Vulgar History Podcast
La Chevalière d’Éon (with Maya Deane)
June 15, 2022
Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. I’m your host, Ann Foster. So, we’re back on the Internationale saga. This week, we’re going to be looking at the story of a woman from 18th-century France, which I think you can know is going to mean me pronouncing some things in my effortlessly perfect French accent.
I’m joined today for this episode by Maya Deane, who is the author of the book Wrath Goddess Sing, which just just came out. So, we talk about that in the episode as well. Wrath Goddess Sing is a retelling of the Iliad. “Drawing on ancient texts and modern archaeology to reveal the trans women’s story hidden underneath the well-known myths of the Iliad, Wrath Goddess Sing leaves a compelling, pitilessly beautiful vision of Achilles’s vanished world, perfect for fans of Song of Achilles and The Inheritance trilogy.” So, we’re going to definitely talk about that. We’re going to talk about Achilles. We’re going to talk about trans history. I think it’s so perfect because it’s June, it’s Pride Month. And honestly, Maya Deane is here with the facts and the information. She knows so much about the person who we’re talking about. It’s kind of bit like she’s telling the story to me. So, I hope you enjoy this episode about the Chevalière d’Éon.
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Ann: I’m so excited today. I’m here with Maya Deane, author of… So, at the time this podcast comes out, your book will have been out for, like, a week, but we’re recording it before it comes out. So, can you just, first of all, tell everybody about your book, please?
Maya: Sure. Hi, I’m Maya Deane. My book, which will be out by the time you hear this, is Wrath Goddess Sing, which is a retelling of the life of Achilles from the Iliad as the trans woman that she was, which is a bold claim, but you know. [laughs] So, Wrath Goddess Sing really explores alternate and submerged readings of familiar myths to give us Achilles as she might have been in the Bronze Age, in a world that was just on the brink of collapse, a world that was, in many ways, much nicer to live in than the world of the next thousand years in large parts of the region. Like, Mycenaean women had equal pay apparently.
Ann: So, just from looking at, like, what’s out there, your bio on your website and stuff, like, you’ve been into this mythology since a very young age, right?
Maya: Lifelong, absolutely.
Ann: I feel like you are for like the Trojan War and Greek mythology as I am for like the women of Tudor history, which is just, like, from a weirdly young age, it’s just like, “This is my thing and here we go.” So, I’m excited for you, like, that this book is coming out, that is you get to explore all this stuff.
Maya: Oh gosh, yeah. The Tudor period is so fascinating; you get so many big personalities.
Ann: Well, no, exactly. But this is not about me; this is about you. But actually, today we’re talking, so you’re joining me both because you have this book coming out and because I got the best email from your publicist saying, like, “Maya has this book coming out and here are some other things that she can talk about as well,” and one of them was trans women of 18th-century France. And literally, as I read that, I was like, I’m currently researching a trans woman from 18th-century France! So, this is the perfect opportunity.
Today you’re joining me, and we’re going to be talking about a woman whose name is… Well, we’re going to call her La Chevalière, which was kind of a title that she was given at one point. It’s a French word, it means knight, effectively, right? It’s a role that she earned. So, she was assigned male at birth, was a woman. And so, the name… I’m just going to do my best with an extremely long French name. Her name was Charlotte-Geneviève-Louise-Augusta-Andréa-Timothéa d’Éon de Beaumont.
Maya: She kind of carried around a lot of names, yeah.
Ann: She had… It’s all of the names, which is why… I don’t know, in history, she’s mostly… People refer to her when you look it up, it’s the Chevalière. That is how she tends to be known, and I feel like in her life, that’s kind of what she went by, maybe.
Maya: La Chevalière, yeah.
Ann: I love that is just sort of the presence of that. It’s not just like, “Oh, I’m Ann.” It’s like, “Oh hi, I’m La Chevalière.” Like, okay, step back. Already, this is a cool person.
Maya: Oh, yeah. No, she made a big deal out of it. In fact, that was one of the ways she was an early feminist, and one of the ways that she related to the other early feminists who thought she was a cis woman who had been raised as a boy, but one of the ways she related to them was by, like, Mary Wollstonecraft actually mentions her in passing in some of her writings, talking about how, like, La Chevalière proves that women can be warriors. And she knew that she would be read that way. She intended, she wanted to be understood and accepted by her cis women peers. Definitely, she positioned herself that way intentionally.
Ann: Yeah. And so, what… We’re going to just kind of go through, like, birth to death, what was her situation? But it’s like, the gender stuff is such a big part of kind of the mythos that she built up around herself, like, how she kind of used that for PR reasons. But I want to mention that her life was also so interesting aside from that. Just, like, the espionage of it all… There’s a lot to get into.
La Chevalière was born October 5, 1728, in Burgundy into a poor noble family in a wine-bearing region. I mentioned that because wine does come up later, as a thing that she’s smuggling.
Maya: Oh my gosh, Burgundy! A lot of stuff was happening in Burgundy, actually. Like Abbé de Choisy, better-known occasionally as the comtesse de Barres, actually lived as a woman in Burgundy for some years, and wrote a very famous best-selling memoir that probably was still pretty accessible in d’Éon’s childhood.
Ann: Yeah. Oh my god, I love that. Did not know that detail. So yeah, Burgundy. And the sort of like, the early years, just from what I’ve read, it’s kind of like… Like most people alive at that point in France, we don’t know a lot about the early years because no one really wrote it down. So, I just kind of know about, like, she excelled in her schooling, she went into military training. By age 35, she’d gotten a law degree, published books about the French tax system, been knighted and became a celebrated fencer.
Maya: Oh yeah. She was a fantastic— Like, even much later in her life in England, she spent a fair bit of time giving exhibition fencing matches. I’m sure Georges de Bologne will come up at some point.
Ann: Yeah. So, just right away, before we get into the rest of it, it’s like, this is a person who’s like really smart, really educated, really athletic, and then skilled in these impressive ways. Fencing to me is, like, a really epic skill.
Oh yeah! I also want to mention, much of what we know about her early life comes from… She wrote an autobiography, but I don’t think it was published, and I think it was ghostwritten, like, she hired someone else to write it for her. But she wrote these other books as well. So, in the introduction to this never-completed autobiography, some modern-day historians said that “By 1758, she was a rising star among the young aristocratic elite who hoped to serve the monarchy in some important capacity.” So, she was just smart, she was charismatic, she was talented. And it’s just kind of like, she was from what did I say? A noble but poor family, but she was elevating herself just by virtue of being so good at stuff, basically.
Maya: Yeah. Her family had the sort of positioning where they had noble enough blood and all that to be positioned where they could excel and could rise themselves through, like, skilled bureaucracy and stuff. And she was a talented intriguer so…
Ann: Yeah. She was, like, ambitious. She was like, “I’m just going to make my mark on the world. Here we go.”
