The Compendium Podcast
An Assembly of Fascinating and Intriguing Things, a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information on a topic to help you stand your ground at any social gathering. We explore big stories from true crime, history, and extraordinary people.
The Compendium Podcast
Julie d'Aubigny: The Sword Fighting Opera Singing, Kick Ass Feminist of the 17th Century!
In this episode of the Compendium, we unravel the mysterious and audacious life of Julie d'Aubigny. From her daring duels to her captivating performances as La Maupin, Julie defied societal norms as a female opera singer in 17th-century French history. Discover the life story of this bisexual historical figure, a true icon among historical LGBTQ figures, who lived a life as scandalous as it was fascinating. Buckle up for a wild ride through the carnival of Julie d'Aubigny's life, where every twist and turn reveals more about this legendary rogue.
We give you the Compendium, but if you want more, then check out these great resources:
- "Mademoiselle de Maupin" by Théophile Gautier
- "The Opera Singer Who Killed or Maimed at Least Ten Men" - Kelly Gardiner
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Credits:
- Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
- Intro and Outro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland by Aleksey Chistilin
- All the Latest Things Intro: Clowns by Giulio Fazio
[EPISODE 71] Julie d'Aubigny: The Feminist Icon Who Defied 17th Century Norms
Kyle Risi: So famously on those occasions, She would just rip open her shirt and expose her breasts to the audience, inviting everyone to make up their own mind about her sex.
Adam Cox: I can
Adam Cox: imagine that, and like the buttons fly open, everyone goes, Yes!
Kyle Risi: Apparently, her breasts were really large as well, and she probably got a lot more tips.
Kyle Risi: Ha Ha Ha But my point is that they seem like swindler types anyway so I wouldn't be surprised if they arranged for those hecklers to be in the audience beforehand just to have that moment where she just lobs out of a boob
Adam Cox: Yeah I guess so. I was just thinking if she's in a fight she could do that and that would stun the like the other person she's dueling and then she can just like you know stab them.
Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things. We're a weekly variety podcast where each week I tell Adam Cox all about a topic I think he'll find both fascinating and intriguing. We dive into stories pulled from the darker corners of true crime, the annals of your old unread history books, and the who's who of extraordinary people.
Kyle Risi: We give you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering. I'm of course your ringmaster this week, Kyle Riese.
Adam Cox: I'm your sideshow freak this week, Adam Cox.
Kyle Risi: Do you think that's gonna stick?
Adam Cox: What else is like a sidekick in a, in a circus?
Kyle Risi: The bearded lady?
Adam Cox: I'm your bearded lady this week, Adam
Kyle Risi: Fox. Ha ha, yes! I wonder what you'll be next week.
Adam Cox: Oh no, three breasted lady?
Kyle Risi: You would like that, wouldn't you? Three breasts. I'm just fascinated by breasts. I love them.
Adam Cox: Especially when there's three.
Kyle Risi: Especially, yeah. Three times the fun, right?
Adam Cox: So what are you adding into the Compendium Library today, Kyle?
Kyle Risi: In today's compendium, we are diving into an assembly of daring duels and opera tales that break all of the gender rules.
Adam Cox: Opera tales and gender rules. Mm hmm. Some opera singer, maybe, who wasn't a man, or maybe was a man, or perhaps was a woman, I don't know. I have no idea what this is about.
Kyle Risi: Today we're talking about a woman, called Julie.
Adam Cox: Julie?
Kyle Risi: From finance. From finance? Yeah.
Adam Cox: Wow, is that what we've got to?
Kyle Risi: No.
Adam Cox: This better be good, Kyle.
Kyle Risi: Adam, get ready to be amazed because today I'm going to tell you the extraordinary tale of the true story of Julie,
Kyle Risi: should have checked how to pronounce her pseudonym.
Adam Cox: Do you just want to fact check that real quick?
Kyle Risi: Yeah. Take two. Adam, get ready to be amazed because today I'm going to tell you the extraordinary true story of Julie Dauberney. A woman whose daring exploits, defiance of social norms and sheer audacity have almost been lost to the annals of time. The best way that I can sum up Julie. is for you to imagine a figure as charming and as controversial as Casanova himself and the inspiration behind the legendary character of Ira Stark from the Game of Thrones.
Adam Cox: Oh, okay.
Kyle Risi: She's always been like a bit of a wild child in Game of Thrones, right? Very good with kind of the sword. Is she male?
Kyle Risi: Yes, that's it. She had a little needle. Is she a male? Is she a female? Was she attracted to men? Was she attracted to women? And apparently, like, in the folklore of Game of Thrones, she goes off and does, like, some incredible things. She goes and kind of wanders the world, sails the world. So, it's very much the inspiration for Iris Stark in terms Julie Dne,
Adam Cox: I don't think I've ever heard of this woman because it feels like, has there been like a film about her or anything?
Kyle Risi: Have been a couple films about her. Not that I've looked into them too much, only when I was doing the research did I find that there have been a couple shows. Do you remember, the woman who was married to Joffrey, whose grandmother was the matriarch of the house somewhere down in Dorne. She was the one who famously called Joffrey a cunt.
Adam Cox: Do you remember that scene? Yeah, it's that one with, like, the, the flat. Yes,
Kyle Risi: her daughter. What was the actress's name? Cause she's also in, uh, I know what you
Adam Cox: mean. Yeah. She was, she was, she got blown up.
Adam Cox: Didn't she? Yes.
Kyle Risi: So she actually plays Julie in some kind of film or TV series, and Julie's story takes place in Paris in the late 1600s. It was a time. And a city of grandeur, decadence, and very strict social codes where gender roles were originally defined.
Kyle Risi: It was a world where women were expected to be kind of demure and obedient to find a husband and to produce offspring.
Kyle Risi: But Julie shattered all of these conventions. She was an incredible opera singer, dressed in men's clothing, was always ready to duel any man who dared to insult her honor and was an insatiable lover who had many, many affairs with many, many men and many, many women over the course of her life.
Kyle Risi: Julie was the original feminist and queer icon a symbol of the resistance against the oppressive norms of her time. And while she didn't change the world or help millions of starving peasants, she did live a hedonistic life living by her own rules, like daily life for her was just a whirlwind of love affairs and outrageous antics.
Kyle Risi: She committed also a whole bunch of crimes, including but not limited to stealing dead bodies, kidnapping lovers, stabbing people, including herself, and at one time she even burnt down a convent.
Adam Cox: Oh my word, this woman sounds extreme.
Kyle Risi: And the thing is though, Julie's story matters because It was almost forgotten to history and her incredible life stands as a reminder that there have always been women pushing through those gender barriers to be seen as equal, living their lives in accordance to the men around them and the boundaries dictated by society and her story is a reminder to anyone, not just women, but also members of the LGBT community, people of color, men who don't fit the mold that's expected of them, that if a 17th century woman could fight against the norms when the stakes were even greater, then we can continue to persevere in light of kind of the overwhelming societal pressures, you know?
Kyle Risi: Not all of the sources in this story are reliable. Because historians have argued over just some basic details, but I'm going to give you the rundown of the very best parts of her unfortunately very short life.
Adam Cox: Which may or may not be true.
Kyle Risi: What I'm going to tell you is pretty much true. It's on, it's on the record somewhere. I'm not making it up.
Kyle Risi: But some of the details are argued about because it happened so long ago and a lot of the accounts come like pretty much 50 years after she died. So you can take them with a grain of salt. They come with a bit of folklore attached to it.
Adam Cox: I'm guessing there's going to be some allegedly and supposedly definitions in it.
Kyle Risi: That's right. So I'm super excited about today's story. Her exploits, her passionate affairs, her fearless defiance. Today's episode is going to be,
Adam Cox: uh, a doozy. A doozy. Cool, alright, I'm excited.
Kyle Risi: But before we kick off, as we always do, it's time for uh, all the latest things.
Kyle Risi: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step right up and welcome to All The Latest Things, where we unveil the fascinating, the extraordinary, and the downright loopy stories, strange facts, and intriguing tidbits from the past week. Adam, what have you got for us today?
