demmed sequels

[bronze_ribbons]

I was warned, but I had to look anyway [at the sequels to The Scarlet Pimpernel], and was I sorry: for me, one of the main draws of the first book was the overwhelming sense of suppressed passion - Percy being as madly in love with Marguerite as she becomes with him but unable to show it openly until the very end.

So, Marguerite's angst in the later episodes about playing second fiddle to Percy's addiction to adventure - it's a theme I might find intriguing in some other universe but most unwelcome chez Richmond. It thoroughly undercuts the balance of the first book, where Marguerite at least seems capable of appreciating Percy's compulsion to rescue Robespierre's targets.

It could be argued, of course, that she is as utterly self-absorbed in the first book as in the rest - that even when she hurries to Calais to save him, it's all about how devastated she will be if he dies not knowing that she does indeed return his love. But I would rather see Marguerite as the partner who discovers she "would gladly die for him, and with him" and who would have been appalled at the thought of placing herself above his vocation. I would rather envision Marguerite's cleverness and courage being of infinite use to the League. I would rather cleave to the declaration at the end of The Scarlet Pimpernel:

The rest is silence!--silence and joy for those who had endured so much suffering, yet found at last a great and lasting happiness.

Sigh. There are other things, too, but the gist is that the first book works for me as a stand-alone fairy tale; the sequels feel more like cartoons (which, to be fair, is perhaps all any of them were ever intended to be). It's like eating an eclair filled with real custard and chasing it with a bunch of cream puffs filled with synthetic whipped cream. Sigh.

(What's also true is that I'm a huge sucker for hero-disguising-his-true-worth storylines - Kathleen Woodiwiss's A Rose in Winter and Shanna, to list but two ...)