VIII: Pimpernel
On the nature of superhero stories.
Good morning. Today is octidi, the 18th of Ventôse, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate le mouron, a weedy little flower that indicates a fluffy soil.
This entry could be the whole newsletter for the year. How little did Fabre d'Eglantine know, when he included this insignificant flower on a random octidi, that it would come to stand for the defeat and abolition of everything the French Revolution stood for, and that he himself would be drafted into the multi-volume revenge fantasy as a greasy secondary character susceptible to bribery and double-crossing.
I'm speaking, of course, of The Scarlet Pimpernel, a blockbuster play that was then adapted into a series of novels, each one featuring a proto-Batman whose entire life is dedicated to battling the evil figures of the French Revolution. In each adventure, the English fop Sir Percy Blakeney disguises himself, bests someone with a sword, and leaves behind a calling card depicting a scarlet pimpernel to terrify his enemies among the Jacobins.
While there's no denying that the French Revolution went wrong – something people have made hay of ever since, particularly from conservative circles intent on pointing out the dangers of change – the Scarlet Pimpernel stands out as a particularly vicious smear job intended to uphold the imperial monarchy of England and besmirch various revolutionary independence movements gaining steam at the time. The template it set has strongly echoed over the past century and carried with it the single most vexing trope of superhero stories: the violent vigilante project to uphold the status quo and protect wealth and power.