Adam Cox: Well, Kyle, I've got a couple of things for you this week. And my first thing is, part of one of the age old debates that people have argued about over time, such as, Legs or girth? Well, yes, that's one. I was gonna be trying a little bit more, highbrow with, Oh, highbrow? Nature versus nurture.
Kyle Risi: Oh, okay.
Adam Cox: Realism vs Idealism, science vs Religion, Uh, Evolution vs Creationism. Or, Which way you hang your toilet paper.
Adam Cox: Oh, I know this one. I have very strong opinions on this. I'm ready for this debate. I'm ready for this fight. Ready for this fight. Some people will, hang their toilet paper with the sheets, I guess, facing out
Kyle Risi: Yes.
Adam Cox: And then the other way of doing it is back to front where the sheets go down the wall. And so people have argued what's right or wrong because some say, I don't know, it's easier to grab hold, some it's more hygienic so you're not touching all the blue roll or whatever.
Adam Cox: So what's your thoughts on this?
Kyle Risi: Straight away, I can tell you that beards are cool, mullets are not.
Adam Cox: Right, okay. And that
Kyle Risi: should tell you everything you need to know. Because mullets go down the back, beards come on the front. So you should always hang your toilet roll with the beard facing forward. Mullets are not cool.
Adam Cox: They are cool right now.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, okay, so maybe it's time to turn your toilet roll around.
Adam Cox: Well, what's your take on this? So, um, because people have been talking about this for ages, and I've always had it, well, typically, uh, the bearded way, but then sometimes I'm thinking, well, maybe the other way is better, but actually, people have referred back to the original patent for the toilet paper, which is like back in 18
Kyle Risi: Someone has a patent, someone patented the toilet paper.
Adam Cox: Yeah, I think it was like the second iteration or whatever and the, you know, the perforated design, it should be easy to tear off. Sure. And the original patent has the toilet roll with a sheet of paper, hanging down the front. So beards are cool? Beards are cool. So that is the official way that you should be hanging your toilet paper.
Kyle Risi: And I agree, and I'll tell you why. Because there is nothing, nothing that I appreciate more in this life. And I'm sorry, I'm just gonna have to say it. I don't care what you guys think. We have a cleaner. She's brilliant. She's a great friend of ours. And when she comes over, she's just And she cleans our bathroom and she does that little triangle thing and then gets the little water stamp and like stamps it down so it's like you're at the hotel.
Kyle Risi: That is just the best touch that anyone can do for you during a clean. It just, it just makes the whole Loo experience so much better. It
Adam Cox: really elevates the bathroom.
Kyle Risi: It does. And like, um, and I'm not saying that we have tons of money that we can afford a cleaner because I promise you we make sacrifices so we can have this cleaner. Right? Like, if anything else changed in our budget, she'd have to go, and I'd be really sad. But, she does that, and that's only possible with the beard. It wouldn't work with the mullet.
Adam Cox: That nice little stamp.
Kyle Risi: Actually, let me just check something. She came yesterday.
Adam Cox: Uh, I can answer that, and she didn't.
Kyle Risi: She didn't do it?
Adam Cox: No.
Kyle Risi: Does she not? Right, that's it Lois, you're sacked.
Adam Cox: And so my second thing this week is I've come across a Something that has disappointed me with human nature.
Kyle Risi: What's that? Length or girth? No. Have you heard of,
Adam Cox: The, and I'm going to use this very loosely, sport called hobby horsing?
Kyle Risi: Yes, I have. I don't know if our listeners have though.
Adam Cox: And I feel like that exasperation, you're probably on the same wavelength as me.
Kyle Risi: It just depends. It depends who's doing it, right? I can get it if a kid is doing it, but I do know that its big with adults.
Adam Cox: So in Finland, there's competitions held where countries all over the world come to participate.
Adam Cox: So for the listeners that have never heard of this, which I hadn't until this week. Hobby horsing is when, you remember, maybe the, probably the girls tends to be, did you have a horse, you know, with a horse head on a stick and you'd have some handles and you'd stick the stick between your legs and you'd gallop around the house.
Adam Cox: This is what adults are doing. And they're almost like dressage or show jumping with real horses where they're around a track or, an arena and they've got these like three foot, Fences that they need to jump across.
Kyle Risi: On this stick.
Adam Cox: On this stick, and whilst they're not jumping, they're then trotting as if they are on an actual horse.
Adam Cox: And I am just like, this is ridiculous.
Kyle Risi: It is ridiculous.
Adam Cox: And so it's come under a bit of an attack because people are criticising that this is not a sport. And because I think, it's aimed towards young girls who are obviously perhaps more into it than anyone else. I
Kyle Risi: don't think it's just young girls.
Kyle Risi: I'm sure I've seen. older women and men doing this?
Adam Cox: Well, I think it's most popular between ages 10 and 20. I mean, 20, it's still quite old to be doing this.
Kyle Risi: Once you start getting boobies, it's time to retire the hobby horse.
Adam Cox: Um, so yeah, I've got a video. I'll just play it to you real quick.
Kyle Risi: Okay, so what I'm watching is someone literally trotting around as you would expect. on this hobby horse, but it looks like they're doing the ministry of funny walks from Monty Python.
Adam Cox: Yeah. But this is like this huge sport and people are trying to get some accreditation for and, fighting back to say, no, the amount of hip mobility needed to do this is actually insane. And these athletes would give, hurdle jumpers a run for their money.
Kyle Risi: No, adam.
Adam Cox: So, yeah.
Kyle Risi: Do you know what, this is a symptom of peacetime. Too much peacetime. This is a result of being too content and not having too much to worry about in your life.
Adam Cox: Yeah, you're having fun. It's nothing, no harm in it. It's just very weird.
Kyle Risi: Amazing. So my all the latest things is the whole Pepsi Cola kind of battle, right? What do you prefer? I mean, we don't really drink soft drinks anyway But if you had to pick Pepsi or Cola, do you have a preference? To me they taste the same.
Adam Cox: I think Pepsi Max, does taste a little bit different. I prefer that, but I I maybe that's just a preference Or I think I prefer that. I don't actually know. Interesting. If I did a blind taste test, I don't know if I'd know.
Kyle Risi: I don't know if I would know either. For some reason though, I always feel like Coca Cola gives you a weird kind of film over your teeth, and that's normally how I can tell. But I don't know, I don't really have a preference for it. But what I was really fascinated by, and I was thinking about doing this as a topic, but I wanted to just tell you about it because it was just mental.
Kyle Risi: The story is mental. So when you think about which Codas you prefer, You need to consider that in 1992, Pepsi attempted to compete with Coca Cola inadvertently, leading to the deaths of several people in the Philippines.
Kyle Risi: At a time when Pepsi was struggling to compete with Coca Cola, which of course was the biggest soft drink brand in the world, so as a way to try and claim some of Coca Cola's market share, Pepsi decided to launch the Cola Wars. So the Cola Wars that exist was a marketing campaign. by Pepsi, which they started off inadvertently because of course they wanted to claim some market share, but then they started leaning into it when people started noticing that there was a very clear battle going on.
Kyle Risi: So to Pepsi surprise all of this paid off and Pepsi began to gain ground against Coca Cola in the United States But when Pepsi decided to take the battle to the global stage to win market dominance in other countries The Philippines was a particularly attractive market because they had one of the highest Per capita soft drink consumption rates in the world.
Kyle Risi: That's an actual stat, which is crazy Now despite their efforts Coca Cola remained supreme for most Filipinos, right? As Pepsi was about to admit defeat, they tried one last ditched effort to try and turn the tide, and they launched a campaign called Pepsi Number Fever. They printed basically on the underside of all the bottle caps a mini kind of a lottery number Okay, and each week they would do a draw where you could win 1 million pesos And basically that was the equivalent of six hundred and eleven times the average monthly salary of the Filipino.
Adam Cox: Mm hmm. So quite a lot
Kyle Risi: So the campaign was massive and instantly in the first month increased Pepsi's market share from 19 percent To a whopping 24 that's just one month. So it's hugely effective when the prize so when the draw took place the winning number 349 was called and almost Immediately the hotlines were inundated with filipinos calling in to claim their winnings because it turned out That they had printed that number 800, 000 times on a bunch of bottle caps across the entire country.
Adam Cox: Whoever was responsible for quality control. Yeah.