So, she was given the role of a diplomat to Russia and England, like officially, but privately, what she was doing was she worked for the most clandestine spy service in France, le Secret du Roi, or the King’s Secret. So, this is like, you could probably explain this better than I can, but the king was suspicious, and he wanted to have these secret spies working directly for him, like, not going through the rest of the political everything. I love this. This is like… It’s like a James Bond moment.
Maya: Yeah. A lot of people cast doubts on some of the claims she made about her spying in Russia, mostly about the idea that she spent most of it, you know, looking gorgeous in dresses. But I mean, that’s not particularly impossible.
Ann: No, exactly. So yeah, that’s the thing. There’s something like… So, she’s charged with fostering good relations with the Russian court. Empress Elizabeth is who is there. So, okay, one article I read said the Empress liked to have balls, metamorphosis balls, where gender nonconformity was, like, celebrated, and that’s what was done, which is not to say that’s how or why she started potentially dressing in glamorous dresses. But it’s like, if it’s already a court where gender is not strictly binary, like maybe…
Maya: Great opportunity.
Ann: Exactly, exactly, exactly. And then, I think I saw something about where it’s like, because she was presenting as a woman, she was able to get into places men maybe couldn’t go to, like, learn some more of the secrets, to get closer to the Empress, and that sort of thing.
Maya: Yeah, exactly. In her memoirs, she talks about essentially being able to get to all sorts of places that men couldn’t go. Because there are so many historians who are trying to narrate her as cis, obviously, there’s like, a line of critique where people say that, well, maybe she was exaggerating those stories to make herself seem more useful, but like, probably not.
Ann: Honestly, I’ve had this in a couple other episodes of my podcast, where like, if someone writes their memoir, and it says something that historians are like, that just doesn’t fit into this binary concept, they’re like, “Oh, well, she’s probably exaggerating,” like not just her, but other people, like, “This probably isn’t true.” And I’m like, well, this is her memoir, and I trust her more than I trust, like, a 20th-century cis white man, being like, “I don’t believe it.” It’s like, well, I believe her if I’m gonna believe anyone, frankly.
Maya: Oh, yeah, absolutely. [laughs] It’s really an interesting thing. I mean, this is what, like, Catherine the Great is in court? That kind of thing, this period?
Ann: It was Elizabeth.
Maya: I know but wasn’t Catherine the Great like a junior figure at that point, not yet…
Ann: Yes. Yeah.
Maya: In the fabulous and wildly historically inaccurate The Great, it would be, like, Season One.
Ann: Yes, yes, exactly. I don’t know. Anyway, I find it like… This is why I’m so happy to have you here, because so much of this history, it’s just been interpreted for so long by cis white men who are like trying to make these stories fit into a paradigm that they understand. And part of it, I think, with the Chevalière is like, well, she’s so impressive. Surely a woman couldn’t have done these things, so it must have been a man in disguise. But then, like, the contortions you have to make to make that fit a story that clearly is the story of a trans woman.
So yeah, exactly. Season One of The Great is what’s happening. Apparently, she dazzled in her posts. So, she was like, in the fashion, the outfits, and again, just like the charisma, and she’s so smart, and I’m sure quick and witty. So, then France entered into the Seven Years’ War with Britain and the Chevalière was ordered to return to become a captain. Oh, and this is where she was later admitted to the prestigious Order of Saint Louis and honoured with the title Chevalière. It’s an honourific; it’s just kind of the equivalent of being, like, dame or lady whatever. After the war ended, she was appointed as liaison to the English court, but again, working directly for the king with secret orders to scope out the coastline for possible French invasion of England.
Maya: Yeah, that came in handy later.
Ann: Ha-ha! Yeah. So, it was a prominent position, but it wouldn’t last. According to the one source I was looking at here, she enjoyed England a little bit too much; she was strongly reprimanded for importing too much wine. And I feel like you can’t take the Burgundy out of the girl.
Maya: [chuckles] Clearly.
Ann: So then, within six months, she was fired for insolence and given two weeks to return to France. She knew that if and when she returned to France, she probably should be sent to jail, to the Bastille, so she just decided to not return. She’s just like, “What if I stay in England?” So, the king, which is Louis… God, I’m so bad at telling the Louises apart… XV, furiously ordered her to be extradited to France, but the British foreign minister refused, declaring she was free to stay in Britain as a private citizen.
So, she’s just like, the scandal of it, you know? She’s setting herself apart from just everyone else right away, because it’s, like, the king is demanding her back, the foreign minister is here. So, already she’s like a celebrity in that sense.
Maya: It gets even wilder because the way she got reprimanded for insolence was pretty weird. A new ambassador was assigned to England, and within a short period of time, they clearly did not like each other. She quickly started accusing him of trying to drug her at dinner, at which point she made these accusations public, so then he sued her for libel, which I mean, it’s Britain. If there’s a constant that unites the 18th century to today, it’s that it’s really easy to sue people for libel. So, she lost that case, but the British public sided with her and just started, like, pelting this guy when they saw him with, you know, just fruits and vegetables. Like, there was this huge scandal. And that’s how she got recalled for insolence. So, I’m just wondering, like, why was he trying to drug her?
Ann: Yeah! [both laugh] I love, I love, there’s been other stories on the podcast too, where it’s like the people of Britain, just like, they riot at a moment’s notice. It’s like, “This is our star, and we will defend her.” Yeah, I appreciate that consistency.
So, everything that she’s doing is just like, the most; this is not a low-key life that she is living. The French foreign ministry made several attempts to kidnap and arrest her. In retaliation, she made her most scandalous move yet, which is she published a book of state secrets full of correspondence from Le Secret du Roi, full of salacious details and the promise that there was more to come unless the French king stopped trying to bring her back.
Maya: Yeah. I think she held back, like, the invasion plans.
Ann: But this is like… It’s epic. I love that they’re like, “You’re coming back,” and she’s like, “Oh really? Well, what if I just expose your entire, like, secret James Bond operation?” And it worked! So, the king agreed to leave her alone with a generous 12,000 livres salary, on the condition that she did not reveal his worst secrets. So, she was in England! She’s just this, like, fabulous French woman in England in political exile, but I think, I would assume, based on the scandal, the stuff that had happened already, she continued to be a celebrity. Like, people are just, like, all about her in England. So, of course, she’d stay there. Like, they left her there.
Okay. And then this is where I’m just like, please help me with this. Around 1770, rumours started to spread, potentially started by her, that she had actually been born a woman, but had been raised as a man in order to receive a family inheritance.
Maya: Yeah. That’s kind of one of the ways you do it. In some ways, I think she was learning from some of the lessons that you could take away from, like, the lives of early 17th, early 18th-century French trans women, which we’ll talk about more later, because I think she decided, “Look, no. We have to actually convince everyone that I’m assigned female at birth or else I will never get what I want.” She probably did start the rumours herself because, I mean, she was literally a spy who intrigued constantly and used public opinion to get what she wanted. And yeah, I would not be surprised in the least. There was a bet on the London Stock Exchange, just a giant betting pool, which is perfect because that lets her do this virtuous, “No, no, I will not. It’s humiliating that you’re even betting about this. I will not deign to reveal one way or another,” which of course inflames the speculation even further. The betting pool lasts for, like, a year.
