#honestly still might do another version since louis deserves to be in a pretty dress

[sun-3-160]

Armand and the press conference rag! Notice how his mouth never moves! (Almost.)

[margridarnauds]

character asks meme you just reblogged: marie antoinette, 1789; katte, friedrich; and sarah, tanz

MA (Obviously focusing entirely on the portrayal of her in-musical)

character: hate them | don’t really care | like them | LOVE them | THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS

ship with: Louis XVI, as per the historical record. Like, come on, they were ADORABLE together. And for me, their final fate together only works if they both love and respect one another. Like, really, you expect me to believe she consistently stayed by his side throughout the entire Revolution because she tolerated him? When the French doesn’t even let her respect him? (Not even mentioning that the Varennes Flight could have gone VERY differently if they’d split up rather than staying together as a family. Like, I really, really hate historical!Fersen for a variety of mostly petty reasons, but he had a point there.) 

Madame de Polignac, in the sense of “They’re totally canon in the French version.” Not something I really see myself DOING anything with, but, like, it’s a thing. 

Olympe in a sort of tragic, one-sided way. Like, I can’t ever really see them as having a full on RELATIONSHIP, even in a world where Louis XVI didn’t exist and MA didn’t love him (don’t ask me how she’s in France in this universe, possibly widowed, possibly traveling around with her family? For some reason?) But, like, I see it more as a first crush, Olympe realizing that she doesn’t HAVE to like men, and possibly being a little over-attached because (1) This is the first time she’s felt like this and (2) She’s somewhat isolated from regular court life. 

Also, I’ve toyed with Solene/MA before, as a possibility, but it’s not one I’m really hardcore on, more an “Oh, that would be interesting” type thing. I think it would be HILARIOUS if Ronan’s chilling incognito with Laz one day in Versailles, two dudes chilling in the same bed five feet apart because they’re not gay, Ronan’s his VALET dammit, and then in pops his sister by the queen’s side and they both have to do some major explaining to one another. 

friendship them with:  MA/Madame de Polignac, in 99% of the universes where they’re not a thing and MA remains fully in love with Louis. MA/Olympe, after Olympe is able to sort everything out. MA/French!Artois, because I honestly love the two of them chilling out, being friends as per the historical record (before...things intervened. Mainly politics.) I love Trash Shit!Artois with every fiber of my being, but also I love the more benign version of him, hanging out as the Token Goth during Je Mise Tout, not planning the death of his entire family. 

general opinions: I fully understand (alright, not fully, because I don’t have a PHD in Japanese lit, but...I get it a little) the various and assorted ways that both Toho and Zuka MA conform to the Good Wife, Wise Mother trope, being punished for her adultery with Fersen and then resolving to become devoted to her husband and children, losing that little spark of rebellion she has in the beginning. I do get it. BUT, ultimately, I do prefer it to French!MA, where it’s obvious that they had no idea what to do with her, having her being a vain party girl in one scene, throwing a temper tantrum when Fersen says he’s leaving (Even though he ALREADY left once before, you know? When he fought in a little skirmish called “THE AMERICAN MOTHERFUCKING REVOLUTION”) a mourning mother, swinging BACK to the vain aristocrat when Soléne brings the party to them (I can tell they were literally one step away from having her say “Let them eat cake”), then she hates her husband, and then we’re supposed to feel sorry for her.  

Like, I feel like they were handed one of the most controversial women in history and they had no idea what to do, so they just molded her to whatever the scene required. 

Meanwhile, both the Takarazuka and Toho casts (or, at least, what I’ve patched together about the Toho; I might be revising this in a month with “I CHANGED MY MIIIIIIIIIND”) give her a full story arc, as far as beginning with her party girl stage, saying that she doesn’t care about what God would think about her affair with Fersen, paying the consequences, and then preparing herself for the role she’s going to play later on. 

Obviously, it’s still not what I would’ve done if I was in charge of a 1789 adaptation. What me, @philomaela, AND @cestbrulercesnuits have all talked about at times is that our ideal 1789 adaptation would be a TV series because....it’s the French Revolution. We differ in exactly what we’d put INTO it, but that’s a kind of common thread. Personally, I would probably bring in the more political Antoinette that we got to see historically, show the conflicts she had with Louis’ brothers as time went on, that break in their relationship, her frustration with the émigrés, along with her generosity and the increasingly devoted relationship with her husband. AND. NO. FERSEN. (Though, also, if I were in charge of a 1789 adaptation, I’d still want to focus more on the Squad, AKA the nonhistorical characters, so it’d be kept to maybe one scene per episode, at most.) Still, if I’m not going to get ahold of an ungodly amount of money so I can personally finance my dream version of it, I’m going to appreciate what we’ve been given and the cultural translation involved. Though I do feel a little bad that Olympe’s kind of been pushed to the wayside in the musical where she’s supposed to be one of the two leads, when there’s so much of a chance to actually develop her more. But....The Rose of Versailles. Japan. Takarazuka. It was kind of inevitable that we’d get a focus on Antoinette, as well as Antoinette/Fersen. 

Also, she has pretty dresses. I want that silver one, dammit. 