Kyle Risi: Someone's getting sacked, right? Because this led to widespread chaos with hundreds of thousands of people believing that they had won a million pesos So pepsi, of course, quickly announced their mistake and people were just outraged like, Protests erupted across the country pepsi trucks were overturned. They were stoned. They were burned pepsi executives received death threats in may of 1993 Three Pepsi employees were killed after a protestor threw a grenade into a warehouse.
Kyle Risi: Oh,
Adam Cox: geez, that's not cool.
Kyle Risi: It's not cool. But then even on top of that, a couple months previous, a homemade bomb was thrown at a Pepsi truck killing a school teacher, and a five-year-old child in Manila. Wow. It Adam. This story is nuts.
Adam Cox: So when people say about the cola warms or whatever, I generally just thought like, oh, market share. No, this is actual.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, blood was shed. Yeah. I'm going to do this as an episode. It's just mental. But also in the fallout of this as well, approximately 000 people ended up taking legal action against PepsiCo.
Kyle Risi: And Pepsi was forced to pay like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fines to the Department of Trade and to various kinds of people that brought lawsuits. And the fallout of this continued until 2006, with people still bringing forward cases and lawsuits.
Adam Cox: That is a momentous eff up.
Kyle Risi: It's mental, can you imagine it? So, what do you reckon? Do you reckon we should do that as a story?
Adam Cox: That could be a good one, yeah. So, the bit that I remember, is more in America, the wars. Which, no bloodshed, but I remember there was like this stat that, Pepsi was selling two Pepsis for every Coke being sold in the US.
Adam Cox: But then Coca Cola did a TV advert of this short kid going to a vending machine, putting in money, And because the Coca Cola button was at the very top of the vending machine, he couldn't reach it. So he'd buy two Pepsi cans. Stand on the Pepsi cans, and then buy a Coke. Just one Coke.
Adam Cox: One Coke, and then would walk off and drink that. That was just one of that's how they responded to which I think is very good marketing
Ah, so I see So what they're saying is that this is the reason why they've overtaken coke is still the preferred But people are just using this to get to coke using pepsi to get to coke.
Kyle Risi: Exactly. Yeah, very funny. Very good That's all the latest things.
So Adam,
Kyle Risi: julie Daubigny. Actually, do you know what? I'm just gonna say this right now. There's gonna be a lot of French accents, and there's gonna be a lot of French names, and I'm gonna butcher all of them, alright? So you just have to just deal with it.
Adam Cox: Yeah, in all honesty, we don't have a lot of French listeners, so I think we'll be fine.
Kyle Risi: And that's why we don't have French, because they go, Oh my God, he butchered our language. That was awful. What was that?
Adam Cox: That was definitely not French. That was not
Kyle Risi: French. But anyway, Julie d'Aubigny. She was born sometime between 1670 and 1673.
Kyle Risi: Now she was an only child and lucky for her, she was part of the upper middle French noble class, right? She wasn't quite nobility, but she was part of that world. This gave her some huge advantages in her life. We don't know anything about her mother because she clearly wasn't that important enough for anyone to write anything down about her, but we'll call her Sandra just for reference and we will not mention her again at all throughout this episode.
Adam Cox: Okay, okay,
Kyle Risi: weird. Adam's mother's name is Sandra and I hate her. What we do know is that her father was a very important man in French aristocracy and his name was Gaston and he was the private secretary for the government. of the Count Dominic. Now, to give you a sense of how high up his boss was, the Count Dominic, his boss's boss, was the King of France, right?
Kyle Risi: And the Count's job was to oversee the royal stables and the education of all the court pages, essentially. So thanks to Papa Gaston Julie had a very privileged upbringing and had access to one of the best educations in europe at the time, particularly for a girl Very few women were pretty much educated back then.
Kyle Risi: So the system wasn't really equipped to accommodate young girls It was very male orientated. So Judy undertook her studies along with all the young royal page boys in the French court and showed great aptitude for the subjects that she was learning about
Kyle Risi: and because this was a boarding school Judy spent most of her waking hours with the boys so to fit in she became accustomed to dressing in boys clothes and because her father was absorbed in the world of education she actually ended up attending school For many more years than a standard page would have done anyway.
Kyle Risi: I guess it's like daycare, right? It's oh, I need to keep her somewhere. I'll just keep her in school.
Adam Cox: Just stick her long hair under a hat and
Kyle Risi: no one will know. I think they did know, that's the thing though. So she wasn't disguised as a boy as such. She just wore boys clothing. She was very proud of the fact that she was a woman. But she just also looked really great in boys clothes, essentially.
Adam Cox: Well, even as like a kid, she was very proud to be a woman.
Kyle Risi: I don't think so. I don't think she had any issues with her gender. But in terms of her studies, all in all, Julie was an excellent writer. She was a brilliant dancer, very skilled as an artist, but she was also a very highly skilled swordswoman. And all of this was because, of course, her father Gaston was a bit of a progressive wild child himself.
Kyle Risi: And growing up, he had seen the seedy side of France during kind of his nightly pub crawls around the city. So he was very familiar with the worst of humanity in like France 1700s. And Gaston was already an elite fencer and he wanted to make sure that Judy was also able to look after herself if she ever needed to.
Kyle Risi: So her privileged life overall instilled in her a very strong sense of confidence and intelligence about The academic world but it also provided her with street smarts on top of this
Adam Cox: She was also really hot Wow, she sounds Yeah, she sounds quite unique.
Kyle Risi: She is irish stark, man so when she was around 14 years old she catches the eye of her father's boss the count armagnac Now he was 32 years her senior. Remember she's 14 at this point So together they start an affair, though considering at his So together they start an affair, though considering his age and position.
Kyle Risi: It's clearly not an affair,
Adam Cox: but No, it's just Well, we all know what it is.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, but historians are calling it an affair.
Adam Cox: They put a nice little romantic spin on that. Yeah,
Kyle Risi: exactly. Okay. So this led the council introducing Julie to the king's court in Versailles, but even back then this was controversial of a situation and it didn't come without its criticisms from the other courtiers.
Kyle Risi: Also, Julie technically wasn't a noble. She didn't have a title which only added to the So there were, like, a lot of whispering and gossiping going around about her. So the count needed to provide Judy with a respectable title. He couldn't marry her himself, because of course he was already married.
Kyle Risi: So the count found a man named Monsieur Mopin. I think that's how you pronounce it.
Adam Cox: Mopin. Mopin.
Kyle Risi: Mopin. Mopin.
Adam Cox: Isn't pal bread? No, that's Portuguese. Sorry, carry on.
Kyle Risi: We cannot get bogged down in these pronunciations. Monsieur Mopin.
Adam Cox: Okay.
Kyle Risi: So in 1687, he arranged for the two of them to be married. And once Monsieur Mopin, had served his purpose, the count then sent him off to oversee tax collections on the behalf of the crown in kind of the southern provinces of France.
Kyle Risi: Of course, Julie stayed in Versailles and that allowed them to continue their affair without any kind of side eye or controversy from the other courtiers.
Adam Cox: Right. So she has
Kyle Risi: a husband now, but
Adam Cox: That's just, for show.
Kyle Risi: For essentially, yeah, to stop the gossiping.
Adam Cox: And what, I'm guessing like getting married at 14 was fine back then.
Adam Cox: It wasn't like frowned upon.
Kyle Risi: I don't think so, no. I mean, there are some countries where the age of consent for marriage is quite low anyway in the UK it's what 16 is it or have we increased it to 18?
Adam Cox: I don't know but even still 14 feels you know 14 is very young you should have been still playing with your wooden dolls on your spinning wheel
Kyle Risi: that is right not this chick man I think she was so wealthy and so street smart I think she was years beyond Her years.
Kyle Risi: So she stays behind in Versailles but it wasn't long before Julie's temper starts getting a bit too much for the count. At first he was able to deal with her privately but then more and more people in society start talking about the way she'd lose her temper in shops often resulting in her like literally assaulting the shopkeeper.
Kyle Risi: And on top of this, she would also often frequent the local taverns at night, getting drunk and purposely starting fights with other young noblemen.
Adam Cox: Wow, she is
Kyle Risi: Like, she's a firecracker, right? Yeah, she's fearless. She is a firecracker, and that's, we haven't even started yet.