Ann: Yeah. I’ve got in my notes here, it says “There was three to two odds that she was a woman.”
Maya: [chuckles] I mean, it’s probably not surprising. If we look at representations of her from her own lifetime, and especially from when she was relatively young, she’s generally portrayed, before she was outed, as being quite beautiful. She probably didn’t look particularly masculine, given that most of those reports about that really started to happen after she died.
Ann: No, and I think just from what I understand, she was also, I think, a short person, like, a short person with like a higher-pitched voice anyway, so it wasn’t outside the realm of… So, when she’s like, “Oh, yeah. Actually, I am a woman,” everyone’s like, “Oh, yeah. That tracks. That tracks.”
So, apparently, at this time, she was forced to hire protection just to safely step outside her house because people wanted to, like, rip off her clothes to be like, [desperate tone] “What is your gender?” Like, people are just so… It’s such a, I don’t know, just hearing about these, like, paparazzi-level moments from olden times, I’m just like, humanity has been the same forever. Like, there’s always these celebrities, and crowds follow them and whatever.
Maya: Yeah. What’s determined weird enough to be worth invading privacy has varied culturally, but the fact that you can randomly invade people’s privacy, if you’re curious and spread that to everyone else, that’s been constant, I would argue, since the Bronze Age. [laughs softly]
Ann: Yeah. Well, it’s giving me like early 2000s, like Perez Hilton upskirt shots of Lindsay Lohan or whatever, right? Like, people are just wanting to rip off her clothes because she was like… They want to like consume her. So yes, the bet was abandoned… Oh! So, then an envoy from Le Secret du Roi arrived in England to determine the truth, like about, was she a woman? She told all, she revealed she was a woman raised male by a father desperate for a son and heir, which again, as you said, it’s like, yeah! You want to be able to start living as a woman. So, you’re just like, “Guess what? I’ve always been a woman,” but in a way that people would understand.
Maya: Oh yeah. Tons of, like, mid-20th-century American trans women did the same thing. It was a very common approach.
Ann: Yeah. So, let’s see. The question was brought all the way to the court of the King’s Bench. On July 2nd, 1777, the English government formally pronounced “She who had called herself the Chevalière d’Éon until that day was an individual who did not possess what the Appalachian man promised, and that she was a virago disguised in a uniform.” I had to look up that word. Do you know that word?
Maya: Virago kind of signifies female masculinity. It’s a Latin word that kind of suggests anything ranging from butchiness to, like, on its boundaries, it can sort of shade into that other really ancient trope of the tribade.
Ann: Tell me about that.
Maya: The tribade is basically this, like, classical era, but also through the early modern era conception of sort of an obligate lesbian who’s partially virilized genitally, which of course would mean you have to, like, have to go after women. It’s just the way things work. Because it’s very like, you know, sexuality was super gendered, so it’s this combination of, “Well, this woman will act like a man.”
Ann: Yeah. So, they’re saying like, “Okay, this person is not a man. She is a virago,” which is basically like a mannish woman. That’s kind of what they’re saying.
Maya: Yeah.
Ann: But this is like, okay, so it’s official. The English government formally pronounced that she’s a woman. So, this is from, I think, the article from a site called Them.us. “This was the perfect way to effect a public gender transition without losing her status or popularity by claiming to have been a woman pretending to be a man all along.” And then taking it one step further, “She wedded her public transition to her pious religious nature, arguing that because she was at heart a good, honest Christian woman, she could no longer live a lie.” And everyone’s like, “Okay! Fair enough.”
Maya: Well, I guess we can’t allow you to be a man anymore. Yeah, exactly. And actually, there were a bunch of little things, which some people have interpreted as ambivalence, because it’s convenient, but which I think is better understood as protesting just to the right amount. So, for instance, there was this whole kerfuffle over whether she could wear her military medals. She was very insistent that she could, but then there was this bit where she was like, “Am I to be forced to wear women’s clothing all the time? Surely that’s not progressive. Maybe you could fund it…” [Ann laughs] And then, the king pays for a wardrobe by Marie Antoinette’s genius dressmaker.
Ann: Oh my god, we’re definitely going to get to that. Well, I’ll just say right now. She’s officially declared a woman, age 49, just for the record. She negotiated her return to France, and part of that, like you just said, was like, “But I’ll need gorgeous dresses. Who will give me those?” And the king’s like, “Okay, I will. Yeah.” She agreed to publicly present as a woman for the rest of her life.
So, she went back to France, she was formally presented at the Court of Versailles. There was a four-hour makeover montage, “including powdered hair and an elaborate gown outfitted by Marie Antoinette’s own dressmaker, Rose Bertin.” So, it’s not just a coming-out moment; it’s a coming-out moment, dressed like Marie Antoinette, like, in an outfit that takes four hours to put on.
Maya: Yeah, it’s very much an “I’m on top of the world! Ha-ha! I win” moment.
Ann: Like, in the movie that I’m imagining in my mind, this is just this moment of just like the… What is it? I don’t know. Any movie with, like, the prom or the person coming down the stairs, and everyone’s like, “What? The nerd is beautiful?” Like, her coming out, just like, having been dressed personally by Marie Antoinette’s dresser, just like “I’ve arrived. This is me. It’s beautiful.”
Okay. So, the way that this article says, “Being an 18th-century noblewoman after having been a soldier, spy, and diplomat,” was kind of not… It was a little boring. It’s kind of like, “Well, I don’t want to just, like, hang around a court doing whatever. I’m a spy. I’m a soldier,” like she wants to keep doing stuff. So, for instance, when France sided with the colonists in the American Revolution, she asked to be put back in uniform to assemble an all-female battalion to fight the British. I love it!
Maya: I mean, and I think that that’s best understood… Like, it would be easy to decontextualize it and treat it as just some sort of weird pipe dream she had, but I think it’s best understood in the context that, you know, figures like Wollstonecraft were talking about her as this, like, proof that women can fight. I think there’s a political element to that, especially given some of her later, like, public work as an abolitionist. I’m not surprised that her feminism and her abolition would, you know, appear in the form of “Well, let’s see if we can form regiments.”
Ann: Yeah. No, I love it. I love that she’s got all this military experience and she’s like, “Let me use it.” And then, like, her life is inherently, like you said, it’s proof that women can do this. The government, apparently, to that suggestion said, “Well, why don’t you join a convent?”
Maya: [chuckles] Yeah.
Ann: Like, just in terms of not… Her being so progressive for the era and just being faced with people who are just like, “Does not compute. No. No. A group of women? Sounds like a convent to me.”
Maya: Yeah, I know. If she’d been 30 years younger, she would probably have been guillotined with a bunch of revolutionary-era French feminists.
