A revolutionary’s life is full of the unknown will I live to see our triumph are we acting in the proper way at the proper time what exactly is up with my friend’s hair, is that even a thing hair can do
(I don’t draw anything ever and then this, why does anyone follow me also Tumblr what are you even doing with my colors)
AN OPPORTUNITY TO TALK ABOUT FEUILLY! thank you friend 😀
so. he’s a complete nerd. like, he really is. His Brick description is not so much a list of personality traits as a list of special interests. That, actually, says a lot about his personality. He’s passionate, and enthusiastic, and a giant nerd.
kind of awkward too? he’s pretty confident about his knowledge of said interests, but he talks about them – all the time. even when it’s not really related to the subject at hand. He rants whenever someone – willingly or not – gives him the opportunity to. he gets so offended on the behalf of others and injustices and betrayal. every single time. Bless him.
He considers his own education as a way to deliver himself. He learned to read and write by himself, and while this would be impressive about anyone, but it’s even more knowing what we do about Feuilly’s background. He probably started working/apprenticeship really young, because the orphanage or wherever he was staying wouldn’t – couldn’t – have kept him on forever. But he still taught himself to read, seeing it as a mean to rise up beyond his circumstances. That’s more than hard work – that’s hope and ambition and dedication and desparation all blended together.
and he never loses that? it’s liked to his passion, really – he knows he/the world can be better, and he holds on to that, always strives towards that, even though his life must have been really difficult sometimes.
honestly he’s like the opposite of Grantaire in many ways – he has every reason in the world to be bitter and cynical, but he’s not. he’s so passionate (I’ve said it like three times oops) and he’s so. trusting? like. even more than Combeferre, who wasn’t surprised when the generals didn’t come to their aid. Feuilly was genuinely heartbroken over it, like – you’d have totally expected him to know that these higher-ups would have let them down like they’ve let them all down before, and he’s been let down a lot in his life, but he didn’t. whether he’s instinctively trusting or makes himself trust because he refuses to be bitter is a matter of interpretation, but. that’s really something.
it’s one of the reasons I picture him as a bit younger than most of the fandom does, really, because 1) being a worker in the 1820s/1830s (or today really) doesn’t at all mean that he has to be older than students, especially if it’s such a big deal that he never got to go to school in the first place, and 2) that idealism and trust and enthusiasm sentimental aspect of his personality just seems different than the sort of laid-back experience of the older members like Bahorel and Bossuet, idk.
oh man this is already so long why.
I haven’t even gotten to fanon/improvised traits I like to give him.
he’s just. a cutie. okay I’ll try to find other posts I’ve written about this before and reblog them.
my gripes about the way Feuilly is portrayed in fandom is usually when two (often related) things happen: his canon personality gets replaced by a bunch of classist cliches, like grumpy, swearing, fighting, macho, rude, close-minded etc, or when he becomes a sort of Bahorel-lite, with fighting, drinking, swearing, loud, and always mentionned as part of ‘BahorelandFeuilly’, never as an individual person (I dislike Bahorel’s characterisation in that too, but he usually is at least a little better? closer to his actual personality? anyway)
besides these two frankly terrible trends, I think, as with every character in this fandom, we have some leeway when it comes to personality traits. We have the descriptions in the book, which are frankly both precise and vague at the same time it’s kind of beautiful, as well as the way they’re played in the musical, different movies/shows/etc. so. my take on characters is not more valid than any other that’s done with, you know, some thoughts and consideration for the material and implications.
so Courfeyrac keeps coming buy like. borrowing sugar and flour and baking soda all the times, because Courf talks a lot but his flirting game when he has an actual crush is absolutely atrocious. it’s terrible pickup lines and bad jokes and Feuilly’s love that actually but Courfeyrac doesn’t know that so he has no idea how to approach him.
so after something like two months of that, Feuilly’s curious about his cute neighbour who looks like he bakes a lot so he gathers his courage and initiates Small Talk (with extra awkward because he’s not good at small talk) ‘’Hey you like to bake? That’s so cool what do you bake? I’m learning to bake too. Maybe we could swap tips and reciepes and stuff’ (and he curses himself because he’s actually terrible he burned the last three batches of cookies he’s tried).
But Courfeyrac’s been sorta gathering all these ingredients without knowing what to do with them and he panics like – ‘Crap have I been stealing from him?? I have haven’t I’
#romcomplotbegins
(they both call their friends/coworker Bahorel to help them come up with something, not realising they have a common acquaintance. And it all goes well, more or less, until they realise Bahorel gave them both the same tips and reciepes because no way he’s letting that kind of misunderstanding up in the air for long enough to screw everything up. in the end they all have a good laugh and Courfeyrac totally declares it a successful date. Feuilly’s still a lil embarrassed but he agrees.)
Okay, this is in incredibly petty nitpick, but: if you’re writing a fantasy setting with same-sex marriage, a same-sex noble or royal couple typically would not have titles of the same rank – e.g., a prince and a prince, or two queens.
It depends on which system of ranking you use, of course (there are several), but in most systems there’s actually a rule covering this scenario: in the event that a consort’s courtesy title being of the same rank as their spouse’s would potentially create confusion over who holds the title by right and who by courtesy, the consort instead receives the next-highest title on the ladder.
So the husband of a prince would be a duke; the wife of a queen, a princess; and so forth.
(You actually see this rule in practice in the United Kingdom, albeit not in the context of a same-sex marriage; the Queen’s husband is styled a prince because if he were a king, folks might get confused about which of them was the reigning monarch.)
The only common situation where you’d expect to see, for example, two queens in the same marriage is if the reigning monarchs of two different realms married each other – and even then, you’d more likely end up with a complicated arrangement where each party is technically a princess of the other’s realm in addition to being queen of her own.
You’ve gotta keep it nice and unambiguous who’s actually in charge!
Okay, I’ve received a whole lot of asks about this post, so I’m going to cover all of the responses in one go:
1. The system described above is, admittedly, merely one of the most common. Other historically popular alternatives include:
The consort’s courtesy title is of the same rank as their spouse’s, with “-consort” appended to it: prince and prince-consort, queen and queen-consort, etc. This is how, e.g., present-day Monaco does it.
The consort is simply styled Lord or Lady So-and-so, and receives no specific title. I can’t think of any country that still does it this way, off the top of my head, but historically it was a thing.
(Naturally, your setting needn’t adhere to any of these, but it would be highly irregular for it to lack some mechanism for clarifying the chain of command.)
2. The reason why the consort of a prince is historically a princess even though those titles are the same rank is basically sexism. This can go a couple of ways:
In many realms, there was no such thing as being a princess by right; the daughter of a monarch would be styled Lady So-and-so and receive no specific title, so the only way to be a princess was to marry a prince.
In realms where women could hold titles by right, typically a masculine title was informally presumed to outrank its feminine counterpart. So, e.g., kings outrank queens, princes outrank princesses, etc.
In either case, no ambiguity exists.
(Interestingly, this suggests that in a more egalitarian setting where masculine titles are not presumed to outrank their feminine counterparts, or vice versa, you’d need to explicitly disambiguate rankings even outside the context of same-sex marriages. Food for thought!)
3. It would also be possible to have two kings or two queens in the same marriage without multiple realms being involved in the case of a true co-monarchy. However, true co-monarchies are highly irregular and, from a political standpoint, immensely complicated affairs. If you’re planning on writing one of those, be prepared to do your research!
4. The next rank down from “countess” is either “viscountess” or “baroness”, depending on which peerage system you’re using.
(Yes, that last one actually came up multiple times. Apparently there are a lot of stories about gay countesses out there!)
eirenical17 