More Yellow Poppy thoughts
12 May 2024 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeIt occurred to me to wonder belatedly what Christian name Gaston de Trélan is using under his pseudonym of 'the Marquis de Kersaint'. Obviously none of his subordinates actually refer to him by it, just as nobody ever uses de Brencourt's personal name, but the latter -- judging by Lucien's "short but very venomous epistle in verse, beginning Artus, le Judas de nos jours!" -- very definitely is a matter of public knowledge, even if no-one would ever dream of using it, so I'm guessing that in de Kersaint's official commission from the Comte d'Artois, for example, a full name rather than merely a title would have been expected. He and the Abbé Chassin, while observing the usage of "M. le Marquis" and "Abbé" when addressing one another in public, are "Gaston" and "Pierre" in private, and although they are careful not to let their relationship slip (de Brencourt guesses that the Abbé is "deep, as he always suspected, in de Kersaint's confidence", but has no idea until the very end that the little priest was the foster-brother of the Duc de Trélan), it would seem a wise precaution to keep the same name in case of just such a slip or overhearing.
Unlike "Artus" or many of the Duc's other assorted Christian names ("Gaston-Henri-Hippolyte-Gabriel-Eléonor"), "Gaston" is not particularly distinctive or memorable, after all, and it is not a matter of high security but merely of personal pride that obscures his identity -- indeed the Abbé himself advises his foster-brother early on simply to tell de Brencourt who he really is, on the assumption that the achievements of 'the hero of Rivoli' must expiate any dishonour attached to his old existence. So it seems to me quite likely that Gaston de Saint-Chamans, Duc de Trélan, has simply become the Marquis "Gaston de Kersaint"... which would be entirely unremarkable unless suspicions of his identity should actually arise, at which point it would become very significant indeed. (So much so, in fact, that I feel de Brencourt undoubtedly *would* have listed it mentally among his grounds for suspicion, which tends on the other hand to argue against the case!)
Of course the truth is that the author never considered the matter :-p
The other thing I wonder is just how fatal, with hindsight, his resuming his true identity proved to be (foreshadowing: "it might some day mean Gaston's life if the Directory knew who he really was"). It seems to have been a pretty open secret after Valentine's arrival, since she is known to everyone as the Duchesse de Trélan and as the commander's wife, but one of the subsequent grounds for disregarding the safe-conduct is that "that man who organised Finistère, de Kersaint" has turned out to be "a ci-devant of the ci-devants; no less than the Duc de Trélan, in fact. Brune let that out too; Fouché, it seems, discovered it. So he would be worth capturing". He is sentenced to death as "an émigré taken in arms", on the same grounds as La Vireville and the rest after Quiberon: as a noble who had emigrated and then failed to return or avow allegiance to the lawful government of France (as Quentin de Morlaix manages to do, with the aid of a bit of bribery, in order to take up his 'inheritance' in "The Marquis of Carabas", and as Roland's father the Vicomte de Céligny and his grandfather M. de Carné, who remain in residence upon their property, have presumably done). In other words, the execution is able to take place purely and simply because he *is* now known to be the ci-devant Duc de Trélan ("monsieur heretofore the Duke", as Dickens translates the expression), even though in public, e.g. at the peace conference at Poancé and when addressed in front of his men by Mme de la Vergne --who as Valentine's hostess is perfectly well aware of his identity-- he is still participating in the war as "the Marquis de Kersaint". Which indeed is the name on the infamous safe-conduct!
On the other hand, since this is merely the nominal excuse for disposing of him and his true offence is that of being too obdurate in his resistance against the Royalist surrender, another rationale for the death sentence would undoubtedly have been found even if he had managed to preserve his incognito from the investigations of Fouché's secret police. And the Marquis de Kersaint, who famously fought against Revolutionary France under the Austrian banner, would be presumably every bit as much 'an émigré taken in arms' as anyone else :-(
I uploaded "The Remorse of Others" to AO3 on the 3rd of May, where it has reached a new low of zero page hits (even lower than my snippets of ancient original work, or my opera-fic, or the Gigi story where there was no pre-existing fandom). I suppose that makes a sort of sense in that an original work might conceivably be of stand-alone interest, whereas work in an unknown fandom can affect only those who already care about the characters, but to be fair it probably says more about my summary being completely opaque to anyone who doesn't know the original novel...
