Anne Dieu-le-Veut’s incredible story? It’s all there in her ‘nom de guerre’*: her spirit, her creed, her life. ‘Dieu-le-Veut’ means ‘as god wants it’, meaning that when Anne wanted something, her will was so strong, it was as if the gods themselves wanted it too! Born Marie-Anne Dominique du Pres in 1661 in Brittany, France, we may assume that her early years were not exactly smooth. When we first read about Anne, she is being taken ‘off the streets’ and deported to the Caribbean. This was part of a program that imported prostitutes for local French buccaneers, hoping that they would give up pirating and settle down as farmers with their new wives. Well, when she arrives in freebooter heaven Tortuga, farming seems to be the last thing on feisty Anne’s mind.

Anne marries a buccaneer with whom she has a child. When he gets killed, she marries another one, Joseph Cherel. In 1693, Anne becomes a widow once more when Cherel is shot during a bar fight by Laurens de Graaf. Enraged and unafraid, Anne challenges the infamous Dutch pirate – described as ‘tall, blond, mustached and handsome’ – to a duel to avenge her husband. What happens next is like a scene from a romantic action comedy: when Laurens draws his sword, Anne pulls her gun, at which point the pirate gets down on one knee and proposes to Anne! Supposedly Laurens suddenly remembered that chivalry forbids men from fighting women, but to me, it sounds a lot like ‘love at first fight’!

Equally besotted, Anne said yes. She became Laurens’ ‘ride or die’, sharing his pirate work and the command of his ship. Unlike other female pirates of the era, Anne didn’t pretend to be a man but flaunted her femininity in a way that we we would now describe as ‘typically French’. It was during these years that Anne – described as ‘stunningly beautiful, brave and ruthless’ – became known as Anne Dieu-Le-Veut.

When a canon ball killed Laurens during a fight with a Spanish ship, Anne took his place as captain and furiously led their crew of pirates in the battle. According to some stories, she then starts a new chapter in her life by falling in love and teaming up with the legendary flame-haired pirate Jacquotte Delahaye. What a formidable pair they must have made, pirating the Caribbean together! They surely did a good job staying off the radar, because we lose track of Anne here. But Anne Dieu-le-Veut’s strong-willed spirit lives on. Not only in her daughter, Marie Catherine de Graaf, who famously challenged a man to a duel and won – something about an apple and a tree – but in every woman who ever believed she could, so she did.

* warrior nickname

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