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A new fanfic
I've definitely started a new story now (several days' steady progress :-D)
Based on the idea of writing Philippe de Chagny's last moments as he searches vainly for his brother beneath the Opera, but it's basically a retelling of the relationship between the brothers de Chagny from Raoul's conception onwards, the whole thing being done in flashback. (And in consequence all in the perfect tense, which is getting a bit awkward.) I'd hoped to write this while I was on holiday, and took a pen and notebook with me, but I never really got enough peace of mind until the last day when I did a solo walk... and came up with about half of it there and then, establishing the rest over the next couple of days. Giving Raoul's older brother something of an Œdipus complex was an interesting explanation as to why he hasn't married (and not one of the two or three I'd previously come up with!), and also as to why he resents Christine so much (Raoul is effectively desecrating their mother's memory by putting this hussy in her place). It was an unintended offshoot of the idea that it might be more interesting to have a domineering mother and an ineffectual father, though, since by default people assume that Raoul takes after a gentle mother...
I'm enjoying revisiting Philippe, although this is not a 'prequel' to Count Philippe Takes a Hand, and it's a rather more emotionally open and less cynical version -- he is effectively in the position of remembering his mistakes (not that he would admit that most of them are mistakes) rather than being in command of himself and in control of the situation. I've also deliberately chosen a different name for the elderly aunt with whom Raoul spends the summer in order to indicate that this isn't the same continuity as Teach Me to Live either; there turn out to be quite a lot of little inconsistencies in the detail of what Leroux tells us of Raoul's early years, and one of them is that the aunt supposedly lives in Brest but is said to be staying with Raoul in Lannion on that occasion -- so this can't be the same aunt as the one who is assumed in my other story to be living in Lannion! (Brest is a good fifty miles from Perros-Guirec even as the crow flies, which conveniently explains why Raoul didn't get to see Christine again the next summer: if his aunt had gone back to her home in Brest, this made it a very different proposition from walking or driving over from Lannion, only six miles away by road.)
Other chronology issues: Raoul is looked after first by his sisters and then by his aunt after his father dies. His sisters don't marry until after the death of Comte Philibert, therefore cannot -- unless they married relatively late in life -- have been very close in age to Philippe, who can be calculated to have been thirty-two when he inherited. But Raoul is implied to have been a last, late child, and his sisters were certainly old enough to 'mother' him...
Raoul cannot have been much more than twelve when he met Christine; in fact, the way he is described makes both children sound rather younger, but they are teenagers three years later so must have been immature for their age. Not implausible, given their rather unusual upbringings. However, he is said to have been twelve when his father died, so is apparently already living with his aunt as of that summer: his sisters evidently only looked after him very briefly, presumably marrying in unseemly haste as soon as they had the opportunity :-p
(I have hypothesised that the old Comte effectively had the whole family immured in the country after the demise of his wife, with Philippe the only one to be a free agent before their father's death...)
Likewise, the sisters are stated to have declined their portions of the estate, leaving these under Philippe's care, and only received their share as dowry when they married; but this really doesn't leave very much time for Philippe to act as steward, if they married before the next summer! (I've tried to fudge this one by having Comte Philibert suffer a disabling stroke, thus effectively putting Philippe in control of the estate a couple of years before he legally inherited.)
And Raoul was evidently living with the Daaé household, or at least staying overnight in Perros-Guirec, since he is described at least twice as being in Christine's company after dark -- the boy cannot have been listening to ghost stories in the twilight or chasing fairies under the moon (in the summer months, with dusk late in the evening!) and then travelling back to his aunt's house in Lannion on a regular basis over lonely roads by night, surely? (With his governess? Without his governess? I can't see it being allowed.)
I've guessed that he and the governess were allowed to stay at the inn overnight on at least some occasions (seems more likely than having him actually move in with Christine), and implied that Raoul was sneaking out illicitly for fairy-hunting expeditions :-p
I realised belatedly that having Philippe show up at Perros-Guirec and meet Christine (not in Leroux) raises a few issues as to why he never makes the connection with Raoul's childhood when the brothers witness her triumph at the famous gala evening :-( But since the whole story is seen through his eyes I need him to be on the spot at least once...
So I'm 'softening' the original plan a little to remove the element whereby Philippe deliberately plans to prevent a recurrence of Raoul's obsessive summer spent at Perros-Guirec, in a conscious attempt to break the connection. He barely notices Christine at all (most of his interaction is with Professor Valerius, who is barely mentioned but definitely stated by Leroux to be present; a nice respectable personage in Philippe's eyes!), and splitting up the two children is simply a natural consequence of the boy's being assumed to have developed more adult interests (e.g. the navy).
