Cimourdain, hated all the more because he was a priest, is a counterbalance to Lantenac. The intro to Lantenac that we get on the royalist ship Claymore—ruthless, insufferable—is how Cimourdain looks to the Vendéens. The difference is that Cimourdain is working for a better future and so, for all his inner darkness, gets some light because he’s facing the dawn.
Gauvain, unlike Lantenac, has some feeling for La Tourgue itself. For Lantenac, who’s a creature of Versailles, La Tourgue is just a last-ditch refuge; for Gauvain it’s home, the place where he grew up, the place where his forefathers lived and died, and he would prefer to save its civilized side if he could. Cimourdain shares this feeling in spite of himself. He can’t help but have affection for the place he taught little Gauvain how to read, and he sees this as his weakness; for Hugo it’s his strength, his corner untouched by the Styx. All of this supports what pilferingapples was saying about the original Gauvains belonging to the land and the locality and its people, while the later Lantenacs simply aren’t as tied to it and don’t care about it. Really, we’ve had a lot of evidence so far that while the Vendée might love Lantenac because he’s their lord by birth, he doesn’t love it back, because he doesn’t even know it. And what he does know, he scorns. He doesn’t get their style of warfare. He can’t make use of it. He has no respect for his own peasants and puts all his faith in the English. And he does not know or care about La Tourgue, because Versailles is his true home. This will probably come back to bite him, considering that he’s now besieged there and has to defend it.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
3.2.11
Date: 2014-06-22 09:41 pm (UTC)Gauvain, unlike Lantenac, has some feeling for La Tourgue itself. For Lantenac, who’s a creature of Versailles, La Tourgue is just a last-ditch refuge; for Gauvain it’s home, the place where he grew up, the place where his forefathers lived and died, and he would prefer to save its civilized side if he could. Cimourdain shares this feeling in spite of himself. He can’t help but have affection for the place he taught little Gauvain how to read, and he sees this as his weakness; for Hugo it’s his strength, his corner untouched by the Styx. All of this supports what pilferingapples was saying about the original Gauvains belonging to the land and the locality and its people, while the later Lantenacs simply aren’t as tied to it and don’t care about it. Really, we’ve had a lot of evidence so far that while the Vendée might love Lantenac because he’s their lord by birth, he doesn’t love it back, because he doesn’t even know it. And what he does know, he scorns. He doesn’t get their style of warfare. He can’t make use of it. He has no respect for his own peasants and puts all his faith in the English. And he does not know or care about La Tourgue, because Versailles is his true home. This will probably come back to bite him, considering that he’s now besieged there and has to defend it.