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Personal history

Julia Maupin had a real piece of work for a dad. He worked for the miniter of war of the king and was the man in charge of training the king's pages, her father would fence nonstop during the day, and hit up gambling dens, bars, and brothels in the evenings. Given the seedy circles in which he ran, it should be little surprise that his main ideas for daddy-daughter bonding time were a) teaching her how to use deadly weapons, and b) using said weapons to drive off any potential suitors.
 
This paternal embargo on genital contact backfired when our heroine found a loophole: shtupping her dad’s boss, the one guy he couldn’t challenge to a duel.
 
When said boss became frustrated with La Maupin’s increasingly wild ways, he arranged her marriage to a mild-mannered clerk, thinking that might settle her down. She responded in the only sensible manner, by taking an itinerant swordsman as a new lover and leaving home to wander aimlessly through France.
 
When a drunken onlooker proclaimed loudly that she was actually a man, she tore off her shirt, providing him ample evidence to the contrary. The heckler had no comeback.
 
She earned her living through singing and dueling demonstrations, usually dressed as a man — a fashion she’d keep with for the rest of her life. She was already so skilled with the sword at this point in her life (quickly surpassing her new lover) that audiences sometimes would not believe that she was actually a woman. In fact, when one drunken onlooker proclaimed loudly that she was actually a man, she tore off her shirt, providing him ample evidence to the contrary. The heckler had no comeback.
If La Maupin had one overriding flaw, it was an allergy to boredom. In fact, she soon dumped the wandering swordsman, pronounced herself tired of men in general, and seduced a local merchant’s daughter. The merchant, desperate to separate the two, sent his daughter to a convent — but again, our heroine found a loophole. La Maupin joined the convent herself, and started hooking up with her intended in the house of God. Shortly into their convent stay, an elderly nun died (from unrelated causes, it would seem), and La Maupin reacted the same way anyone might: by disinterring the body, putting it in her lover’s room, and setting the whole convent on fire. You know, same old story.
 
The two ran off in the confusion, and enjoyed a long elopement. After three months, La Maupin got bored, dumped her back at her parents’ house, and ran off into the night.
 
For this bout of shenaniganery, La Maupin was sentenced to death. In response, she approached her first paramour (her dad’s boss), and through his influence, convinced the king to revoke her sentence. The king did so, and she took advantage of her new lease on life by running off to Paris and joining the opera.
 
And this was all before she was 20! Makes you feel like an underachiever.
 
Her behavior amped up even more when she became an opera singer — basically the rock stars of the day. In true theater major fashion, she alternately fucked and fought her way through her stage contemporaries, and audiences loved her for it. Four stories of her time in Paris:
 
Another opera singer named Dumenil started talking shit about a number of women, including La Maupin. She responded by ambushing him, pushing a sword in his face, and demanding a duel. When he refused (on the grounds that he was a wimp), she beat him with a cane, stealing his snuffbox and watch. The next day, she caught him complaining that he had been assaulted by a gang of thieves. She called him a liar and a coward, threw his watch and snuffbox at him, and declared that she, alone, had architected his ass-beating.
 
One night, while out carousing on the town, a particularly ardent man named d’Albert began crudely hitting on her. She’d just finished singing for the crowd, and he let loose with the one-liner “I’ve listened to your chirping, but now tell me of your plumage” — a come-on which I take to be the 17th-century version of “does the carpet match the drapes?” She was, shall we say, unimpressed. In short order, she got into a fight with him and two of his buddies, won, and ran her sword clean through his shoulder. She felt a bit bad about that, so she visited her impaled victim in the hospital and hooked up with him anyway. Although the relationship only lasted a short while, they were apparently lifelong friends.
 
She fell in love with Madame la Marquise de Florensac, the "most beautiful woman in the KINGDOM", the two women lived, according to one account, in perfect harmony for a time but Florensac was so beautiful that she too had had to flee to Stormport, because the king's son was obsessed with her. It was then that Julia lost contact with her.
 
Julia returned and attended a royal ball (thrown either by the king or his brother) dressed as a man. She spent most of the evening courting a young woman, which earned the ire of three of the woman’s suitors. When La Maupin pushed things too far and kissed the young lady in full view of everyone, the three challenged her to a duel. She fought all of them — outside of the royal palace, mind you — and won. According to some accounts, she actually killed them. This entertained the king so much that he pardoned her from any punishment.
 
Actually, with the last one, she didn’t get off completely scot-free. The anti-dueling laws of the time were becoming increasingly severe, and even though the king had basically pardoned her (musing that the law governed men, but didn’t say anything about women), she still ran off to Stromport until the heat died down.

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