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1[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/claudine_cover.jpg]]
2Claude de Montesse is a trans man living in early 20th century France. Born in a woman's body, he was assumed female at birth and thus given the feminine name Claudine. It wasn't until he was eight that he began to dress in traditional masculine clothing and inform everyone that he was really a boy. While his father respected this, Claude's mother insisted on taking him to a psychiatrist. Claude would later develop something of a friendship with said psychiatrist, who would take a deep interest in the young boy.
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4The psychiatrist won't be the only one: Claude's good looks, natural charisma, and gentlemanly demeanor will prove irresistible to multiple women as he grows up. Four in particular- his childhood friend Rosemarie, the sweet maid Maura, the stunning librarian Cécilia, and the lovely ballerina Sirène- will show him that love can hurt as much as heal.
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6''Claudine'' (クローディーヌ...!, ''Kurōdīnu...!'', "Claudine...!") is a 1978 historical {{shojo}} manga by Creator/RiyokoIkeda. It was serialized in ''Weekly Margaret'' in January 1978 before being released as a single volume later that same year. An English translation was published in 2018 by Creator/SevenSeasEntertainment. The manga is notable for being one of the first manga, if not ''the'' first, to feature an explicitly trans character as well as explore trans related issues in a sympathetic light.
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8'''Note''': While the main character is referred to by his deadname and with female pronouns, he's also explicitly stated to be trans. As such, the main character will be referred to as Claude and with male pronouns.
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10!!This manga includes examples of:
11* TheAce: At university, Claude becomes a popular gentleman and scholar whose even invited to events like the gentleman's club.
12* AllLoveIsUnrequited: Rosemarie's love for Claude is reject by him and he never falls for her. His own feelings for Cécilia are rejected, [[spoiler:and Sirène ultimately chooses Claude's oldest brother over him]].
13* AnguishedDeclarationOfLove: Claude passionately declares his love to Cécilia one night, but she rejects him since she can only ever see Claude as a girl.
14* ArrangedMarriage: Instead of marrying for love, Claude's parent's marriage was arranged.
15* BirdsOfAFeather: Claude and Cécilia bonded over their shared love for the written word.
16* BreakTheCutie:
17** It's hard not to feel sorry for Maura when [[spoiler:she realizes that her first paycheck never arrived home]] and when [[spoiler:her dad suddenly dies]].
18** Rosemarie witnesses all the disgraces that befalls Claude, and can only give him limited support. [[spoiler:She gets half her face scarred in the fire that killed August and Cécilia and that, combined with her one-sided love for Claude, means she'll never marry.]]
19* BrokenAce: While Claude is popular on campus, he still struggles in his romantic life due to being transgender.
20* BrokenBird:
21** [[spoiler:By the time Sirene rejected Claude for his older brother, he's beyond depressed at how society treats him along with the constant heartbreak he's faced.]]
22** [[spoiler:Rosemarie's broken by the end of the story, unable to get over Claude's rejection and later death.]]
23* BuryYourGays: [[spoiler:Claude de Montesse is a trans man who was born and raised in 1900s France. Despite being the main character, Claude perishes at the end of the story by suicide, his decision to take his own life spurred on by his greatest love abandoning him for his older brother.]]
24* CharacterDevelopment: By the end of the manga, [[spoiler:Rosemarie's accepted that Claude will never love her and claims to bear no hard feelings towards him, choosing to support him no matter what]].
25* ChekhovsGunman:
26** After exiting the psychrist's office the first time around, he sees a bushy-haired girl's umbrella flying away. He catches it and brings it back to it's very grateful owner. Some years later, the bushy-haired girl- whose name is Maura- returns into Claude's life as a maid. Maura becomes Claude's first love.
27** When Claude was fifteen-years-old, he saw a pretty girl through the window of a ballet academy. Two years later, the girl comes back into his life: her name is Sirène, and she becomes his third and last love.
28* ChildhoodFriendRomance: Rosemarie was Claude's neighbor and they've known each other since they were kids. Also since they were kids, Rosemarie has been in love with him. She confessed to him but was ultimately rejected. She seems to be the girl who understood him the most out of all of those involved in his life; though she still refers to him by his birth name and with female pronouns, she calls him "a true man given a female body", in contrast to Cécilia who could only ever see Claude as a girl.
