Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky Listener, Discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: In seventeen seventy one, the London Stock Exchange introduced a
Speaker 1: betting pool at three two odds that the notorious cultural
Speaker 1: figure the Chevalier Dion, whose long resume onto that point
Speaker 1: included stints as a diplomat, spy, soldier and political writer,
Speaker 1: was biologically a woman. This was an actual betting pool
Speaker 1: that people bet actual money on. The interest in the
Speaker 1: Chevalier des Genitalia became so frenzied that for a period
Speaker 1: of time John couldn't leave her home without armed guards
Speaker 1: because of all the strangers who were trying to physically
Speaker 1: rip her clothes off and expose whatever was beneath, presumably
Speaker 1: to their financial advantage. After a year, the betting pool
Speaker 1: was abandoned because no progress was made on actually coming
Speaker 1: up with a determination that was deemed satisfactory. If you
Speaker 1: can possibly believe it, Dion wasn't willing to undergo a
Speaker 1: public physical examination. But Dion's gender expression became such a
Speaker 1: topic of public interest in the eighteenth century that the
Speaker 1: Court of the King's Bench in England, and then ultimately
Speaker 1: the French government would weigh in to issue formal declarations
Speaker 1: that she was in fact a woman and would and
Speaker 1: should be publicly treated as such. The Chevalier Deon is
Speaker 1: one of history's most compelling and confounding figures, sometimes regarded
Speaker 1: as a proto queer figure, the namesake for a number
Speaker 1: of groups that support the transgender community. She is sometimes
Speaker 1: incorrectly recognized as the first openly transgender person in Europe,
Speaker 1: but that declaration is both an oversimplification of the Chevalier
Speaker 1: and a fundamental misunderstanding of gender expression. Throughout history, trans
Speaker 1: people have existed as long as people have existed, and
Speaker 1: certainly the Chevalier Dion would not have thought of herself
Speaker 1: as transgender, nor would she have had the vocabulary to
Speaker 1: do so so. Perhaps understandably, there's plenty of confusion and
Speaker 1: a good amount of disagreement, even among prominent historians about
Speaker 1: the appropriate pronouns to use when we're talking about the
Speaker 1: Chevalier personally. With the research and reading I've done, I've
Speaker 1: decided to use female pronouns continually throughout the episode. Just
Speaker 1: as the London Stock Exchange discovered barring an inspection of
Speaker 1: a now corpses genitals. There's no quote unquote right answer
Speaker 1: for the chevalier biological sex, and to me, even thinking
Speaker 1: along those terms is well a little gross and intrusive,
Speaker 1: not to mention, as you'll find out later on, pretty
Speaker 1: unhelpful in the end. So what we do actually know
Speaker 1: about the Chevalier is that she spent the last three
Speaker 1: and a half decades of her life making it very
Speaker 1: clear on an official and on a personal level that
Speaker 1: she was a woman and wanted to be treated as such.
Speaker 1: It feels like the very least I can do as
Speaker 1: a podcaster telling her story to take her at her
Speaker 1: word there. During her lifetime, the Chevalier was celebrated by
Speaker 1: contemporary feminist thinkers like A. Lump de Gorge and Mary
Speaker 1: wolf Stonecraft. In her vindication of the rights of women,
Speaker 1: wolf Stonecraft specifically include Dion as an example of a
Speaker 1: woman who was able to succeed in a man's world.
Speaker 1: Wolf Stonecraft rights, I shall not lay any great stress
Speaker 1: upon the example of a few women, sappho Eloisa, Mrs Macaulay,
Speaker 1: the Empress of Russia, Madame Dion, et cetera. These and
Speaker 1: many more, maybe reckoned exceptions and are not all heroes
Speaker 1: as well as heroine's exceptions to general rules. I wish
Speaker 1: to see women neither heroin nor brutes, but reasonable creatures who,
Speaker 1: from having received a masculine education, have acquired courage and resolution.
Speaker 1: The Chevalier's life would have been filled with intrigue and
Speaker 1: scandal and more than a few international incidents, even if
Speaker 1: she hadn't also been a walking example of this strange
Speaker 1: performance of gender, both in the eighteenth century and today.
Speaker 1: I'm Danis Schwartz and this is noble blood. The figure
Speaker 1: who had come to be best known as the Chevalier
Speaker 1: Dion was assigned male at birth when she was born
Speaker 1: on October five, seventy eight into North France, a little
Speaker 1: town tucked into the hills of the wine regions of Burgundy.