Ann: Yeah. Luckily, she had the goods on the king, and so she kind of was safe in that way.
So, she returned to London because, frankly, her life just seemed a lot better there. She said she was going back there to settle up some business, but it potentially was more just to escape the strict life that she was being forced into in France. In London, she continued to write, because remember she’d written all those books before, and she collected a large library of early feminist works, which I love. Like you were saying, her and Mary Wollstonecraft, she’s like, just as a figure of this time, she’s so into just, “Let’s get on this. Feminism, let’s make it happen.” She’s into it.
While she was in England, though, the French Revolution happened, so actually, luckily, she was out of town. The French monarchy was abolished, meaning she no longer had the protection or the pension that she had been getting from the monarchy.
Maya: Or for people who don’t think she was actually a woman and that she was doing this as some sort of testing, any reason to live as a woman if she wasn’t one?
Ann: Yeah, exactly. So, it’s like, if the king had said, “Okay, you have to live as a woman,” and so she did, like, once the king died, she didn’t have to anymore. Clearly, this is what she was doing by choice, like, for herself.
And then, this part bums me out, obviously, the last season for life. So, she lived in poverty. She sold off her book collection. But you were saying, she was giving fencing displays. So, this was a way that she’s making some money was just, like, showing off her cool fencing skills. And people are like, “What? A woman who’s a fencer?” She had this trademark, like, long black dress that she would always wear.
Maya: Yeah, there were a bunch of exhibition matches with her and Joseph de Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who is sometimes called the Black Mozart, although actually, Mozart slept on his couch. First, they were famous for being abolitionists, pressuring the British government to do something about the slave trade. But second, they would do their exhibition matches together. So like, there are these political cartoons of just, you know, her and Joseph de Bologne, just duelling, but also punishing the regent, the Prince Regent. [chuckles]
Ann: So, they were like, yeah! Thank you for bringing that up as well, because I love the story of Joseph as well. I encountered it because the symphony here did a concert, and I’m like, “Oh, who’s this musician?” I was like, “Oh my god, I love the music. Who’s this person? Oh, it’s this guy, like, “the Black Mozart.” But basically, they just mean like, it’s a Black man who lived at the same time as Mozart, who had a white wig on, so everyone’s like, “Oh, the Black Mozart.”
Maya: Yeah, but he was actually, like, he was amazing, and he was actually a big influence on Mozart.
Ann: But I love the image of this Black man, trans woman, just doing these fencing displays, and everyone’s just like, “Yeah, we stan! We love you! Oh my god, it’s these two!” So, they were celebrities, and really progressive abolitionists. Yeah, I love this moment. And this is, like, the early 1800s. So, this is like, if you want to put it into… This is Bridgerton era, you know? It’s like, that’s happening with the marriage market and whatever, the Regency, and then at the same time, like, they’re doing these fencing displays. It’s all happening all at the same time.
So, she’s making these fencing displays because she needed money, because she didn’t have her pension for all her military work and spy work, and then she lived the last few years of her life with a roommate who was another woman. I haven’t seen anything… Actually, let’s talk about that. So, I haven’t seen anything about the Chevalière having any romantic connections with anyone. Have you come upon anything about, like, her having a love life?
Maya: Honestly, no, which makes her relatively unusual compared to some of the other famous French trans women who were somewhat famous for their love lives. No. No one knows. I mean, it just doesn’t seem to come up. Now, partially, it could be that she was very disciplined about her own PR. So, for all we know, she had secret affairs that just never saw the light of day. But certainly, certainly, this was not something that was much talked about.
Ann: Yeah. I find that interesting in terms of how much her… The fact that people are just, like, trying to rip off her clothes. People are so interested in every detail of her life, but there’s never any sort of scandal or rumours about her having affairs with anyone, of any gender.
Maya: Well, granted, people trying to rip your clothes off is a great reason to be paranoid about that kind of thing.
Ann: You know, yeah, I agree. And that’s a real hint, like, maybe you want to keep your love life private if you don’t want…
Maya: Or potentially, maybe you’re a former spy, and you don’t trust anyone to see you in such an intimate way, especially given what happened when she was no longer alive to protect her privacy.
Ann: Yes. So, she was living with this woman for the last several years of her life, and then she died in 1810. Her roommate discovered her body. And then I’ll let you describe what happened to her body.
Maya: Then some physicians decided to examine her, and they were like, “Oh look, a penis. It’s perfect in every way.” At which point, the scandal was worth a lot. There’s actually, like, a drawing of her genitals in the British Museum because people were very curious. Her autopsy report also notes that, you know, just like, “Okay, also boobs, very curvy, but look! A penis.” And that then led to her defenders, people who wanted to protect her reputation from the horrific charge of being a trans woman, which was a lot more scandalous in 1800 than in 1700, for reasons, to concoct various explanations as to why she was never really a trans woman and just had to disguise herself as a woman for decades, and decades, and decades, and decades for other reasons.
Ann: Yeah. It was like she lived openly as a woman for 33 years, where it’s like, “Ha-ha! I’m a spy, and I’m going to dress like a woman.” Like, that’s a long time.
Maya: Yeah, no. No one’s that committed to the bit unless it’s actually something they care about.
Ann: No, exactly. So, that’s where it’s like, like I was saying before, like the contortions of historians trying to be like, “Okay, this is a story of a man who was so clever and devious, decided to dress as a woman for 33 years.”
Maya: I think some of them were doing it in kind of a horrifying attempt to rescue her reputation, which obviously is upsetting to me. But at the same time, yeah, the contortions are extravagant.
Ann: Well, it’s just like, if there’s two options and one of them is like, you know, A to B, here’s the thing. And the other one is just like, what if you go from A to Z to this, to this, to this, to this, to this? It’s like, one of these is way more likely than the other one. The amount of work you have to go through to see her as anything other than a trans woman is… It just really speaks to how much people were committed, like you said, I was thinking it was like, people just couldn’t wrap their head around it. But what you’re explaining, and what I see now, is they wanted to preserve or, like, I don’t know, make her… Save her legacy.
Maya: Save her reputation from the horrific barge. Yeah, like there were fencers too… There was at least one famous fencer who, among other things, was writing about how she and his father, also a famous fencer, were good friends, and he refers to her as herself throughout. But there’s a brief aside, you know, just like, “Oh yeah, sure, it came out later, she was a man the whole time. Moving on.” And like, I think what we see is plenty of people were not ashamed to have known her, were not ashamed of what she was, but maybe didn’t have the political vocabulary to say, “But actually, but actually let’s defend her womanhood on its own terms.”
Ann: Keep going. It’s such a complicated, yet not complicated… It’s just such a shitty thing, frankly. Like, she had this cool life, and she’s so amazing, and they’re just like, “Well, let’s finally reveal the genitals.”
Maya: “Put them in the British Museum.”
Ann: Yeah. It’s so gross.
Maya: They’re still there. I mean, the drawing, not her body.
