Mademoiselle de Maupin (Julie d’Aubigny) has always been one of my role models. I’m so glad this post exists so more people can learn about her. The more you know, the more there’s to love. Let’s see:
Around 1678 (she was like fourteen or fifteen), she was making a living in Marseilles by doing fencing exhibitions, dressed in male clothes, with her boyfriend who was on the run because he killed a guy in an illegal duel in Paris.
Then she joined an opera company and fell in love with a young woman, but the woman’s parents decided to put her in a convent to, you know, protect her honor and all that…
…so yeah, that’s when the whole “sneaking into a convent to help a nun sneak out and also putting the room on fire” thing happened.
She wounded a guy through the shoulder with a sword in a duel because he had made fun of her clothes. They became friends after she came back a few days later to ask if he was okay.
She beat a singer who was quite famous at the time because he was being a jerk to some women from her new opera troupe in Paris.
She kissed a young woman in front of everyone at a society ball, and that angered three noblemen who were there, so she beat them all in duel and fled to Brussels. Then she resumed her opera career there.
Then she returned to the Paris opera and had yet more problems with the law because she beat up her landlord.
She retired to a convent after the death of her love Madame la Marquise de Florensac, and died at only 33 years old.
The legend says that she never got arrested for all her deeds because king Louis XIV thought she was way too entertaining to deserve death. I have no idea if that’s true. But she did sing in Versailles for the Court, so there’s that.
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