Speaker 1: Her being assigned male delighted her father. They were a
Speaker 1: noble family, but noble and poor, a terrible combination. Once
Speaker 1: the Chevalier's father had a son his own air, he
Speaker 1: was entitled to a certain inheritance from his in laws. Physically,
Speaker 1: the Chevalier Deon remained small her entire life, five ft
Speaker 1: and four inches tall, with long legs, blue eyes, and
Speaker 1: a voice that was high pitched enough that it was
Speaker 1: remarked upon presenting as a man as her father's. There,
Speaker 1: Dion studied civil and canon law to become a lawyer
Speaker 1: like her father. She graduated from College Mazzara at age
Speaker 1: twenty one in seventeen forty nine. Over the next five years,
Speaker 1: like many other young, intelligent literary people, Dion made a
Speaker 1: name for herself as a political writer, one successful enough
Speaker 1: that she even gained some notoriety. Her career was also
Speaker 1: enough to propel her into a prominent job working as
Speaker 1: a secretary for a number of high ranking court officials
Speaker 1: and as an official royal censor for history and literature,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately she got a job as the secretary
Speaker 1: of the diplomat sent down behalf of France to the
Speaker 1: court of the Russian Empress Elizabeth. Or at least that
Speaker 1: was what Dion was doing in Russia officially. Unofficially, she
Speaker 1: was working as an agent of the top secret spy
Speaker 1: network known as the Secret of the King or Secrete
Speaker 1: de Rouix. The group was so secret that there were
Speaker 1: officials in the actual government who didn't know what existed.
Speaker 1: The point of the Secrete de Rua was to serve
Speaker 1: the King Louis fift exclusively so that he could operate
Speaker 1: in certain foreign spears without involving France as a whole. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: like in Russia, the task of the Secrete de Rua
Speaker 1: ran contrary to the officially stated French diplomatic goals. The
Speaker 1: king's plan, as Deon later recounted, it was to put
Speaker 1: his cousin, the Prince de Conti, on the Polish throne
Speaker 1: so that Poland could operate as a satellite French nation,
Speaker 1: and so Deon was meant to make nice with embrass
Speaker 1: Elizabeth of Russia, to help foster good relationships with her
Speaker 1: and to undermine Habsburg power in the area. There's very
Speaker 1: little corroborative documentation about Dion's time in Russia, possibly because
Speaker 1: some of it was in a secret capacity, so for
Speaker 1: some details we have to rely exclusively on her own,
Speaker 1: possibly embellished memoirs written later in life. According to Dion,
Speaker 1: at the time she was sent to Russia, the English
Speaker 1: were attempting to restrict French access to the Russian court,
Speaker 1: and so they were only allowing women and children across
Speaker 1: the border. So in order to complete her mission, Dion
Speaker 1: took on the disguise of a woman, a woman named
Speaker 1: Lea de Beaumont, Dion passed as a woman and then
Speaker 1: passed across the border. This is, according to Dion's memoirs,
Speaker 1: the first instance of her publicly presenting as a woman
Speaker 1: for political purposes in this case, but to ultimately positive effect.
Speaker 1: It's also worth pointing out that Empress Elizabeth's court in
Speaker 1: Russia was a place where cross dressing was a common
Speaker 1: and delighted in form of entertainment. The Empress through weakly
Speaker 1: cross dressing parties called metamorphosis balls, in which men arrived
Speaker 1: in petticoats and Elizabeth herself showed off her figure in
Speaker 1: men's riding oaths. As a young future Catherine the Great
Speaker 1: would write of these parties, quote, the only woman who
Speaker 1: looked really well and completely a man was the Empress herself,
Speaker 1: As she was tall and powerful. Male attire suited her.
Speaker 1: She had the handsomest leg I had ever seen. Some
Speaker 1: people say Empress Elizabeth just wanted to throw these parties
Speaker 1: because she was tired of hiding her handsomest leg underneath
Speaker 1: voluminous women's petticoats. By all accounts, Dion dazzled in her post,
Speaker 1: but she was ultimately withdrawn from Russia. When France was
Speaker 1: pulled into a more immediate international conflict, the Seven Years
Speaker 1: War with England, John was made a captain of dragoons
Speaker 1: and fought valiantly, distinguishing herself enough that she was made
Speaker 1: the secretary to the Duke of Vernay and was deployed
Speaker 1: to London to assist in the drafting of the peace treaty.
