1.2.1-Pilferingapples

Ninety Three- 1.2.1 The Corvette Claymore: England and France in Concert
Oh yeah Hugo’s defintiely rocking his identity themes this time. General King Peasant Guy cracks me up, because they’re SO CAREFUL with his costume (am I the only one who thinks that vest sounds amazing?? Embroidered goatskin! With the hair still on the back! GORGEOUS EITHER WAY ugh waistcoats in period literature will ruin me), down to finding clothes that are properly WORN,and at the same time everyone on ship sees the people technically in charge deferring and and consulting with this guy, and the crew calls him The Peasant like they’d call someone else The Captain, and OBVIOUSLY they know he’s not at all who he appears because they aren’t utterly oblivious

And then according to that last letter the enemy—whoever they may be, beyond “people who would like to not see THE ENTIRE COAST OF FRANCE ON FIRE THANK” — totally knows about the disguise, which kinda undermines the whole POINT of the disguise. Not that the disguisers know this, of course, or presumably they don’t.

But all of it together makes me wonder who the disguise is FOR— “The Peasant” certainly isn’t insecure about his own identity, and the people around him know the disguise is only aesthetic, and there are things about him (“the hands of an artistocrat”) that he just can’t hide. What’s it for, then? Plausible deniability for the crew or co-conspirators? I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW. But I know everything and everyone in this chapter is living a LIIIIIIEEEE and I’m interested to see what happens with that!

Historically— oh, geez, France and England in consort. I DO know enough Revolution History to have a Bad Feeling about this, because what “France” and England were mostly likely to be collaborating on at this point was UNDERMINING THE REVOLUTION. Well, I say undermining. INVADING THE NATION AND DEPOSING THE NON-MONARCHICAL GONVERNMENT, there. And that is of course what’s happening, and excuse me while I become partisan enough to boooo this project, BOOOOO.

Side Note: I know, I KNOW we’re talking about a ship, but..The Corvette. EVERY TIME I hit that word I get a picture of an exceptionally well-armed sports car going VRRROOOOOOOM. It has made the chapter rather more hilarious than I think could have been intended.

Commentary
Eccecorinna I think I got so distracted by the details of the Peasant’s costume (reversible vests! how nineties!) that I didn’t even think about your question of “what’s even the point?” But now that you bring it up, yeah, what IS the point?

Though, I do suppose you have the whole folkloric tradition of royalty in disguise waiting to reveal itself at a crucial moment (Odysseus disguised as a beggar, etc.) so, maybe Hugo is playing on that trope a little bit. My thoughts here are not yet fully formed, so I will let them incubate a while longer.

Side note to your side note: while your mind went forward in time, mine went back in time from corvette to the Latin corvus. The word means crow, but it’s also a giant crowbar that Romans attached to their ships, that they’d then use to attack other ships. And they’d send a bunch of their soldiers across the crowbar and have them kill the guys on the other ships. (My professor explained it as, the Romans were better at landfighting than seafighting, so they just turned sea battles into land battles.)

Anyway as a result I was picturing something way more Roman than 18th century French. But it sounds like our headcanons averaged end up in about the right era!

Pilferingapples (reply to Eccecorinna) Heh, HOW NINETIES INDEED. XD

and I hadn’t thought about about the Disguised Royalty trope! Though I think they’re going for something a bit more practical in-story, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Hugo was trying to reference that too—and even the crew in the story might be planning on playing on that a little.