Fans of Vicomte Raoul de Chagny

This is brilliant.
This is brilliant.
This is brilliant :-D
The Conjuror's Masque

It was business as usual at the Paris Opera. Of course, when you're trapped in a detective novel about a disfigured lunatic who falls in love with your understudy, usual is just another kind of strange.

"OMG I totally did it because I am bad artistocrat rapist and evil boring and she totally loved Eric and I wear pink panties and stuff OMG!" –signed, Raul, the Visconter of Change
There was a general murmur of "OMG? What does OMG mean?" until at last little Jammes yelled over the din, "It must be Opera Ghost!" This seemed to satisfy the crowd until someone with slightly better observational skills pointed out that Jammes had missed out the M.
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One of the standard things Raoul gets bashed for, when people are trying to justify why they resent his existence, is that he is apparently disrespectful/condescending for not taking 'No' for an answer when he invites Christine out to supper after their reunion -- she says she doesn't want to go, and he doesn't listen but rushes off to get his outdoor clothes while leaving her to get into hers. (As an aside, it occurs to me here for the first time that "I must get my hat" effectively acts as a tactful way of removing himself from the room so that Christine can get changed in privacy!)

While I think that (contrary to the scenario I chose to explore for the purposes of There is No Phantom of the Opera) Raoul does come to the dressing-room powerfully attracted to Christine rather than as a platonic reunion of old friends, I don't think the invitation to dinner is intended as a message of seduction; I'd read his motives as being genuinely those represented in that story, a desire to take her out to celebrate and for the chance to catch up on old news. After all, the management aren't exactly laying on a party for her, and she richly deserves one -- at least in his eyes!( Read more... )

It's interesting that there are currently two (that I know of) R/C fanfics running which have decided to depict Raoul as a non-white protagonist, even despite the difficulties this creates in retaining his 'de Chagny' role.

In Strange Sweet Sound on AO3, Raoul is described as a 'throwback' to an enslaved foremother, the darkest one in a family of otherwise only slightly-negroid aristocrats (a sort of parallel with the cases of Alexandre Dumas and the Chevalier de St-George).
In the graphic novel Fantome-Stein on Tumblr, 'half-caste' Raoul appears to be the illegitimate offspring of Philippe's sister, although this plot point has yet to be clarified. (Weirdly enough, in the earliest artwork he isn't discernably dark-skinned at all; it shows up starting in chapter two.)

I'm wondering if this fan development is something to do with millennials' psychology, i.e. in order to be virtuous you need to be able to demonstrate identity with some oppressed group. It's interesting that I've only come across this in pro-Raoul stories (admittedly in a grand sample of two!) -- I have a feeling that it's a subconscious attempt to make Raoul a more sympathetic protagonist and perhaps to counterbalance the 'Aristocrat = Evil' assumptions among the fandom/demographic (poor Philippe, the go-to source of villainy...)