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Distracted by a plot-bunny
Jan. 5th, 2016 08:34 amSo this should be an Alpennia writing post. I've started the revision process for Mother of Souls by skimming through the pdf on my iPad, highlighting names and such, and making very general notes about things I've decided to rearrange or have changed retroactively. But in the meantime…
There I was on Twitter, just reading my tweeps as you do, and there in my feed was an acquaintance (someone I've interacted with, but wouldn't presume to claim as a friend yet at this point), exclaiming, "I need The Three Musketeers set in the same time period but they're all women. This exists, right, Twitter? Right?" And after some bantering back and forth between various Musketeer fans, I suggested, "Then someone will simply have to make it happen." And suddenly there were several sets of virtual eyes pinning me down, saying, "Do it."
So.
You know, the easy part of this is that there were a lot of really fascinating women running around in the right part of the world in the mid/late 17th century. Unless one were to write a completely gender-bent version with no explanation for why the Musketeers were women, there's going to be some element of disguise/masquerade involved. So all I had to do was look for some interesting women who were good with a sword and then find an excuse to throw them together disguised as Musketeers (at which point the comic-drama aspects of the story will pretty much write themselves, right?).
Given the names that first came to mind, it was clear this was going to be a "next generation" setting, rather than the period specifically equivalent to The Three Musketeers (which is ok, because Dumas drew out his characters well into that next generation). I eventually settled on 1678 as the setting of my story as the best intersection of actual historical events and people for my purposes. So, without giving any spoilers to the plot I'm about a third of the way through writing, here are some actual historical facts.
* * *
Hortense Mancini was one of the nieces of Cardinal Mazarin, the second of the two great French Cardinal-statesmen who maintained their own private company of Musketeers. (After Mazarin's death in 1661, his company was transferred to King Louis and we lose the opportunity for including an ongoing rivalry between the two sides, alas.) Hortense and her four sisters were brought by their mother from Italy to France in order for their uncle Mazarin's influence to help gain them ambitious marriages. They, along with another set of cousins, were popularly known as "the Mazarinettes" and were something of the Kardashians of their day.
Shortly before Mazarin's death, Hortense was married off to a very rich and very disturbed man who was granted the title Duc Mazarin and inherited significant properties at the Cardinal's death. Hortense was treated rather badly due to his…um…prudish hangups about sex. She first took comfort a love affair with another young woman, but then was driven simply to run away from home. Shortly before my story opens,she has been solicited by the English Ambassador to France, Ralph Montagu, to travel to England with the ambition of becoming one of King Charles II's mistresses and ideally to supplant the despised Louise de Kerouaille, his official mistress, who had (in her turn) supplanted Barbara, Lady Castlemaine. Hortense took on the challenge, traveling to London disguised in male clothing. By 1676 Hortense had succeeded, though she was no more faithful to Charles than he was to her, of which more later.
For a variety of reasons, Lady Castlemaine had removed from England around 1676 and was living in Paris with several of her younger chidren. Now Lady Castlemaine had a daughter, Anne, who was generally acknowledged to be the king's daughter, and who had been married off at the age of thirteen to the Earl of Sussex. At some time shortly before 1678, Anne had a scandalous affair with Hortense Mancini. This culminated in the two engaging in a friendly fencing match in Saint James' Park clad only in their chemises. The Earl of Sussex felt this was enough beyond the pale that he forcibly removed his wife from London and, after some rustication (during which Anne was said to do nothing but pine in bed, kissing a miniature portrait of Hortense), Anne was sent off to Paris to the supervision of her mother, who installed Anne as a guest at the convent at Conflans, just north of town.
While in Paris, Lady Castlemaine had been amusing herself with an affair with Ralph Montagu. Remember Ralph Montagu? English Ambassador? But in 1678, while Castlemaine was distracted, Montagu began paying court instead to Anne, visiting her at the convent and dismissing Castlemaine's servants in a rather suspicious manner. This culminated in Anne being "abducted" from the convent, gaining Montagu the enmity of Lady Castlemaine who began bad-mouthing him to King Charles. The break between Montagu and the king had later repercussions when Montagu was involved in leaking various secret negotiations between the English and French kings that touched on the twin third-rails of religion and the English succession.
