Double Agents de Chagny

[igenlode]

Summary post of all the surviving material on my long-pending "Double Agents de Chagny" WW2 AU story, prompted by betweensunandmoon:

(extracts from an email conversation - with text emoticons :-p)

17 Sep 2013
I am seriously tempted by Pika-la-cynique's throwaway suggestion of a Paris-based Second World War version "featuring the Double Agents de Chagny playing collaborateurs and hosting champagne parties for the Nazi top brass, while secretly in touch with the Phantom, explosives expert and leader of the underground sabotage movement, reluctant allies for La Cause..."

Well, 'tempted' isn't the word. The possibilities are there all right, but I simply don't know enough about the setting (and more importantly [eyes] its mythology: not what *really* happened, but the heroic tropes) to write it. I can't use a supply of gangster/pirate movie references, swashbuckler conventions, background stage experience, basic social mores or re-reading of the source material (because, being AU, there *isn't* any) to provide standard plot themes for Occupied France, and don't know enough about daily life under those conditions to sketch in the background. But tantalisingly, I know just enough to have vague ideas of the potential ("Scarlet Pimpernel" meets "Colditz")... and to realise that, given the possibly explosive effects of fiddling with a sore point in someone else's history, it would need an awful lot of research! (It really ought to be written by a French fan, though; otherwise there would be a big danger of getting ordinary cultural basics wrong. Like the Americans who keep writing about the rest of the world having pancakes for breakfast :-p)

The plus point is that I know there are at least two other people who would be interested in reading it :-D

The trouble is that the amount of research required would make it a very big project that would (A) need an epic (and awesome) plot to justify the work involved and (B) take so long it would never get finished. I have just the ghost of an inkling however that it might be possible to do a *short* story illustrating the basic set-up (i.e. the characters, their undercover activities and relations with one another), while reserving the possibility of doing further stories (utilising further details of background, plot tropes, etc., as and when researched :-) to expand the 'series' at an indefinite future point. But even for the most superficial introductory scene you'd need to know more about French Society customs of the Forties, Nazi dinner parties, etc., than I do (currently nothing [roll])

However, I did go to the lengths tonight of reading the sole book in my immediate vicinity that happened to discuss the Occupation in Paris... a history of 1940s women's fashion :-P And in amongst the stuff about haute couture (exempt from clothes rationing, apparently, or rather on a different rationing system -- you could either register for the one or for the other, and if you were paying for the expensive clothes you weren't entitled to claim a ration of the cheap ones!), which to be frank a 1940s Christine (or at least one married to a Viscount rich enough to be hosting Nazi champagne breakfasts) would probably be wearing anyway -- in other words, it's quite possibly actually relevant [eyes] -- there was in fact a good deal of useful background detail, like the time of the last Metro and the fact that the nouveau riches were known as the BOFs (Beurre, Oeufs, Fromage -- the implication being that they were food profiteers). That is, things that I can see getting dropped into the background of a story, even though I don't actually have a plot for one [eyes]

What is really needed is some good cheesy thrillers about the French Underground/Resistance, double agents, etc. for plot purposes, though...

1 Oct 2013
I'm now getting plot-nibbles on the Resistance story, well in front of any real knowledge about what I'm doing, unfortunately. I've got the image of Raoul helping unload a lorry in the dark wearing heavy gloves, on the grounds that he can't afford to have any traces of grime seen under his nails when 'shaking hands with the Gestapo' the following day, but no idea as to what the lorry is carrying or why... I suspect fangirl/'fop' jokes are going to be irresistible, as I've already got Raoul playing a Sir Percy Blakeney role :-p

Christine using Raoul's touch to try to get the feel of a 'guest's wandering hands off her; he hopes the Wehrmacht haven't quite got that far yet...

