Julie D'Aubigny

""Beautiful, valiant, generous and supremely unchaste.""

- unknown, on Julie D'Aubigny

""French opera singer who killed ten men in duels and once snuck into a convent to bang a nun."

- Ben Thompson of Badass of the Week

Julie D'Aubigny was a 17th-century bisexual French opera singer and fencing master who killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death duels, performed nightly shows on the biggest and most highly-respected opera stage in the world. Her father was the Grand Squire of France, meaning that he was pretty much the number-one dude responsible for training King Louis XIV's pages and maintaining the Royal Stables, and this guy wasn't really the sort of hard-drinking drill sergeant motherfucker who was going to let his little daughter grow up without learning the finer arts of dishing out knuckle sandwiches to her enemies or running would-be suitors through the small intestines with the pointy end of a rapier. One time a trio of drunk assholes were giving Julie shit while she was performing her songs in a rowdy tavern, so the star of the Paris Opera took all three of them out into the grassy courtyard, and when they all jumped her at the same time with their swords she drew her blade and made sure every single one of them was suffering from multiple stab wounds before she went back to the tavern. -Badass of the Week