Kyle Risi: So the Count thought it would be best for them to take a little break, and he decides to end their relationship. Okay. And she was of course completely fine with this because she already had another affair going on So over the years she'd obviously kept up her fencing practices and she had started an affair with a fencing instructor called Saran
Kyle Risi: now by this point the record suggests that she was around 16 or 17 years old. Now to keep their affair under wraps they told everyone that he was her teacher. When, in fact, she was clearly the better swordswoman of the two. And they were literally a match made in heaven. Both extremely boisterous, loving a couple pints down the pub or the local tavern, which often resulted in them together starting brawls just for fun.
Adam Cox: That is, as if that's what you do with your part.
Kyle Risi: Why don't we go off starting fights? Like little slappy fights, the little gay ones where they go,
Adam Cox: Ehhhhhhh. Because Kyle. We would get locked up. Would we? Or would we get beaten up? Uh, locked up in like, an asylum.
Kyle Risi: Being a pansy is not a sickness, Adam.
Kyle Risi: I thought we'd come past that. No longer do you need therapy to treat pansyism.
Adam Cox: Pansyism.
Kyle Risi: So one evening, their favorite little pastime resulted in an illegal street fight that ended up in Saran actually killing a guy, right? And as a result, they had to flee to Marseille to avoid getting arrested and potentially executed by the King's Guard.
Kyle Risi: Like, duels were completely illegal in France at this time. The only reason Julie went with Saran was because he had promised her that he would be able to support them both financially, so she just figured it would be a bit of a fun down by kind of the seaside. When they get there, she started using her maiden name as a way of her kind of avoiding being tracked down by the authorities.
Kyle Risi: But it wasn't long before it transpired that Saran had totally exaggerated his financial situation and both Saran and Judy were then forced to do whatever they needed to do to secure some kind of income for themselves. So they had to go and start working. That's what happens when you go out with a murderer.
Kyle Risi: I don't think he intentionally killed. I don't think it was premeditated.
Kyle Risi: He was just a bit of a thug, you know. Check me out sympathising with the thugs. What can you do? I like a bad boy.
Kyle Risi: So what they started doing was putting on these shows in different taverns and pubs around the city. It was like kind of a combination of showing off their sword fencing skills, through the art of song and theatrical kind of storytelling, to all the drunk patrons in the pub.
Kyle Risi: And after the performance they would then walk around and then ask for money. So they were kind of like grifting. And they actually made a ton of money doing this. The thing that punters loved the most was seeing a woman be able to demonstrate such a high degree of skill in fencing and their minds were just blown. Fair enough like she was dressed as a boy but again she wasn't disguised as a boy So they just loved it.
Kyle Risi: I think there's like a bit of a sordid kind of element to that as well. Like men just found it really hot to see a woman in these boy clothes, like doing boy stuff. And I think there's something quite sexy about that sometimes. I guess,
Adam Cox: yeah, if she's not, you know, she's maybe just got her hair tied up, whatever, and still obviously a woman, but I guess she's so different to any other woman. Around at the moment. Uh,
Kyle Risi: yeah, like it's a little treat, right? Ooh, I've not seen that one before.
Adam Cox: Well, I guess just, yeah, some, a strong, confident wi woman, I guess. Maybe they, yeah, that's a, I don't know, ,
Kyle Risi: Like I said, when she dressed as a boy, she wasn't disguising herself as a boy. She was very proud that she was a woman. It was just more practical to wear a shirt and breeches rather than a big hoop skirt and corset when you are, like, fencing. Yeah, she's being practical. She's being practical.
Kyle Risi: So when she was doing these little shows in these taverns to earn some money, some spectators refused to believe that she was even a woman. She'd often kind of get hecklers who thought that she was just a young pre ubescent boy with a nice singing voice and really good with a sword.
Kyle Risi: She's rip open her top and then just do like a little wiggle and then they get all stunned and they're like mesmerized
Adam Cox: and then she just jabs them in the neck.
Kyle Risi: Underhand tactics Adam. Well she got to do what she got to do. All's fair in love and war. Okay.
Kyle Risi: So through this grift she found out that she had a real talent for singing. People said her voice had a really low register, but also had this phenomenal range. The best way to describe her voice would be to liken her to Cher. What?
Adam Cox: Why is that funny? Just the thought of her just going, whoa.
Kyle Risi: Who thought
Adam Cox: of the French
Kyle Risi: accent, right? Ho ho ho ho. Anyway, so one day, she enrolls in the music academy to train professionally in singing and dancing. And a while later, her tutor helps her and Saran get a working gig at a theatre and she is a huge hit. She genuinely was good at holding an audience. And as time passed, she started to kind of get a bit bored with Saran and wondered like, What it might be like to go to bed with another woman.
Adam Cox: Oh, a sexual awakening. Yes, that's very good. Or reawakening. Yeah, reawakening. Well, she's already probably awakened one sexual part of her. This is like a whole new experiment. Either way, she's experimenting.
Kyle Risi: She's waking up.
Kyle Risi: So basically she just really wanted to know what it was like to just bump boobs with another lady. And of course this probably wasn't something that she decided on a whim. Very often women would approach her at these shows. So it was something that she most likely had wondered about for a while.
Kyle Risi: So one night, after a performance, she met a young woman who indicated that she might be interested in a bit of girl on girl action. One thing led to another, and before you know it, they were embroiled in a hot, steamy lesbian love affair. Wow. But then, of course As it always happens, the girl's parents find out, and being absolutely horrified, they immediately ship her off to a convent in Avignon to keep them apart, probably hoping that the nunnery would help them pray the gateway.
Adam Cox: Or the fact that they're shipping her off to a A convent which is full of women. I know!
Kyle Risi: I
Adam Cox: know! We know about my, my, my, my nun story with the lesbians.
Kyle Risi: Exactly! So by sending a lesbian to a convent in the hope of making them less gay, it's probably not the most effective tactic you can think of, but nothing was going to keep Julie away from her girl.
Kyle Risi: We don't actually know this girl's real name by the way, but I feel like she does need a name because we're going to mention her for the next few paragraphs. So let's call her Classic lesbian name. What about Mary? No, Gus! The thing is though, the only other name that I could think of for a lesbian was Julie.
Kyle Risi: Well, it can't be another Julie. I know, exactly, it can't be the two Julies.
Adam Cox: Other Julie.
Kyle Risi: I think we should stick with Gus. Okay.
Kyle Risi: So, Julie followed Gus to Avignon and enrolled as a nun so that she and Gus could continue bouncing boobs against each other at the convent.
Adam Cox: Is that a term that they, lesbians use? I've never heard a lesbian say bumping boobs.
Kyle Risi: I mean, uh, I just want to make it very clear that my understanding of anything feminine
Adam Cox: is
Kyle Risi: very lacking. So I, I just assume that's what they're for.
Adam Cox: No? They're not like, yeah, no. I've seen
Kyle Risi: some lesbian pornos and they do push their boobs together a little bit.
Kyle Risi: And they're just like,
Adam Cox: Oh
Kyle Risi: god. Ugh. Are you saying that they don't bounce boobs?
Adam Cox: They're um,
Kyle Risi: I mean I feel like if I had boobs I would want to bounce them. Okay. Against other boobs. If I was a lesbian.
Adam Cox: Yeah. I'm not sure about that. There goes all the lesbian listeners.
Kyle Risi: So the thing is though, living at the convent turned out to be pretty awful. Although it was quite exciting to sneak off and have some kind of sexy nipple play, the rest of the time was just filled with constant cleaning and praying. And this started to wear Judy down. So she promised Gus that she would hatch a plan for them to escape in such a way that nobody would come looking for them.
Kyle Risi: Because they couldn't just leave, someone would always kind of be looking out for them, right? So Julie's plan was to wait for one of the older nuns to die, And as luck would have it, she didn't need to wait very long because, of course, they live in a convent, so in the middle of the night, Judy breaks into the dead nun's crypt.
Kyle Risi: She carries the body. Up to Gus's room, she places the nun's body in Gus's bed and then together they set the entire convent on fire.
Adam Cox: Oh, so she's using her to kind of, they'll find a body and they'll think it's Gus.