Ann: Yeah. Where it’s, like, she was famous— Well, there was the bet about, like, is she a woman? But she was famous for like all these other cool reasons, not just because of the question of gender, and just to limit the legacy is just that, I think…
Maya: Oh, a hundred percent. But like, I think we have to look at that in a context where it became much, much, much, much, much harder to be a trans woman, and in a lot of ways, harder to be a trans woman in England, because this is the period of time where, like, between… Her time basically parallels the massive police crackdowns on so-called Mali culture in England, which is essentially working-class trans women and trans femmes. I would call it a culture that consisted of working-class trans women and trans femmes and gay and bisexual men, with a lot of space carved out for the trans feminine.
But yeah, during her lifetime, that stamping out and criminalizing that entire cultural element was a huge thing that was ongoing in England. Whereas, like, a few years before she was born, there was this massive bestseller, which was the comtesse de Barres’ memoirs; they’re often referred to as the transvestite memoirs by historians. But yeah, the climate she was born into would have been in some ways more tolerant of gender variance than the climate she died in.
Ann: Which does explain kind of why she’s drawn to living there at the time, like when she first went there, it would have been more tolerant than what it was like by the time she passed away.
Maya: Yeah. And by the time she passed away, I think she’d very heavily relied on essentially passing as cis for the rest of her life, and having that validated with, like, official decrees and edicts and acts of parliament.
Ann: Yeah! Which is just honestly, like I can’t… It’s so major to just be, like, “What’s the proof that I’m a woman? Well, this act of parliament. The French king has said.” And so, you’re like, “Okay, cool.” That’s like, what more proof do you need?
So, she was buried in the churchyard of St. Pancras Old Church. Her remaining possessions were sold at Christie’s Auction House in 1813. And her grave is listed on the Burdett-Coutts Memorial there as one of the important graves lost. I don’t know much about this, but the Beaumont Society is a longstanding organization for transgender people named after her. I don’t know if you know anything about that organization.
Maya: I don’t. But basically, not long after she died, from the 19th century to the present, obviously, trans people, however we describe ourselves, I mean, the terminology has changed a lot, but we’ve been around forever, have looked to her as, you know, an example of someone who successfully got the King of France to declare her a woman, and just as evidence that you can be, like, an incredibly talented trans woman.
Ann: I love her story for that, and I love her story just for being just this scandalous, wild, like, who’s just like, “I was a spy, and then I decided to stay in England, so I’m just going to basically blackmail the King.” Like, the audacity with which she lived is great. It’s such a good story. This is where it’s like, it’s all intrinsically connected with, like, her identity as a trans woman, which is why it bothers me to see her legacy being reduced to being like, “But what were the genitals?” It’s like, there’s 10,000 other more interesting things to talk about!
Maya: Alas, that seems to be the trans feminine condition in trans misogynist societies.
Ann: I think this is where I first heard about her. In 2012, the National Portrait Gallery in London purchased a portrait of her, which had been, like, for a while, no one knew who it was a portrait of. They were just like “A portrait of a middle-aged woman.” And then they were like, “Oh no, this is the Chevalière.” But I think that’s where there’s a lot of press about the portrait being purchased, the identification of the portrait. That’s where I had first heard about it. And so, the portrait, I think itself, I don’t know, I love it. Like, 2012 was a good period of time in terms of the internet existing or whatever, where this portrait came out, and there’s a lot of articles, a lot of discussion about it, and that brought, I think, a new level of attention to her story, which is good.
Maya: Well, I think that one of the things that contemporary representations of her show, and we touched on this a little bit before, is just the extent to which people kind of redrew her when they knew she was a trans woman. So, especially portraits that are from before her death portray her extremely differently. She’s just a younger middle-aged woman, an older middle-aged woman, sometimes in the scandalous years where they’re speculating, she’s a very hot young woman, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, it’s just really revealing that a relatively unremarkable portrait of her would go unlabeled for 200 years because it didn’t look stereotypically mannish enough.
Alie: I love that she was at a level… Well, for anyone I do in this podcast, I love when there’s actual portraits of people because there’s so many women in history where there’s not. But I love that she was at a level of fame and importance that she was, portraits of her were done during her life. I don’t know.
So, she has appeared as a character in some fictional works. This is the, like, legacy portion of it. There’s a film in 1928, Spy of Madame Pompadour. 1959, okay, this is a film loosely based on her life that portrays her as a woman masquerading as a man, which is like…
Maya: Which is pretty much just taking her propaganda and running with it, which is fine.
Ann: Yeah. So, that’s Le Secret du Chevalier d’Éon from 1959. 2006. Have you seen, or are you familiar with, the anime series, Le Chevalier d’Eon?
Maya: I’ve heard of it. I haven’t been able to actually track it down. I’d love to.
Ann: What I know of it is that it’s some sort of, like, supernatural type thing where she like… It’s like the spirit of her dead sister lives in her body, and she switches back and forth between a masculine person and a feminine person. So, almost like a Sailor Moon transformation.
Maya: I love Sailor Moon, but…
Ann: Yeah. [laughs] Sailor Moon transformation in kind of the worst possible way. I’ve not seen it, but that is what I’ve heard about it. And that’s, honestly, when you look up the Chevalier d’Eon, a lot of your search results are going to be about this anime series. I’m interested in this, and I’ve not listened to it, but the Doctor Who audio series has an episode featuring her, which I think is interesting.
Maya: Oh cool.
Ann: And she appears as an unplayable character that gives out side quests in the video game Assassin’s Creed: Unity.
Maya: That’s not a surprise, but I’m not familiar with the portrayal. Unity is one of the few Assassin’s Creeds I haven’t played.
Ann: I don’t know. There’s been a couple of people done the podcast, whereas just when you’re looking at them in pop culture, and it’s like, “And they’re in Assassin’s Creed.” I’m like, should I play Assassin’s Creed? All these people…
Maya: Well, Assassin’s Creed is filled with historical Easter eggs. So yeah, as long as you can get past the cheesy, ridiculous sci-fi frame narrative, there’s a lot to like.
Ann: Yeah. And that’s where I’m just like, I forget… Just a couple other historical figures, it’s like, “And they’re in Assassin’s Creed.” I’m like, “They’re in Assassin’s Creed?” [laughs] The more I hear about them, I’m like, intrigued.
Okay. I want to talk to you… So, on my podcast, we do a score for everybody, just on various categories, and I’m going to get your thoughts about where the Chevalière is going to fall. So, there’s four categories. The first category is Scandaliciousness, which is just, as you can probably presume, just kind of like, how gossipy and fantastic was this person’s life and story?
Maya: What’s the scale?
Ann: The scale is a 0 to 10, 10 being the highest.
Maya: So, I think definitely 10 on Scandaliciousness. I mean, she blackmailed the King of France, [Ann laughs] like, “I will reveal your invasion plans.” That’s like, basically, she said, “I will start a war. I will literally start a war if you don’t back off.”
