Where are all the scarlet pimpernel fans?

By the sounds of it, I think your quite right! The scarlet pimpernel with sharp eyes??! dark clothing!? A violent and arrogant scarlet pimpernel???! and a non-foolish sir Percy!?!? Your completely right! not the scarlet pimpernel but his enemy!

'The Scarlet Pimpernel' is the story of Sir Percy and Marguerite's marriage, basically, and the misunderstandings therein. The book does not mention their courtship, except to say that he first saw her three years earlier, as he was passing through Paris on a trip to 'the east', and then returned a year later and they were married ('just like that'). Orczy's novel begins a year into the marriage, when husband and wife are completely estranged, thanks to a lack of communication. Marguerite betrayed the Marquis de St Cyr to the tribunal of the National Assembly because he had her brother beaten for sending a love letter to St Cyr's daughter, Angele. Marguerite was not set up by Chauvelin for rebuffing him, she is completely guilty of grassing on St Cyr out of spite. St Cyr is also guilty of treason, however - apparently Marguerite just didn't figure that informing the revolutionary authorities would end up with St Cyr's head on the chopping block! That's Orczy's proposed defence of her beautiful and talented heroine.

The first novel leads the film up until Marguerite enlists Sir Andrew's help in travelling to France to save Percy, after she realises the truth about his dual identity ('The Scarlet Pimpernel ... Percy ... Oh God, what have I done?') The second novel, 'Eldorado', is gradually introduced, however, by having Armand become a member of the League, and introducing his girlfriend, Louise Lange (called 'Jeanne' in the book, and a deeply annoying wench at that). The second half of the film, about the rescue of the Dauphin and dippy Armand leading Chauvelin to the Pimpernel, is from this book. Sir Percy is arrested by Chauvelin after trying to help Armand and Jeanne/Louise, but he finds himself in rather worse trouble in the book version. And Marguerite does go to his aid (the prison scene, which is rewritten in the film to include Marguerite and Percy's reunion), producing a very romantic scene between the two!

I would definitely recommend 'Eldorado'. It's a fantastic story, and very romantic, which is really all the stories are about (for me). At the time Orczy was writing, it wasn't known if the young Dauphin had survived his imprisonment in the Temple prison. It was generally thought that he had died in there (which he did), malnourished and neglected by his gaolers (and eventually left completely alone), but there were also theories that he had somehow been rescued, smuggled out of the prison with the help of Madame Simon, the wife of the man employed to watch over him. This is what Orczy builds on for her story, rewriting it so that of course the Pimpernel is behind the Dauphin's escape. However, Armand and his insipid actress girlfriend Jeanne are so deeply irritating - it's sort of the same true-love mush as Percy and Marguerite, but without any redeeming qualities in the characters for the reader to root for - that you may want to throw the book across the room as the story develops!

'The Elusive Pimpernel' is another villain-captures-hero near-miss story - and this time it's the Pimpernel *and* Marguerite who walk into Chauvelin's trap! The plot is weak, the ending is weaker, and as for Marguerite - as Chauvelin says, 'Ye Gods! the irony of it all! Had she not been called the cleverest woman in Europe at one time?' But this book is really just about the Blakeneys' relationship post-Pimpernel, and in that way, it's a fantastic romance story (it's even possible to excuse Marguerite on the grounds that she is not yet used to her husband's secret life and death wish mentality). If you read this as a sort of series of romantic vignettes, instead of a decent story, it's great fun.

I love 'Mam'zelle Guillotine', however, which is set after the two stories above. It's the story of the Pimpernel's run-in with a woman whose incarceration at the hands of an aristocratic family before the Revolution has turned her into a bloodthirsty, pitiless (and deeply unfeminine!) executioner. She buddies up with Chauvelin to capture the Pimpernel and lay hands on her own quarry, the wife of the man who had her locked up in the Bastille. The Pimpernel's disguises in this story are some of the best in the series. A very good book, I think. Definitely number one on my 'must read' list, after the title novel. Perhaps a little harder to find in book form, but there are always the e-texts.

Hope this waffle is helpful in some way!

Sarah

"Tony, if you talk that rubbish, I shall be forced to punch your head" - Lord Tony's Wife, Orczy