I Love This Analysis Sm, All Of This Is So True Omg!!!!

I love this analysis sm, all of this is so true omg!!!!

Me?? Over-analysing The Scarlet Pimpernel??? Its more likely than you think

So, surprise surprise, I was rereading the scarlet pimpernel in hopes of getting any tiny bit of inspiration for The Lady Of The League, and instead, I, of course decided to over-analyse it and came up with a lil theory about our very own Sir Percival Blakeney, Baronet.

Bear in mind that this is just a nerd rambling, I'm probably very wrong-

Also idk how much of a "theory" this is. It's more of a "my brain worked overtime and wouldn't let me rest until I wrote this down and forced it upon my mutuals and followers"

So it's well established within the canon of the Scarlet Pimpernel that Percy stops any suspicion of him being the Pimpernel by hiding himself behind the facade of a brainless, foppish idiot. Which is a very important point, as it's how he manages to keep himself safe for so long.

Even more important is the fact that everyone believes it. His act works, and practically everyone in England remains convinced that Percy Blakeney is just an idiot who managed to marry 'the cleverest woman in Europe' somehow.

But clearly, Percy isn't the idiot he pretends to be. He is, of course, the titular Pimpernel, who is intelligent enough to rescue countless aristocrats from death, to plan escapes very quickly, and just to generally outwit Chauvelin and the French constantly. This is common knowledge to pimpernel fans, of course, so why is Jess basically regurgitating the whole first novel?

Because I have a question:

Why does everyone in England genuinely believe that Percy is a completely incompetent fop?

It's something that I don't think many people really think about. The explanation we are offered in the book is that for the purpose of hiding any association with the Pimpernel and his League, Percy goes out of his way to play the idiot. And that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for it. I know I accepted it unquestionably during my earliest experience with the Scarlet Pimpernel.

But I personally think that it's deeper than this. And that's where my dumb, over-thinking analysis fandom brain kicked in, and started to construct this idea.

So let's start with what we know about Percy Blakeney from the book. Throughout his introduction in chapter 6, titled 'An Exquisite of `92', a point is made of the way he is perceived by English society.

"He, the sleepiest, dullest, most British Britisher to ever set a pretty woman yawning"

"the 'cleverest woman in Europe' had linked her fate to that 'demmed idiot' Blakeney"

"Every one knew that he was hopelessly stupid"

"But then Blakeney was really too stupid to notice the ridicule"

Each is a direct quote from the chapter. So clearly, there is a certain way that he is seen by everyone. And he accepts it. More than this, he plays himself into this view they have, for the sake of his own ends.

But nobody ever explains where this image of Percy comes from, and why it is practically just a fact that he is remarkably stupid.

The book is set in 1792, and the revolution began in 1789. The mass execution of aristocrats didn't come straight away, and Percy and his friends certainly weren't lying in wait for all of this to happen. So at most, Percy has been rescuing people for some time more than a year, and has been married to Marguerite for around a full year of that time. So for Percy to be so well-known by England, he's probably been known to them for longer than he's been Pimpernel-ing.

So why do they believe that he's so incompetent? Surely, if he was as clever as the reader knows he truly is, people would notice if he suddenly turned into a brainless fool for no reason.

Unless they never considered that he was intelligent in the first place.

Which is a weird thought, right? When we clearly know that he is clever. But then it starts to make more sense if you start to consider his history, specifically his mother and what happened to her.

"Although lately he had been so prominent a figure in fashionable English society, he had spent most of his early life abroad. His father, the late Sir Algernon Blakeney, had had the terrible misfortune of seeing an idolised young wife become hopelessly insane after two years of happily married life. Percy had just been born when the late Lady Blakeney fell a pray to the terrible malady which in those days was looked upon as hopelessly incurable and nothing short of a curse of God upon the entire family. Sir Algernon took his afflicted wife abroad, and there presumably Percy was educated, and grew up between an imbecile mother and a distracted father, until he attained his majority. The death of his parents following close upon one another left him a free man, and as Sir Algernon had led a forcibly simple and retired life, the large Blakeney fortune had increased tenfold."

So, there's a lot to unpack here. But the basics come down to the fact that just after Percy was born, an unnamed illness affected his mother's mind, and his father took the family out of England to some unnamed place, which is where Percy would then grow up.

And this is where things started to form for me. We don't know how quiet this whole thing was kept, but it does seem to be told to us as though it was common knowledge, and later on in the book, when Marguerite comes across a portrait of Percy's mother in his study, we find out that she knows what happened to her as well. And then another line from Percy's introduction in chapter 6 jumped out to me on rereading it.

"but then that was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that all the Blakeneys, for generations, had been notoriously dull and that his mother had died an imbecile."

This tells us that Percy is already at a disadvantage if he wishes to be seen as intelligent.

He has to contend with the fact that his family is know to be dull, and bland, and boring people, and on top of that, he also has to contend with the fact that at least some people know that his mother lost her mind, for one reason or another.

And then you start to consider Percy himself. He was raised and educated abroad. He was more than likely raised by paid servants and hired hands who knew very little of the expectations of an English society gentleman, and his parents, who did know what was expected, were unavailable and occupied by the goings-on.

So that's what we have to consider: Percy was inexperienced in an upper-class English society. He probably had very little idea of what to expect from others, and what others, in turn, would expect from him. And then, when his parents died, he suddenly found himself inheriting a title, and lands with an estate, and a place in this society he had never known.

So when he inevitably returns, what can he do? He won't know many people, and therefore, he won't have many people to learn from. He will be the outsider, the boy who didn't grow up in England, the one who doesn't know how to fit in.

So it starts to come together.

We're told that after his parents passed away, he travelled abroad a lot. But he more than likely would have returned to England at least once, to see his estate, to acquaint himself with a world he will now have to navigate and live in. And when he does, the image of Sir Percy Blakeney that England has begins to form.

There is already the image of the previous members of the Blakeney family, who are known for being "notoriously dull"

There is the whole history of Percy growing up with an "imbecile mother"

And now, he returns to England and joins society with no idea what to do

And so the image forms.

They label him as this fool, as this brainless fop who knows more about fashion than he does about the world. And because he has no way of knowing how to show them that he is in fact intelligent, he accepts it. He takes the role they have given him to play, and he lives it.

Because when he is Percy Blakeney, the idiot who will laugh at everything, who will lead England in its fashion, he is accepted, and he has a place.

And then, enter the revolution. Percy finds himself wanting to do something, and he becomes the famous Scarlet Pimpernel. And he realises that this image of him can be used to protect his life, and that of his most loyal friends and followers in the League.

So I propose the theory to you; Percy did not become the brainless fop to hide himself. Instead, he, in his unseen cleverness, used what people knew and expected of him to deflect suspicion.

And that's why it worked so perfectly. Because in order to hide in plain sight, he didn't have to change a thing about himself.

~~~~

So there we have it! A long, probably very useless rant that will probably never help anyone, but if you made it this far, I hope you enjoyed my take!

Once again, this is just an idea I had about Percy, I'm not claiming it to be canon, I'm probably looking way too deep into this, but I thought I'd share it with y'all