#except that crossover (friend)ship with the scarlet pimpernel and marguerite

[dodger-chan]

The Marquise de Merteuil for the question game. I love that book so much!

One of my favorite characters in all of literature. She is the absolute worst human being and I adore her for it.

I don't actually ship her romantically with anyone. Not in Dangerous Liaisons, or in any crossovers. She doesn't love people that way. Sometimes she'll have a lover like Valmont for whom she feels a vague friendly affection, but a romance would make her unhappy.

My non-romantic otp for her is actually an ot3 and it is a crossover at that. Merteuil and the Blakeneys (Percy and Marguerite) sometime after the first Scarlet Pimpernel novel, when their marriage is on solid footing. Merteuil doesn't mind her old peers being guillotined for entertainment, but she does get so bored and getting them out of Paris is something to do. Marguerite and Percy are clever enough to amuse her, and understand each other enough not to let her come between them (except in bed - it may not be romantic but it is a sexual ot3).

I don't know that enough people have opinions about Merteuil for me to have an unpopular one. Maybe that I don't think she's the worst villain in her story?

I wish canon hadn't given her visible scarring from (probable) syphilis right at the end of the book. It's too much like a moral lesson that sex is morally wrong, rather than that treating people poorly is morally wrong and the social structures that we live within create their own dangers.

My absolutely factual headcanon is that she steals enough of her husband's family's jewels to set herself up nicely in Amsterdam. She gets involved in espionage which gives her an outlet for her cleverness and she's never bored again.