One Of The Most Entertaining Historical Figures I’ve Heard Of

One of the most entertaining historical figures I’ve heard of

Ok but why are we not talking about Julie D’Aubigny

So this lady was born in France in 1670 to a guy who worked for the Comte D’Armangac training pages. And so her father was like, “what the heck. Give the kid a sword.” So Julie grew up cross dressing and training with pages. But she was a mere woman in the late 1600s so when she was like 14 the Comte took he as his mistress because that’s how human rights work, and then married her off to one of his men because that’s also how human rights work. So Julie’s husband gets an administrative position in southern France and has her stay in Paris. Julie is not about this arranged-marriage thing, but she does meet a fencing instructor named Serranes. They have an affair, Julie is divorced, she and Serranes run away together and put on shows (she was also an opera singer. For anyone interested, she was an alto.) They broke up and parted ways.

Now this next bit all happened before she was 18. That’s important to note. She ran away with a couple more people, my personal favorite incident being the time she fell in love with this girl (that’s right, friends. Probably the greatest lady in history was bi). Girlfriend’s parents weren’t happy that she had a girlfriend, so they sent her to a convent (filled with other women?). Julie is not happy about this.

So she sneaks into the convent.

Steals a dead nun’s corpse.

Puts it in her girlfriend’s bed.

And escapes with her girlfriend, setting the convent on fire behind her.

They wander for a bit, eventually break up. Girlfriend goes home. Julie keeps wandering. This guy insults her, she stabs him in the shoulder in a duel, it’s a mess for like a day. And Julie asks around, figures out this guy is the son of a local duke, goes to his house (in my completely historically accurate opinion probably to gloat). They start dating for a while.

Stuff gets fuzzy after Julie turns 19 or so. She reportedly duelled three men in one night who got mad at her for kissing girls. She won all three. And I haven’t been able to find a good source on this, but it’s possible that she sang insulting songs at people while she duelled them. Some records suggest she ran off to Spain with another girlfriend before dying in her early thirties.

So yeah that’s Julie D’Aubigny, the woman I swear was born to be tumblr famous. Thank you for reading my rant.