by Sarah Prager
When Jeanne’s judges came to check on her a few days later, they were shocked to see her back in pants. Her guards had stolen her dress and wouldn’t give it back—maybe as a kind of degradation, or a bad joke, or because they just really wanted her to be executed. If she didn’t wish to be completely naked in front of these men, pants were her only option. She remained silent and steady when she was found guilty of being a relapsed heretic . . . right up until the moment when she called out for Jesus as she was burned to death at the stake (in a dress).
Sainte Jeanne
* * *
Jeanne’s mother petitioned to have her daughter’s name cleared, and twenty-five years later, a special retrial overturned the guilty verdict. Then, almost five hundred years later, in 1920, the pope made Jeanne a saint herself, patron of soldiers and France.
KRISTINA VASA
AKA CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN
1626–1689
tl;dr A gender nonconforming sovereign brings peace and queerness to Sweden
Kristina slowed their horse from a high-speed gallop as they approached the Swedish border. There was no turning back now.
Dismounting, Kristina took off their dress and changed into men’s clothing. They chopped off their hair to chin length and buckled on a sword. Kristina’s temporary transformation to a male persona was now complete. From here on out, the name was Count Christoph von Donha.
Hours ago, Kristina had been the ruler of all of Sweden. Now, twenty-eight-year-old Christoph was about to stow away into Denmark anonymously.
“The Girl King”
* * *
A fast note on pronouns: “They” was not used during Kristina’s time, but we’ve used this gender-neutral pronoun for Kristina because they were vocal about not feeling entirely female.
Kristina was a star at playing with gender from the moment of their birth. King Gustavus and his wife, Maria, were overjoyed when court astrologers predicted that pregnant Maria would give birth to a boy—an heir! And for several moments after Kristina entered the world, the baby’s parents got to live out that fantasy: the nurses announced that a prince had been born.
But then the nurses took another look. The baby was hairy and loud (too hairy and loud to be a girl, they’d initially thought), but nonetheless it was a girl. Maria was crushed, while Gustavus smiled and said, “I hope this girl will be as good as a boy.”
From the way the king raised Kristina, you’d think he never got the memo about not having a male heir. Kristina was just like the son Gustavus had always wanted: playing with toy soldiers instead of dolls, learning to hunt, wearing men’s jackets over their dresses, swearing like a sailor, and sometimes pretending to twirl an invisible mustache. Walking by ladies in the palace, Kristina would bow and tip their hat as a man would do. Being royalty, they were never called out for being . . . eccentric.
But Kristina didn’t have much time to enjoy a carefree childhood; Gustavus was killed in battle when Kristina was only six. At fourteen, Kristina started attending meetings of the Swedish leadership, and an adviser ruled as a placeholder until the young queen came of age at eighteen.
Kristina always had their nose stuck in a book and often studied just for fun. They got up before dawn to read before governing a country all day. Then, once they became queen, they prioritized science, literature, philosophy, and other lofty subjects in their court; Kristina bought entire libraries from other countries and held philosophical discussions every Thursday night. All this put Kristina on the map as one of the most educated “women” in the world during that time. Not to mention that they ended the Thirty Years’ War—the very war their father had died in—and brought peace at long last.
All the while, Kristina refused to abide by gender norms, straddling male and female. Kristina once wrote:
As a young girl, I had an overwhelming aversion to everything that women do and say. I couldn’t bear their tight-fitting, fussy clothes. I took no care in my complexion or my figure or the rest of my appearance. I never wore a hat or a mask, and scarcely ever wore gloves. I despised everything belonging to my sex, hardly excluding modesty and propriety. I couldn’t stand long dresses and I only wanted to wear short skirts. What’s more, I was so hopeless at all the womanly crafts that no one could ever teach me anything about them.
Kristina even said in their memoir that women weren’t worthy of ruling a country: “It is almost impossible that a woman should perform the duties required on the throne. The ignorance of women, their feebleness of mind, body, and understanding, makes them incapable of reigning.” Yikes.
But Kristina certainly saw themself as capable, so were they the exception to the rule, or not a woman at all? There are many ways to answer that question. If Kristina had lived during our time, they might have identified as a transgender man, a cisgender woman, genderqueer, or something else altogether. They also may have been intersex. Since they lived in a time without our terms, there is no modern label to pin on them.
Courtship at Court
* * *
You’d think a superambitious and busy person like Kristina would’ve had no time for silly distractions like love or sex. And you would have been right—but then Ebba came along.
Ebba Sparre was a woman so beautiful, Kristina nicknamed her Belle. Rumors about their relationship circulated through the court’s gossip mill. Kristina felt a “tenderness” toward Ebba that they didn’t have for their other friends. The two often shared a bed (though this wasn’t unusual for unmarried ladies of the time). Kristina once wrote to Ebba from abroad, declaring: “In whatever part of the world I may be, I shall never cease to think of you. . . . If I may never see you again I shall always love you. . . . While I live I will not cease to love you.”
But we know rulers don’t always get to choose who they end up with. Even if Ebba had been a man, she didn’t have the right lineage or clout to merit a permanent place by Kristina’s side. Kristina was trapped: queens must marry men—the right men.