19 Oct 2013
Amusingly, the latest 'barnacle' to crop up on the 'double agents' story was sparked off by a mention that young men were using vegetable oil on their hair during the shortages caused by the Occupation: Christine was complaining about the kitchen smell, Raoul was complaining that it had darkened the colour of his hair so much that he wasn't going to look 'Aryan' enough to impersonate a German officer :-p

(It hadn't previously occurred to me, but there would be advantages in being fair-haired and blue-eyed under the Nazis...)

[...]

I have been continuing with the 'research' for the Resistance story, although the reality is one long overdose of prison/forced labour/concentration camp material -- sooner or later everyone evidently got caught, and it's not pretty reading [no] It's going to be hard to work up the right sort of light-hearted caper (and then of course you have to worry about being seen to trivialise events within living memory...)

The red-light district of Pigalle has featured in two books so far, so may end up making an appearance [eyes]. A handy place where Germans are off-guard and off duty, anyway.

Dennis Wheatley's "V for Vengeance" does indeed cover more or less exactly the right area (the Resistance in Paris and at times outside) from the start of the war up to the entry of the Russians (in this novel, the result of the hero's scheming!) and in a suitably biased vein. The appearance of a racially inferior German soldiery (who can be identified by their reduced cranial capacity [eyes]) is an amusing reversal of prejudices :-p

And any novel which opens with a description of the heroine's heroic love-interest being shot in front of her during a dramatic escape attempt certainly... draws your attention. (Hence "vengeance" -- this is her motivation for the rest of the book, although of course the author's real motive is to free her up to fall in love with somebody else [eyes]).

But it really doesn't give me much material for what the Resistance actually *did* -- in fact, I'm coming to the conclusion that they quite possibly managed to do very little... Nor any hint of a role for the 'explosives expert' incarnation of the Phantom.

(Meanwhile my characters fail to do anything very much save for flirt with one another -- I think I'm going to have to split them up :-p
Probably best for plot purposes anyway.)

I've had the inkling of an idea about that lorry: I think it may be a question of *who* rather than *what* is being smuggled on board, which would explain the need for Raoul's presence in person to meet/reassure whoever-it-is...

26 Oct 2013
So far as the 'study' goes, I've read the novels "The Foreign Correspondent" and "Spies of the Balkans" by Alan Furst, "V for Vengeance" by Dennis Wheatley and "The Collaborators" by Reginald Hill, and the non-fiction "A Train in Winter" (about women of the Resistance deported to Auschwitz), the autobiography "Résistance" by Agnès Humbert who was in the first Resistance group in Paris and was deported to a slave-labour factory, the rather specialist but not un-useful "Forties Fashion", which covers conditions in occupied France, the biography "Living with the Enemy" about a Jewish teenager who eked out a living in Paris for a few years pimping for the German soldiery (and was deported like his parents to a death camp), and the beginning of "Nancy Wake", a biography of yet another undercover woman (aren't there *any* old-fashioned books about the *men* of the Resistance?) who was an SOE agent for the British, but was married to a rich Frenchman at the start of the war so with a bit of luck will have some of the high-society stuff I need. Also, she had a dog, which may help me with Sarrasin (Christine's putative large mongrel, who may well have had to have been sent out of Paris during the war -- certainly in Britain a large number of pets were euthanized for fear of bombing and because the government didn't want people to waste scarce meat rations on dogs and cats)

I still have a copy of Irène Nemirovsky's "Suite Française" to read, apparently a classic novel which seems to cover the period -- although outside Paris I think. (Oh, and she too was sent to Auschwitz, which is why the planned end of the novel is missing [no])

I definitely need to find some more material on the Paris catacombs during the war, only touched upon briefly in "V for Vengeance" and not even mentioned elsewhere (I know there was a book on the subject that I came across in the library a few years back, though I never read it!), given that the Phantom is supposed to be hiding out down there. Otherwise, I'm beginning finally to feel that I have something of a handle on the period and might be able to produce a convincing story [yes]

