Given his canonical role in attempting to stop Raoul marrying Christine (and not even because he thinks she'll be bad for his little brother, but because she's a commoner), the fact that Erik murders him, therefore (like Buquet) he must be Evil in order to justify saintly Erik's having attacked him in the first place, and his status as 'extra character who exists but whom nobody really cares about much' and who is therefore a blank canvas available for any convenient plot-role, I don't think many fans actively like him :-p (In Fantome-stein, for example, he oppresses his sisters, insults Sorelli, and is thoroughly embarrassed by Raoul's existence,locking him in his room to keep him from the masked ball... all of which are not unreasonable developments from what little we see of him in canon, if you need a villain and want to make the character a little 'darker'.)
Fanfics that want a moustache-twirling villain to persecute poor innocent Erik and his loving Christine but have a sufficient grasp of reality to recognise that Raoul really doesn't fit that template will often adopt Philippe as a powerful mafia boss-type figure with a private army and a corrupt array of officials at his disposal. I saw one fanfic recently that had Philippe attempt to rape Christine in order to give her a reason to flee from Raoul's protection back to Erik without making Raoul himself look bad. There's a subset of plots which have Erik as the rightful Comte de Chagny and Philippe as the evil half-brother who uses his unfortunate deformity as an excuse to dispossess him )e.g. by selling him to a circus) -- although of course Philippe then has to be much younger than in the book, or else Erik would be old enough to be Christine's father, and that would never do :-p There is of course the notorious 'porn Phantom' (no, the official one from the series of 'erotic historical retellings' :-p), in which Philippe is portrayed as a violent sado-masochist who wants to take Christine home for threesomes with Raoul: he has a sex dungeon, a collection of sex toys, whips, and aphrodisiacs to further his enjoyment, and he won’t stop until he’s taught Raoul the ways of a deviant sex fiend.
And then there's the mass of modern-day fanfic in which 'brother Phil' is a business tycoon who is too distracted by making money to have any time for his brother and/or makes snobbish remarks about Christine to his snobbish mother behind Christine's back (which she of course overhears for Plot Reasons, i.e. to disqualify Raoul)...
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branchandroot
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Date: 2018-04-20 11:06 pm (UTC)Given his canonical role in attempting to stop Raoul marrying Christine (and not even because he thinks she'll be bad for his little brother, but because she's a commoner), the fact that Erik murders him, therefore (like Buquet) he must be Evil in order to justify saintly Erik's having attacked him in the first place, and his status as 'extra character who exists but whom nobody really cares about much' and who is therefore a blank canvas available for any convenient plot-role, I don't think many fans actively like him :-p
(In Fantome-stein, for example, he oppresses his sisters, insults Sorelli, and is thoroughly embarrassed by Raoul's existence,locking him in his room to keep him from the masked ball... all of which are not unreasonable developments from what little we see of him in canon, if you need a villain and want to make the character a little 'darker'.)
Fanfics that want a moustache-twirling villain to persecute poor innocent Erik and his loving Christine but have a sufficient grasp of reality to recognise that Raoul really doesn't fit that template will often adopt Philippe as a powerful mafia boss-type figure with a private army and a corrupt array of officials at his disposal. I saw one fanfic recently that had Philippe attempt to rape Christine in order to give her a reason to flee from Raoul's protection back to Erik without making Raoul himself look bad. There's a subset of plots which have Erik as the rightful Comte de Chagny and Philippe as the evil half-brother who uses his unfortunate deformity as an excuse to dispossess him )e.g. by selling him to a circus) -- although of course Philippe then has to be much younger than in the book, or else Erik would be old enough to be Christine's father, and that would never do :-p
There is of course the notorious 'porn Phantom' (no, the official one from the series of 'erotic historical retellings' :-p), in which Philippe is portrayed as a violent sado-masochist who wants to take Christine home for threesomes with Raoul: he has a sex dungeon, a collection of sex toys, whips, and aphrodisiacs to further his enjoyment, and he won’t stop until he’s taught Raoul the ways of a deviant sex fiend.
And then there's the mass of modern-day fanfic in which 'brother Phil' is a business tycoon who is too distracted by making money to have any time for his brother and/or makes snobbish remarks about Christine to his snobbish mother behind Christine's back (which she of course overhears for Plot Reasons, i.e. to disqualify Raoul)...