BONUS CHAPTER - Julie d'Aubigny

I want to briefly pause the serious(ish), academic(ish) stuff to talk about Julie d’Aubigny, a 17th century singer, swordfighter, and chaotic bisexual of mythical status in the world of the French opera. What we know about her is from the gossip and legend of the time and there are very few credible and academic sources, so it’s hard to say how much of her story actually happened. I could use her as a springboard to discuss how we should hold stories that probably aren't true when we study history, or how we measure what is and isn’t a true story, and if that measure needs to change when talking about marginalised populations. But instead I want to have a bit of fun telling an incredible story: one of a remarkable woman who was so unstoppable, with so much grit and audacity, and so little time for other people’s shit, that she first made me fall in love with queer history. 

D’Aubigny was born in Versaille in 1673. Her father was a former musketeer and secretary of Master to the Horse of Louis XIV; his job was to train the pages, so Julie grew up in the bustling royal stables of the Palace, learning to read, write, horse ride and sword fight along with the boys. From an early age she dressed in the same clothing as the boys too, this probably started out as a matter of practicality, because horse riding and sword fighting in that many ruffles doesn't sound ideal, she continued to dress androgynously throughout her life.     

At 14, she had her first romantic evolvment when she was married to Sieur de Maupin of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, colleague of her father (I know, ew). However, being the borning tax collector he was, when he needed to move to the South of France on boring tax collector business, she refused to go, and instead fell in love with a fencing master, which to be fair is a much much cooler job. But not long after, the fencing master killed someone in a duel and he and Julie were on the run. While travelling, they made money by performing in pubs and bars, singing and exhibiting their fencing skills. At this point in history, women occasionally fenced eachother but mixed gender fencing was really quite the scandal. Sometimes at the end of these shows, like the badass and hotty she was, she’d whip off her corset and flash the audience when they were in disbelief that she was a woman. 
Eventually they ended up in Marseille, and it's here where the story gets good - and by “good”, I really mean gay. Julie fell in love with a woman, the daughter of a merchant, whose parents were, predictably, not pleased. They sent her to a convent in Avignon, but like any woman in love with another woman, Julie wasn’t letting it go that easy. Somehow she gets into the convent - some stories say she broke in, some say she fully committed to the bit and took holy orders to become a nun herself. Once in the convent, and determined to get her lover out, she hatches a plan: they’d do a switcheroo and place the body of a dead nun, already dead they didnt kill a nun for this, into the bed, and set fire to the room to cover their tracks. This works. With Julie’s antics causing her to be sentenced to being burned at the stake, she once again went on the run with her lover, but this was a love that burned bright but not for long as within three months, and I imagine quite the dramatic break up, the women returned to her family and Julie moved on to Paris. 

    In Paris, Julie was insulted by a young nobleman. In a surprise to noone, she challenged him to a duel and won, putting a sword through his shoulder. Then it gets all Shakespearean because it turns out he thought she was a man and apologies, she nurses him back to health, and like then become lifelong friends. Obviously. 

I want to note here that it is only at this point does the “adult life” section of her wikipedia page begins. 

    In 1690, aged 17 because, yes, all of this happened before she turned 17, she became a performer at the Paris opera. In case you’d forgotten in the chaos that had happened since, the law is still trying to get her both for the murder she was involved in with the fist guy, and for burning down the convent, so she needs a personal pardon from Louis XIV to become a member of the Paris opera. She gets this. She also gets invitations to parties and society balls from Louis' brother Prince Philipe; he’s bisexual too and wears dresses and no one really cares. At one of these parties, to be fair probably at many but this is the one that’s important, Julie comes dressed in mens’ clothing and causes quite the stir and grasping of pearls when, like the badass and absolute hotty we have fully established her to be, kissed the most beautiful women in the room that all the men were courting. Three separate men then perfectly demonstrated that no matter the era, straight men will be threatened by lesbiananism, and challenged Julie to duels. She, of course, wins all of these, disappointingly probably one at a time and not all at once. The whole ordeal forces her to flee Paris, where she goes and joins the Belgium Opera. 
    In Belgium she has an affair with a German prince; it’s a fraught relationship and he even offers her 40,000 francs to leave him alone. But she also falls in love with Madame la Marquise de Florensac; this is the great romance of her life, where she seems to settle down and the drama and chaos begins to stop. A biographer wrote of the two "For two years they dwelt in such affection they believed to be perfect, ethereal and beyond the reach of the contamination of men. The young women isolated themselves, enamoured, only appearing at occasions where their presens are essential.” However, Julie was so ahead of her time that she fell victim to Dead Lesbian Syndrome nearly 300 years before Willow from Buffy, as Florensac died of a fever a few years later. Julie was so heartbroken at her death she quit opera and stardom and moved into a convent. I hope the irony wasn’t lost on her. 

    It’s in this convent when Julie died in 1707, aged just 33. Unlike everything in her life her death was probably heartbreakingly quiet, probably of TB, and she was buried with no known grave. But part of me wants to imagine something more dramatic - maybe strangled by another nun she was having a dramatic affair with; maybe she fell in love again, faked her death and ran away where she is still on the run today, sneaking into house parties were queers are playing the game where you tell a story one sentence at a time in order to get new ideas of where to go next. 

Wherever she ended up, I think it's safe to say the force of nature that was Julie d'Aubigny is still haunting those house parties nad hte messy breakups happeneing in the upstais loos of them. Her ghost has probbaly watched BBC Three’s lesbian Love Island rip-off and loved it, and she most definitely haunted the chaotic LGBT youth support groups I used to run, and is even right here in this blog.  

Originally posted April 2025, but keep having to change dates to keep posts in order.