But let us return to Hortense Mancini for a while. In 1689, the novelist and playwright Aphra Behn dedicated one of her works to Hortense with the following words, to the Most Illustrious Princess, The Dutchess of Mazarine...how infinitely one of Your own Sex ador'd You, and that, among all the numerous Conquest, Your Grace has made over the Hearts of Men, Your Grace had not subdu'd a more intire Slave; I assure you, Madam, there is neither Compliment, nor Poetry, in this humble Declaration, but a Truth, which has cost me a great deal of Inquietude, for that Fortune has not set me in such a Station, as might justifie my Pretence to the honour and satisfaction of being ever near Your Grace, to view eternally that lovely Person, and here that surprising Wit; what can be more grateful to a Heart, than so great, and so agreeable, an Entertainment? And how few Objects are there, that can render it so entire a Pleasure, as at once to hear you speak, and to look upon your Beauty?
This, and several other pieces of evidence (such as Behn's clearly bisexual reputation) have led historians to conclude that the two women had most likely been lovers at some point prior to that date. Behn had an interesting and colorful career, the early parts of which are clouded by deliberate obfuscation and mythologizing. But what is clearly fact is that during the mid 1660s she worked as a spy for King Charles II in the Netherlands, under the code name "Astrea". It is possible that, after some initial success with her plays, she returned to this profession in the mid 1670s when her third play was a disaster, though her literary career picked up again in 1677.
Now we turn to the last historical member of our party (I've also included one entirely invented protagonist) and the one where I've taken a significant temporal liberty. Because I couldn't resist adding Julie d'Aubigny to my cast, and for that I needed to move her life history ten years earlier than it actually occurred.
Julie d'Aubigny (later known as Mademoiselle Maupin) was the daughter of a man in the service to the Comte d'Armagnac who trained the court pages. Julie was given the training of a page, learning to ride and fence as well as other courtly skills, and spent a great deal of her youth dressed as a boy. At the age of fourteen, the Comte d'Armagnac (her father's employer) took her on as a mistress, arranging for a marriage of convenience to a man who was then hastily sent off to parts unknown.
This arrangement, whatever she may have thought of it, didn't last long, for within the year Julie had begun an affair with a fencing master and--when he needed to hot-foot it out of town as a consequence of an unfortunate duel--ran away with him, supporting themselves by giving fencing demonstrations and by singing. Julie habitually wore male clothing at this time but didn't attempt to seriously disguise her gender. Julie rapidly grew bored with her fencing master and began a love affair with a young woman whose parents thought to interfere by placing the woman in a convent. This was no bar to Julie, who snuck into the convent and--amid some rather amusing hijinks--liberated the woman and ran off with her, although their affair seems to have lasted only three months after that.
Julie's later adventures become even more outrageous. She wounds a nobleman in a duel then becomes his lover. Her flirtations with a lady at a ball result in being challenged to duels by three noblemen, all of whom she defeated. She had a stunning career with the Paris Opera. And the final great love of her life was with Madame la Marquise de Florensac, at whose death Julie was inconsolable and after which she retired to a convent.
So. Having moved Julie's life a decade earlier, in 1678 she has just taken up with her fencing master and is clearly ready to move on from the Comte d'Armagnac and begin her adventures.
Those are the actual historical facts. Now I begin my fiction. Hortense Mancini has decided to follow her beloved, Anne, to Paris, and for the journey disguises herself in an old Musketeer's uniform that her Uncle Mazarin had made for the Mazarinettes as masque costumes. Aphra Behn has been strong-armed into reprising her role as a spy to retrieve some rather unfortunate correspondence of King Charles that is in the keeping of Ralph Montagu. And Julie d'Aubigny has made a wager with the fencing master that he will see her in the uniform of a Musketeer before the end of the year.