Ann: I agree. I agree entirely. And then, when you add onto that the fact that she was a spy, that she worked for this super secret spy network, like, it’s a high score there.
The next category, again, it’s a 0 to 10. So, the next one is Schemieness. So, just like, and that can be sort of like how smart she was, but like, how many plans she did? Were they good schemes? And I feel like this is going to be a high score as well, but I will default to you.
Maya: I would say at least an 8. You know, maybe she wasn’t able to successfully get an Amazon army, which clearly was her endgame and which would have been amazing. So, can’t give her the 10 there, but like, she was a skilled schemer.
Ann: I think between, like, the fact that she was very successful as a spy, and then the fact, the way that she stayed in England, and then the blackmail plot. And then also the way that she’d used her celebrity and PR to just affect this transition. Like, I agree. I think an 8 is good.
Maya: And you know, she was remarkably successful in destroying the career of the diplomat who apparently drugged her.
Ann: Yes! Yes. I don’t have a scale for, like, vengeance, but I feel like she would get that too because she’s just like, “Oh, you crossing with me? Guess what? Like I’ve been a spy my whole life. I’m super smart, and like, I will destroy you.” And she did. Not a person you want to cross.
The next category is Significance. So, this can be both, like, her significance at the time she was alive, but then like, the legacy, what she means to other people, but also like, what she did that could have set the stage for future generations of people.
Maya: Well, that’s really complicated. We’re still talking about her, and so many trans women I know are motivated to claim her because the gall, like, the nerve!
Ann: Well, that’s what I think… I think her significance is really strong to the trans community. I think if you just see it through that scale, like, how significant is she?
Maya: Yeah. And I would say her significance, she would have been a much more significant figure in the history of early feminism, if cis women hadn’t dropped her after the genital reveal. Like, definitely, you don’t see the next generation after Wollstonecraft treating her as the same level of figure, and it has everything to do with just having decided that she was never a woman.
Ann: Honestly, though, when we think too about the significance of her actions in the war, her actions as a spy, we can never quantify what exactly that did, but I think she was involved in France’s success.
Maya: Mm-hm, probably.
Ann: Yeah, but it’s good. It’s hard to say. So, I don’t know, where would you put her for Significance?
Maya: To the trans community, probably an 8, 9. More broadly, 6, 7.
Ann: Okay. I’m going to average that out to, like, 7.5.
Maya: Cool.
Ann: I like how you broke that down because, yeah, it’s like, significance to the trans community is really high, but then I think she should be more significant to a broader.. But she’s not. So, it’s like, we need to be…
Maya: Yeah. I mean, I think Wollstonecraft had it right.
Ann: Then the last category, so it’s the Sexism category, which is just like, how much did the patriarchy hold her back? Everybody gets at least a 5 because… Of course. But like, how much did sexism hold her back?
Maya: 10. In life and in death, like, it’s pretty clear that the scope of her ambitions was enormous. Clearly, she wanted to end slavery. Clearly, she wanted to end patriarchy, and of course, the two are linked. Clearly, she wanted to do a great deal, and she managed to do a lot for herself, but she did die poor, and then she, you know, for the next 200 years, people argued about whether she was, like, a trans woman, or just a man with a really good reason to pretend to be a trans woman, which is much more believable.
Ann: And I hate how that obfuscates all of the cool stuff that she had been doing, to limit her to just be like, “Oh, look at this interesting gender story.” Where it’s like, no, she wanted to send an all-woman brigade to the Revolution. Like, she was so into the feminist stuff at the time. Yeah.
So, how that all adds up, just so you know, is a 35.5. The highest score anyone’s ever gotten on the podcast is a 38. So, she’s close.
Maya: Ooh! Who’s a 38?
Ann: 38 is Fredegund. I don’t know if you know about Fredegund.
Maya: Oh yes, yes. I know Fredegund.
Ann: She’s like, who can top her? So far, nobody. But yeah, so Fredegund is a 38. Queen Margot is 37.5.
Maya: I think Fredegund gets extra points for, like, gleeful murder, right?
Ann: Fredegund gets points for a lot of murder-based things, yeah. Njinga of Ndongo has a 36. Hurrem Sultan has 36, and then there’s Chevalière, 35.5. So, she’s in fifth place overall.
Maya: That’s a good ranking.
Ann: I am happy. I’m happy for her. I think she deserves to be right up there.
Now, since I have you, who are the other two trans women of the 18th century who you want to talk about?
Maya: All right. Well, let’s start with a lower-ranking one first, known to history as the abbé de Choisy and from Burgundy, but also known better, I think… Well, I’m not going to misgender her. I’m just going to call her de Barres because she decided she was the comtesse de Barres for several years, and then wrote a massively successful memoir about it. Essentially, the story she put out was that her mother simply decided she was a girl and raised her accordingly. But like, that was probably political maneuvering as well because that was just how she preferred to be, and also because she spent much of her childhood as playmate to Louis XIV’s trans sister… More on that in a second.
Ann: Okay. [chuckles]
Maya: Their mothers were tight and were just like, “Well, let’s just get them both great dresses. Life may be hard, but it doesn’t have to be hard now.” So, at the age of 18, she was sort of heavily socially shamed and was like, “Okay, fine. I guess I’ll try to dress as a boy for a bit.” Didn’t like it, stopped almost immediately, and spent vast amounts of money on ridiculously gaudy outfits because she was a fashionista.
At one point, the Dauphin’s hard-ass tutor comes up to her at a party and is just like, “You should be ashamed of yourself. You disgust me completely. What’s wrong with you?” And she’s like, “Well, I can’t just have people walking up to me at parties doing that. I’ve got to get out of Paris.” So, she retreats to the countryside. She has her lawyer prepare for her an identity as a respectable widow, the comtesse de Barres. She dyes her hair, she’s like, “Yeah, okay, fine. We’ll just go with really dark hair for now.”
And then, suitably disguised, she basically just starts sleeping with everyone in sight, according to her memoirs. Well, she only really records the women she slept with because that wasn’t illegal. There was no potential death penalty for sleeping with women. So, it’s like, “Memoirs of a trans lesbian.” She gives her skincare regimen in passing in her memoirs. Her memoirs are actually hilarious; they’re kind of ridiculous. She starts them off by basically observing, she’s like, “Every so often I try to stop being a woman. [Ann giggles] But I put on boy clothes and the darnedest thing keeps happening… I just gamble all the time. I spend so much money gambling that eventually I just realized I can’t keep doing this anymore. So, I re-pierced my ears, put on a great dress, and I feel great!” [Ann laughs] She’s like, “Let me tell you about my skincare regimen. [Ann bursts into laughter] My skin is amazingly soft. Of course I’m gorgeous.” And her memoir just continues in this vein. Like, it’s hilarious.
Ann: I love it.
Maya: Incredibly arrogant. She was probably annoying to be around, but she was hilarious.
