Parler chinois : the Invention of the Fake “Chinese Princess” in Seventeenth-Century Paris

Abstract: In the August 1693 issue of the Mercure Galant , a curious histoire claims that a Chinese princess has shown up in the streets of Paris after being kidnapped by pirates. Historian Sean Heath (2024) has recently matched this story with Jesuit missionary Louis Le Comte’s account of his encounter with a self-proclaimed Chinese noblewoman in his Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état présent de la Chine (1696), where he exposes her as a hoax. Two questions left open in his article—those of the story’s authorship and the identity of Ina’s benefactress—can now be answered thanks to previously neglected archival documents. In this article I propose to reexamine this story in the light of literary production and sociopolitical realities within elite circles of the time. I begin by approaching this narrative in the context of author Mme d’Aulnoy’s literary career to understand how the writer mobilizes literary conventions and techniques to reinforce its appeal and plausibility. I then move on to the discussion of a manuscript that includes an omitted passage containing two crucial pieces of information—the names of various individuals involved in the affair, as well as a rather comical account of the convoluted process of identifying the imposter’s origin. I conclude that the ethnic identity of the “Chinese lady” was not established from the outset but rather evolved over time as the result of embellishment and artistic invention aimed at serving the needs of her aristocratic benefactors.