Speaker 1: When the war ended in seventeen sixty three, Dionu received
Speaker 1: the Order of Salouis and was granted the title of Chevalier,
Speaker 1: the French equivalent of a knighthood. She was only thirty
Speaker 1: five years old, and she was going to continue to
Speaker 1: be incredibly useful to the king. After the Seven Years War,
Speaker 1: France was in fragile condition. It had been stripped of
Speaker 1: its North American colonies, and it was saddled now with
Speaker 1: two things, enormous debts and a hatred of the English.
Speaker 1: The Secrete de Rouix had a new goal to see
Speaker 1: if invading Britain was a thing that might be on
Speaker 1: the horizon. Dion was given a post as a temporary
Speaker 1: liaison to the English court, a short term diplomatic job,
Speaker 1: while the real ambassador to England was being appointed secretly
Speaker 1: on the orders of King Louis the fifteenth. Her job
Speaker 1: was also to scope out the English coast line to
Speaker 1: see if there was a place that would lend itself
Speaker 1: to a French invasion. But our former good soldier Dion
Speaker 1: wasted very little time becoming a thorn in the King's side.
Speaker 1: She had expensive tastes, and she was formally reprimanded for
Speaker 1: importing too much expensive wine on France's dying, which would
Speaker 1: have been troublesome at any time, but was especially impudent
Speaker 1: when France was cash strapped and deeply in debt from
Speaker 1: the war. But Dion was about to cause more trouble
Speaker 1: than just buying wine. Soon enough, the real official ambassador
Speaker 1: to England was appointed, and Dion was politely told to
Speaker 1: vacate the position. The official ambassador was a man named
Speaker 1: Comte de Guerchi, who had almost no diplomatic experience and
Speaker 1: even fewer friends. He was a mediocre bureaucrat, and as
Speaker 1: soon as he arrived, Dion was to be demoted to
Speaker 1: serve as his secretary, even though Dion outranked him as
Speaker 1: a member of the secret In short, it was an
Speaker 1: outrage not to be abided, and Dion said as much
Speaker 1: in the numerous letters that she wrote back to France,
Speaker 1: saying that it was an insult that she was expected
Speaker 1: to vacate the ambassador position for someone as unqualified and
Speaker 1: unlikable as the Comte. Later do All would also write
Speaker 1: that she believed that she was being sabotaged back in
Speaker 1: France by the King's favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, who
Speaker 1: was threatened by anyone but her having prominent influence over
Speaker 1: the King. Dion was fired for insolence and given two
Speaker 1: weeks to pack her bags and come back to France.
Speaker 1: At this point, she knew she was in trouble. Poor
Speaker 1: low ranking nobleman could be thrown into the best deal
Speaker 1: for less than what she did. She wouldn't be returning
Speaker 1: back to France for a party with sparkling grape juice
Speaker 1: in the office kitchen, and so de All made the
Speaker 1: decision to just not. She just didn't return to France.
Speaker 1: Louis was outraged, of course, and he demanded that Dion
Speaker 1: be extradited, but the French Foreign Minister just shrugged and
Speaker 1: said that Dion was welcome to stay in Britain as
Speaker 1: a private citizen. The French crown went so far as
Speaker 1: you tried to physically kidnap Dion and bring her back
Speaker 1: to France, all to no avail. Without a country or
Speaker 1: any real political protection, d a made an incredibly risky decision,
Speaker 1: the nuclear option. She published a book of state secrets,
Speaker 1: full of all of her correspondent through her service in
Speaker 1: the secret Dubrois, with plenty of salacious details and the
Speaker 1: promise that this was just the first volume of many,
Speaker 1: that there were even more scandalous secrets on the way.
Speaker 1: It was, like I said, a risky strategy. But when
Speaker 1: that paid off. Without political protection, Dion turned to the
Speaker 1: protection of celebrity and fame, the protective bubble of attention
Speaker 1: and the adoration of the British people for this woman
Speaker 1: who basically just betrayed the French government, Dion became an
Speaker 1: overnight international celebrity, the person everyone was talking about the
Speaker 1: next morning at the water cooler, so to speak. She
Speaker 1: was the main character of European politics for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: In Gary Cates's biography Monsieur Dion as a Woman, the
Speaker 1: writer includes a contemporary letter from a sixteen year old
Speaker 1: girl writing to a friend, astounded by Dion's impudence. As
Speaker 1: for Dion's implicit blackmail to spell more French secrets, that
Speaker 1: worked too, because she hadn't included the worst of King
Speaker 1: Louis secrets. Louis the fifteen quietly awarded a lifelong pension
Speaker 1: of twelve thousand livres in exchange for the promise that
Speaker 1: she would withhold the most incriminating secrets, and maybe the
Speaker 1: promise that she would continue to pass along some reports
Speaker 1: on British politics as long as she was over in England.