Kyle Risi: Exactly.
Adam Cox: Ah, I see, that is clever.
Kyle Risi: So of course everyone thinks that Gus has burned to death in his sleep and now they can run away together and nobody will be looking for them.
Kyle Risi: But Weirdly, no one seems to care where Julie is.
Adam Cox: Yeah. And also what about the nun that has actually died? They're like, Oh, there's Gus, but what happened to the actual dead nun?
Kyle Risi: She's already been buried and she's in a crypt. So they've had the ceremony. Yeah, they snuck into the crypt. So they're not looking for her. They just think it's Gus.
Adam Cox: Okay. Wow. She is. Yeah, she's quite a woman.
Kyle Risi: But again, back to my point, like, no one seems to care where Julie is. I mean, I know, like, her temper is terrible, so they probably are just glad to get rid of her, but, like, no one seems to care where she is. They're just worrying about where Gus is.
Adam Cox: Gus
Kyle Risi: cares
Adam Cox: where she is.
Kyle Risi: We'll see, actually, because Off they go to be together. So, in some other part of France. And for three months they're really happy. They're just living their lives, doing what lesbians do. Gus is mowing the lawn. Julie is building a deck. You know, all the classics.
Kyle Risi: But then, Julie starts to realise that Gus is a bit of a whinger. So she just ditches her. And I know this sounds brutal. But Judy actually does Gus a massive favour just because of what else she gets up to. She's just too much of a loose cannon.
Adam Cox: That's they've just done all this together. They've dug up a body, committed an arson, and then she's just gone, Oh, do you know what?
Adam Cox: And this isn't worth it.
Kyle Risi: You whinge too much. Yeah. Listen, I, I can't do the washing up and do the laundry. Yeah. And do everything else that I do and build the damn deck.
Adam Cox: I just want a glass of wine. Let me be.
Kyle Risi: I need to put my feet up. Listen, Gus.
Kyle Risi: So Gus makes her way back home to her family and she tells them the whole story. How Julie, of course, enrolled in the convent as a nun. How she stole a nun's body to fake her death. And how Julie had coerced her and that she was to blame just for everything, basically, she was just playing the victim in all of this. And they believed her story, and as a result, she didn't need to go back to the convent.
Kyle Risi: But Gus's parents the authorities, and they put Julie on trial, even though nobody knows where she was. And at the trial, she is sentenced to death by fire, for the crimes of kidnapping, body snatching, arson, and also failing to kind of appear before the court when she didn't even know that she needed to attend.
Adam Cox: That feels like a little bit harsh. I mean, all the other stuff, I don't know. Yeah, that's pretty serious. And then they're like, yeah, but she didn't turn up. We didn't tell her, but she didn't turn up. Exactly. It's ridiculous.
Kyle Risi: So Julie had no choice. She had to flee. The only place she thinks to go to get out of this mess was back to Paris and that maybe her ex lover, the Count, could possibly help. So she sets off towards the capital, stopping at various cities along the way. And to help pass the time, she tries her hand at writing some of her own kind of original songs and then performing them in local taverns to earn a bit of coin.
Kyle Risi: It's through these performances that she meets an old drunken actor called Marichelle. You Now, he's really impressed with her voice and he tells her he knows all about voices and talent and under his tutelage, in five years, he could make her the premier of the French opera.
Kyle Risi: So obviously, being a massive attention seeker, she decides that she's going to stick around and perfect her operatic technique.
Adam Cox: Uh huh.
Kyle Risi: But, this doesn't last very long because his alcoholism is so bad that he can't even get through a single lesson with her.
Adam Cox: Right, so, oh, so he's trying to like teach her his ways, but actually he's awful. But, you know, I don't think I'd ever buy it. Like, this is some drunk that's
Kyle Risi: Exactly, they've met in a pub
Adam Cox: Yeah, and it's got a, uh, I can teach you a thing or two Yeah,
Kyle Risi: So she hits the road again She still doesn't know what she's going to do about the death penalty sentence And is still kind of dragging her feet towards Paris Like, she doesn't know really what to expect when she gets to Paris Because Like will the king's guard be waiting for her? Will someone spot her and then dob her in so it's risky So she's like taking her time trying to like avoid going to paris, but knowing that she needs to go there.
Kyle Risi: So remember adam She's really gorgeous and she's also alone in a very dangerous world, so when men see her they want to try it on and they don't know that she's actually You So often she finds herself getting into a lot of these different scrapes and tussles with these unsavory characters on the road And one of the most famous examples of this Was the time that she almost killed a man, in a fight, and then she took him as a lover the very next day.
Adam Cox: So when she's like being the crap out of him, she then went, Oh, actually, I could see something with us.
Kyle Risi: I like how you cower in the corner. I might make you my mistress.
Adam Cox: So is she like beating them up with like her fists or with a sword?
Kyle Risi: All sorts. Canes, fists, swords, everything. She's a brilliant fighter.
Adam Cox: I really would love to see her in action.
Kyle Risi: So the story goes that she was doing her usual thing, singing for some money in a local tavern one evening when Louis Joseph tries a really sleazy pick up line on her And because of course she is always on her guard She doesn't take it very well, so she challenges him to a duel which of course he accepts and the two of them go outside to the courtyard and in front of Louis Joseph's friends Julie absolutely smashes him To the point that Louie's friends have to also jump in to try and help him and she smashes them too and the fight ends abruptly when Julie skewers Louie Joseph clean through the shoulder so that when Louie Joseph turned his head He could see the sword poking out through his back.
Adam Cox: Eeeh
Kyle Risi: It's bad.
Adam Cox: Yeah You
Kyle Risi: So she immediately pulls the sword out and she legs it, leaving him lying in the street, bleeding, with all his friends looking on in horror. And the next day Upon reflection, she feels that maybe she might have overreacted just a little. Ha ha ha ha ha. And she starts to try and track him down to apologize. Plus she thinks he's really hot as well.
Adam Cox: She just couldn't get him out of her head, obviously. The chat up line worked.
Kyle Risi: Mm hmm. She
Adam Cox: just maybe, yeah.
Kyle Risi: She's like, you cower well. Ha ha ha ha. I like it. I like my men to cower and squirm. So she decides that she's going to go to a local barber who at the time would often moonlight as surgeons.
Adam Cox: Like Sweeney Todd.
Kyle Risi: Exactly, exactly like that. She went there just on the off chance that maybe he had seen someone from the night before looking a little worse for wear needing assistance. And as luck would have it, the barber points her to where this man was staying and tells her that the guy that she skewered was actually the son of a count.
Adam Cox: Oh, of all the people to skewer.
Kyle Risi: So this changes everything because before when she just thought he was a regular Joe Schmo, she was just gonna like spitting a hand and offering him a handshake. So she like now had to go back to her place and think about how to handle the situation Because she needs to be a bit delicate with it.
Adam Cox: Yeah
Kyle Risi: So it just so happens that when she gets home, one of the count's friends is waiting there to offer the count sincerest apologies and Julie's like Oh, he wants to apologize to me.
Adam Cox: Yeah, he should be sorry. He
Kyle Risi: should be sorry Yeah So off julia goes to see the count and of course one thing leads to another and they end up having very aggressive Very angry makeup sex. How do you know it's aggressive? I just assume it's aggressive. It's got to be right So this is you. Um Artistic license.
Kyle Risi: Okay, fine. Right. Yeah, the thing is though they kept up correspondence throughout the years anyway So this is how it was described in the notes So, okay. Yeah, I don't know how they know but I because they wrote letters back and forth I imagine they might have been reminiscing right? Okay reminiscing's about this occasion.
Adam Cox: Okay. It was a passionate night
Kyle Risi: So she sticks around and she nurses the count back to health and along the way they fall madly in love You I want to remind you, just for a second, that Julie, remember, she's married to Monsieur
Adam Cox: Mopin.
Kyle Risi: So, nothing can actually happen between them anyway, it can't go any further than just a bit of a thrift, right?
Adam Cox: And she's a wanted woman.
Kyle Risi: But then, the King orders Louis Joseph to return to the court in Versailles, and of course, Julie is a wanted woman, so she can't go with him ? So they have to part ways, and they promise that one day they'll reunite again, And for the rest of her very short life, they continue to write letters back and forth
Adam Cox: reminiscing about that night
Kyle Risi: Reminiscing about the angry sex.
