Although my viewpoint characters are all non-normative in their sexuality in some fashion, Barbara is the only one who habitually pushes at the edges of gender performance boundaries in her appearance. It began when she served as the late baron's armin, and wore masculine clothing for practical reasons. Given that her inheritance of the title might also be seen as a minor transgression--Alpennian inheritance law allows for women to inherit, but social practice strongly prefers male heirs--she also chooses to use gender-crossing garment styles as a marker of status and authority. She tends to be hyper-aware of the usefulness of using gender performance as part of her public persona, especially when interacting with the primarily-male movers and shakers of Alpennian politics. (Some day maybe someone will do cosplay of her military-style gown for the New Year's Court! I'd love to see how people interpret that description.) When she decides to to track down and interrogate the Austrian spy Kreiser, she chooses to do so in public, at his club, and so girds herself in a gender-blending outfit appropriate to the task. But Barbara isn't the only person who has been analyzing the way she uses gender as a tool...
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Mother of Souls - Chapter 9
Tavit was far more perceptive than Brandel in the nuances of her dress. His surprise was not for the purpose of her excursion but its venue. “I thought women weren’t allowed in clubs.”
“It depends,” Barbara said. “In most, it isn’t actually forbidden, it simply isn’t done. Back before the succession debates, the dowager princess was quite familiar in the Zurik and Jourdain’s.” It was a thin precedent, but not the only one she was relying on. “I hope not to provoke a fuss, so I will be enough of a man for their comfort and enough of a woman for my respectability.”
Tavit looked puzzled but asked, “Have you any special instructions?”
Barbara picked up her gloves and hat and turned to him. “If anyone should object to my presence, don’t take it as insult or threat. I have no right to entrance. And though a man without membership might visit a friend with no comment, it will spoil my purpose if too much notice is taken. This one time, resistance shall be met with retreat. I’ll let you know if you need do anything beyond standing and waiting.”
He nodded in acknowledgment, and then after some hesitation, “Mesnera, may I ask you something?”
The edge of tension in Tavit’s voice caught Barbara’s attention. Under the strict rules of her own service, she had always asked permission to speak, but she’d never demanded that of those who served her. “Yes?” she said.
The question came haltingly. “Mesnera, have you ever thought…have you ever wished you had been born a man?”
Barbara turned the idea over in her mind. She was accustomed to the awkwardness that came with playing a man’s role as often as she did. So many things would have been easier, so many paths smoother, and yet…
She cast her mind back even further. If her father’s bastard had been a son, would he have thought it worth the cost to acknowledge him and regularize his position? How would all their lives have changed if she had been raised as heir-default to Saveze? And yet…then there would have been no reason for the old baron to bring Margerit into his plans. They never would have met. Even as an unacknowledged son, their lives might have run more like that wretched novel that had stirred so much gossip. The lost heir of Lautencourt, indeed! What if her rise in society had given her the chance to offer Margerit, not this private promise and the risk of scandal, but marriage and the rank of baroness? And yet…
They had met and loved as women. That much was certain. Who could say what else would have changed, what would have remained?
“Forgive me, Mesnera. I should not have asked,” Tavit said quietly.
Barbara shook her head. “I think…I am more than content—no, I am joyful—to be in the place I find myself. And I don’t think I could have come to this place by any road but the one I’ve traveled. If there are limits to what this body can do—” She gestured to take it in. “—they are limits made by others, not my limits. No, I wouldn’t choose to be other than what I am.”
Tavit seemed disquieted by her answer, but how could he understand? It would be a strange man indeed who could accept that one might prefer to be female despite those limitations.