1.2.2-Kingedmundsroyalmurder

ClubNinetyThree 1.2.2
So… this was a chapter. A chapter definitely just happened, yep. There were words and paragraphs and punctuation marks over several pages. And some stealth-spy-explosion-secrets stuff happened too. I am… not entirely awake yet can you tell?

Okay, being serious, we’re clearly setting the scene here. I actually appreciate these kinds of chapters, because they do make the payoff more satisfying. I like sequential stuff, and it’s nice to not have to try and cram in both background and payoff in one shot. Hugo has the leeway to take a chapter and go, “This is what is happening, this is where we are, this is who I would like you to believe the major players will be, and also have a teaser for things to come” and I like that. Plus it lends itself to pretty writing, which pretty predictably makes me go all metaphorically weak in the knees. There’s nothing unbearably breathtaking that I noticed, but I liked this paragraph a lot:

Le soleil s’était bien couché; la nuit était noire, plus que ne le sont d’ordinaire les nuits d’été; c’était une nuit de lune, mais de vastes nuages, plutôt de l’équinoxe que du solstice, plafonnaient le ciel, et, selon toute apparence, la lune ne serait visible que lorsqu’elle toucherait l’horizon, au moment de son coucher. Quelques nuées pendaient jusque sur la mer et la couvraient de brume. (The sun had definitely set; the night was black, more than usual for summer nights; it was a night of moonlight, but vast clouds, more of equinox than solstice, formed a ceiling in the sky and, by all appearances, the moon would be visible only when it touched the horizon at the moment of its setting. A few clouds hung atop the sea and covered it with fog.)

We seem to have moved away from thematic deceptions into actual sneaking around — the warship pretending to be a merchant ship is now a warship pretending not to exist, while the peasant-who-isn’t now not only isn’t named but can’t be named.

That’s particularly interesting because we’ve gotten a lot of names in these two chapters. The shift from titles to names was talked about over on the DW com, and it makes the peasant-who-isn’t’s careful guarding of his own name stand out even more. In 1.1, calling a man only “the peasant” and “the man” wouldn’t have stood out; in these chapters it’s immediately noticeable. (It’s also interesting because usually when Hugo does this kind of thing he’s not concealing the name from the audience just choosing not to use it to underscore the thematic point he’s trying to make. This time the characters know things the audience doesn’t, things that the audience is explicitly shut out from knowing. We have lost our position as privileged insiders, and I don’t know where either I or Hugo am going with this but it’s noticeable.)

Not that we’re being allowed to forget that he’s not a peasant, of course. Even setting aside the chocolate and the teeth, which both scream out rich if not aristocrat, we get a reminder that this man was addressed as “general” and “cousin” by prominent men before setting off. He is Not As He Seems and both he and Hugo seem far more invested in concealing the truth of which aristocrat he is than the truth that he is one at all. (Which, given some stories of French Revolution aristocrats trying to pass themselves off as peasants, is probably for the best, really. The hands and the lack of practical knowledge will get you every time.)

I do have to say though, the conversation at the end feels very As You Know Bob. It’s not a terribly egregious example, but it doesn’t really flow as a real conversation, short as it is. Though I do like how the peasant-who-isn’t is part of this quasi-death pact, what with promising to take his name to his grave should he meet it before completing his mission. I assume the mission in question is the setting France on fire thing mentioned last chapter, so this will be fun. (I am going to venture to suggest that the man will not be guillotined, but I don’t know how much this book is going to deal with the whole ‘war sucks and death sucks and let me kill a bunch of characters you thought were protagonists to prove it’ George R. R. Martin thing so I can’t confidently predict anything.)

Commentary
Fizzygingr Oh man I keep forgetting there are whole other discussions happening on DW. I might just not read them for now, because there are SO MANY POSTS already.

Anyway, yeah, Hugo’s definitely doing something with this guy’s name and identity. We know how he presents himself: very transparent peasant disguise, no name. But we don’t know how he sees himself, or what name he calls himself, or if his face has molded to his mask. I’m interested to see where Hugo goes with this.

(Please nag me to write a post for today, because I have more to say on the subject.)

Kingedmundsroyalmurder (reply to Fizzygingr) Basically all the DW stuff has been crossposting from tumblr and short comments so far, so as of right now it’s not too hard to keep up with. We shall see how this all shakes out as we settle in more.

(And you should totally write your post for today because I’m intrigued with where you’re going with this and I want to hear your thoughts!)