#my hc is after the whole freezing she chilled out and felt guilt for some time but then she grew to not care as nobody wanted her apologies

[demonkinguwu]

Vanessa Doodles before work™️

My interpretation of canon Vanessa + her w Snatcher + Someone wanted to hug he <3

[margueritestjust-a]

1-5 !

Questions for Canons | Not Accepting!

1. What is the biggest headcanon deviation from the canon material that you have incorporated into the way you write your muse? Why did you come up with it?

I don’t know if it’s a headcanon deviation from the source, or if it’s merely the way I interpreted Marguerite’s character, but I believe that A) she was always in love with Percy, even when she was acting snarky about him and B) she wasn’t “testing” Percy’s love for her by not telling him the truth about St. Cyr - she was overcome with emotion and claims that it was a “test” to save face. In fact, I believe a lot of Marguerite’s actions that audiences use to vilify her are about saving face when overcome with emotions that she doesn’t know how to process. Let’s start with the snark towards Percy. 

The book starts after the honeymoon phase is over for the Blakeneys - literally months into their marriage. Despite being the most fashionable couple in London, you couldn’t find a stranger match. We have Marguerite who is clever and charming and talented and Percy... whose chief talents seem to be superfluous commentary, bad poetry, and a laugh with the power to irritate everyone in a two mile vicinity. Why on earth would the intelligent, charming, beautiful Marguerite St. Just marry this guy? In the book, she confides in her brother, Armand, that she’s sure people think she did it for the money, but that she really, truly loved Percy for his passionate nature. And that, after she told him about the St. Cyrs, that passion dried up and that she’s left with this buffoon of a husband who does not love her and who is not the man she loved in Paris. It is, however, clear to me that prior to their argument, Marguerite loved Percy a great deal - and perhaps continues to wistfully love him (or the memory of him) and that his change in behavior baffles her. Armand, being the reasonable, level-headed (lmao) big brother he is, gives Marguerite Actually Solid Advice that basically goes, “Well, maybe if you told him the whole truth about the St. Cyrs, you two would be okay!” and Marguerite is like, “He wouldn’t listen to me about it now; it’s too late. I messed up and I just have to deal.” And her way of dealing is by making sarcastic jibes at her husband to get him to pay attention to her because otherwise, he’s much more into his fatuous, foppish friends than her. It’s the only time Percy pays attention to Marguerite (as far as Marguerite knows) and it lets her get out some of her hurt and frustration. 

Fast forward to when she tells him “I betrayed St. Cyr at the tribunal because I thought he was just going to be punished for trying to murder my brother but APPARENTLY we just guillotine entire families these days in France for one man’s crime and now I have the blood of an entire family on my soul and have been living with the guilt since.” And Percy is like, “Babe, why didn’t you tell me?” and Marguerite - who told her brother pages and pages ago that she didn’t think Percy would believe her, that she was afraid of losing him and lost him anyways, goes, “... I wanted to test your love for me.” 

What.

The conversation gets EVEN WEIRDER because Percy is like “Well, I wanted you to keep explaining yourself and you didn’t” and Marguerite is like, “I just wanted you to ask me to elaborate” and it goes on for a bit and you’re sitting there as a reader trying to reconcile Marguerite-talking-to-Armand and Marguerite-talking-to-Percy. It’s a nightmare tbh because there’s so much inconsistency. So here’s what we have to bear in mind: A) Armand is the man who raised Marguerite, her brother and dearest confidant. He has never betrayed her trust and vice versa. B) Marguerite and Percy have marital issues like woah and at this moment in time, she’s justifying herself to her husband - while worried that she will lose what little of his love for her remains. (Surprise: there’s a whole lotta love there and she doesn’t lose any of it. She probably gains some because he has a SUPER EMOTIONAL moment in the garden once she’s gone to bed where he kisses all the places she’s walked and like Percy find your chill). 

So here’s what I think - and it may be a deviation from canon, it may not be, it’s so unclear that I just roll with it and smile. I think that Marguerite loves Percy but when she tells him “Hey, so I accidentally got an entire family murdered” she freaks out internally and shuts down because How do you explain that? Omg my husband is going to hate me - see look he hates me!  and then, by the time she’s recovered from her internal panic attack, she convinces herself that it’s too late to make things right with Percy. Doesn’t help that now Percy has chosen to freeze her out because of what she told him and has nothing else to go on. So, what’s she do? Lash out. When she’s finally forced to tell him the truth and he asks why she didn’t just tell him, she doesn’t want to admit weakness - she already looks so weak and emotional and vulnerable - so she says, “I was testing you.” As if it was some kind of intentional maneuver on her part. And with most guys, this would shame them because they failed the test. But Percy is smarter than that and he calls her bluff with “I was just waiting for an explanation.” And HERE IS MARGUERITE’S GOLDEN CHANCE to tell him how scared and repentant and guilty she’s felt but instead she continues to save face as much as she can. 

Yes, she’s still prideful. Yes, this pride still leads to miscommunication. But, no, she is not some unfeeling bitch. I will fight anyone who says otherwise. Meet me in the pit. 

2. Do you have any controversial headcanons that go against what is generally accepted by the fandom? Do you incorporate this into writing your muse or keep it to yourself?

Umm... I guess one HC that I have - which is actually canon, not headcanon - is that Marguerite was never a prostitute. I’ve been seeing a lot of things in the tags that indicate people believe otherwise even though there is no canon indication that Marguerite was ever a prostitute (she was the leading actress of the Comedie Francaise and her family was bourgeois). The thing that most frustrates me about this headcanon is that people who hold it tend to A) slut-shame Marguerite (and/or all prostitutes and sex workers) and/or B) hold Percy up as a paragon of virtue for not slut-shaming his wife? Like, guys. That is literally doing the minimum as your job as a husband (and as a human being). It’s not heroic and it’s definitely not more heroic than saving innocent people from the guillotine. 

Anyways, my adherence to canon crops up plenty in threads, but it’s not something I’m like... making a point of showcasing? It’s just the facts where my muse is concerned. 

3. What is something that was never addressed at all in the canon material that you have independently developed for your muse?

Canon - as far as I know - never addresses the St. Justs’ social status prior to their parents’ death. We just know there’s an eight year age gap between Armand and Marguerite, that their parents died when Armand was “a youth” and Marguerite was “a child” and Marguerite raised her, and that they aren’t nobility, but they’re doing well enough to be respected by all walks of society. Soooo... I’ve had to elaborate. 

I’ve HC’d that the St. Justs were upper-middle class business owners - perhaps Moniseur St. Just was a merchant - whose work brought them into contact with the nobility as well as common people and whose profit was enough to send both Armand and Marguerite to school. Furthermore, when their parents died, Armand and Marguerite would be left with a sizable inheritance and a business... which they could sell or run. It just makes sense to me.

As with the prostitution HC that’s so popular in the fandom, there’s a notion that Armand and Marguerite were born and raised in the gutter, which has no canonical basis and doesn’t really make sense with either of their characterizations. So... yeah. I had to develop that on my own.

4. Have you made any outright changes to the canon material in order to write your muse the way you wanted (entire scenes you chose to omit, chapters you say never existed, things you assume were never said, etc.)?

Probably, but I can’t think of any specifics. 

5. What is an aspect of your muse’s canon material or canon existence that you never had the opportunity to explore but really want to?

Marguerite’s relationships with other canon characters, Percy aside. We’re talking Armand, Chauvelin, Suzanne, Ffoulkes, Dewhurst, the whole damn League. It’s a little hard to do since... like... the fandom is a ghost town, but I’d love to explore some of these relationships somehow.