There’s a rumour that I find somewhat credible that one of her lovers was Prince Eugene of Savoy, which would be scandalous on multiple levels, especially since this is, like, roughly the War of Spanish Succession era. No, it’s a little before that. I guess it’s, yeah, it’s before that. So, maybe it’s not that scandalous. Maybe it’s just scandalous because, you know, Prince Eugene of Savoy. She’s also known for being part of a diplomatic mission to the Kingdom of Siam.
Ann: Really?
Maya: And writing extensively about it. She wasn’t just a pretty face. David Hume actually had both her scandalous memoirs and her account of the situation in Siam in his library. Eventually, she sort of went back to the countryside and just carried on writing letters to various scandalous people. Her memoirs were a big bestseller posthumously, but also there were a bunch of open secrets during her life. She’s an interesting figure to me.
She also apparently wrote a fairy tale with Charles Perrault, and I forget which feminist writer of the late 17th century, but it was like Charles Perrault, the writer of fairy tales, this feminist, and her, sat down to write a fairy tale. The fairy tale is essentially the story of this young Marquise who has this interesting backstory where her mother was like, “I’m going to have a girl.” Then, after her child was born, she was informed she had a boy. And she was like, “Nope, nope, girl.” Fairy tale precedes, you know, the young girl was raised in extravagance, she had all these wonderful things, she had all the accomplishments you would expect, pretty dresses too, and so on and so forth.
Then it’s like, “And then one day she meets this handsome young marquis, her exact social station. Wonderful. Match made in heaven. They fall for each other. They arrange a marriage. On the wedding night, they’re disrobing innocently, not suspecting anything could be amiss.” And then, basically, what happens is they both have a surprise genital reveal, sort of look at each other, shrug, and are like, “Well, this is fine.” [Ann laughs] And proceed with their lives happily ever after. Which is like, I guess you could say early T for D. I’m trying to find a good copy of that, but it’s difficult to track down. There’s a, I forgot which university press has a pretty good omnibus with it and her memoirs, like, from 2004, so I had dread the author’s note.
But yeah, so that’s the comtesse de Barres or the abbé de Choisy. And the person whose playmate she was, Philippe, the trans sister of Louis XIV, has a completely bananas life as well.
Ann: Okay. I’m so excited to hear.
Maya: So, clearly in her childhood, at least according to Choisy, she had a playmate who was also a trans girl, and they hung out together, and they wore dresses, and everything was great, but she was also, like, a pretty major prince, which brought a lot of heartbreak. So, she had this famous on-again, off-again relationship with this Duke. It was very stormy. At one point she marries, I forgot who… Someone important. And then, of course, he feuds, like, the Duke feuds with her wife. It’s this whole mess. Her wife gets the Duke sent to the Bastille, or no, was it to the Château d’If? Yeah. Her wife gets her boyfriend sent to the Château d’If. Then she has to go to her brother and be like, “Please let my boyfriend out of the Château d’If. Please let my boyfriend out of the Château d’If.”
She was apparently a very successful general, like, terrifying field commander, and famously had a statue of Achilles created in the gardens of Versailles. It’s Achilles on Skyros, so it’s Achilles in a beautiful dress, looking like the woman warrior she was. Apparently very significant to Philippe because that was her contribution to the gardens of Versailles, which I find pretty interesting. It’s like, oh, okay. She definitely related to this particular version of Achilles, who’s interpreted as a trans feminine person. When she died, her friends were like, “She was the silliest woman who ever lived.” Like, basically, that was her obituary. [Ann chuckles] Her life was probably pretty sad, but also very privileged with stormy boyfriends and wives who sent those stormy boyfriends to the Château d’If.
Ann: Since you brought up the statue of Achilles, I feel like it’s a natural progression to wrap things back around to your version of Achilles in your book, which everybody should buy and read.
Maya: I agree. Buy Wrath Goddess Sing. Read Wrath Goddess Sing. You’ll get to meet Achilles.
Ann: So, I know the vague outlines of the story of Achilles, but I’m not familiar with the part you just said about what the statue is made of, like the Achilles in a dress. What’s that story?
Maya: So, one of the parts of the Achilles mythos, and this is in a bunch of different classical sources and also represented on art from the classical period, probably it reflects a pretty old tradition. It’s not referenced in The Iliad, but it appears on art pretty early, where Achilles lived for years before the Trojan War as a woman named Pyrrha on the island of Skyros and had a relationship with the princess of Skyros, Deidamia. So, Achilles was a trans lesbian, and that episode was super popular in art, literally from the classical period to the 19th century, when it kind of stopped because all of a sudden people needed a little more consistency in their gendered representations of Achilles.
But yeah, frequently, like, a surprisingly often amount of the time, Achilles was portrayed as a woman. We see this in the Renaissance, we see this in the Middle Ages, we see this in the classical period. Achilles was often portrayed by women on stage. Shakespeare kind of riffs on that when he makes his Achilles very feminine. It’s just a really long-standing tradition.
There is a Roman epic, unfinished epic, called the Achilleid by Statius, which I detest, which is one of the more elaborated forms of that story. Statius just decides to take the narrative and go as trans misogynist as he can in order to, I guess, make Achilles, like, the kind of man the Romans could relate to. In that version, Achilles is forced to live as a woman by his mother in order to prevent Achilles from going to war. So, the first scene is just like, [weepy voice] “Mom, I can’t believe you would force me to live as a woman. I’m so mad at you!… Wait! The princess of Skyros is hot, I’m going to rape her.” And that’s what happens. Which, I mean, that’s the kind of thing that the Romans vibed with. It’s definitely not the kind of thing I vibed with. So, I thought to myself, “Well, this cannot stand.” Then I thought to myself, “Also, isn’t it a simpler and more economical story if Achilles is just a trans woman?”
Ann: Exactly! It’s the Chevalière all over again. [laughs]
Maya: Yeah. So, that was the point of departure for writing Wrath Goddess Sing. We start on Skyros. She ran away from Thea some years before, like less than two years before, but, you know, a couple of years in order to live as herself. She’s constantly worried that sails in the distance might mean that her Myrmidon relatives have come to collect her. Sails appear; they turn out to be Diomedes and Odysseus, who are looking for Prince Achilles and have no idea that the polite young woman they just encountered is Prince Achilles, and it kind of goes from there, but it gets very weird. [chuckles]
Ann: Yeah. I’m so excited about it. I’m very much looking forward to reading it. I think it’s… Could you have known when you were writing this book that it’s coming at this moment where people are obsessed with Circe and, like, the Trojan women? Books about this time period, these myths are having a moment and, like, here you come!
Maya: Honestly, we had so many publishers pass because they were like, “But Song of Achilles came out 10 years ago. Surely this wave is over.”
Ann: And then enter, like, book talk and suddenly everybody’s all about it.