It's much harder to find out what life would have been like for rich collaborators than for all the heroic starving Communists, though: unsurprisingly no-one writes books lauding the former, so you have to glean what passing glimpses you can from mentions of background characters :-( I know a lot more about what the accommodation of a penniless student/immigrant looked like in 1940s Paris than I do about how the comfortably-off lived: and did they have servants? Were they affected by rationing? I do know that you could run a car only if you had a special permit from the authorities: I'm tempted to bestow an impractical little open two-seater on Christine (who would undoubtedly have been able to get a permit), but don't know if a married woman in that era would have driven herself or possessed a car :-( I do know that they couldn't vote or hold bank accounts [razz]

On the whole I think the novels are the most useful, because they set out to handle scene-setting while the factual books basically assume you know what things looked like and smelt and sounded of. But obviously the factual books contain facts -- and readily obtainable dates, which I suspect are going to be a big issue: I need to decide exactly when this first story is going to be set, which will make a big difference to the political situation. It looks as if the answer to "what *did* the Resistance do" is that they didn't do all that much until the Germans took over Vichy France, and that they got more and more violent as the war swung against the occupying forces.... but I don't want to set the story right at the end of the war, because I want (probably optimistically) to reserve the option of setting further adventures as sequels during later periods, and it's easier to write things in chronological order.

On the other hand, I don't want this to be an 'origins' story... at least partly because I don't want to have to work out a complete backstory before I start [evil] -- I'd much rather have it evolve by being hinted at through the characters' thoughts, in the usual way -- and partly because I want to jump straight into the Gestapo-party scene that was Pika's first prompt. A story about *how* Raoul and Christine got involved in acts of resistance and how they were recruited as double agents definitely belongs to a later stage, once the set-up is familiar and the readers are invested in the characters and want to know how it all started.

So the story can't take place right at the beginning of the Occupation, either, because they need time to get the whole thing set up. (And also, no-one was really doing any blowing-up, etc. at that point... so there's no role for the Phantom :-p)

I have a feeling that brother Philippe is going to be recently-deceased as a result of enemy action, and Raoul is going to blame this in some way on the Phantom (who betrayed him, or let him down, or in some other manner contributed to his death). I'm also wondering about Raoul's naval service, and whether the British destruction of the French fleet can be worked in (is he a serving officer who has now been stranded ashore? This would make co-operation with British agents potentially as fraught as the highly reluctant alliance with the Phantom :-p)

It would be quite nice to have an early story with Philippe actually alive in it... :-(

And there's the question of Christine's relationship with the Phantom: the fandom dictates that there has to have been one in some context, and currently I really have no idea what, although I have Raoul reluctantly conceding that she's the one who will have to go down and do the negotiating if they're going to get any cooperation out of the eccentric explosives expert... She has definitely stepped out of her station in life by marrying Raoul, and gets a certain amount of resentment/rough teasing about it from the rest of the group. But I don't know what she was before, or how they met. Presumably via music..?

And is Christine Swedish in this version? Sweden was neutral, which might come in useful (though it would open up yet another field of research, because I know nothing at all about Sweden in the early 20th century save a feeling that it was vaguely Fascist but didn't do any actual fighting).

But with her father as an itinerant violinist, she could quite easily be Eastern European/Jewish... which would open up a whole new can of worms... :-( (Probably not, because I want her convincingly blonde. Though platinum blonde dye-jobs were common in this era, so no-one would think it suspicious if she had dark roots.)

Given all the 'fop' jokes, I think it's going to be fairly irresistible to have Raoul running the /réseau Petit-Maître/... which is *of course* named after the bookshop in the Allée du Petit-Maître where it was originally set up, and not in any sense a criticism of its chief architect :-P (Which means he is inevitably going to end up being known as the "Chief Fop" or just as "The Fop" for undercover purposes [evil] -- and I strongly suspect that Erik may well have contrived to influence the original choice of name with just such an end in view [flynnocent])

