Caspian (Sirius’s version)

if you’ve heard of the idea that a story can be tragic because “it was always going to end this way” or because “it didn’t have to end this way,” you’ll know what i mean when i say that this story is so devastating because both are equally true.

with mordred the main issue when merlin first met him was that mordred was just a kid, combined with the fact that merlin’s friends (morgana especially but gwen and arthur too) cared about him (mordred). it’s also worth noting that merlin was still very young and had not yet witnessed quite how much danger arthur was really in. as such i’m not even convinced that he fully believed that this tiny, injured, innocent boy was going to harm arthur. if he believed that it was inevitable, i think he would have let him die when he was first presented the opportunity. as it was, he had no way of knowing for sure, and indirectly killing a child is not something you do if you’re not certain that you have to. what i wonder is if he was given the chance to do it again, having lived through the events of s5, would he then believe that it was inevitable? would he think that fate couldn’t be thwarted, that mordred was always destined to do what he did and there was never anything to be done about it beyond killing him first, or would he blame himself for what mordred became, thinking instead that if he had been kinder to him, if he had chosen to trust him, if he had rescued kara, if he hadn’t tripped him, if he had advised arthur to legalise magic to save him, then maybe everything would be different?

with morgana it’s more complicated because merlin’s reason for initially sparing her was more personal. merlin LOVED morgana. i genuinely believe that he did, all the way to the end. he knows what she’s becoming but he tries so hard to change it, partly because he loves her and he doesn’t want to lose her, and partly because of how much *arthur* loves her. he poisoned her because he had to, but he chose to tell morgause how to save her. he knocked her down the stairs because he had to, but he saved her. he threw her against a tree in the forest (and she had *fully* turned against arthur by that point) but even when she’s unconscious and apparently past saving, he doesn’t try to kill her. even when he finally does kill her, he lowers her to the ground so gently. he loved her no matter what she became, he just loved arthur and albion more.

when arthur says that he, arthur, “could have saved her,” merlin says that there were others better placed to help morgana, suggesting that he blames himself for *not* saving her. does that mean he wishes he’d told her the truth about his magic? about hers? does it mean that he believes he *could* have changed the outcome for her?

merlin is arthur’s. he loved morgana, gaius, gwen, gwaine, lancelot, etc., but he was always arthur’s. his devotion was such that i think he’d have burned the rest of the world to the ground to save him if he had to. there’s nothing and nobody he would not sacrifice for arthur. by the end of the series, merlin’s humanity is all but gone because *nothing* but arthur matters. he has the chance to free himself and everyone like him but he turns it down because saving arthur is more important. so if he could go back, even knowing exactly how he could have saved mordred and morgana, would he even bother to try, or would he, unwilling to risk a second failure, kill them on sight, even before they’d done anything wrong?

what to watch ?

- i feel like this is a classic, but the 2012 movie adaptation by tom hopper, obviously. while it's not the best adaptation, it is still really good (also i feel like it made a lot of us join the fandom in the first place)

- also pretty obvious but the west end musical by claude-michel schönberg and alain boublil (i'm pretty sure u can find decent bootleg on yt) + honorable mention for the 25th anniversary concert but i feel like u need to know a bit about the musical before seeing the concert

- a personal favourite, the 1982 french movie by robert hossein, it is three hours long tho, but it's worth it; the adaptation is really good, especially the portrayal of Les Amis (here's the yt link to the whole movie)

- shojo Cosette is also pretty decent, tho i've only watched the episodes with Les Amis (the barricades are heartbreaking just like we love)

- it's really obscure but the silent short film l'enfant sur la barricade (the child on the barricade) by Alice Guy. the sources diverge from whether it's an adaptation of les mis or an adaptation of a poem hugo wrote called "sur une barricade" and taking place during the commune of paris but the character could be inspired by gavroche

- Les Amis webserie, that u can find on yt, or here :

it's a web serie made by fans for fans and it's amazing

- All That's Left Of Us, another web serie made by and for fans. it's beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking. u can find it on youtube or here:

and on the overall anything that eli southern does about les mis is pretty amazing so i encourage u all to go check @thecandlesticksfromlesmis

(although i feel like u need to know a bit about the fandom before jumping right into the webseries)

- and obviously, The Brick, the original masterpiece that is Les Miserables by victor hugo; if u have the courage i promise that it's worth it

you can read it, tenlittlebullets translated it into English :)

I’m so glad somebody asked this, because the answer is: when they finally ran out of ammunition, Charles Jeanne rounded up everyone who was still standing, went, “look, if we’re going to die, we might as well die fighting,” and led a suicidal ten-man charge against an entire flippin’ infantry column, armed with nothing but bayonets. The first few ranks of soldiers were so unprepared for such a spectacularly insane attack that they were too surprised to shoot. They crossed bayonets and tried to hold the insurgents off in hand-to-hand combat, but Jeanne’s swordsmanship was apparently aces, because he held off a bunch of them at once and covered his friends as they tried to breach the ranks. And once they were in, nobody could shoot them for fear of taking out their own guys.

So the last stand that the insurgents had intended as a noble suicide ended in them breaking through the ranks entirely and winding up in the next street over, outside the combat zone, going “well shit, what do we do now?” (I’m guessing the infantry column wasn’t very deep; central Paris at that point was a rabbit warren of narrow twisty streets, and assembling troops en masse for an organized attack was a logistical nightmare.) Unlike the National Guard, the army weren’t total chumps and got themselves turned around to give chase and start shooting once they weren’t at risk of friendly fire any longer… and that’s when all the civilians holed up in their houses went “no way, you’re not getting your hands on these crazy bastards” and started hurling furniture and crockery down on the soldiers’ heads. Jeanne was understandably distracted at the time, but afterwards somebody informed him that the barrage of unlikely projectiles included a piano. A piano. That is some straight-up Looney Tunes slapstick right there. No wonder Hugo went for the heroic death scene instead; if he’d stuck to real life, he probably would’ve gotten complaints that he’d wrecked his readers’ suspension of disbelief.

Anyway, someone opened an alley gate for them to shelter in and take stock of the casualties–most of them survived(!!!), but a few were pretty nastily wounded. Their host then had to lock Charles Jeanne in to keep him from charging right back out and taking on the whole goddamn army singlehanded. He probably would’ve broken down the door if the poor man hadn’t pointed out that going back out would give away his wounded comrades’ hiding place and the identities of the people sheltering them. They sat there listening to the gunfire gradually slow and go silent, and then in the middle of the night the ones who could still walk were allowed to slip away one by one at long intervals from each other. Charles Jeanne went straight home, slept like the dead for a few hours, was woken up at five in the morning with a warning that he’d been denounced and the building was surrounded, and then slipped out in disguise and managed to evade the police for four months before a former comrade ratted him out and he was arrested.