Maya: Yeah. And I think too, that’s a great time to just sort of think about what we’re doing as we retell, because there are so many different ways to retell, and these stories were never neutral. Like The Iliad, for instance, I mean, Alexander the Great slept with a copy of The Iliad under his pillow and literally would occasionally just say, “My ancestor Achilles was killed in this area, so I can invade.” Like, it became the foundation of, like, the Hellenistic Imperial colonial literature. The British used it the same way. The Iliad is like… Retellings and framings of these stories are never neutral, and I think it’s really interesting to think about what we’re doing when we decide to make Achilles the kind of person who would only ever, would only ever deign to wear women’s clothing in order to rape princesses, or when we reject that. Yeah, it feels very timely.
Ann: Yeah. I think it’s coming at the perfect moment for this book, I think. Not just because of, like, retellings happen to be popular, but just because of where we are as a society, not to get into all of that, but I think it’s so important. And I think this is part of what was in the message I got from your publicist just saying, like, what is it? “It’s a book about a trans character written by a trans author being published by this huge publisher. This is groundbreaking in those ways.”
Maya: Yeah. It’s something that couldn’t have happened even a few years ago, and hopefully, in a few years, it’ll continue to be conceivable.
Ann: No, but I think, as everything we’ve just been talking about, like it’s just such a good reminder, or maybe some people who didn’t know that trans people have been here all along!
Maya: Oh yeah. The earliest writer whose name we know, Enheduanna, writes extensively, basically praising the goddess Inanna, that transition is possible. And there are substantial hints in the text that at least Enheduanna either was the author or was regarded as the author of these super famous religious hymns that were used for the next 2,500 years. There are definitely trans elements in how Enheduanna is described in these hymns as well, which wouldn’t actually be surprising, but it would be one of those cases of a historical figure who has just been presumed cis because there’s not affirmative evidence of transness. But affirmative evidence of transness doesn’t even help, as we see with the Chevalière.
Ann: Yeah. Gosh, you know so much about everything. I’m just learning, [laughs] I’m learning so much from you.
Maya: Thank you.
Ann: So, you’ve always had an interest in Greek mythology. You said that’s been kind of like your thing from a young age. Did you study history, or is it more of, like… I mean, did you officially study history, or is this just like, you just do it yourself?
Maya: Oh no, I’m a talented amateur. No, my formal degrees are in fiction.
Ann: Okay!
Maya: But no, trans history… I mean, I would also say to be interested in the written word, growing up as a trans woman, as a millennial, meant constantly encountering buried trans stories, like Léa at de Beaumont, but also like Enheduanna, or like Yusupov who killed Rasputin, Yusupova has a memoir, Lost Splendor, which essentially amounts to coming out repeatedly as a trans woman, but also being confident no one will ever actually get it.
So, like, at one point, the assassin of Rasputin just spends chapters talking about how gorgeous she was in her dresses as she lived for years as a woman in her brother’s house before there was a giant scandal that caused her family to find out. And like, you run into these stories, you look around, everyone is just saying, “Oh, you know, he was just unusual” over and over again, but they build, and it becomes this itch in the back of your brain you can’t scratch. It becomes this sensation, like walking over your own grave, constantly. You just have these buried stories.
So, I would say more than anything, my love of stories and mythology and history is also tied to that. It’s tied to “Oh, there are hidden stories that can see the light of day, but only if we actually encounter them on their own terms, instead of saying, nope, nothing to see here.”
Ann: Yeah. So, it’s like detective work.
Maya: It’s like, un-forgetting.
Ann: Yeah! It’s like, brushing away all these convoluted explanations that don’t actually make any sense to be like, “Oh, but the obvious thing is like, this is a trans woman.” Like, if we just remove 75% of this biography and just focus on, like, what actually the facts are, you’re like, “Oh. Well, here’s the story of a trans woman. Okay.” So, it’s just like weeding through all that stuff.
Maya: Yeah. In a way, it’s like a demystification.
Ann: And it’s like a clarification of just, if you get rid of all the confusing other people— Well, all history, I guess, is written by somebody with an agenda. But once you realize that agenda, if you’re like, well, how many of these facts are being filtered through somebody’s point of view? And then at the end of the day, when you get rid of that point of view, like, what is left?
Maya: Right? Yeah, I find it so fascinating.
Ann: Well, thank you so much for this conversation. This is like, I can’t wait to publish this. I can’t wait for everybody to hear everything you have to say. I can’t wait for people to learn like A) about the Chevalière, and B) about you and your book!
Maya: Thank you. Oh my gosh, I’m really excited.
Ann: Thank you so much for this amazing conversation.
Maya: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.
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So again, Maya’s book is called Wrath Goddess Sing, it is out now everywhere where you can get books. If you use the link in these show notes to buy it through Bokshop.org, then a little bit of money goes towards supporting Vulgar History podcast. You can also, of course, get it for free at your local public library. And I really am looking forward to reading it. I hope you all get to read it. Maya is so smart and so interesting, and I can’t wait to see what her book is like.
So, the regular reminders we say at the end of every episode… You can go to vVulgarHistory.com, there is a little form there. You can contact me if you have thoughts that you want to share. You go to VulgarHistory.Store to look at our merch, including the new Affair of the Necklace, the necklace, the T-shirt. You can use code TITSOUT for free US shipping or TITSOUT10 for 10% off.
You can support me and this podcast at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, which includes when you pledge any monthly amount, you get early access to all the episodes of Vulgar History, as well as you get the super, super special, I guess, episodes we do, Vulgarpiece Theatre, where I’m joined by Allison Epstein and Lana Wood Johnson to talk about costume dramas. This month, we’re going to be talking about— Well, you know, I can’t say what we’re talking about because it’s a spoiler for what the next episode of Vulgar History is. But rest assured, there will be women in pants in the movie we watch.
Also, when you pledge at least five dollars US or more on Patreon, then you get So This Asshole episodes where I talk about shitty men from history. There is one about, if you’re still having dramatic flashbacks to Ann of Denmark’s marriage to James, I have done an episode there about James I/VI. I’ve also done… Who have I done recently? Napoleon. Allison Epstein was a special guest star on that because she has some real strong feelings about Napoleon. This month, I’m going to be doing, I think, Alexander the Great. So, like, stay tuned. Oh, and that was mentioned a little bit in this episode, how he was into The Iliad.
Yeah. So, Instagram @VulgarHistoryPod is where a lot of the action is happening, including perhaps this week, giveaways, perhaps of books, perhaps that are discussed like Wrath Goddess Sing. So, you can follow me there to see what’s going on. Twitter @VulgarHistory. And, you know, today, as all days, I hope you all keep your masks on, pants on, and your tits out. Talk to you next time!
Vulgar History is hosted, written and researched by Anne Foster and edited by Christina Lumage.
References:
Buy a copy of Maya’s book Wrath Goddess Sing
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Get 15% off all the gorgeous jewellery and accessories at commonera.com/vulgar or go to commonera.com and use code VULGAR at checkout
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Get Vulgar History merch at vulgarhistory.com/store (best for US shipping) and vulgarhistory.redbubble.com (better for international shipping)
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