29* ClingyJealousGirl: Rosemarie loved Claude and was jealous of any other woman he happened to fall in love with, causing her to lash out in passive-aggressive ways towards the other woman/women.
30* ComingOfAgeStory: ''Claudine'' tells the story of a noble young trans man who grows up from a boy to a young man during early 1900s France.
31* CountryMouse: Maura's parents worked as retainers for the de Montesse family, and she was even born in the main house. Then they moved back to a nearby village, and Maura came to work to the main home.
32* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:The story ends with Claude committing suicide after finding out his lover left him for his oldest brother]].
33* TheHeroDies: [[spoiler:Claude takes his own life after Sirène chooses his eldest brother over him.]]
34* HotLibrarian: Cécilia is a beautiful young woman who worked as a librarian for Claude's high school.
35* HotTeacher: He worked as Rosemarie's tutor and is quite handsome.
36* IfItsYouItsOkay: When Claude explains to Sirène that he's trans, she takes it in stride.
37* {{Jerkass}}: Even before Louis' lover cheated on him, he was aloof and had anger issues.
38* KickTheDog: Rosemarie meets Maura while the maid was on her way to the post office. Maura got lost and Rosemarie deliberately sends her in the opposite direction out of jealousy. Since Maura has no sense of direction, she gets hopelessly lost and winds up losing the money she intended to send to her mother and dying father.
39* IdiotBall: In the final chapter, practically everyone around Claude begins to behave like assholes to him. [[spoiler:Sirène cheats on Claude with Andrew who bluntly tells Claude that he "forgave her this sin, because you're a girl", after which the psychiatrist technically finishes our main character by suggesting that Claude is "an imperfect male" on account of being born in a woman's body.]]
40* TheIngenue: Rosamarie's innocence causes trouble for those around her as well as herself. As a young girl, she often tried to hog Claude all to herself, which only resulted in Claude distancing himself from her. [[spoiler:When she was older, she caught Auguste with his lover, Cécilia, then told Louis, not realizing that Louis and Auguste were also lovers. This drove Louis into a jealous rage, leading to Auguste, Cécilia, and Louis' deaths and Rosemarie with half of her face covered in burn scars.]]
41* InterGenerationalFriendship: The psychiatrist is at least middle-aged when he meets the ten-year-old Claude. Despite the large age gap, they both share a lasting friendship. The psychiatrist explicitly refers to Claude as a good friend in the ending narration.
42* LongHairedPrettyBoy: Louis and Claude are both stunningly pretty men with long blond hair.
43* LoveDodecahedron: Claude falls in love with Cécilia Lacques, but she doesn't return his affections because she sees him as a girl. Cécilia's brother, Louis, is sleeping with Claude's father Auguste, [[spoiler:as is Cécilia]]. Rosemarie is in love with Claude since they were kids and is jealous of Claude and Cécilia and serves as an {{Unwitting|InstigatorOfDoom}} [[spoiler: when she reveals Cécilia and Auguste's affair to Louis, whose fury incites him to kill them both]]. And that's without bringing Sirène into the mix.
44* LoveHurts: Claude's love affairs all end poorly, either just for him, his love interest, or both.
45** He falls hard for Maura and they share a kiss, but Claude's mother catches them, leading her to send Maura back home.
46** Cécilia can only see Claude as a female friend, rejecting his AnguishedDeclarationOfLove, [[spoiler:and is later murdered by her own brother]].
47** [[spoiler:Sirène chooses Andrew over Claude, resulting in Claude's decision to commit suicide.]]
48* {{Meido}}: Maura is an adorable girl who works as a maid for the Montesse family.
49* TheMourningAfter: [[spoiler:Rosemarie never stopped caring for and loving Claude, as evident when we see her visiting Claude's grave.]]
50* NiceGuy: The Doctor is a true gentleman who respects Claude as the man he is.
51* NoNameGiven: Claude's mother's given name is never stated, only being referred to as Madame de Montesse. The psychiatrist she takes Claude too is left completely nameless.
52* NotGoodWithRejection:
53** [[spoiler:Louis founds out through Rosemarie that Auguste was sleeping with his sister, Cécilia. Then he went '''crazy'''.]]
54** [[spoiler:Sirène's secret affair with Claude's oldest brother, Andrew, and her choosing him over Claude is the primary factor in Claude's decision to shoot himself.]]