There I was on Twitter, just reading my tweeps as you do, and there in my feed was an acquaintance (someone I've interacted with, but wouldn't presume to claim as a friend yet at this point), exclaiming, "I need The Three Musketeers set in the same time period but they're all women. This exists, right, Twitter? Right?" And after some bantering back and forth between various Musketeer fans, I suggested, "Then someone will simply have to make it happen." And suddenly there were several sets of virtual eyes pinning me down, saying, "Do it."
So.
You know, the easy part of this is that there were a lot of really fascinating women running around in the right part of the world in the mid/late 17th century. Unless one were to write a completely gender-bent version with no explanation for why the Musketeers were women, there's going to be some element of disguise/masquerade involved. So all I had to do was look for some interesting women who were good with a sword and then find an excuse to throw them together disguised as Musketeers (at which point the comic-drama aspects of the story will pretty much write themselves, right?).
Given the names that first came to mind, it was clear this was going to be a "next generation" setting, rather than the period specifically equivalent to The Three Musketeers (which is ok, because Dumas drew out his characters well into that next generation). I eventually settled on 1678 as the setting of my story as the best intersection of actual historical events and people for my purposes. So, without giving any spoilers to the plot I'm about a third of the way through writing, here are some actual historical facts.
* * *
Hortense Mancini was one of the nieces of Cardinal Mazarin, the second of the two great French Cardinal-statesmen who maintained their own private company of Musketeers. (After Mazarin's death in 1661, his company was transferred to King Louis and we lose the opportunity for including an ongoing rivalry between the two sides, alas.) Hortense and her four sisters were brought by their mother from Italy to France in order for their uncle Mazarin's influence to help gain them ambitious marriages. They, along with another set of cousins, were popularly known as "the Mazarinettes" and were something of the Kardashians of their day.
Shortly before Mazarin's death, Hortense was married off to a very rich and very disturbed man who was granted the title Duc Mazarin and inherited significant properties at the Cardinal's death. Hortense was treated rather badly due to his…um…prudish hangups about sex. She first took comfort a love affair with another young woman, but then was driven simply to run away from home. Shortly before my story opens,she has been solicited by the English Ambassador to France, Ralph Montagu, to travel to England with the ambition of becoming one of King Charles II's mistresses and ideally to supplant the despised Louise de Kerouaille, his official mistress, who had (in her turn) supplanted Barbara, Lady Castlemaine. Hortense took on the challenge, traveling to London disguised in male clothing. By 1676 Hortense had succeeded, though she was no more faithful to Charles than he was to her, of which more later.
For a variety of reasons, Lady Castlemaine had removed from England around 1676 and was living in Paris with several of her younger chidren. Now Lady Castlemaine had a daughter, Anne, who was generally acknowledged to be the king's daughter, and who had been married off at the age of thirteen to the Earl of Sussex. At some time shortly before 1678, Anne had a scandalous affair with Hortense Mancini. This culminated in the two engaging in a friendly fencing match in Saint James' Park clad only in their chemises. The Earl of Sussex felt this was enough beyond the pale that he forcibly removed his wife from London and, after some rustication (during which Anne was said to do nothing but pine in bed, kissing a miniature portrait of Hortense), Anne was sent off to Paris to the supervision of her mother, who installed Anne as a guest at the convent at Conflans, just north of town.
While in Paris, Lady Castlemaine had been amusing herself with an affair with Ralph Montagu. Remember Ralph Montagu? English Ambassador? But in 1678, while Castlemaine was distracted, Montagu began paying court instead to Anne, visiting her at the convent and dismissing Castlemaine's servants in a rather suspicious manner. This culminated in Anne being "abducted" from the convent, gaining Montagu the enmity of Lady Castlemaine who began bad-mouthing him to King Charles. The break between Montagu and the king had later repercussions when Montagu was involved in leaking various secret negotiations between the English and French kings that touched on the twin third-rails of religion and the English succession.