7 Nov 2013
More ideas on backstory. Philippe's death: he drowns, of course (as per canon) or at least dies in water -- *he* is responsible for initial Resistance activity (possibly with Christine's assistance) and Raoul gets roped in as replacement after he dies. This fits with likely lifespan of pioneer members of the Resistance [no] and allows Raoul and Christine to have the benefit of a more experienced organisation at a later stage in the war, when things were actually starting to get blown up, etc ;-p

I rather think that the Phantom is responsible for actually killing Philippe (as per canon) -- but he does it for 'humane' motives (although Raoul isn't necessarily aware of this!), i.e. when his death was inevitable anyway and/or to keep him from being caught (and killed... eventually) by the Gestapo. Probably because of Christine's involvement -- he doesn't care that much about the welfare of the de Chagny family in general but wants to make sure Christine can't be implicated. But the side-effect is that Philippe is cleared of any suspicion, either because his death appears to be accidental or because he is believed to have been killed by the Resistance.

This leaves Raoul, as the new Comte de Chagny, in a nice friendly position vis-a-vis the occupying forces thanks to his martyred brother... and it also leaves him 'inheriting' command of a lot of people rather more experienced than he is thanks largely to the fact that his family money is virtually bankrolling the movement, thus explaining some of the rather snide remarks...

Raoul is younger than I thought he was -- he is an 'Armistice baby', conceived in November/December 1918 (thus explaining why why the rest of his family are so much older than he is) to elderly parents, probably on his father's return from war. This makes him just twenty when the Navy is mobilised in the summer of 1939 and he and Christine marry hurriedly on the eve of war -- as a lot of people did. Which means I think that he must have had Philippe's permission to marry, this time round...

He and Christine meet as children circa 1930 in the South of France (rather than Brittany), while Philippe is busy amusing himself on the sophisticated Riviera and his young brother is thoroughly bored :-p Christine's father is a violinist in one of the 'gypsy' orchestras of the era, who have been hired to entertain the fashionables (he doesn't have to be a real gypsy: most of them weren't!), and without a mother to look after her (maybe she died in the post-war Spanish 'flu? -- not sure about dates) his daughter is at a loose end during her father's rehearsals/performances and eventually runs into an agemate in the form of the similarly unoccupied Raoul...

Raoul's war starts off with the destruction of the French fleet by the British navy at Mers el-Kebir in 1940, described as "like shooting fish in a barrel" :-( I think he probably serves as a junior officer on board the destroyer (/contre-torpilleur/) "Kersaint", simply because it amuses me to have a D.K.Broster reference in there (the hero of "the Yellow Poppy" uses the pseudonym 'Marquis de Kersaint') -- the "Kersaint" was part of the small squadron that escaped. http://www.alamer.fr/index.php?NIUpage=35&Param1=11 Alternatively, he may have been one of the men who managed to swim to shore through the burning oil and subsequently have reached France by some other means :-(

Probably simplest if he is wounded on board one of the ships that escaped (I'm not sure if and when the men left behind in hospital in North Africa were repatriated). Anyway, he gets injured pretty badly in the battle, which gives him an excuse to be sent home (rather than to a PoW camp, say -- French soldiers were taken prisoner and shipped East, but I'm not clear what happened to French sailors, who never actually got to fight the Germans) and to spend months convalescing (?at Chagny rather than in Paris?) instead of getting involved with the early Resistance as Philippe is doing...

This also gives him impeccable collaborationist credentials in that he becomes understandably bitter against the British -- and he comes out of the experience quite a lot grimmer and more ruthless in his early twenties than the sunny-natured boy he would otherwise have been [no] (He still winds up finding himself helping British agents for purely pragmatic reasons, but there is a certain amount of tension involved...)

