The Choices of Raoul de Chagny: Ch.1

Finished! It's finished! It just needs typing out of manuscript status... lots of typing... Oh, and it needs the Epilogue writing as well, but that will be quite a bit more work; it was busy trying to write itself this afternoon in advance of the necessary research, which is not really the right way round to do things -- never mind how little of the 'research' is likely actually to register in the finished chapter...

And so here, in its first-draft status and subject to potential tweaking later on (but probably not very much, unless I encounter serious structural problems) is the first typed chapter of my attempt to write a legitimate alternative outcome to "Love Never Dies", without cheating: all the problems and inconsistencies created by Andrew Lloyd Webber have to be included and whipped into some kind of psychological probability, whether I like them or not :-D

Continuity is Lloyd Webber ("Phantom of the Opera"/"Love Never Dies") with sizeable helpings of the Leroux novel for the backstory where not actively contradicted in the musicals: the only thing I have deliberately changed here is that Raoul's parents both died (as in Leroux) while he was still a boy (although as per Lloyd Webber, he holds the title of Vicomte and not Comte de Chagny!) Specifically, the story is dated very precisely to 1907, which is supposedly the setting for "Love Never Dies" (whether or not this is consistent with the time-period for "Phantom"...) It is also tied definitely to the events and lyrics of the original London production, rather than the revised version -- largely because a number of the specific lines I referenced here were among those subsequently removed in revision. I suspect this may lend some significance to the colossal struggles I had in getting this stuff to work together!

( Chapter 1: What Little We Deserve )