1.2.1-Acegrantaire

England and France in Concert
okay, this chapter is short! I might be able to do this!

The name of this part of the book makes a lot more sense now! We have arrived on a ship! Yay!

Okay, my first note—the Claymore is presumably leaving on orders, and yet goes out in weather that is specifically noted to be “favorable to flight because pursuit is rendered dangerous.” Which is interesting. Is this just Hugo trying to show how thick the fog is? Or is this an implication that some pursuit might be showing up soon? Given the last line of the chapter, I’m inclined towards the latter but WHO KNOWS? NOT ME.

Second note: I actually understood a lot of the stuff being said about the ship courtesy of having read WAY TOO MUCH science fiction. Anyway, this bluff of corvette-as-merchantman shows up in sf a lot, but I’m not sure how easy such a trick is to pull off in reality. Is Claymore unique, or at least rare? Is she not unusual? Is she rare only because people don’t want enemies learning her tricks? Certainly she doesn’t seem to be an easy ship to mimic, given her rudder is peculiar, which might mean she’s strange in other ways.

Also her carronades are very securely fastened below deck, but Hugo doesn’t say whether that’s because of the ship being subtle or a storm coming, leading me to think it might very well be both. However, she has a crew that is clearly said to be very skilled, so my assumption is that even if they run into storms on their passage, Claymore and her crew and her passenger will be just fine.

On to the passenger, since I’ve brought him up. In some ways, I feel like the fact his disguise is so perfect is going to get him into trouble. Maybe not be recognizable, but it’s just enough to make someone suspicious. Plus, given that he’s a general, with the “hands of an aristorcrat” I don’t imagine he moves right for the person he is intended to be portraying. ACTING IS NOT JUST COSTUMES.

I do like the way that Hugo gives us this passenger and lets us figure out the fact he’s not at all a peasant.

AND THEN THERE ARE THE LAST LINES OF THE CHAPTER. Which were a bit startling, tbh. But with the title of the chapter, it makes me think that there’s an element of not just the personal, but the nationally political in that order to guillotine the man. Much of this is caused by how Gelambre says that the “whole coast will be on fire.”

This is an English vessel designed to deceive, but with a French crew. Her passenger is a disguised general who is going to be executed. HMM HOW COULD THIS POSSIBLY GO WRONG. I don’t even know who a bunch of the people mentioned here are, and I can still see how this would cause problems.