Welcome to 1789...

This, which I just discovered, just topped most of the reasons why I nurture love-HATE feelings for TV Tropes:

I must bring to your attention that Maximilien Robespierre has his own TV Tropes page!... Uh-huh, after all these weeks of playing around on that site, I just discovered it. (Or perhaps it's new.)

Amoral Attorney and Just The First Citizen, orly? *rises eyebrow*

...hm, I don't know who exactly is this group in charge of TV Tropes, but they can sound like such cynical, bitter, ultra-sarcastic, arrogant b**ches at times. Trust me, I can tell. Ha ha ha, maelicia can do humor.

Some of the Tropes listed there can be, as usual, pretty hateful and/or just plain irritating, and any Historical Inaccuracies/Slash Mentions (yes, they exist -- that's how I first came across that site in fact) aside:

1) I love how, in "Just The First Citizen", Robespierre coexists with Roman Emperors, Stalin, Kim Jong-il, Hitler and Mussolini. Admittedly, it's rather unexpectedly appreciated that they put all presidents and prime minister of the present democracies in the same package deal. In other words: we're doomed.

2) Hoist By His Own Petard: he was eventually executed via guillotine, the fate he assigned to so many others. Ugh. I'm so tired of this one. But it could have been worse, they could have listed Karmic Death. However, Karmic Death is a bit too overused in Original Thermidorian Literature (that is, the pamphlets, etc.) -- which I can testify of after much readings of said documents. Shoot me... but don't miss me in the jaw. Ha ha ha, moar humor.

3) Villains Out Shopping: At the height of the Terror, he lived a normal life at a respectable boarding house, eating toast every morning with his favorite marmalade and flirting with his housekeeper's daughters (although not too much as he was a rather prudish guy). After this of course, he would go to work and sentence lots of people to guillotining.
Yes, you know... that would be logical since IRL "Villains" don't really exist, IRL people you consider "Villains" never really consider themselves as such, and IRL people do lots and lots of very common, banal, boring stuff like everybody does. No, seriously. In between Important Guillotining Scenes and Plotting of Evil Plans Of Tyranny And Mass-Murdering, Robespierre doesn't just brood in the dark sipping red wine blood---oh wait.

4) I'm grateful for the "It's worth noting that many of the morality tropes here differ in different works/character representations." and "A highly controversial person, the level of sympathy allotted to him depends on the work." Small progress. However, the rest....



Thoughts? Comments? Guillotine? Complaints to register? (I really can't stop linking back to that one lately.)

Finally!! I just found an extract online of the amazing La Terreur et la Vertu, near the ending of the second part "Robespierre".

This is the antidote needed after Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution.

This is Saint-Just -- with natural authority, dignity, and a grand, tragic, resolute and sublime aura:

Robespierre et Saint-just 9 thermidor
envoyé par star_vin. -

My translation of the dialogue:

COUTHON – Yes, write. (reciting) “Citizen-soldiers, generals and officers, armies of the Republic. The National Convention has fallen in the hands of rascals...”

(Couthon's voice fades, as Robespierre slowly walks to Saint-Just, who's standing near the window of the Hôtel de Ville.)

ROBESPIERRE – Why don’t you say anything?

SAINT-JUST – You know it. “In the name of the French people…” What people? It is not here.

ROBESPIERRE – Why did you follow me?

SAINT-JUST – “You, who sustain the fragile patrie against the torrents of despotism and intrigue… I do not know you, but you are a great man. You are not only the deputy of a province; you are the one of humanity, and of the Republic.”

ROBESPIERRE – What is this?

SAINT-JUST – You don’t remember?

ROBESPIERRE – No.

SAINT-JUST – One day, back in 1790, a young man from Blérancourt wrote a letter to a deputy he admired through his speeches. This deputy; it was you, Robespierre. This young man; it was I.

ROBESPIERRE – So, you wrote to me?

SAINT-JUST – And I did not change.

ROBESPIERRE – I was the loneliest man of the Constituante. And now, I am alone again. Always.

SAINT-JUST – And I…

ROBESPIERRE – Everything is lost, isn’t it?

SAINT-JUST – Yes, it is lost. It could not be otherwise. Considering who we are, both of us. Considering what we think.

ROBESPIERRE – Why didn’t you help us? Give us any advice?

SAINT-JUST – We possessed seventeen companies of gunners and thirty-two cannons. The Convention only had one company. We had to, at 19:00, lead two companies in front of the main door of the Convention; at the East door, one company; at the West door, two companies. We had to, at 19:30, invade the committees and immediately arrest all the members. We had to, at 19:45, invade the Convention, proclaim the Constitution of 1793 and outlaw Tallien, Fréron, Barras and all the other rotten scoundrels. We had to send, at the School of Mars, two companies to rally the students, the officers and the troops. We had to, at 20:00, in Paris, proclaim the triumph of the Commune. And the Insurrection of the Apathetic would have been crowned the Insurrection of the Bold.

ROBESPIERRE – And you did nothing?

SAINT-JUST – If I had, would you have approved it?

ROBESPIERRE – No…

SAINT-JUST – The People of 10 August had the right to invade the Tuileries. The People of the 31 May and of the 5 September, had the right to invade the Convention. Not the armies.

ROBESPIERRE – Yes…

SAINT-JUST – Today, all that was left to us was the dictatorship of the armies. The military dictatorship. We would have been suspended in a void. Robespierre, consul of the Republic. Saint-Just, consul of the Republic.

ROBESPIERRE – Of which Republic?



Edit: And if someone feels adventurous enough to watch it all in French without subtitles, I think I just found the whole second film online: http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/xrrkt_star_vin_la-revolution-francaise

This is brilliant. And how apt.