Kristina didn’t exclusively love women, but the queen did exclusively love their own independence. In the end only one man came close to winning their hand: their cousin, Charles Gustavus. Kristina cared deeply for Ebba and Charles (as well as one or two others) at different times throughout their life, but had more interest in romance than sex. Kristina once wrote to Charles: “My love is so strong that it can only be overcome by death, and if, which God forbid, you should die before me, my heart shall remain dead for every other, my mind and affection shall follow you to eternity, there to dwell with you.” And the diet (the Swedish equivalent of congress or parliament) would’ve been perfectly happy with Charles as king. But Kristina said they “could not bear to be used by a man the way a peasant uses his field.” And they certainly could not bear to be married.
“I Was Born Free and I Will Die Free”
* * *
Though Kristina declared over and over they would never marry, the diet simply wouldn’t believe it. Convention dictated she would settle down when she found the right man. Kristina told the diet they would do no such thing, saying they “felt such a repulsion toward the marital state” that they “would rather choose death than a man.”
Ultimately, Kristina made the impossible choice to give up the throne. If they wouldn’t marry, they couldn’t be queen—and they did NOT want to get married. The power, their father’s legacy, the entire 131-year-old royal House of Vasa: over. In the end, Kristina made Charles king after all . . . just not as their spouse. The diet begged, the country mourned, and Kristina rejoiced. They were free.
Free! No more answering to others. No more compromising. No more pressure to marry. A blank canvas lay ahead, and Kristina could paint it however they wanted. As they rode across the border out of Sweden and into Denmark, they yelled out, “I am free at last!”
Leaving Sweden Behind
* * *
Now, Kristina didn’t ride off entirely alone. Ever the expert at political negotiation, Kristina had secured themself a salary for
life, servants, and some land and power too. Not bad!
Kristina chose to settle in Rome, dropping the traveler disguise and returning to their given name. They continued to cheerfully disregard gender norms their entire life, wearing both male and female clothing and romancing both men and women. After giving up so much to be able to live the way they chose, Kristina died peacefully after a full—and free—life.
JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ
1651–1695
tl;dr A Mexican nun falls for a powerful woman she can’t have—then becomes a world-class poet and an advocate for education equality
Don’t go, my darling, I don’t want this to end yet.
This sweet fiction is all I have.
Hold me so I’ll die happy,
thankful for your lies.
My breasts answer yours
magnet to magnet.
Why make love to me, then leave?
Why mock me?
Don’t brag about your conquest—
I’m not your trophy.
Go ahead: reject these arms
that wrapped you in sumptuous silk.
Try to escape my arms, my breasts—
I’ll keep you prisoner in my poem.
Prodigy
* * *
Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana, later known as Sor Juana (that’s Sister Juana in old Spanish), was seriously gifted. All she ever wanted was to fill up her brain with knowledge, and then fill it up some more. Impoverished and the child of a single mother, Sor Juana didn’t have many opportunities growing up in San Miguel Nepantla, a Mexican village nestled in the shadow of a volcano. She asked her mom if she could dress as a boy and sneak into college, but that was a big no-go. Sor Juana was destined to do what every other girl in New Spain (as Mexico was called then) was supposed to do: take care of the home and make a bunch of babies.
But Sor Juana wasn’t having any of that. She taught herself to read and write capably by the age of six or seven. And because she felt like she wasn’t learning fast enough, she cut her hair short—she felt a head shouldn’t be “adorned with hair and naked of learning.” Around age nine she moved to Mexico City to live with her rich aunt and uncle. Even with the step up in family wealth, she had no dowry and therefore couldn’t marry any of the eligible men in the viceroy’s court (he was the king of Spain’s rep in New Spain, a kind of mini-king in his own right). Getting married was pretty much the Thing to Do for a girl of her time, so that presented a bit of a problem.
Sor Juana stayed dedicated to teaching herself everything she could from any source she could get her hands on, until she became literally one of the best educated women in New Spain. Word of this smart cookie quickly reached the ears of the very powerful viceroy, who decided to set up a test for Sor Juana to see if she really was all that. He gathered forty of the most educated men in the country to the palace: philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, poets. This group lobbed question after question at seventeen-year-old Sor Juana, trying in vain to stump her. No one could. Did she know this about geography? Could she recite that about literature? What about this in Latin? Yes, yes, and yes. Impressed, the viceroy decided to take Sor Juana under his wing and treated her as an ally for the rest of her life. But that didn’t exactly solve all of our girl’s problems.
A New Muse
* * *
Sor Juana did the only thing she could do, since marriage and education were off the table: she became a nun. Life at the convent of Santa Paula in the Order of San Jerónimo would allow her to keep studying without having to take care of a husband. The downside? Sor Juana was not allowed to leave the convent walls—ever. Her attendance at daily prayers was mandatory, which wouldn’t have been a huge deal, except services were held at six a.m., nine a.m., twelve noon, three p.m., and seven p.m. (just in case you forgot for a whole three hours why you were there in the first place). The nuns spent the time between prayer services doing quiet activities like sharing meals and sewing. For Sor Juana, it was an opportunity for writing, having academic talks with visiting scholars, and playing word games.