But let us return to Hortense Mancini for a while. In 1689, the novelist and playwright Aphra Behn dedicated one of her works to Hortense with the following words, to the Most Illustrious Princess, The Dutchess of Mazarine...how infinitely one of Your own Sex ador'd You, and that, among all the numerous Conquest, Your Grace has made over the Hearts of Men, Your Grace had not subdu'd a more intire Slave; I assure you, Madam, there is neither Compliment, nor Poetry, in this humble Declaration, but a Truth, which has cost me a great deal of Inquietude, for that Fortune has not set me in such a Station, as might justifie my Pretence to the honour and satisfaction of being ever near Your Grace, to view eternally that lovely Person, and here that surprising Wit; what can be more grateful to a Heart, than so great, and so agreeable, an Entertainment? And how few Objects are there, that can render it so entire a Pleasure, as at once to hear you speak, and to look upon your Beauty?
This, and several other pieces of evidence (such as Behn's clearly bisexual reputation) have led historians to conclude that the two women had most likely been lovers at some point prior to that date. Behn had an interesting and colorful career, the early parts of which are clouded by deliberate obfuscation and mythologizing. But what is clearly fact is that during the mid 1660s she worked as a spy for King Charles II in the Netherlands, under the code name "Astrea". It is possible that, after some initial success with her plays, she returned to this profession in the mid 1670s when her third play was a disaster, though her literary career picked up again in 1677.
Now we turn to the last historical member of our party (I've also included one entirely invented protagonist) and the one where I've taken a significant temporal liberty. Because I couldn't resist adding Julie d'Aubigny to my cast, and for that I needed to move her life history ten years earlier than it actually occurred.
Julie d'Aubigny (later known as Mademoiselle Maupin) was the daughter of a man in the service to the Comte d'Armagnac who trained the court pages. Julie was given the training of a page, learning to ride and fence as well as other courtly skills, and spent a great deal of her youth dressed as a boy. At the age of fourteen, the Comte d'Armagnac (her father's employer) took her on as a mistress, arranging for a marriage of convenience to a man who was then hastily sent off to parts unknown.
This arrangement, whatever she may have thought of it, didn't last long, for within the year Julie had begun an affair with a fencing master and--when he needed to hot-foot it out of town as a consequence of an unfortunate duel--ran away with him, supporting themselves by giving fencing demonstrations and by singing. Julie habitually wore male clothing at this time but didn't attempt to seriously disguise her gender. Julie rapidly grew bored with her fencing master and began a love affair with a young woman whose parents thought to interfere by placing the woman in a convent. This was no bar to Julie, who snuck into the convent and--amid some rather amusing hijinks--liberated the woman and ran off with her, although their affair seems to have lasted only three months after that.
Julie's later adventures become even more outrageous. She wounds a nobleman in a duel then becomes his lover. Her flirtations with a lady at a ball result in being challenged to duels by three noblemen, all of whom she defeated. She had a stunning career with the Paris Opera. And the final great love of her life was with Madame la Marquise de Florensac, at whose death Julie was inconsolable and after which she retired to a convent.
So. Having moved Julie's life a decade earlier, in 1678 she has just taken up with her fencing master and is clearly ready to move on from the Comte d'Armagnac and begin her adventures.
Those are the actual historical facts. Now I begin my fiction. Hortense Mancini has decided to follow her beloved, Anne, to Paris, and for the journey disguises herself in an old Musketeer's uniform that her Uncle Mazarin had made for the Mazarinettes as masque costumes. Aphra Behn has been strong-armed into reprising her role as a spy to retrieve some rather unfortunate correspondence of King Charles that is in the keeping of Ralph Montagu. And Julie d'Aubigny has made a wager with the fencing master that he will see her in the uniform of a Musketeer before the end of the year.