Kyle Risi: Remember that time I skewered you you coward like a baby And made me really hot. Do you remember that?
Adam Cox: Yeah.
Kyle Risi: So next judy finds herself in a town called rouen in the northwest of france where she meets another singer called Gabriel vincent now, he isn't a singer a drunkard this time. So Gabriel is actually an inspiring opera singer who left his family business to try and make it in the Parisian opera.
Kyle Risi: However, because he lacked experience, he sings in bars and taverns and this is how kind of him and Julie cross paths. So very soon after meeting, they decide that they're actually quite a good match and they should perform together. So they start performing to try and make a bit of coin And Gabrielle instantly falls in love with her.
Kyle Risi: But for Julie, Gabrielle is just a friend with benefits. She lets him accompany her To Paris, because he's going that way anyway, but she has to dump him just before she gets there because she can't risk being spotted with someone and then turning her in. So she dumps Gabriel at like a crossroads somewhere and she heads off into Paris without him.
Kyle Risi: She figured the best way to navigate this situation is to visit her old friend and lover, the Count Armagnac, her father's boss, if you remember, right? So she thinks that he could potentially help her and sure enough, He still has a soft spot for her and he agrees to go and see the king and request a formal royal pardon on her behalf. So Count Armagnac tells the king the full story and the king is highly amused by the whole thing. He instantly overrules her death sentence and fully pardons her because he finds the entire story of kidnapping a dead nun, burning down a convent, just so, like, amusing. So he pardons her, and it was as easy as that.
Adam Cox: That's, I guess it was so uncommon, but that feels a little bit, I don't know, corrupt of a king. Why? Well, just get like, oh, you, you, you know.
Kyle Risi: I mean, it's his country, he can do what he wants, right?
Adam Cox: Yeah, I guess you didn't kill anyone at that point.
Kyle Risi: But, I mean, kidnapping of a, of a dead nun's body.
Adam Cox: Yeah, it's a little against the church.
Kyle Risi: And so, yeah, so, and finally Julie is now a free woman once again. How old do you think she is at this point?
Adam Cox: Okay, so, I feel like she's like toured the country and done so much. It feels like she should be in her thirties, but I'm guessing she's probably like 21.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, she's 20. She's done all of that and she's 20.
Adam Cox: She's still beating people up. Oh yeah, I guess she has to be quite young in order to have all that energy to skewer men.
Kyle Risi: I wish I could skew you like I did when I was in my 20s.
Adam Cox: Yeah
Kyle Risi: So yeah, so she's 20 and life is good She's starting afresh and things are really taking off for her because Gabrielle Vincent was waiting for her and having managed to get a gig In the paris opera on his first day in the city, He gets her an audition too. however, when she goes for the audition, she completely flubs it, and they tell her to go away, practice a bit more, and then come back the next year. So she is gutted.
Adam Cox: I guess she's been like a tavern singer up until this point, and like street shows and stuff. And this is a bit different, isn't it? But then, was she? Known for being operatic then, is that right? Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. You wait.
Kyle Risi: You wait, Adam.
Adam Cox: Okay. Things are gonna take off
Kyle Risi: for
Adam Cox: her. I guess she, Is she just going to go out, you know what, I'll take your feedback on and constructive criticism and I'm going to go and practice?
Kyle Risi: No. I
Adam Cox: don't think so. No.
Kyle Risi: So Julie does the obvious thing and she seduces the best friend of the guy who manages the opera. And persuades him to get her into the show, which he does. And she makes her debut playing the goddess Athena in Cadmus and Hermione. Okay. And Adam, she's visually stunning wearing this golden helmet, holding kind of this long spear rising out of the stage. And overnight after this performance, she becomes one of the biggest sensations across Paris. And she goes on to star in other productions, playing Queens and goddesses, warriors.
Kyle Risi: And she even sometimes plays the male role as well. Regardless though of the role, she always steals the show. People are obsessed with her because she's a proper method actor.
Kyle Risi: And the thing is, though, now that she's a free woman, she can actually technically go back to using her married name. So she is Julie Moppa. But because she is so famous and so revered that she earns the name La Moppa. Which is the equivalent of you being so amazing that people start calling you the cocks.
Adam Cox: And maybe they should .
Adam Cox: Wow. Yeah. I love the fact that she seduced him, the guy in order to get in. That's really, I dunno, she didn't kill anyone, so that's good. I
Kyle Risi: feel like women have been like playing to their advantages for Mm-Hmm. Forever. Yeah. And why should they not?
Kyle Risi: Right.
Adam Cox: And she's playing men as well. So she's quite versatile in terms of I guess lady's voice and then quite a deep voice as well, or, yeah,
Kyle Risi: yeah. Yeah. She's not a femme lesbian. She's like a very, she can do both. She's the us. She can be the femme and she can be the butch.
Kyle Risi: So life for La Mopin is just incredible. She is the jewel of Paris. And of course, amongst all of this, she enjoys all the carnal pleasures afforded to her by her fame. She has lots of sex with the rest of the cast. It's very incestuous, Adam. Very. The story's got so much sex in it everyone's banging each other.
Adam Cox: There's no different to, I guess, like TV shows now. Like, um, Are
Kyle Risi: they banging on that?
Adam Cox: Well, don't
Kyle Risi: they? I guess it's implied.
Adam Cox: Yeah. So even in the opera, that's what used to go on in France. I guess it's with all these thespian types.
Kyle Risi: That's what they do, right? Thespians. Thespians. So for about two years, actually, speaking of thespians, for about two years, she actually has an affair with another female soprano in the opera, when Julie meets another cast member who she becomes so deeply and obsessively infatuated with. The only problem is that this other actor. is not interested in her at all. And after multiple rejections, she does the obvious thing and undertakes an elaborate suicide attempt to draw attention to herself and try and win over her affections.
Adam Cox: This would snare me, that man or woman, I don't know. It was
Kyle Risi: a woman.
Adam Cox: Oh, was it? Okay.
Kyle Risi: Of course, this doesn't work. She does, of course, survive the suicide attempt. She gets her life back on track and While working at the opera, she continues to dress up as a boy looking for illegal jewels in Paris. The fact that these jewels are illegal only just adds to the thrill for her, I think. And she also has a nearly perfect record. So when you're really good at something and it's illegal, why would you not want to just continue doing it, right?
Adam Cox: Yeah. Is she winning money for this as well?
Adam Cox: If it's kind of like, I just think she's
Kyle Risi: just thirsty for blood. Yeah.
Adam Cox: So she finishes her like singing gig and then goes out into the night and That's the man. 100%.
Kyle Risi: So when the rest of the cast find out about her skills in sword fighting, she gets teased a little bit and she ends up beating the absolute crap out of one of the Tenors after he is a dick to her one night after the show. And the story is wild, Adam.
Kyle Risi: So his name is Dumanil, one night, Dumenil is being particularly vulgar and he's propositioning almost every woman in the cast, including Julie. So she immediately shuts him down in her usual no nonsense way and he resorts to insulting her in front of everyone. And humiliated, Julie looks him dead square in the eye and warns him, De Menil, this is not over. Do
Adam Cox: you know what, I think your French accent is getting better. Did
Kyle Risi: you like that?
Adam Cox: No. God damn
Kyle Risi: it. So later that night, after everyone had left the theatre, she changes into one of the nobleman's kind of costumes that they have in their costume department and she waits for De Menil to set off home. She intercepts him on the way home and she challenges him to a duel. Obviously he doesn't recognize her.
Kyle Risi: So Dumenil is terrified and he refuses to draw his sword. So out of pity and disgust, she just beats the absolute crap out of him with her cane. But I will
Adam Cox: fight you.
Kyle Risi: I will fight you! She steals his pocket watch and his snuff box and just leaves him cowering in the gutter. The next day, at the opera, Duminil arrives, obviously beat up and covered in bruises, and he tells everyone that he was attacked by these three big guys the night before, Who he managed to fight off really quite valiantly.
Kyle Risi: But they fought dirty, they overwhelmed him, and they stole his snuffbox and his watch.