Thus Philippe really doesn't remember Christine or her father when she first shows up again -- or presumably, until Raoul himself prompts him at some stage. He's pleased that Raoul has got himself a girl, and presumably he wouldn't be pleased if he'd realised that it was someone Raoul had in the past been attached to, since this potentially messes up a nice mercenary relationship.
I don't have a name at all for this story yet, let alone a teaser/summary. Fortunately the former will only be a problem when I need to create a computer file to type it into (all safely on paper at this stage) and the latter is only an issue when it comes to the final publication stage... I was intending to do this as a 'one-shot', but it's currently looking more as if it's going to extend over a couple of chapters.
Eight pages so far (about 4,000 words), and I'm just finishing with Perros-Guirec; that leaves me with Raoul's visit to Christine as a teenager (which Philippe knows nothing about until his brother tells him in the midst of a quarrel a few days earlier), a mention of his naval career and Philippe's hopes in that regard, Philippe's discovery of his plans for elopment that evening (Raoul pawns his mother's earrings to pay for it; more insult added to injury) and just how the Comte ended up down in the cellars after lighting out for Brussels. Possibly the material that originally fitted somewhere earlier discussing Philippe's impatience for Raoul's sexual initiation, his own formative experiences with a lusty peasant's wife, and his realisation that Raoul would run a mile from anything of the sort and ought to have been set up with some bored society matron -- but I can't remember what reflections on the Comte's part originally led to this (it was definitely at some point in the plot which I've now passed) and I'm not sure it fits with the tone of the piece as it now stands: it's more akin to a left-over from "Philippe Takes a Hand", really.
The inevitable end of the story being the Siren's song and the hands which lunge out of the water and drown the protagonist, naturally :-(
My current thinking is that Erik is humming the tune from Schubert's "Lazarus" which he played to Christine in the graveyard; Philippe recognises this from Raoul's description of the scene, and is hypnotised into picturing himself present in that memory; when the Phantom seizes him by the throat, Philippe subconsciously associates this with the embrace of a younger Raoul and doesn't struggle against him. So a sort of bittersweet ending; the whole original point of the story, after all, was that Philippe really does love Raoul, however complicated and confusing their relationship has been over the years...
Based on the idea of writing Philippe de Chagny's last moments as he searches vainly for his brother beneath the Opera, but it's basically a retelling of the relationship between the brothers de Chagny from Raoul's conception onwards, the whole thing being done in flashback. (And in consequence all in the perfect tense, which is getting a bit awkward.) I'd hoped to write this while I was on holiday, and took a pen and notebook with me, but I never really got enough peace of mind until the last day when I did a solo walk... and came up with about half of it there and then, establishing the rest over the next couple of days. Giving Raoul's older brother something of an Œdipus complex was an interesting explanation as to why he hasn't married (and not one of the two or three I'd previously come up with!), and also as to why he resents Christine so much (Raoul is effectively desecrating their mother's memory by putting this hussy in her place). It was an unintended offshoot of the idea that it might be more interesting to have a domineering mother and an ineffectual father, though, since by default people assume that Raoul takes after a gentle mother...
I'm enjoying revisiting Philippe, although this is not a 'prequel' to Count Philippe Takes a Hand, and it's a rather more emotionally open and less cynical version -- he is effectively in the position of remembering his mistakes (not that he would admit that most of them are mistakes) rather than being in command of himself and in control of the situation. I've also deliberately chosen a different name for the elderly aunt with whom Raoul spends the summer in order to indicate that this isn't the same continuity as Teach Me to Live either; there turn out to be quite a lot of little inconsistencies in the detail of what Leroux tells us of Raoul's early years, and one of them is that the aunt supposedly lives in Brest but is said to be staying with Raoul in Lannion on that occasion -- so this can't be the same aunt as the one who is assumed in my other story to be living in Lannion! (Brest is a good fifty miles from Perros-Guirec even as the crow flies, which conveniently explains why Raoul didn't get to see Christine again the next summer: if his aunt had gone back to her home in Brest, this made it a very different proposition from walking or driving over from Lannion, only six miles away by road.)
Other chronology issues: Raoul is looked after first by his sisters and then by his aunt after his father dies. His sisters don't marry until after the death of Comte Philibert, therefore cannot -- unless they married relatively late in life -- have been very close in age to Philippe, who can be calculated to have been thirty-two when he inherited. But Raoul is implied to have been a last, late child, and his sisters were certainly old enough to 'mother' him...
