Like any good conspiracy, Le Chevalier D’Eon starts with a murder: Lia de Beaumont, a capable agent of the French court, is found in a coffin floating down the Seine. Her eerily preserved, mercury-injected corpse joins other dead young women showing up in Paris, often with the word “Psalms” involved. Lia’s younger brother, D’Eon d’Beaumont, is devastated. Fortunately, he’s also part of king Louis XV's secret police, so D'Eon and his cohorts trace the murders to a smuggling ring and such high-ranking figures such as the Duke D’Orleans and the Comte de Saint-Germain (yes, that Comte de Saint-Germain). Yet they’ve bitten off a bit too much. An attack by a mysterious stranger leaves most of D’Eon’s friends dead and one of them reanimated as a mercury-bleeding zombie. And then the departed soul of Lia seizes D'Eon, turning him into a more effective and more feminine swordsman.

The mystery goes much deeper, of course. It involves King Louis XV as well as Queen Marie, the latter of whom confides in a talking ebony skull. Driven by both his own honor and Lia’s restless soul, D’Eon focuses on finding her killer, to the point where he avoids even his adoring fiancée, Anna. With the King’s blessing, D'Eon sets out with three other agents of the crown: his distinguished fencing instructor Teillagory, the roguish spy Durand, and Robin, a naïve, pistol-wielding young servant of the Queen. The four of them journey to the courts of Russia and England, discovering a cabal that leads back to the heart of France.

So Lia's basically the angry ghost version of a girl who torments her little brother by putting makeup and hairbows on him?

As the story of two souls reluctantly sharing one body, Le Chevalier D’Eon has its own identity crisis. On the surface, it’s a fairly restrained look at ugly machinations in the courts of 18th-century Europe, with appearances by Madame de Pompadour, Maximilien Robespierre, and Count Cagliostro. Yet they’re all part of a web of dark magic, where monsters and spells are crafted by dramatically quoting the Bible (I hoped someone would pull out the Deuteronomy line about not eating oysters, but no). Some may be offended, but it’s amusing to see Biblical references, long treated with clumsy symbolism in anime, used as matter-of-fact occult spellcasting. Yes, this is a fast-and-loose historical fantasy, remaking all sorts of real-life figures to suit its Christian mysticism and silver-blooded undead horrors.

And somehow, Le Chevalier D’Eon pulls it all off. Nearly every character is more than he or she appears, and even the completely innocent, like poor neglected Anna, go beyond routine stereotypes. The show also raises intriguing questions as Lia’s influence over D’Eon grows. It’s less clear as to who’s in charge, and less certain as to how loyal Durand, Robin, and Teillagory are to an increasingly unstable hero. The realistic look of it never gets in the way of scheming, supernatural nobles or sudden turns of the story. In fact, the show often surprises by introducing an out-of-place historical figure and then twisting the role into a strange kind of sense.

Le Chevalier D’Eon suffers on one count: it’s too damn dignified at times. The series opens strong, but the middle section shuffles through a slow-moving arc involving Catherine the Great (here shown as sympathetic and free of horse-related jokes). It’s notably less fascinating than the real-life D’Eon, who supposedly had an affair with the Russian empress. One shouldn’t want the speed-lined nonsense of 1970s series Rose of Versailles here, but Le Chevalier D’Eon could use a little pulp sensibility. It finds something better by its end, though. The final arc is a depressing barrage of revelations, and it makes any previous dragging worthwhile.

Her to-do list: oppress peasantry, avoid bathing, die in childbirth, and pick up some pastries.

Director Kazuhiro Furuhashi has long been wasted on TV shows like You’re Under Arrest and Ruroni Kenshin, while occasionally slipping out something like the excellent Kenshin prequel OVAs. He gives Le Chevalier D’Eon graceful swordfights and detailed scenery (with a few background anachronisms), yet he’s still working with a TV series. The animation sometimes gets cheaper than Production I.G’s usual standards, especially during idle conversations. At least Furuhashi went with a style far from the usual exaggerations of anime. Le Chevalier D’Eon has no giant eyes or shiny towers of spiked hair, and it’s often occupied with dialogue and mood. Michiru Oshima’s soundtrack helps out there, and this emerges as one the few anime series with memorable opening and closing songs.

The English dub is the work of Stephen Foster, the ADV Films director often upbraided for dramatically changing dialogue and throwing in crude humor. There's little of either in Le Chevalier D’Eon. Like Gankutsuou’s dub, it makes no real effort to use elegant speech, but the actors are solid enough. David Matranga carries D’Eon in even his duller moments, Taylor Hannah does well with the seldom-heard Lia, and Illich Guardiola’s odd Euro-something accent actually works in Durand’s favor. The Japanese voice cast comes through well, and it’s nice to hear Ken Narita in a leading role instead of a bit part. ADV even packaged each volume with a decorated slipcase as well as a thick booklet detailing the show’s production and history. It's certainly not the basic box-set treatment anime embraces now.

Someone once told me that Le Chevalier D’Eon was “too good for anime fans,” and I hate to think that he was right. Lacking exaggerated artwork or pandering undertones, the show wasn’t a great success in North America. And that’s a shame. It's bland at times, but it comes together with style and poise that's sadly uncommon in this market. If Le Chevalier D’Eon is just a ridiculous anime vision of history, it's history worth studying.