Adam Cox: And he's, oh, so he's like, yeah, these big guys, that, yeah, I did my best. There were
Kyle Risi: three of them, oh
Adam Cox: my god! I had no chance.
Kyle Risi: So this is the perfect setup for Julie, when he's done, she throws his belongings down at his feet and declares, Dubonnet, you are a liar and a coward. It was I alone who defeated you. You were afraid to fight. So I, so I gave you a sound thrashing. As proof, I return to you, your miserable watch and snuffbox.
Adam Cox: Um, I don't know what that was. It got really gruff. Gruff towards the end. Do you know, this is just like when Phoebe mugged Ross in Friends. And he's like, oh no, it's these big guys. And she's like, give me your money or your wallet, punk. Oh my god, it was you!
Kyle Risi: Brilliant. So she completely disgraces him in front of everyone and because he is such a dick, she becomes the hero of the cast.
Adam Cox: Which is great, but I feel like this doesn't gonna, it's not gonna bode well for her long term.
Kyle Risi: No, this is over. That's it for him.
Adam Cox: Oh, okay, fine.
Kyle Risi: It's not gonna come back and bite her.
Kyle Risi: I think he's learnt his lesson. Cool. But the thing is though, Julie does continue to get into trouble, sometimes landing herself in court. Once, she was arrested for attacking her landlord because he wouldn't make her dinner after she came home too late. She beat the shit out of him.
Adam Cox: Yeah, she is a bit, I really like her, but I don't want to be her friend.
Kyle Risi: No, you do want to be her friend, but you want to keep her on your good side.
Adam Cox: Yeah, like see her maybe once every three months.
Kyle Risi: Another time she's arrested for threatening the Duchess of Luxembourg with a pistol. So Adam, she can't seem to control herself or shake that temper that has just been plaguing her since her childhood. One of my favorite stories, however, is how she humiliates the Countess at a ball with a bunch of radishes. So apparently the Countess had done something to offend her and the Countess of course was wearing one of those big elaborate wigs similar to kind of like Mary Antoinette.
Kyle Risi: So Julie would sneak up behind her and stick radishes in the back of her wig every time the Countess had turned her back. And then the whole party would go wild. Was just kind of giggling at the Countess's expense before she then finds out what's going on.
Adam Cox: That feels so childish, but I love that.
Kyle Risi: So she's always like nipping over like, Oh, another radish.
Kyle Risi: Oh, what was that? Pudded? Coming! So despite all of her antics, she just continues to be the Belle of Paris. Everyone loves her or is in love with her or is jealous of her and because of this she is invited to all of the major social events most notably she's invited to a fancy ball that's been hosted by the king's brother Philippe the duke of Orleans. So Philip was known for his flamboyant lifestyle anyway, leading a very different life to the typical Royal expectations at the time, very different life to what the King was leading.
Kyle Risi: Remember when we did the Mary Antoinette episode and we talked about kind of the grand leather, which is the formal morning ceremony of the king's awakening and the dressing involving all the different courtiers which based on their rank would be prescribed different roles of dressing the king and if someone more senior would come in then that person would then need to bow. Yeah, that's right. yeah, just all this ostentatious kind of like
Adam Cox: Stupid pageantry
Kyle Risi: Exactly. Well, this system was the brainchild of Philippe and of course it was set up to keep all the nobles busy enough So they wouldn't have time to plot against the king. That's the purpose of all of that
Adam Cox: That's what the
Kyle Risi: purpose was?
Kyle Risi: Yeah.
Adam Cox: Like, oh, I need to be on the lookout in case someone more important comes in
Kyle Risi: That's it. Well, the thing is though because the king was so paranoid about someone doing a coup He built the Palace of Versailles where he ordered all the nobles of France to come and live at the Palace. So they all lived together And because they were just walking around all day doing nothing, they were a bit bored, he created this system to keep them occupied and to make sure that no one overrules him.
Adam Cox: Seems dumb. It's like Big Brother.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, it is. So this was Prince Philip's kind of brainchild.
Kyle Risi: Philip was also really interesting because he often cross dressed Adam, like he would attend balls wearing the most exquisite gowns and jewels. And historians think that his mother, Anne of Austria, started encouraging him to be more effeminate thinking that he would then pose less of a risk to the king's authority But also he was openly attracted to men. So there's another win for the lgbtq community Is
Adam Cox: that why it's Another one for the gays. Yeah, Gay Paris..
Kyle Risi: Do you think that's where it comes from?
Adam Cox: Yeah. Everyone wasn't gay in Paris in France at the time. I think it's
Kyle Risi: meant to be happy. Uh Yeah.
Adam Cox: Gay.
Kyle Risi: Undertones. So Philippe is throwing this outrageous ball. And even the king is going to be in attendance. So Julie decides that she's going to wear her best formal gentleman's outfit for the event. Remember, she isn't disguising herself as a man. She just loves how she looks in men's clothing. Plus, it draws a lot of attention that she craves. So during the evening, she starts flirting with several pretty young girls that are in attendance.
Kyle Risi: Eventually, she hones in on one of the most beautiful young ladies that she has ever seen in her entire life. So She muscles her way into a group of gentlemen vying for the young lady's attention and completely cockblocks them. She then hijacks a girl and takes the lead in several dances and all the young men Just watch on, seething, and the other lords and ladies are just gasping and tutting in disgust at this display.
Adam Cox: Yeah, they wouldn't be able to do this at like a formal dance. This would be a no go.
Kyle Risi: Yeah, for sure. Then the room gives a collective shriek of outrage when Julie passionately kisses the woman in the middle of the dance floor in front of everyone. The men, feeling very emasculated challenge her to a duel and Julie is delighted to accept and she's like at your service gentlemen very gruff she's been smoking a lot
Adam Cox: yeah i was gonna say
Kyle Risi: So they head out to the courtyard and Julie beats all three of the men up in an embarrassingly short amount of time and everyone is just like, gasp!
Kyle Risi: So immediately she's brought in front of the king. He takes one look at her and says, you are la Moppa. I've heard of your handiwork. Need I remind you of my decree against jewels in Paris? Of course. She has no real defense at this moment in time because so many people have seen her having this duel.
Kyle Risi: So she's just silent. So in disgust, the king just demands that she leave immediately and await her consequences. But before she does, she begs the king's brother to try and speak to the king to persuade him. not to take things further.
Kyle Risi: So she goes home and the next day she's just waiting in anticipation expecting to be arrested at any moment thinking for sure that she's going to be executed if Philip does not come through for her. And then someone arrives at her lodgings. It's not the Kings Guard coming to arrest her. It's someone from the court.
Kyle Risi: And they're there to inform her that she has been let off on a technicality because the law clearly states that no man is allowed to duel and since she was a woman, she technically hadn't committed a crime and so this is the second time that she's been pardoned by the king.
Adam Cox: Legal loophole there, that's a good one. But how is she getting away with so much? She's so jammy.
Kyle Risi: It's got to be because how beautiful she is. And how tough she is.
Adam Cox: Well, I guess her talents, she's just, there's no one else like her.
Kyle Risi: Yeah.
Adam Cox: And yeah, she's not inherently a bad person.
Kyle Risi: But she is breaking the rules, right? These rules are there, and she's breaking them.
Adam Cox: Yeah, but if, if the king ever needed to go to war, You want someone like her, clearly, because she beats up a lot of men.
Kyle Risi: You don't want to send her to war. You want to keep her close on hand to potentially give you a gentle spanking.
Adam Cox: Maybe, or she could be your bodyguard, I think.
Kyle Risi: Protect me, then spank
Adam Cox: me. I need you day and night.
Kyle Risi: So she's been pardoned. But of course, when the news breaks that she has essentially gotten off on a technicality, Not everyone in Paris is thrilled, especially the noble families of the three men that she attacked the night before. So she thinks, all right, I need to lay low for a while, and decides that she's going to get out of town for a bit.
Kyle Risi: She jumps on a horse and she heads for Brussels. And as soon as she gets there, she seeks out the most powerful man that she can. And that is a chap called Maximilian Emmanuel and he is the Elector of Bravaria. Basically, he is a prince.
Kyle Risi: She makes herself his mistress and through his connections She learns herself the leading role in the brussels opera. So she's jammy.