It must have gotten pretty lonely in that convent, but one of Sor Juana’s most frequent visitors kept her busy. Maria Luisa Manrique de Lara y Gonzaga—aka the vice-queen, aka wife to Sor Juana’s benefactor, the viceroy—became the subject of many of Sor Juana’s more amorous poems. Maria Luisa came from an illustrious heritage of Spanish aristocracy and was drop-dead gorgeous (according to Sor Juana). “Loving you is a crime of which I shall never repent,” Juana wrote. And in another poem: “That you’re a woman far away is no hindrance to my love: for the soul, as you well know, distance and sex don’t count.” Line after line in poem after poem, Sor Juana poured out her heart about a love that could never be hers.
All that remains of this love are the poems and letters the two women exchanged—so besides knowing that Maria Luisa visited Sor Juana regularly at the convent, history doesn’t reveal what may have happened behind cloistered walls. Notably, Maria Luisa did get Sor Juana’s works published, canonizing her devotion for all of history.
Sor Juana went on to become one of the greatest poets ever to write in Spanish. She wrote poems and plays for the viceroy’s court and they rewarded her convent with gifts.
Seems like all of this was a win-win, right? Not exactly. Writing about religion and love of God would be one thing, but Sor Juana wrote about everything, such as taking a stand for women’s right to education, an incredibly bomb thing to do in seventeenth-century New Spain. Some members of the court weren’t happy about Sor Juana doing all this secular writing. So, in response, Sor Juana published The Reply of Sor Filotea, a scathing letter to the archbishop that laid out all the reasons why women should be allowed to learn. She cited practicalities, like the way understanding chemistry would make women better cooks (ha!), and lauded examples of female intelligence like the previously mentioned kickass Kristina Vasa. She argued that access to knowledge should be determined by merit instead of sex, noting that some men “who merely by virtue of being men consider themselves sages” didn’t deserve the privilege as much as some women. Get it, girl.
Even though she did a lot to advance feminism during her time, Sor Juana wasn’t entirely certain of her own identity as a woman. She saw herself as somewhat genderless because she considered herself a virgin; for her, having sex with a man was what truly made you a woman. As for how she got away with openly declaring her love for Maria Luisa, it was excused as a poet’s exaltation of royalty. Sor Juana’s poems went beyond the average ode to the vice-queen’s greatness, though, and she hints in one of her poems that “from all I did not say, [Maria Luisa] will sense the love beyond expression.”
In the end, the writings Sor Juana left behind are her legacy. She died of disease in the convent in her forties, but her poetry lives on forever.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
1809–1865
tl;dr A whole other side to the Great Emancipator
On a day two decades before Abraham Lincoln would vigorously call for unity in the Gettysburg Address, he was experiencing some very, very different feelings: “I am now the most miserable man living,” he wrote in a letter.
In his thirty-one years of life, Abraham had never felt so heartbroken. Nothing mattered now that Joshua had left him, and he’d rather die than keep on living so miserably.
Abraham’s friends came and cleared his home of razors and knives for his own safety, but they could only stand by and watch as he wasted away to little more than a skeleton. The once-vivacious lawyer barely had the strength to speak or get out of bed. The only thing keeping him from suicide was the feeling that he hadn’t yet achieved something in his life that he would be remembered for.
The next seven months were more of the same, with Abraham living like a shell of his former self. But everything changed when he finally got what he’d been waiting for: a letter from Joshua, the person who meant most to him in the world.
Intimate Friends
* * *
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Before Abraham met Joshua or became President Lincoln, he was brought up in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky. His family moved to Illinois when he was twenty-one, and Abraham worked as a shopkeeper, a postmaster, and a hired hand on a riverboat before being elected to the state legislature. Then, after passing the bar exam, he moved to Springfield, Illinois, in 1837 with the hope of starting his own law practice. He arrived in town on a borrowed horse with little to his name. First on the to-do list: find a place to live—and sleep. But when Abraham tried to buy a bed, shop owner Joshua Fry Speed told him it would cost seventeen dollars, a significant amount of cash for the time. Abraham didn’t have the money and wasn’t confident enough that he’d make it as a lawyer to let Joshua give it to him on credit. So Joshua made an offer that would change both their lives: “I have a large room with a double bed upstairs, which you are very welcome to share with me.”
Real beds were a luxury item in frontier America, so it wasn’t totally weird for two men to share one. But Abraham and Joshua didn’t just spend a few nights or a few months sleeping together while Abraham got on his feet in Springfield; they made a home together for the next four years, even when neither of them had financial need for a bedmate. (Joshua literally sold beds for a living—there was certainly no shortage for him!)
According to Joshua, “no two men were ever more intimate,” and Abraham’s law partner said that the future president “loved this man [Joshua] more than anyone dead or living.” Abraham and Joshua were “intimate friends,” an antiquated relationship term that refers to an affection one step above a bromance. Before the words “gay,” “bisexual,” and “straight” existed, men were able to express their love for each other without having to prove whether their love was sexual or not. And in this case, there’s no way to know for sure if Abraham and Joshua’s love was or wasn’t.