Raoul cannot have been much more than twelve when he met Christine; in fact, the way he is described makes both children sound rather younger, but they are teenagers three years later so must have been immature for their age. Not implausible, given their rather unusual upbringings. However, he is said to have been twelve when his father died, so is apparently already living with his aunt as of that summer: his sisters evidently only looked after him very briefly, presumably marrying in unseemly haste as soon as they had the opportunity :-p
(I have hypothesised that the old Comte effectively had the whole family immured in the country after the demise of his wife, with Philippe the only one to be a free agent before their father's death...)
Likewise, the sisters are stated to have declined their portions of the estate, leaving these under Philippe's care, and only received their share as dowry when they married; but this really doesn't leave very much time for Philippe to act as steward, if they married before the next summer! (I've tried to fudge this one by having Comte Philibert suffer a disabling stroke, thus effectively putting Philippe in control of the estate a couple of years before he legally inherited.)
And Raoul was evidently living with the Daaé household, or at least staying overnight in Perros-Guirec, since he is described at least twice as being in Christine's company after dark -- the boy cannot have been listening to ghost stories in the twilight or chasing fairies under the moon (in the summer months, with dusk late in the evening!) and then travelling back to his aunt's house in Lannion on a regular basis over lonely roads by night, surely? (With his governess? Without his governess? I can't see it being allowed.)
I've guessed that he and the governess were allowed to stay at the inn overnight on at least some occasions (seems more likely than having him actually move in with Christine), and implied that Raoul was sneaking out illicitly for fairy-hunting expeditions :-p
I realised belatedly that having Philippe show up at Perros-Guirec and meet Christine (not in Leroux) raises a few issues as to why he never makes the connection with Raoul's childhood when the brothers witness her triumph at the famous gala evening :-( But since the whole story is seen through his eyes I need him to be on the spot at least once...
So I'm 'softening' the original plan a little to remove the element whereby Philippe deliberately plans to prevent a recurrence of Raoul's obsessive summer spent at Perros-Guirec, in a conscious attempt to break the connection. He barely notices Christine at all (most of his interaction is with Professor Valerius, who is barely mentioned but definitely stated by Leroux to be present; a nice respectable personage in Philippe's eyes!), and splitting up the two children is simply a natural consequence of the boy's being assumed to have developed more adult interests (e.g. the navy).
Thus Philippe really doesn't remember Christine or her father when she first shows up again -- or presumably, until Raoul himself prompts him at some stage. He's pleased that Raoul has got himself a girl, and presumably he wouldn't be pleased if he'd realised that it was someone Raoul had in the past been attached to, since this potentially messes up a nice mercenary relationship.
I don't have a name at all for this story yet, let alone a teaser/summary. Fortunately the former will only be a problem when I need to create a computer file to type it into (all safely on paper at this stage) and the latter is only an issue when it comes to the final publication stage... I was intending to do this as a 'one-shot', but it's currently looking more as if it's going to extend over a couple of chapters.
Eight pages so far (about 4,000 words), and I'm just finishing with Perros-Guirec; that leaves me with Raoul's visit to Christine as a teenager (which Philippe knows nothing about until his brother tells him in the midst of a quarrel a few days earlier), a mention of his naval career and Philippe's hopes in that regard, Philippe's discovery of his plans for elopment that evening (Raoul pawns his mother's earrings to pay for it; more insult added to injury) and just how the Comte ended up down in the cellars after lighting out for Brussels. Possibly the material that originally fitted somewhere earlier discussing Philippe's impatience for Raoul's sexual initiation, his own formative experiences with a lusty peasant's wife, and his realisation that Raoul would run a mile from anything of the sort and ought to have been set up with some bored society matron -- but I can't remember what reflections on the Comte's part originally led to this (it was definitely at some point in the plot which I've now passed) and I'm not sure it fits with the tone of the piece as it now stands: it's more akin to a left-over from "Philippe Takes a Hand", really.
The inevitable end of the story being the Siren's song and the hands which lunge out of the water and drown the protagonist, naturally :-(
My current thinking is that Erik is humming the tune from Schubert's "Lazarus" which he played to Christine in the graveyard; Philippe recognises this from Raoul's description of the scene, and is hypnotised into picturing himself present in that memory; when the Phantom seizes him by the throat, Philippe subconsciously associates this with the embrace of a younger Raoul and doesn't struggle against him. So a sort of bittersweet ending; the whole original point of the story, after all, was that Philippe really does love Raoul, however complicated and confusing their relationship has been over the years...