Adam Cox: Yeah,
Kyle Risi: but even in brussels She doesn't learn her lesson her behavior just becomes more and more dramatic Her temper, even worse than before, and Maximilian starts to get a little concerned and possibly a little afraid.
Kyle Risi: But the final straw comes when during a performance, she really leans into the moment and for realistic effect she stabs herself with a dagger and she lets herself bleed all over the stage and people are like, what the fuck?
Adam Cox: Cause she is a method actor and yeah, willing to. Do that to herself. Crazy. I'm a little bit like, yeah, maybe she could do with a little bit of, um, Therapy! Discipline, just to put her on the right track.
Kyle Risi: Mm, I agree. So Maximilian decides like enough is enough and he ends things with her, but of course he's too scared to do it himself. So he sends the husband of one of his other mistresses to Julie's house to do it for him. It's basically a text message breakup. So hang on he sent
Adam Cox: the husband of one of his mistresses so he's cool that his wife is cheating on him with the prince
Kyle Risi: it's just a whole mess it's hard to unpack that
Adam Cox: yeah okay
Kyle Risi: the fact that you can call
Adam Cox: on him to do that that's that's weird
Kyle Risi: So when the messenger gets there, he hands her 40, 000 francs and a written note from Maximilian with orders to leave Brussels immediately, So she absolutely kicks the crap out of him. Kicking him down the stairs before picking up the money off the ground and then heading back to Paris.
Adam Cox: There's just no stopping this woman. And like, what is the time period for this? Like, she's just gone to Brussels. I'm guessing she was probably there like a year or a few months or whatever.
Kyle Risi: Not long at all.
Adam Cox: And she's already been kicked out of there and she thinks going to Paris so soon? Okay, she needs an intervention.
Kyle Risi: I think so. I think so. So when she gets to Paris, she remembers, Oh, remember, I have a husband somewhere in the provinces.
Kyle Risi: Oh, how is she forgetting about this? So she figures that her relaunch back into Paris society would be easier if she had a husband by her side. So she asked the Count Armagnac to summon her husband back from the provinces, which he obliges, of course, and Her husband is just super happy to be back after all these years. He's like my beautiful wife I spent one day with you before I got ships off. We could be reunited. How long have they been apart years adam years It's like you're not how I remember you and that's him saying it to her
Kyle Risi: So with him back she makes her triumphant return to the paris opera However, shortly after he does return he conveniently dies Which is fine because obviously she just needed him to reinstate her reputation, but also because she's just set eyes. On her next lover
Adam Cox: victim
Kyle Risi: No adam a lover so this is this is it now this is this is the final one This is
Adam Cox: the real deal
Kyle Risi: This is the real deal a woman who was so famously known as one of the most beautiful women in all of france madame La Marques de Florenzac. We'll
Adam Cox: just call her Florenzac. her
Kyle Risi: Florenzac. Anyway, she's gorgeous. The most beautiful woman in all of France. Like the king's son was so obsessed with her that even she had to flee to Brussels just to get away from him.
Kyle Risi: Pest. So she's hot. Together they live in perfect happiness for about two years before Florenczak tragically dies of a fever in 1705. And Adam, Julie is left utterly heartbroken. That's the end of her, like, she can't go on. Julie just doesn't have the heart to continue in the opera after this and she figures that she's getting towards her mid 30s anyway.
Kyle Risi: Her mid 30s at this point. So coupled with her grief she decides that it's time to retire and she moves to the southern provinces and joins a convent. So she's back where she started basically.
Adam Cox: I know where to get a new girlfriend.
Kyle Risi: I think she's done, no more. I don't think she's got any more kind of lesbian ing in her.
Adam Cox: I think, sounds like she's lived, Like a 50, 60 year life in the space of like 20 years.
Kyle Risi: Exactly. So between the ages of 34 and 37, we're not quite sure, she dies. And we don't know what from, but accounts simply say that she was deeply affected by the loss of her lover, that she just didn't have the will to go on, in effect, Julie dies of a broken heart.
Kyle Risi: And for a long while, people write about her often using her story as a cautionary tale for what happens when women receive an education that's just not deemed appropriate for them. So basically for thinking too worldly or too independently. And It's a warning that this is what happens when you step outside of the gender norms. And behave like a bloke.
Adam Cox: Yeah, I mean, I often walk down the street and there are women just beating up men all over.
Kyle Risi: But you know, like, there is a part of me, after knowing what we know about Julie, that thinks that maybe, just maybe, she faked her death, and she pulled another body from the crypt, and she took off somewhere to fight another day with some other woman.
Adam Cox: Maybe, but why would she do that? Why? I mean, unless she accidentally killed someone, then needed to fake her own death. Oh, and they don't know who it
Kyle Risi: is. Yeah. But maybe there's another part of me that just, for a second, for a split second, I wondered maybe she actually is Ira Stark. Maybe she's actually Maisie Williams. And when the role for Ira came up, she's like, lol, hold my screwdriver, I got this.
Adam Cox: Yeah, she's about 400 years old by this point. Yeah, but you don't
Kyle Risi: There might be some kind of spell. Maybe she met, like, some kind of witch on the side road off to, like, Marseille or somewhere, or Bordeaux.
Adam Cox: And have the writers actually said that Iris Stark was sort of based on this woman?
Kyle Risi: Yeah, there's some strong indication that she inspired
Adam Cox: the character. Yeah, sounds like it. Yeah.
Kyle Risi: The important thing is that she should be celebrated as a feminist gay icon Someone who is literally centuries ahead of her time, living the life that feels right to her despite social constructs telling her no.
Kyle Risi: And I think that, that's really inspiring to many people even today, not just women like I said, but gay people, trans people, anyone who just does not fit that cookie cutter mold of what society expects from them. Although, I'm not excusing her bad temper. Like, she definitely needs to see a therapist about that, probably.
Adam Cox: Yeah, but I like that she just took no shit. She did what was felt right to her. And
Kyle Risi: having
Adam Cox: all these sort of, uh, relationships with women, which, I don't know, that just, that seemed, that would be all underground, but she doesn't seem to care about that at all.
Kyle Risi: Oh, sure.
Kyle Risi: And Adam, that is the story of Julie Daubigny.
Adam Cox: What a woman. Yeah. Formidable woman.
Kyle Risi: So, for our freaks out there, if you really enjoy this type of topic, we have a few recommendations from our back catalog that I was going through yesterday. Okay. That you might want to revisit or if you've not listened to them go and check them out Do you know which ones i'm going to say?
Kyle Risi: Adam? What do you think my recommendations would be?
Adam Cox: Mary Antoinette,
Kyle Risi: of course Mary Antoinette. So that was episode five, Mary Antoinette her life her legacy so that was, of course, took place a couple of hundred years. Well, that's, that took place a little while after obviously King Louis the 14th. So there would have been King Louis the 16th. So his grandson.
Adam Cox: It was leading up to the French revolution, wasn't it?
Kyle Risi: Lots of French accents in that one. But what a brilliant woman she was, right? Like there's so many things that we didn't know about Marie Antoinette. Also, we did the Radium Girls, episode 12.
Kyle Risi: Oh yeah. They were just incredible women, weren't they? Just how they fought against the establishment and they helped kind of create or force the government to create health and safety laws in the workplace. Those women were just inspirational. And then Amelia Earhart. She was cool as well. So that was episode 21. I still wonder, I still convinced that she was eaten by crabs, man.
Adam Cox: That is the popular theory, right?
Adam Cox: Should we run the outro? Let's do it
Kyle Risi: And that's it for another episode of the compendium podcast If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow us on your favorite podcasting app. It really helps us when you do Next week's episode is available seven days early on our free access patreon For more content, subscribe to our certified freak tier for access to our entire backlog of exclusive posts and sneak peeks.
Kyle Risi: We'd love you to join us and have a chat. I'd like to welcome two new patrons for this week Carmen Woolley and Jennifer Chiriano So good to have you guys in the Big Top Tent with us.
Kyle Risi: We release new episodes every Tuesday and until then remember Sometimes breaking the rules is the only way to write your own opera.
Kyle Risi: See you next time.
Adam Cox: See ya