(It's not that people haven't been reading my *other* work during that same period, though; so they presumably have been looking at my profile page, just not clicking through to that particular fic!)
I mean, I wasn't all that pleased with it myself (which hasn't stopped me worrying away over that other idea, which I'm not all that happy with either but may now at last be writable, since I yesterday discovered a conclusion!), but since literally nobody read it, they wouldn't be in a position to know whether it was any good or not. So I would guess that it is (a) the summary, (b) the length, which is a bit much to jump into as a blind taster, and (c) the complete obscurity of the fandom... I did get 10 page hits on the same story on fanction.net, but that one I 'advertised' on the Writers Anonymous forum, so people will at least have had to click on it before rejecting it there!
Email notifications are down *again* on FFNet; I have had two PMs there which I didn't know about, and it looks as if I may have had a number of reviews. Unfortunately with sixty or so stories uploaded there it is a bit difficult to tell if there are new reviews on any of the old ones without clicking through to every single published story, which I can only do while at the library.
I discovered a belated review on the final chapter of Hertha from the new fan I acquired over a year ago (of course, when notifications are down, given that I update so infrequently *she* only discovers the existence of my new work if and when she actually goes to the trouble of actively checking on me, which is more than I do for any story/author I 'follow'!) And I discovered that I had received a big bulge in views from a reader in Austria who is presumably not EMK81 (whose "Gefangene der Angst" I still ought to be working on, having actually had enquiries on that!), and at least two reviews both written by one user, presumably this same reader, on recently-posted stories of mine. I don't know if she has reviewed anything else, as I ran out of time to check after spending twenty minutes or so in responding to the first review and hadn't expected to then encounter a second, but it is quite possible that she represents another enthused 'new fan'.
(So I really have no right to complain...)
Unfortunately she has a big message at the top of her profile talking about 'reviews being app-to-app only as of the announcement of April 2024' -- or words to that effect; as ever, I can't actually access the FFnet site from here -- which, whether true or not, implies that she is reading via the 'FFnet app', meaning that she won't receive any review replies I send her via the original website :-(
Unlike "Artus" or many of the Duc's other assorted Christian names ("Gaston-Henri-Hippolyte-Gabriel-Eléonor"), "Gaston" is not particularly distinctive or memorable, after all, and it is not a matter of high security but merely of personal pride that obscures his identity -- indeed the Abbé himself advises his foster-brother early on simply to tell de Brencourt who he really is, on the assumption that the achievements of 'the hero of Rivoli' must expiate any dishonour attached to his old existence. So it seems to me quite likely that Gaston de Saint-Chamans, Duc de Trélan, has simply become the Marquis "Gaston de Kersaint"... which would be entirely unremarkable unless suspicions of his identity should actually arise, at which point it would become very significant indeed. (So much so, in fact, that I feel de Brencourt undoubtedly *would* have listed it mentally among his grounds for suspicion, which tends on the other hand to argue against the case!)
