You're not original

[montagnarde1793]

To anyone who has ever considered writing about the French Revolution, can we please not see any more scenarios involving a tug-of-war over Robespierre's soul, with Saint-Just in the role of the little-devil-on-the-shoulder and someone else, frequently, but not always, Camille Desmoulins as the little angel? It's been done to death. Random Germans were already doing it in 1861 (though in this case with Éléonore Duplay taking the role often assigned to Camille). Not only does this tell us nothing about the Revolution, as the article I just linked to points out, it's also extremely tired from a literary standpoint.

So please, cut it out.

Comments

[nirejseki]

Seconded! So, so seconded! Also, Camille is a terrible character to use as a narrator for so many reasons...

[montagnarde1793]

Thank you. I think Camille could have worked (I say "could have worked" because it would take a great deal of talent to come up with something original and worth reading centered around him at this point) as a narrator if people were more willing to acknowledge that his is an extremely slanted, particular point of view not widely shared by his contemporaries or historians and therefore taking his version of events for the true understanding of the essence of the Revolution is probably unwise and he would have to be set up in some measure as an unreliable narrator - or at least a particularly biased one - in order for him to work as a narrator at all. (Not that his point of view was even ever that he was in a tug-of-war with Saint-Just over Robespierre's soul. I mean, if you read the Vieux Cordelier - the undoctored version, that is, although even with the post-Thermidorian insertions of Robespierre's name where it doesn't belong - he spends a lot more time criticizing Barère... who is almost never a character in narratives focusing on Camille and never a major one.)

So it might still be possible to salvage Camille as a character, if not necessarily as a narrator, if one is willing to look beyond fanon!Camille. Still, there are hundreds if not thousands of other fascinating people and scenarios in the Revolution - not even counting fictional characters. I really wish people would write about them. But really, I'd be satisfied if they just stopped writing the scenario outlined in this post.