Imagine you are the Empress of Russia.
Living in the eighteenth century, when being the Empress meant something. Not a bad job, huh?
One day, a delightful French teenage girl comes to visit you. She is shy, modest, very likable and studious, always carrying around a book to read in her free moments.
Meanwhile, by this point in your royal career, you’ve become royally bored by your royal duties. So you decide to meet with her. Alone. For some girl talk.
Surely this girl can’t be an assassin. No need for guards.
She bows solemnly — and from her book she suddenly whips out something. The book has a hollow compartment! She’s an assassin! She’s got — a club! She’s pointing the club at you!
She’s pointing the club at you? What’s that supposed to do? Make a point? You’re the Empress of Russia. Did your enemies economize on your assassin? Talk about cheap!
Wait a minute … she isn’t holding a club. It’s — a scroll. The girl is handing you a scroll! It’s a letter from the King of France!
At this point the girl unhinges her dress and drops it to the floor. Her immodesty reveals herself to be — a himself.
“Your Majesty,” he declares, “I am not what I seem.”
Oh? You seem to be a cross-dresser.
“I am the Chevalier D’Eon, sent to you as the special messenger of King Louis XV of France. It was necessary to come to you in this guise to outwit your Court officers, who were determined that no message from the King should reach you.”
Okay. Remind me to appoint a new Postmaster. And to frisk my visitors.
This bizarre meeting actually happened to the Russian Empress Elizabeth in 1755. The meeting was arranged under false pretenses: an indecent deception that violated her royal privacy, pitting her against a man who could have killed her, and, adding insult to injury, the guy was in drag.
Imagine what the Empress thought.
Flattered. “All this effort just to meet little old me? Golly, you make me feel — like royalty!”
“But Your Majesty —”
“Now listen here, you cross-dressing Frenchman, don’t correct me! It won’t help.”
“Yes, all of this just for you! Oh, uh, Your Majesty, may I put my dress back on? Here in Russia the weather is frick’n cold!”
“In a minute or two. Or maybe an hour. But isn’t that dress kinda tight?”
“Well, Sire, in some places it’s kinda too tight. In other places it’s kinda too loose.”
The French King’s letter expressed a desire to resume diplomatic relations between France and Russia. The King also sought to preclude a possible alliance between Russia and England, an alliance some people in the Russian Court were trying to arrange. Now, courtesy of the cross-dressing D’Eon, the Empress had her own ideas. Not all of them hers.
And there you have it. The Chevalier D’Eon was able to reach the Empress of Russia through the use of a disguise. It was a total disguise, incorporating not just his dress but his demeanor. Had he visited the Russian Court in a dress and behaved like a very manly man in a dress, he might have gotten invited to some rowdy Russian parties. But he would never have been allowed to see the Empress alone.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Respectfully (because all my readers deserve respect),
Reginald Dipwipple
Secret Agent Extraordinaire