Katte

character: hate them | don’t really care | like them | LOVE them | THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS

ship with:  Fritz. Was there ever a doubt?

friendship them with: The Wilhelmine/Fritz/Katte trio is Good and Pure, though apparently she HATED him historically. But. It’s Friedrich: Mythos und Tragödie. History’s dead. 

general opinions: Good boi. Baby. Awkward dance moves, but he tries. Lies to Frederick William I’s face while thinking about banging his son. 

Also, while it’s possible, it would be VERY hard for you to convince me that Ghost!Katte is real!Katte. Like, Katte tried to protect Fritz consistently, even at the potential cost of his career and his life. And then at the end he wants Fritz to just? Give up? Rather than turn himself around? And the way he looks at Fritz when he dies...

Really. Look me in the eye and tell me that’s the Katte we saw in the past, that that reflects ANY of his interactions with Fritz. 

“Oh, but Rachel, they’re together in the end!” 

 As soon as Fritz is dead, he’s off the stage. His job is done. Now, you could argue that he’s a figment of Fritz’s imagination, as he’s growing older, thinking back on the past as he nears death, but I would propose another suspect, who we KNOW is capable of changing form to suit the job at hand and has a tendency to emotionally manipulate their victims to make the job easier. 

Tl;dr: THAT THING IS NOT KATTE. 

Sarah Chagal

character: hate them | don’t really care | like them | LOVE them | THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS

ship with:  Krolock (Shhhhhhhh, I know I’m trash on this one. I accept it. Let me have my gothic romance trash ship even as I know Tanz is a deliberate subversion of many of those tropes and in many productions Krolock drops her to the ground after the Ball and she seems to be more in love with the romance and mystery Krolock offers than him. But again! That’s a production by production thing! In one production Krolock turns into a talking stuffed bat, even though I know MOST of the fandom chooses to forget it.)

friendship them with: Honestly, as cute as her and Alfred would be as friends, I’m not sure they could ever reach that point again post-finale. Obviously, that’s rich coming from me, aka “I know he killed his father, but LISTEN...” but I just have a hard time seeing it. Like, I feel like the vampiric self ultimately doesn’t entirely subsume the original personality, and that once Alfred’s gone on his little blood binge, he’s probably going to come back to himself a little. 

I do kind of support Herbert and Sarah bonding over their shared love of baths (also, I could actually see them traveling around together, since Sarah would never take well to being locked up in the castle and...come on. Herbert staying there when he could be observing the latest Parisian fashion, living the high life? Herbert? Though ultimately I think that Herbert would probably be more than a little bit petty, if not because of Alfred, then because he’s used to being the primary focus of his father’s attention and he sees her essentially as a mid-afterlife crisis. 

The only thing I could really see is her/Magda, since they’ve both dealt with SO MUCH SHIT because of Chagal and it’d be great to see them bond. But that would require the women on this show to actually. Interact. (THANK YOU, Broadway production. The fandom might reject you, but I appreciate you.)

general opinions: 

God, it’s been so long since I’ve watched this show. When I did read all the fanfic available, back in the day (on FANFICTION.NET, showing how long ago), I recall that there was a lot of hatred for Sarah, obviously mostly from Alfred/Herbert fans who were like “Poor Alfred, manipulated and abandoned by that devious girl who didn’t deserve her devotion! It’s so good that Herbert understands him for what he truly is!” Because it was that period in fandom. 

Personally, I’ll defend her until I die, I can’t really blame her for ANYTHING she does given what the alternative is. Like, if you interpret her as manipulating Alfred, it’s a pretty shitty thing to do, I get that, and I get why a lot of fandom loves Alfred as the Woobie. He’s cute! He’s a dork! He’s the first thing we see in the show, so we’re already pre-disposed to liking and bonding with him! But what’s her alternative? Staying with her insanely abusive father, dying as an old maid when she wants to escape? Like, come on. She saw a chance that was probably never going to happen again and I think she took it, and I can’t really blame her for it. Also, I fully agree with this meta as far as Sarah being more self aware in the Broadway and at least having an idea of what she’s getting into and seizing it. (Also, I embrace the idea of her and Krolock possibly banging after Totale Finsternis, or at least her having some sort of sexual awakening. Get that undead D, girl.) 

I think that you get a very different idea of her if you’re watching the musical with a focus more on the Heroine’s Journey (Personally, this is the version of the Heroine’s Journey that I tend to subscribe to, VS the more common “Integration of the masculine and the feminine” one, because it actually seems to depict a common progression in fairy tales and doesn’t seem to punish women who stay in the “masculine” side imo) VS The Hero’s journey, which I suppose is why I never really...bonded with Alfred and Alfred/Sarah the same way? Like, when I think about it, my main focus has always kind of been Sarah as the protagonist, which I know was never really the intent, but? I don’t care. Like, when I think about it, I think I always latched onto the idea of the girl escaping the oppressive world in her home by running off with the vampire. It’s kind of an essential part of the appeal of the vampire, especially to teenage girls. Like, one of my favorite quotes is Nina Auerbach’s, “Vampires were supposed to menace women, but to me at least, they promised protection against a destiny of girdles, spike heels, and approval.” And so, yeah, I kind of like the idea of her getting what she wants, much like Elisabeth getting an ending where she’s finally free.