The Sword and the Silk: The Chevalier d'Éon
London bet a fortune on whether the Chevalier d'Éon was a man or a woman. She never answered. She just got dressed.
Tonight, drift off to the story of Charles-Geneviève d'Éon de Beaumont, born in Tonnerre, Burgundy, in 1728: a spy in Louis XV's secret network, a wounded captain of dragoons, a diplomat who helped end the Seven Years' War and then refused to go home, holding the king's own invasion plans as insurance. When a new king sent the playwright Beaumarchais to get them back, the price of the deal was strange: d'Éon would be recognized as a woman and must live as one for the rest of her…
The skinny
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