Speaker 1: Dion was in exile in an uneasy truce with the
Speaker 1: French crown, but certainly not permitted to return to France,
Speaker 1: and so she began her life in exile in England
Speaker 1: as a political celebrity. It's also about now that the
Speaker 1: rumors started, rumors that were possibly started but almost certainly
Speaker 1: fueled by Dion herself, that that scandalous French expat who
Speaker 1: had up until this point presented as a man, was
Speaker 1: actually a woman. This is when the betting pool came about,
Speaker 1: and the hordes of frenzied gamblers, desperate to examine Dion's
Speaker 1: genitalia by assaulting her in the street. Dion, for her part,
Speaker 1: kept coyly mum, continuing to present as a man until
Speaker 1: finally an investigator arrived on behalf of the French government
Speaker 1: trying to discover the truth. At this point, Dion sighed
Speaker 1: and became clean. Yes, she actually was a woman. She
Speaker 1: had been born a woman biologically, but was raised as
Speaker 1: a son because her tyrannical father was desperate to have
Speaker 1: an heir. In seventeen seventy seven, when Dion was forty
Speaker 1: nine years old, the Court of the King's Bench made
Speaker 1: its formal declaration on behalf of the English government from
Speaker 1: Westminster that yes, the figure who had been known up
Speaker 1: until that point as Monsieur Dion was actually a mademoiselle. Quote,
Speaker 1: she who had called herself the Chevalier Dion until that day,
Speaker 1: was an individual who did not possess with the Appalachian
Speaker 1: man promist and that she was quote a virago disguised
Speaker 1: in a uniform. It was actually all part of an
Speaker 1: astonishingly clever roots on the part of Dion, as Hugh
Speaker 1: Ryan wrote for the website Them Dots, By claiming that
Speaker 1: she had secretly been a woman all along, disguised as
Speaker 1: a man, Dion was allowed to publicly transition in a
Speaker 1: way that never would have otherwise been socially acceptable. But
Speaker 1: by framing it as coming clean, not only was her
Speaker 1: transition acceptable, it was celebrated, met with absolutely no loss
Speaker 1: of status. Here she was a good Christian woman who
Speaker 1: could no longer live a lie, who had pretended to
Speaker 1: be a man this entire time in noble service to
Speaker 1: the French king. Now living as herself, Dion's goal was
Speaker 1: to return to France as a heroine. A few years prior,
Speaker 1: King Louis the fift died and his ransom Louis the sixteenth,
Speaker 1: had taken the throne. Louis the sixteenth had no ambitions
Speaker 1: to invade Britain, and he also did not see the
Speaker 1: need for duel foreign services, and so the Secrete de
Speaker 1: rule was abolished and Dion's pension along with it. It
Speaker 1: took fourteen months of negotiation between Louis the sixteenth representative
Speaker 1: and Dia to negotiate her return to France, but ultimately
Speaker 1: the terms were settled with an agreement that came to
Speaker 1: be known as the Transaction, which allowed Dion's return to France,
Speaker 1: stipulating that she would henceforth present as a woman, though
Speaker 1: she would still be allowed to wear the insignia of
Speaker 1: the Order of San Louis. Her title was changed from
Speaker 1: Chevalier to Chevalier, making her the first female knight, and
Speaker 1: even though Dion wanted to continue to wear her dragoon uniform,
Speaker 1: the king wouldn't allow it, and so the transaction also
Speaker 1: provided funds for new outfits from Marie Antoinette's dressmaker, Rose Bertie.