He has some kind of family connection with one of the aristocratic German army officers of the occupation force -- someone of the older generation. Probably not a godfather, because I really don't see anyone asking a member of the German nobility to stand godfather to a child born in France in 1919 :-( Ditto not a brother-in-law (though I think one of his older sisters is married to a traditionalist/monarchist on the Vichy side, giving him further collaborationist credentials plus a potentially useful source of contacts). Anyway, he has this 'Onkel Willy' -- possibly a great-uncle? -- who is I think in the /Abwehr/, the regular German Army Intelligence unit who were more or less rivals to the Gestapo (and apparently didn't think much of their political counterparts). Again a useful source of insider information, although he is genuinely fond of the older man (who is one of the old-school /Junkers/ who took a pretty dim view of the Nazi party in private -- and eventually launching an attempted assassination attempt backed by a lot of the traditional aristocracy), thus creating potential conflict in not wanting to get his source into trouble.

(I did want to have a 'good German' in the story somewhere, though I'm not sure this is necessarily him -- there might be someone else ;-p)

If necessary Onkel Willy will also prove to have pulled strings to get Raoul home and free into civilian life, despite his holding a former commission and being of military age... in other words, he's a handy plot device :-D

And I think I *finally* (as of this evening, some hours after starting to write this email!) worked out most of the backstory for this version of the Phantom [bounce] (And I remembered a woman I see around locally sometimes who has a horrifically deformed face... which will do for my mental image of the Phantom's deformity :-( One side of her face is all slumped downwards into a great warty wattled growth that distorts her eyes and mouth. Unfortunately it affects her voice too, so this version of the Phantom won't be able to be an inhumanly good singer -- but it does explain why he becomes a great ventriloquist; he has had a lifetime of experience with working on his voice to try to make it sound natural, and has developed that into being able to make it sound as if it is coming from other places and other people into the bargain.)

Anyway, the answer to how Christine originally gets involved with the Phantom this time round is that he is a criminal (slightly more professionally than in the original, where he is 'merely' an ex-assassin who happens to be a blackmailer and murderer :-p)

Pre-war, he makes his living in the metaphorical Parisian underworld (as opposed to *literally* underneath Paris... or at least, I think so...) -- as in the original, out of bitterness that his deformity makes it impossible for him to put his considerable intelligence to any gainful end, or to take any part in normal life, without people recoiling from him in revulsion :-( His speciality is safe-breaking with the aid of controlled dynamite: thus explaining how, come the Occupation, he ends up as the underground expert of choice on exploding things :-D

And Christine in this version becomes not an operatic soprano but a rising cabaret singer -- like Mistinguett or Edith Piaf. (I now regret having got rid of that David Bret biography (of Maurice Chevalier)... which is something I never thought I'd say!) I should be able to base the backstage material to some extent on the scenes from "First a Girl" in which Jessie Matthews plays a 'female impersonator' singing as a novelty act in the South of France [yes]

So the Phantom runs across Christine when they find themselves on the bill together at a venue in Paris (possibly called "The Angel of Music" ;-p) where he is putting his genuine ventriloquist skills to use as a novelty act on stage in a bid to get backstage access to the managers' safe. With his talents, he has no difficulty in getting taken on at short notice, and if people think the masked ventriloquist is a bit eccentric for persisting in keeping his mask on after the performance, there are lots of eccentrics around in the stage world... (Properly speaking, a ventriloquist needs people to be able to see his mouth in order to demonstrate that his lips aren't moving; so either this will have to be a half-mask (wouldn't work too well with the sort of deformity I'm thinking of) or else the act will have to involve such dramatic voice projection -- e.g. right into the audience -- that moving lips are the least of anyone's concerns!)

And the Phantom falls in love with Christine, who is sweet and sympathetic and isn't totally repelled when she catches sight of him without his mask on... and he ends up keeping up the act for a lot longer than he intended. Oh, he tells himself that he is simply making absolutely certain of that safe, but he is subconsciously putting the operation off day by day just so that he can spend a little more time with Christine at the theatre. Unfortunately, this is the summer of 1939, Paris is full of feverish gaiety on the brink of inevitable war, and in this atmosphere of heightened existence and urgent emotion she has just re-encountered a childhood friend from the days before her father died, a young naval officer by the name of Raoul de Chagny; in the weeks before full mobilisation and his inevitable call-up they are busy falling head-over-heels in love, and it doesn't even occur to her to regard the reclusive middle-aged ventriloquist in anything other than a paternal light -- until it is too late.

