My Raoul is a Composite Character

Musings on writing the Vicomte (Ensigne) de Chagny

(Painting by Constance Marie Le Charpentier is from 1807; Raoul never would have worn this uniform but ... the attitude)

As All Vows is coming to an end, I first want to thank everyone for reading and for commenting and sharing your thoughts along the way. One of the most frequent comments is how I've really brought Raoul to life and made him sympathetic. This is great, because it's my intent, and also my next big longfic is all Raoul POV! I'm writing that one offline, with the plan to publish when complete. I have some other projects to be announced soon that will be on AO3 in installments. So watch this space.

Bringing Raoul to life has been natural because to me, he is alive. That's because my Raoul is a composite character of real people.

Even though I cosplay Christine, and Christine is the main character in All Vows, Raoul has accidentally gotten the most of myself. Some of his descriptions of being at sea are taken straight out of my journals from Ensign Flag's first deployment. I have plans for my "Raoul Navy" project for him to write absolutely horrific poetry about Christine's blue eyes (it was my bad poetry about some Marine corps pilot I had a crush on when I was...24)He's a composite character of dozens of young officers I've served with over the years. I have literally lived and worked (and sometimes loved) these young men, and later on, now that I am An Old, I'm their boss, mentoring them and developing them into leaders (and reminding them that their wife has probably already told them three times about the "scheduling surprise their wife just told them about").

So in all, my Raoul is a tribute to the best of them, and I'm fortunate that I get to tell their story.

POTOMER DAY 27: HEADCANON-My Raoul is a Composite Character

From April 23 -June 11, I am posting 49 days of POTO content to mark the Omer, except on Shabbat. Masterlist of prior posts.