If you’re ever after a POC Grantaire for modern AU graphics, may I suggest Park Hae-il? (Him from out of The Host. No, not that one.) He’s got that sort of kindess-hidden-under-sadness look, and in the aforementioned movie who else did he play but…a clever, cynical, disillusioned alcoholic.
See?
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…
i just noticed…
in “every day”, the lyrics gocosette: i saw you waiting and i knew
marius: waiting for you at your feet
cosette: at your callaside from marius kissing the tip of cosette’s foot, the theme of “at your feet” also applies to two other pairings, although in a more morbid context. one is eponine and marius —
“Monsieur Marius!” repeated the voice.
This time he could not doubt that he had heard it distinctly; he looked and saw nothing.
“At your feet,” said the voice.and the other is enjolras and grantaire —
Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained leaning against the wall, as though the balls had nailed him there. Only, his head was bowed.
Grantaire fell at his feet, as though struck by a thunderbolt.
Oh god, I never noticed that Eponine-Grantaire parallel before.
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…
There’s always been this fandom-wide headcanon that Grantaire’s good with kids, and he generally gets assigned the role of Gavroche’s protector in the musical. (Although Courfeyrac got it in the movie.) And he knows about different types of Paris gamins, and he offers Gavroche’s friend Navet breakfast and refers to him by name when he’s left. And then I ran across this, in the middle of one of his epic rants (bolding mine as always…):
It’s like children, those who want them have none, and those who don’t want them have them.
Which I think is translated differently in other editions, so for all I know that might not even be what he’s saying. And of course he may not be referring to himself (although I like to think the second part is a reference to the Thenardiers), and oh god no he wouldn’t be a good father unless he cleaned himself up. But hmmm…food for thought.