55* ParentsAsPeople: Claude's father Auguste is an OpenMindedParent, letting Claude dress and act as he likes instead of trying to force him to be someone he's not. That said, Auguste has his own personal issues that he's not dealing with, mainly that being [[spoiler:his affairs with Louis and Louis's sister, Cécilia]].
56* ParentalFavoritism: Auguste favored Claude among his children because Claude was the one most similar to himself. Claude is said to be pretty much the "second coming" of Auguste.
57* PrincelyYoungMan: Claude and his brothers were raised to be distinguished gentlemen who treated women respectfully.
58* ProperLady: Cécilia is young woman who's intelligence and beauty arouses Claude's affections.
59* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: The psychiatrist treats Claude with respect and doesn't ever try to convince Claude that he's not trans.
60* RuleOfThree: Claude falls deeply love with three different women throughout his life.
61* ScarsAreForever: [[spoiler:Rosemarie's scarred face "ruined her for marriage", so she sees herself as unfit for any suitor.]]
62* ShutUpKiss: Claude gives one to Maura when she's grieving over her father's sudden death. Claude's mom catches them and they have a huge fight, which leads to Claude going to the psychiatrist for the second time.
63* SiblingTriangle: [[spoiler:A love triangle forms between Claude, his third love Sirène, and Claude's oldest brother Andrew. Sirène ultimately chooses Andrew.]]
64* SleepCute: A very fatigued and cold Maura falls asleep on Claude's shoulder right after arriving at the de Montesse home on a rainy day.
65* SnowMeansDeath: [[spoiler:Claude kills himself on a snowy night. It's still snowing when Rosemarie visits his grave.]]
66* SobriquetSexSwitch: Claude's name is only two letters away from his deadname, Claudine.
67* SpurnedIntoSuicide: [[spoiler:What specifically pushes Claude into shooting himself is how Sirène- his third and last love- left him for his eldest brother Andrew.]]
68* TallDarkAndHandsome: Claude's older brothers- Andrew, Edward, and Thomas- all grew up to be tall, handsome men with black or brown hair.
69* TransEqualsGay: Played with: Claude is aware that people who don't truly know him will mistake any relationship he has with a woman as a lesbian relationship. It's why he and Sirène are careful to keep their romantic feelings for each other hidden, even though Sirène knows that Claude is a heterosexual trans man.
70* TransRelationshipTroubles: Claude's relationship with Maura is interfered with because it's seen as same-sex and thus inappropriate. Cécilia rejects him because she can only see him "as a girl".
71* TransTribulations: While a lot of Claude's issues are directly caused by his turbulent love life, the fact that he's seen by others as a masculine woman instead of the man he is definitely exacerbates these issues. Something that [[spoiler:contributes towards [[SpurnedIntoSuicide his suicide]] is a phone call he has with his psychologist, who tries to assure him by saying that he's a man who happened to have an imperfect body. Claude interprets this to mean that he'll never truly be a man because of the body he was born in]].
72* TwoFaced: [[spoiler:Rosemarie has scars on half of her face due to the fire that killed Auguste and Cécilia.]]
73* UnsettlingGenderReveal: When he first sees Claude, Louis mistakes him for a cisboy. It isn't until Rosemarie mentions Claude's relation to Auguste de Montesse that Louis realizes Claude was born female.
74* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: A distressed Rosemarie tells Louis about Auguste and Cécilia, [[spoiler:not knowing that Louis was Auguste's first lover. Louis snaps massively, setting a gamekeeper's hut holding Auguste and Cécilia on fire]]. The fire ends up killing them both, and leaves Rosemarie herself with severe burns on half of her face.
75* UptownGirl: A gender-inverted variant between Claude and Maura: Claude is the youngest son of the rich de Montesse family, while Maura is a poor maid who enters the de Montesse home in order to earn money for her sick father. Maura becomes Claude's first love and they wind up sharing a kiss.
76* WhiteHairBlackHeart: Louis has white hair, and commits atrocious actions like setting fire to a house when he finds out that he was cheated on.
77* {{Yandere}}: [[spoiler:Louis had been having an affair with Auguste for years. When he finds out through Rosemarie that Auguste was cheating on him with Louis's sister, Cécilia, Louis ''completely'' flips out, setting fire to the hut that Auguste and Cécilia while they were still inside.]]

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