Juan was born in Seville. His mother was Doña Inez, was an austere woman with a mathematical mind and strong convictions; his father was Don José. He died in a duel after sleeping with the wrong nobleman’s wife. Juan inherited his father’s cheekbones and his mother’s intellect, but something deeper passed down from neither: an appetite. After his father’s death, Doña Inez saw to it that he received a thorough training in the arts and sciences but took great care that he should learn nothing about the basic facts of life or love. Even early on, people looked at Juan as if expecting something from him. He learned to give them what they wanted, but only enough to keep them wanting more. What began as boyish instinct became strategy.
He lost his virginity at fifteen to his tutor. At sixteen, he seduced Doña Julia, a married friend of his mother’s nearly twice his age. She was clever, poetic, and deeply unhappy. She thought she saw something pure in him and he let her believe it. When her husband found them, Juan ran from swords and promises of death. He later heard Julia was sent to a convent, but Juan caught a boat out of town, pressured by his mother, under the pretense of study, but really to let the scandal cool and Julia’s husband to die of old age.
He set sail from Cádiz to Italy. But the gods had other plans. The ship wrecked off the coast of a Greek island during a horrific storm. A few men survived by clinging to driftwood, and eventually Juan was swept to an unknown shore. He managed to crawl up on the beach, where he promptly collapsed. By then, the three others perished.
When he awoke on the shore, he was being tended by a girl with eyes like firelight and saltwater. Haidée.
She was the daughter of a pirate lord who ruled the island like a minor king. She had never seen a boy like Juan.
He told her he had no past, no name worth speaking, and she and her nursemaid smuggled him into the kitchens of their home, away from sight of her father, as Haidee knew he would sell him off as a slave. They made love in the warm sand, in secret glades, and beneath stars. For a few weeks, he let himself believe he was capable of love.
But when her father returned from the sea, the illusion shattered. Lambro discovered them in bed. There was a swordfight, a chaos of shouting, then blood. Sixteen year old Juan was overpowered, captured and sold.
He was transported to Constantinople aboard a merchant galley, but chained, shirtless, and starved he was still somehow radiant. He knew how to survive captivity: with silence, calculation, and the right smile at the right moment. And it was during this time he befriended an older and stronger Englishman named John. When they were auctioned in the slave market, a woman named Gulbeyaz noticed him. She was the wife of a powerful vizier: lonely, cloaked in expensive silk, and dangerous in ways that didn’t require knives. John, he learned later, was sold to the vizier, and remained in the same household.
Gulbeyaz’s eunuch bought Juan, but in order to smuggle him into her household, Juan was dressed as a woman, draped in veils, and explained as a new hand maiden for the Sultana.
Once he arrived, she commanded him to make love to her, which he obliged. He was meant to be her plaything. But Juan knew how to turn even imprisonment into theater. He gave her passion, flattery, and mystery. For a time, he lived as her secret consort, pampered and protected, but still caged under the disguise of a woman. He told himself he was using her to survive.
All was well until the Vizier noticed him. He remarked that “Juanna” was too beautiful to be a Christian, and ordered him to be placed with his concubines. At that point, he was moved out of Gulbeyaz’s care and placed with the Sultan’s harem, and paired with a girl named Dudji to prepare “Juanna” for his upcoming night with the Sultan. Of course, Juan seduced Dudji, but her screams of pleasure drew the guards, and they managed to convince them that Dudji only had a nightmare. Gulbeyaz heard of the ordeal, and jealous, ordered both to her palace. But time was growing short, for the Sultan was soon to discover Juan’s disguise.
Meanwhile, a servant named Zuleika had caught his eye. She was quiet, watchful, and clever. She warned him that Gulbeyaz’s power was waning, and that her enemies were many. Juan seduced her under the guise of escape, and promised that they would flee together when the time came. It was Zuleika who smuggled him and his English friend John out of the palace, using her knowledge of the palace’s hidden ways, and then the walls of Constantinople itself. But he left her when the moment came, they slipped away alone.
He set sail for Russia aboard a diplomatic vessel claiming the role of eunuch. He left Constantinople with Zuleika’s gold in his pockets, the memory of three heart-broken women behind him and another lover at the ready.
St. Petersburg welcomed him with open arms. He arrived in winter, claiming to be the bastard son of a Spanish ambassador. The court loved him. The men wanted to drink with him; the women wanted to save him. He was beautiful and wounded, charming and insolent in just the right measure. Catherine the Great heard of him within a week. Within a month, she summoned him.
He was everything she no longer believed existed in men: vital, intelligent, thrilling. And unlike her aging generals and flabby poets, 18-year-old Juan wasn’t afraid of her. He knew how to play the servant and the predator at once. More than twice his age, she took him to bed, but he took everything else: titles, estates, and influence. For a time, he moved in the corridors of power like a god’s shadow.
But Juan, true to his nature, grew bored.
He began affairs with ladies of the court, then their daughters. He gambled, drank, wrote love poems to multiple mistresses, then mixed up which one was meant to receive them. Eventually, someone’s husband challenged him to a duel. He didn’t show up. Catherine looked away once, then twice. The third time, she exiled him politely for he was too beautiful to sacrifice to blood and sword. He was sent to London on an apparent mission.
In England Juan quickly became the object of as much attention as he had been in Russia. He was known to have come on an important mission; he was handsome, young, and accomplished; he knew several languages; and carried with him rumors of strange adventures. Of wars and lovers, Sultans and Empresses. He was well received everywhere. He passed his mornings in business, his afternoons in visits, and his evenings in dancing and other forms of entertainment.
Diplomatic business often brought him into the company of Lord Henry Amundeville, who took a strong liking to the young Spaniard, as did his wife, Lady Adeline. Juan was frequently a guest in Lord Henry’s mansion in London. When the winter season in London was over, the Amundevilles took him to their country estate, where the three of them could be more free in their affair. In the country, he proved to be good at fox-hunting, riding, dancing, and all the other activities of country life among the aristocracy. Yet as he always does, he drew the attention of other eligible ladies, this time, the more repulsive Lady Fitz-Fulke wanted him. Jealous and sincerely fearing for Juan’s welfare, Lady Adeline suggested that Juan marry in order to throw off unwanted attention. He was arranged to meet the maiden Lady Aurora Raby, but strangely, Aurora showed no interest in Juan. As this was the first time facing rejection, Juan was curiously intrigued by Aurora.
Thinking of Aurora, and unable to sleep, Juan went searching for her in the night. There, he encountered a robed figure that he mistook for the ghost of a monk said to haunt the castle. He retreated to his bedchamber, but the next night, woke to find the ghostly monk hovering at his door. Before he could cry out for help, the monk disrobed, and the naked figure of Lady Fitz-Fulke was revealed. She forced herself on Juan, knowing that it would be impossible for him to resist else the rest of the household would discover them.
The next morning at breakfast, Lord Henry remarked how Juan appeared so worn. It was at this time that Juan knew he must leave the county.
He remained in England for the remainder of his days. As he aged, he began to talk, bitterly, of writing his memoirs. “I’ll tell the truth,” he’d say, “for once. The truth about all of them. And me.” But he never wrote a word.
He died in his sleep at the estate of a minor baron that took him for a lover, surrounded by books he never read and letters from women he no longer remembered. He left no heirs, no fortune, and no grave of note. The only thing people remembered was his name, Don Juan, and faded memories of those who thought they loved him.
Other Lives
- Ozymandias Kassim, 1st Age DJ, nightlife icon, digital-era hedonist
- Narcissus, 6th Age mortal
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