Speaker 1: On November one, Mademoiselle le Chevalier Deon emerged from a
Speaker 1: four hour twilet in an elaborate dress with a powdered
Speaker 1: wig and a face full of makeup to be formally
Speaker 1: presented at Versailles. It was a rebirth of sorts. She
Speaker 1: had returned to France, and she had returned as herself. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Dion was about to learn a terrible lesson about what
Speaker 1: it meant to be a woman in the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: In a word, boring. For an unmarried, relatively poor noble woman,
Speaker 1: French court offered very little to do. There was sitting
Speaker 1: around getting dressed, chatting, maybe playing cards for a woman
Speaker 1: who had spent the earlier decades of her life traveling
Speaker 1: the world as an international spy slash diplomat slash enfonte
Speaker 1: reblay of the political world. Being a lady sitting around
Speaker 1: in petticoats was mind numbing. When France joined the American
Speaker 1: Colonies revolution against the English, Deon tried to put on
Speaker 1: her dragoon uniform again and fight. She suggested that she
Speaker 1: could assemble an all female battalion. The French government suggested
Speaker 1: that she joined a convent. She was so insistent in
Speaker 1: her ambitions to join the war efforts that ultimately Dion
Speaker 1: was arrested and then imprisoned in the dungeon below the
Speaker 1: Chateau of Dijon for nineteen days, upon which she was
Speaker 1: released as long as she promised to shut up about
Speaker 1: the whole wanting to go into battle thing. Disheartened, Dion
Speaker 1: returned to England. She said it was just temporary to
Speaker 1: settle some business, but it became fairly clear that she
Speaker 1: had no intention of returning to France. At least in England,
Speaker 1: she was able to escape some of the restrictions of
Speaker 1: the highly rigid French court, and soon she would have
Speaker 1: no choice but to stay in London. The French Revolution
Speaker 1: broke out, and though Dion was safe in England, her
Speaker 1: small pension was lost, as was all of her family
Speaker 1: property Intinair. Now a woman in her sixties, Dion was impoverished,
Speaker 1: forced to sell her possessions and her vast collection of
Speaker 1: books to get by. Her main form of income was
Speaker 1: dawning her full dress and participating in public fencing demonstrations
Speaker 1: where she would best men, but her short career as
Speaker 1: a fencing performer ended at age sixty eight with an injury.
Speaker 1: At this point, for financial reasons, Dion was forced to
Speaker 1: take a roommate, an old widow named Mrs Cole ms.
Speaker 1: This Cole was the one who would go on to
Speaker 1: discover Dion's dead body just a few years after Dion
Speaker 1: was paralyzed from a fall the Chevalier. Dion died at
Speaker 1: eighty one years old, impoverished, though Dion had spent the
Speaker 1: last thirty three years of her life living as a woman,
Speaker 1: Upon her death, Mrs Cole pulled back the bed sheets
Speaker 1: to reveal that Dion had male genitalia, although it was
Speaker 1: also noted that Dion had certain female sex characteristics. None
Speaker 1: of that information feels very relevant or scientific to me,
Speaker 1: but contemporary historians suggest that Dion might have been biologically intersex.
Speaker 1: In the end, that feels far less important and far
Speaker 1: less relevant to the realities of Dion's actual life, the
Speaker 1: way she lived presenting as a man, which granted her
Speaker 1: the access and opportunities of education, and then cleverly pretending
Speaker 1: that she had been a cross dressing man her entire
Speaker 1: her life, so that she could publicly transition and live
Speaker 1: as a woman. The famous feminist Mary Wolstonecraft, thought of
Speaker 1: as a woman on par with Sappho, and the famous
Speaker 1: letter writer Eloise or Eloisa Dion both defied and defined
Speaker 1: modern conventions of gender. It's a strange fallacy that people
Speaker 1: assume trans people are a new phenomenon. The vocabulary might
Speaker 1: be new, but presentations of gender throughout history are much
Speaker 1: more varied and more nebulous than some people seem desperate
Speaker 1: to keep believing. The Servali Deon became an international celebrity
Speaker 1: presenting as a man, and then she did it again,
Speaker 1: backwards and inhales. That's the story of the Chevalier Dion.
Speaker 1: But continue listening after a brief sponsor break to hear
Speaker 1: a little bit more about her legacy. A portrait of
Speaker 1: the Chevalier d'on now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery
Speaker 1: in London, featuring Dion with a full head of curls
Speaker 1: and a gown and a hat with a tricolor ribbon,
Speaker 1: meant to show her support for the French revolutionaries. The
Speaker 1: announcement about the portraits, purchased back in twenty sixteen, is
Speaker 1: wildly let's say, casual in its language, with the Guardian
Speaker 1: mis gendering her and switching seemingly at random between pronouns.
Speaker 1: At the end of her life, Dion was buried in
Speaker 1: a private plot at Saint Pancras, although her grave was
Speaker 1: lost when the church was constructed into a train station.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's symbolically resonant. Her soul is in a place
Speaker 1: of change and departure, where no one has to stay
Speaker 1: in the same place for too long. Noble Blood is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Monkey. The show is written and hosted by
Speaker 1: Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at
Speaker 1: Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the
Speaker 1: show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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