When she blurts out the news of her engagement/their hopes for an immediate marriage, the Phantom goes off the rails completely :-( He ends up sitting on top of a pile of dynamite under the theatre, ready to detonate the whole thing -- and as many people as possible, including himself -- the moment the police (aided by Raoul?) burst in to arrest him. Only Christine manages to get to him first, and persuades him to flee and save himself (and abstain from mass murder/suicide in the process...)

But the German occupation of Paris gives him a new focus for his hatred of society (and possibly a new source of income -- I'm not sure whether he becomes an enthusiastic black-marketeer or despises them), and he and Christine eventually come into contact again via Philippe's idealistic Resistance involvement. During this whole period Raoul is away/ill, so he gradually becomes accustomed to the idea of Christine's husband somewhere vaguely in the background before they actually have to deal together for La Cause; likewise, Raoul has to take the expertise of the 'Phantom' as a /fait accompli/ by the time he gets involved. But the young Comte doesn't like the man, first of all because he is a career criminal, secondly because he has an unsettlingly possessive attitude to Raoul's wife [eyes], and thirdly because he once tried to kill him and a lot of other people :-p

Not sure what Raoul and Christine's attitude to the black market is -- they are getting 'party supplies' at least from their regular Gestapo guests such as "/lieber/ Otto" and "good old Gunther" (the Germans had cornered at least 80% of the French champagne output, for a start [razz]), but I imagine they are probably more or less required to deal with black-marketeers as part of their 'role' as rich collaborationists. Also, it must be a potential source of information...

Possibly Raoul originally tries to grow a moustache (as in canon) in order to make himself look older, and in imitation of his favourite screen swashbuckling heroes during his adolescence in the 1930s :-D but decides to shave it off in order to provide himself with more flexibility in disguise if necessary... Apparently moustaches aren't allowed in the Marine Nationale, though, so might be out of character -- though a pencil moustache is nice and quick to grow if desired.

[eyes] Right, now that I've got all this detailed backstory for the characters to allude briefly to or brood about unmentioned [laugh], all I need is an actual plot for my first story ;-D

But I do need to know the backstory ahead of time -- like all the period details for the setting, car permits and coal shortages and so on -- just in order to stop myself from accidentally writing something that contradicts it; I need to know *why* Raoul and the Phantom are hostile to each other, for example (other than that the readers expect to see them in this story dynamic due to their historical antecedents :-P) and whether the Phantom ever actually abducted Christine (in this version, apparently not).

I think we might be getting somewhere with this, though... [yes]

(At this rate, I shall end up writing the Alternative Universe 'origins' story instead and ignoring the "Double Agents de Chagny" prompt [roll])

12 Nov 2013
More thoughts on Philippe --what if *Raoul* were suspected of being responsible for his brother's death (as per original canon)?

When he comes back to Paris after an extended country convalescence he is horrified to discover that not only is his brother living under imminent expectation of arrest for anti-occupation activity, but that Christine is implicated -- the whole business having been kept from him up to now in order not to 'worry him' while he was recovering from his wounds. (I never did think Raoul would be very happy to find that Christine had been busy running her neck into danger without him...)

The brothers quarrel, loudly, with Christine's name prominent to be heard (as per canon) -- as reported subsequently by the servants. Possibly Philippe, being in a temper, is indiscreet and says more than he ought, and someone in the house overhears and informs on him to the authorities that night: at any rate, he goes out on Resistance business. Christine slips out as part of her own role in the night's work -- when he finds her gone, Raoul goes after Philippe, angry and afraid.

And something goes wrong with their 'mission' -- perhaps they are betrayed. At any rate, Philippe is doomed to capture and/or death as he tries to get away -- Christine, who doesn't know, is waiting to meet him, a meeting which will inevitably reveal her involvement -- and the Phantom takes matters into his own hands. Raoul, horrified, catches up with his brother at just the wrong moment and is instantly Suspect No.1.