Of course the truth is that the author never considered the matter :-p
The other thing I wonder is just how fatal, with hindsight, his resuming his true identity proved to be (foreshadowing: "it might some day mean Gaston's life if the Directory knew who he really was"). It seems to have been a pretty open secret after Valentine's arrival, since she is known to everyone as the Duchesse de Trélan and as the commander's wife, but one of the subsequent grounds for disregarding the safe-conduct is that "that man who organised Finistère, de Kersaint" has turned out to be "a ci-devant of the ci-devants; no less than the Duc de Trélan, in fact. Brune let that out too; Fouché, it seems, discovered it. So he would be worth capturing". He is sentenced to death as "an émigré taken in arms", on the same grounds as La Vireville and the rest after Quiberon: as a noble who had emigrated and then failed to return or avow allegiance to the lawful government of France (as Quentin de Morlaix manages to do, with the aid of a bit of bribery, in order to take up his 'inheritance' in "The Marquis of Carabas", and as Roland's father the Vicomte de Céligny and his grandfather M. de Carné, who remain in residence upon their property, have presumably done). In other words, the execution is able to take place purely and simply because he *is* now known to be the ci-devant Duc de Trélan ("monsieur heretofore the Duke", as Dickens translates the expression), even though in public, e.g. at the peace conference at Poancé and when addressed in front of his men by Mme de la Vergne --who as Valentine's hostess is perfectly well aware of his identity-- he is still participating in the war as "the Marquis de Kersaint". Which indeed is the name on the infamous safe-conduct!
On the other hand, since this is merely the nominal excuse for disposing of him and his true offence is that of being too obdurate in his resistance against the Royalist surrender, another rationale for the death sentence would undoubtedly have been found even if he had managed to preserve his incognito from the investigations of Fouché's secret police. And the Marquis de Kersaint, who famously fought against Revolutionary France under the Austrian banner, would be presumably every bit as much 'an émigré taken in arms' as anyone else :-(
I uploaded "The Remorse of Others" to AO3 on the 3rd of May, where it has reached a new low of zero page hits (even lower than my snippets of ancient original work, or my opera-fic, or the Gigi story where there was no pre-existing fandom). I suppose that makes a sort of sense in that an original work might conceivably be of stand-alone interest, whereas work in an unknown fandom can affect only those who already care about the characters, but to be fair it probably says more about my summary being completely opaque to anyone who doesn't know the original novel...
(It's not that people haven't been reading my *other* work during that same period, though; so they presumably have been looking at my profile page, just not clicking through to that particular fic!)
I mean, I wasn't all that pleased with it myself (which hasn't stopped me worrying away over that other idea, which I'm not all that happy with either but may now at last be writable, since I yesterday discovered a conclusion!), but since literally nobody read it, they wouldn't be in a position to know whether it was any good or not. So I would guess that it is (a) the summary, (b) the length, which is a bit much to jump into as a blind taster, and (c) the complete obscurity of the fandom... I did get 10 page hits on the same story on fanction.net, but that one I 'advertised' on the Writers Anonymous forum, so people will at least have had to click on it before rejecting it there!
Email notifications are down *again* on FFNet; I have had two PMs there which I didn't know about, and it looks as if I may have had a number of reviews. Unfortunately with sixty or so stories uploaded there it is a bit difficult to tell if there are new reviews on any of the old ones without clicking through to every single published story, which I can only do while at the library.
I discovered a belated review on the final chapter of Hertha from the new fan I acquired over a year ago (of course, when notifications are down, given that I update so infrequently *she* only discovers the existence of my new work if and when she actually goes to the trouble of actively checking on me, which is more than I do for any story/author I 'follow'!) And I discovered that I had received a big bulge in views from a reader in Austria who is presumably not EMK81 (whose "Gefangene der Angst" I still ought to be working on, having actually had enquiries on that!), and at least two reviews both written by one user, presumably this same reader, on recently-posted stories of mine. I don't know if she has reviewed anything else, as I ran out of time to check after spending twenty minutes or so in responding to the first review and hadn't expected to then encounter a second, but it is quite possible that she represents another enthused 'new fan'.
(So I really have no right to complain...)
Unfortunately she has a big message at the top of her profile talking about 'reviews being app-to-app only as of the announcement of April 2024' -- or words to that effect; as ever, I can't actually access the FFnet site from here -- which, whether true or not, implies that she is reading via the 'FFnet app', meaning that she won't receive any review replies I send her via the original website :-(