You five-louis whore, pull off my boots!

(Image ID: screenshot of two replies by @alicedraws-kostyalevin​. saying: Funnily enough eponine works for thenardier but doesn’t actually sacrifice herself for him (or at least, not anymore) but gavroche almost dies for him, and he doesn’t even recognize who it was. Absolutely brutal. Les mis has a thing? for people recognizing others and there must be some symbolism here that I never thought about.)

(Context: this post about he parallels between Eponine and Javert)

I never thought about it until just now either and you’ve made me realize— Javert’s weird power in Les Mis is just, his ability to recognize people?

Javert has a borderline magical ability to know who everyone Really Is, to know everyone’s True Names, regardless of their disguises.

There’s a common fandom joke that Javert is bad at recognizing people, but in canon it’s the exact opposite. Javert’s whole Thing is that he sees through disguises and recognizes the people that no one else is able to recognize, the people that everyone else forgets and overlooks.

And instead of using that power for good he uses it for evil. Javert could use his borderline magical skills to help all these forgotten people, but instead he uses it to condemn them and make them all suffer.

Javert even arrogantly shows off this semi-magical skill during the Gorbeau House ambush. All the members of the gang are masked; Javert orders them to keep their masks on, and then lists off their names one by one, to prove that he knows who they are even when they’re disguised.

“Why?” for the drama of it all

The six pinioned ruffians were standing, and still preserved their spectral mien; all three besmeared with black, all three masked.

“Keep on your masks,” said Javert.

And passing them in review with a glance of a Frederick II. at a Potsdam parade, he said to the three “chimney-builders”:—

“Good day, Bigrenaille! good day, Brujon! good day, Deuxmilliards!”

Then turning to the three masked men, he said to the man with the meat-axe:—

“Good day, Gueulemer!”

And to the man with the cudgel:—

“Good day, Babet!”

And to the ventriloquist:—

“Your health, Claquesous.”

God Javert is such a diva

And as mentioned on the other post: no one recognizes Eponine. Cosette sees adult Eponine and doesn’t recognize her/thinks she’s just a random boy, Marius doesn’t recognize Eponine even after she takes a bullet for him, Thenardier doesn’t recognize Eponine when he sees her in the Rue Plumet garden, etc.

But when Javert is about to be executed, he’s like “oh, it’s her. I know her.”

“Javert gazed askance at the body and, profoundly calm, said in a low tone:

“It strikes me that I know that girl.”

And when Valjean drags a muddied half-dead body away from the barricades– Javert recognizes it as Marius:

He bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which he moistened in the water and with which he then wiped Marius’ blood-stained brow.

“This man was at the barricade,” said he in a low voice and as though speaking to himself. “He is the one they called Marius.”

(ok I literally never noticed the parallel between the way he recognizes Eponine and Marius’s bodies………….quietly saying ‘oh I know this person’ to himself in a low voice, while Valjean looks on)

But the biggest example is obviously Valjean. Javert recognizes Valjean when no one else does, when everyone else thinks he’s crazy for recognizing him, when everyone else thinks a mayor couldn’t possibly be a felon, etc. He’s the only one who recognizes Valjean when he’s wealthy and a mayor, not just when he’s a prisoner dressed in rags.

At the Champmathieu trial no one believes Valjean’s testimony. They think he’s gone mad, even his own prison-mates don’t seem to know him, they think he can’t possibly be Valjean because he’s too rich and educated, etc. Valjean gets Upset and says:

“I wish Javert were here; he would recognize me.” Nothing can reproduce the sombre and kindly melancholy of tone which accompanied these words.

Yeah! Suddenly Javert’s extreme weird Reaction to recognizing Valjean in that moment makes even more sense– Javert normally always recognizes people, it’s his whole Thing.

But then he suddenly doesn’t recognize Valjean, he doesn’t know who Valjean is anymore– both literally and metaphorically!! It’s symbolic!

And yeah you’re right, I feel like it has something to do with Javert’s weird honesty….the only person Javert is capable of lying to is himself, and somehow that weird honesty makes him good at finding out the true identities of other people.

Also lol at the idea of Javert literally sniffing out criminals, @everyonewasabird said the same thing in their tags:

  #it’s because he’s a dog right#of course it is#i feel like there’s a relationship between this power he has and ‘curiosity’#which this novel is absolutely against–ferreting things out about people is Bad and Wrong nearly always#but this identification feels like an instinctive version of that

 And technically I think that IS the canon explanation XD

Javert recognizing people is constantly compared to the way a dog sniffs out/senses the people it’s looking for.

A bestial instinct, though pure and upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies, which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of the man-cat,

Basically:

Small brain: Javert didn’t recognize Valjean coming out of the sewers because he was covered in sewage.

Medium Brain: Javert has an almost Magical ability to know who people are even in the dark/when they’re disguised. He didn’t recognize Valjean coming out of the sewers because his understanding of the world has been shaken so much that he doesn’t know who Valjean is anymore on a literal or metaphorical level. everything that was simple to him before is now chaos and confusion. it’s symbolic.

he had so much sex his biographers straight up gave up trying to document all of his sexual partners. he was reported to fuck up to 3-9 times a day. He had a secret sex diary written in code. He had “official” and “unofficial” mistresses. One estimate was that he had ~200 sexual partners in two years. 

les misérables + art pieces

Icarus’ Fall | Enjolras’ Fall