But given the (somewhat garbled) account of their quarrel that evening, the Germans assume that Raoul the young naval hero killed his brother *because* he had just learned that Philippe was involved in terrorist activity, and as a loyal supporter of law and order was trying to protect the family honour (and stop his brother from proposing to use his wife as an innocent dupe to pass contraband/messages). And they stage a 'cover-up' to pass Philippe's death off as an accident -- thus ensuring that not only is the traitor Comte de Chagny neatly disposed of, but his successor is kept firmly in the collaborationist camp. If Raoul subsequently shows the least sign of wavering in his loyalty to the occupiers, after all, they can simply threaten to 'expose' him as inheriting the title via the murder of his own brother: not only a capital crime, but a particularly abhorrent one...

Thus the Phantom has both rendered Raoul (and by association, his wife) above suspicion in the eyes of the Germans by causing him to appear to have killed his own brother in the name of loyalty to the regime, and also put him in the almost intolerable position of having his brother's death pinned around his neck. A situation which probably causes said Phantom no little satisfaction, although I do him the justice of assuming that he didn't actually think all this out in advance: he simply acted on the spur of the moment to save Philippe from betraying Christine.

This makes more sense both in terms of Philippe's demise -- I was never very sure how exactly his death 'in action' was going to *clear* him of suspicion! -- and in terms of the German confidence in their hold over Raoul (he will have to put up with advances being made to his wife in his presence, for example). I'm not sure that it fits very well with the idea that they dismiss Raoul as an ineffectual fop, though: surely someone who is thought to have killed a man to keep the family nose clean is a ruthless loyalist/opportunist? But they have to consider Raoul too useless to bother to guard their tongues in his presence...

Presumably he can be a nasty weak little fratricide who is only likely to act to save his own skin, and is determined to suck up to the invaders :-p

(It also provides a motivation for them not to have any servants, and thus to be exposed to the 'period' domestic worries themselves: Raoul can't risk any more Resistance activity in the apartment getting betrayed. I suspect they eat out a lot as a result :-p But they may have to hire people in to help serve when the Gestapo come round, or it will look suspicious: they are supposed to be the careless rich, after all, hand in glove with black-marketeers and anyone else who can make their lives easier at a price.)

Hmmm, I still have far too much angst-filled backstory, and not enough -- or indeed any! -- light-hearted plot...

7 Jan 2019
The other bit I remember that doesn't seem to be mentioned here anywhere is that (as hinted above) it was actually a shot-down English airman being smuggled in the bed of the lorry, they take him back to the flat for the night, he gets Christine's luxurious marital bedroom, and Christine and Raoul end up in Raoul's single bed in the dressing-room together :-p

Comments

[betweensunandmoon]

This sounds like a wonderful story!

I suspect fangirl/'fop' jokes are going to be irresistible, as I've already got Raoul playing a Sir Percy Blakeney role :-p

O.o This is bizarre, because...

1. Last month, I had a cold and was reading Mary Sue parodies to cheer myself up.

2. I also, for some masochistic reason, read a lot of old "humor" fics that weren't funny at all and made liberal use of the f-word, which made me think of the Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro.

3. My mind blended all of the above into Raoul de Chagny, fop by day and Sue-hunter by night. (It helps that Leslie Howard looks like my mental picture of Leroux!Raoul.)

4. I wrote the first chapter and posted it on fanfiction.net, but then my cold got worse, I recovered just in time for Christmas and New Year's, and two original-fiction ideas hijacked my imagination once those were over, so it hasn't been updated since.

5. I just think it's strange we had the same idea, though in different contexts.

Possibly Raoul originally tries to grow a moustache (as in canon) in order to make himself look older, and in imitation of his favourite screen swashbuckling heroes during his adolescence in the 1930s :-D

Robert Donat did have a nice mustache...

