Let them boys be prequels, their names written proceded by the conjunction and, just this once
Pylades and Orestes
Pollux and Castor
Patroclus and Achilles
Hephaestion and Alexander
Grantaire and Enjolras
enjolras
OTPS I Love To Pieces:
Enjolras/Grantaire
Who: The other unrequited love story of Les Miserables. (The first one being Marius and Eponine, obviously.)
When: I saw the Les Mis movie the day it opened in England (I had fond memories of it from high school), and then I went on the internet and then I read the Actual Book and suddenly a whole new ship had eaten my life. It took a matter of days. DAYS!
Les Mis is really long, summarize this bit for me?: Well, there’s this group called Les Amis d’ABC. They’re all pretty awesome, and Enjolras is their leader, and Grantaire is basically the guy who sits in the corner and gets drunk all the time and is hopelessly in love with Enjolras. (The book devotes a whole paragraph to that, in fact.) Enjolras is a blond, chaste avenging-angel type, and Grantaire is a cynical alcoholic, so it’s not like they really fit together, and Grantaire pretty much screws up any chance he gets to impress him anyway. Then, when the revolution starts and the barricades go up, he gets drunk and passes out in an upstairs room, missing the battle and the deaths of all his friends. Enjolras on the other hand fights bravely and accepts his end when it comes, cornered in the same room.
It’s just when the National Guard are about to shoot him (although luckily for everyone they don’t really want to and are taking their sweet time about it) that Grantaire wakes up, sees the person he loves about to die, calls out and goes to stand with him in front of the guns. He even asks Enjolras if he minds sharing his last moments with him, and Enjolras responds by smiling and grasping his hand. And that’s how they bow out of the story. I bet it’s made a fair few cry.
For love of god someone tell me why everyone tags this as “E/R”: It’s from the book, basically! ‘Grantaire’ sounds like ‘grand R’ or ‘capital R’ in French, so he signs himself ‘R’. (I had to ask that question too. I think everyone does.)
Why: E/R basically has everything I look for in a ship: a redemptive arc and a grand gesture and a tragedy that’s probably not really a tragedy depending on how you look at it. True, they both die, but Grantaire gets to die hand-in-hand with the person he loves and the last thing he sees is his smile; Enjolras gets to die knowing he inspired someone to greater things, and that he meant more than life to the man he always thought believed in nothing.
It’s a relationship that probably couldn’t have succeeded in any way other than how it did, AUs aside. But, loving Enjolras raises Grantaire up to the level he barely believed was even there- when he awakes to see Enjolras about to be shot, and calls out to the firing squad when he could have escaped, the word ‘transfigured’ is used to describe him. Good word. To love another person is to see the face of God, as they say…
Generally when I say ‘I ship E/R’ I mean ‘it was a sad, ambiguous little unrequited love story about the power of placing another person above yourself, and it makes me cry, and I love it’ rather than…
…well, than anything else really. I sort of like the ambiguity- was Grantaire more in love with Enjolras the man or Enjolras the idea, did it really matter since they were practically one and the same, would they have ever been able to have a healthy relationship under other circumstances (probably not, but you never know), what did Enjolras think of him in their last moments…
So half the time it’s not even a requited love when I read or write about it, but that’s okay, because I always figured the…well, the point of that whole tiny little subplot was basically ‘even if you’re about as lost and low as a person can get, if you love someone enough to die for them that’s all you need’. (You sentimental old bastard, Hugo, you pulled that trick a lot…)
I think for me, the ‘count me in’, the last request, the handgrasp and the smile is all I need, I like it best as a love-as-redemption story rather than a they-lived-happily-ever-after story. Although that’s nice too of course…
Okay, so today has definitely been a day for talking about writing rather than getting any actual writing done, but after listening (for the first time in almost- gasp! – a week!) to ‘My Eyes’ from the Dr Horrible soundtrack, suddenly I DESPERATELY WANT a completely off-the-wall Les Mis AU with Grantaire as a hopeless, unenthusiastic, very ineffective supervillain falling utterly in love with Actual Superhero Enjolras.