The Chevalier d'Eon, media manipulation and the making of an eighteenth-century celebrity

1he Chevalier d'Eon first honed his skills of media manipulation in his quarrel with the French ambassador to London, the Comte de Guerchy, in 1763-1764. He did so with such success that, by the end of their spat, d'Eon had become a household name among Europe's elite, while his allegations that Guerchy had conspired to kidnap and murder him were widely accepted by the British public and had given rise to a criminal prosecution against the ambassador. During the course of the dispute and his vitriolic press campaign against Guerchy, d'Eon learned to fabricate evidence and to mould his public identity. Thus the Guerchy affair laid the groundwork for d'Eon's later celebrity and manipulation of perceptions of his gender. It also provides a case study in the construction of celebrity status in the later eighteenth century.