[igenlode]

I think it *would* be a wonderful story, which is why I've clung into it in my mental queue for so many years. Although the main problem with it was that it was basically all backstory and virtually no present-day plot; I never did get to grips with quite why Christine would have to go down and negotiate with the Phantom in order to help this Allied airman escape, since I don't see how blowing things up would be involved in that scenario. I have a vague feeling that it was his linguistic skills that were required -- maybe the RAF pilot was Polish and Raoul was unable to communicate with him adequately?
And I never wrote the actual escape at all, though I made mental notes during my research of the sort of 'other' Resistance exploits/scenarios one might use for future stories: the idea was that there would be a whole series of R/C Resistance fighter fics under the "Double Agents de Chagny" banner, although that got revised to the more realistic aim of maybe writing just the one shortish adventure plus the full backstory as a 'prequel' if people were interested. Which I strongly suspect, on experience, that they wouldn't be; it's practically impossible to get people interested in spin-offs of anything with a potential audience as low as that.

I think I probably linked you already to the fact that I picked Leslie Howard as my 'face-claim' for LND-Raoul in "The Choices of Raoul de Chagny" ;-)
http://ivory.vlexofree.com/Tower/Fiction/Raoul/cast.html

4. I wrote the first chapter and posted it on fanfiction.net, but then my cold got worse, I recovered just in time for Christmas and New Year's, and two original-fiction ideas hijacked my imagination once those were over, so it hasn't been updated since.
Oh, I never saw that... Unfortunately as it stands it looks like standard Mary Sue material or a parody thereof, with no sign of the caped crusader :-(
Ouch, that review! Is it for real, or did you leave it yourself as a further parody? It's so much of a cliché as to be barely believable...

[betweensunandmoon]

I hope you do figure out a plot and write it someday. :)

Oh, I never saw that... Unfortunately as it stands it looks like standard Mary Sue material or a parody thereof, with no sign of the caped crusader :-(

That's because I haven't written the next three chapters yet.

Chapter 2: Lilith wakes up in the lair and meets Erik and her fellow Sues.
Chapter 3: Raoul arrives at the opera house, witnesses the trouble the Sues are causing, and decides to do something about it.
Chapter 4: The caped-crusading starts up.

Ouch, that review! Is it for real, or did you leave it yourself as a further parody? It's so much of a cliché as to be barely believable...

It wasn't me! I don't know whether the reviewer was being sincere or got the joke and decided to play along.

[watervole]

Sounds like a fascinating project. I think half the pleasure of writing fanfic is having an excuse to do in depth research.

In order to give you some lighter moments, why not go and watch a few episodes of 'Allo Allo'

There plenty of clips on You Tube and there must be complete episodes somewhere. The French Resistance in comedy... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6qRvZe8kLQ&index=5&list=PLHN7G9IVyJ3PwzW3DFkEUjUl_4f-QKvTf

[igenlode]

I've heard of 'Allo 'Allo, like Are You Being Served and It Ain't Half Hot Mum, but I don't think I've ever seen any...
It's certainly a new take on 'research'!
(I went and read Dennis Wheatley in order to get the flavour of some 'heroic' fictional adventures under the Occupation rather than the high body-count real life ones. Alan Furst is rather more modern and downbeat.)

I've ended up doing a ridiculous amount of research for this Arctic thing, as well; just today I discovered that my invaluable 1910 encyclopaedia has an entire extra volume of maps (showing 'European Russia' extending up to the borders of Austria-Hungary and Bessarabia) and statistical tables showing the relative populations of cities of the British Empire and the times taken to journey from England to various places, and from which port. Apparently it was only reckoned to take five days to reach Iceland from London in 1910, and 55 hours to Denmark; of course my characters are travelling thirty years earlier, which makes a difference. (They're crossing the Baltic by sailing packet, for a start...)

[watervole]

I remember reading all kinds of books when researching for my Stargate fiction. And I have a friend who did a German A-level as her fandom's main characters were German.