More on Lancard
27 February 2019 02:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThe first thing is that he really is going to have to change his name :-(
Which at this stage is like pulling out teeth, but it needs to be done; I showed the names Lagarde and Lancard to a few people and they all agreed that they are far too visually similar. It doesn't help either that for a portion of the plot they are 'the two sick men'...
So he is going to have to change to Valéry Roncard, and I need to try to start thinking and writing of him as such. Which feels incredibly weird and wrong.
The second thing was that -- in reference to my worries about how to get rid of him -- it occurred to me to wonder if I might be able to put him into the role of the 'native guide' and general horse-wrangler/accommodation fixer etc. who plays a part in the final confrontation/reconciliation with Erik, since we've established that he speaks Norwegian! But I'm not sure that Raoul and Christine taking Lancard/Roncard on honeymoon with them feels entirely appropriate, and he doesn't really have the sort of local knowledge or fluency that would be required by the role.
I managed to work his old back injury into the account of the sinking of the Résurgence (since it was set up so carefully for this event so long in advance), even though it's not really necessary any more. In fact, it occurs to me that with the revelation that the d'Artois expedition is not an official French naval one, we don't need the whole plot point about Raoul getting himself injured during the boat journey in order to provide an excuse for his not going back to join in the rest of the rescue.... He isn't formally under d'Artois' command, and it could be said that it's actually his duty to report back to Paris rather than swanning off to the Arctic as part of yet another privately-arranged expedition :-p
Raoul and Roncard could quite happily peel off from the rest of the party and head back along the coast without needing to be invalided home.
Would it be better to leave all this out and streamline the plot? *sigh*
I've written it now (with Raoul being considered more of a silly idiot rather than a heroic rescuer, not deliberately but because that was the way events looked, as it came out), and I did have Raoul with an injured arm as a mental image in later bits of the story; when they're riding through Sweden, for example, and when he is trying to point a gun at Erik...
Having taken some but not all of the crew of the Requin to man the Résurgence actually works quite well so far as justifying their going back with d'Artois rather than the whole naval party heading for France together, especially since I split up Gavrillac and Peythieu :-p
They have a strong motive to want to go back and see their friends rescued, whereas the two young officers in the current version of the story are slightly in disgrace (for falsifying Roncard's state of physical fitness) and somewhat injured, so it makes sense that the seamen would eagerly join in with the fresh expedition while the officers are sent home.
And again, having d'Artois' expedition as a private affair rather than a governmental enterprise makes it more credible that the news of their rescue doesn't reach the ears of Comte Philippe, or that he does hear about the reappearance of d'Artois but not about the handful of survivors from the Requin -- since d'Artois' report to his backers will be all about the success or otherwise of his expedition and the data they've managed to find, rather than the attempted but failed outside rescue bid. In fact if the Comte gets the d'Artois news and is painfully reminded by it of the loss of Raoul, that would account for his hiding himself away in the country, instead of the necessity to hypothesise that he had hidden himself away in the country in order to ensure that he didn't hear the general rejoicing :-p
I think d'Artois can probably still ask Raoul to carry a 'dispatch' back to France with him -- he will want to make a full report at a length which really can't be carried out by means of telegrams, and travelling directly there should be at least as quick and reliable as the post.
Which at this stage is like pulling out teeth, but it needs to be done; I showed the names Lagarde and Lancard to a few people and they all agreed that they are far too visually similar. It doesn't help either that for a portion of the plot they are 'the two sick men'...
So he is going to have to change to Valéry Roncard, and I need to try to start thinking and writing of him as such. Which feels incredibly weird and wrong.
The second thing was that -- in reference to my worries about how to get rid of him -- it occurred to me to wonder if I might be able to put him into the role of the 'native guide' and general horse-wrangler/accommodation fixer etc. who plays a part in the final confrontation/reconciliation with Erik, since we've established that he speaks Norwegian! But I'm not sure that Raoul and Christine taking Lancard/Roncard on honeymoon with them feels entirely appropriate, and he doesn't really have the sort of local knowledge or fluency that would be required by the role.
I managed to work his old back injury into the account of the sinking of the Résurgence (since it was set up so carefully for this event so long in advance), even though it's not really necessary any more. In fact, it occurs to me that with the revelation that the d'Artois expedition is not an official French naval one, we don't need the whole plot point about Raoul getting himself injured during the boat journey in order to provide an excuse for his not going back to join in the rest of the rescue.... He isn't formally under d'Artois' command, and it could be said that it's actually his duty to report back to Paris rather than swanning off to the Arctic as part of yet another privately-arranged expedition :-p
Raoul and Roncard could quite happily peel off from the rest of the party and head back along the coast without needing to be invalided home.
Would it be better to leave all this out and streamline the plot? *sigh*
I've written it now (with Raoul being considered more of a silly idiot rather than a heroic rescuer, not deliberately but because that was the way events looked, as it came out), and I did have Raoul with an injured arm as a mental image in later bits of the story; when they're riding through Sweden, for example, and when he is trying to point a gun at Erik...
Having taken some but not all of the crew of the Requin to man the Résurgence actually works quite well so far as justifying their going back with d'Artois rather than the whole naval party heading for France together, especially since I split up Gavrillac and Peythieu :-p
They have a strong motive to want to go back and see their friends rescued, whereas the two young officers in the current version of the story are slightly in disgrace (for falsifying Roncard's state of physical fitness) and somewhat injured, so it makes sense that the seamen would eagerly join in with the fresh expedition while the officers are sent home.
And again, having d'Artois' expedition as a private affair rather than a governmental enterprise makes it more credible that the news of their rescue doesn't reach the ears of Comte Philippe, or that he does hear about the reappearance of d'Artois but not about the handful of survivors from the Requin -- since d'Artois' report to his backers will be all about the success or otherwise of his expedition and the data they've managed to find, rather than the attempted but failed outside rescue bid. In fact if the Comte gets the d'Artois news and is painfully reminded by it of the loss of Raoul, that would account for his hiding himself away in the country, instead of the necessity to hypothesise that he had hidden himself away in the country in order to ensure that he didn't hear the general rejoicing :-p
I think d'Artois can probably still ask Raoul to carry a 'dispatch' back to France with him -- he will want to make a full report at a length which really can't be carried out by means of telegrams, and travelling directly there should be at least as quick and reliable as the post.