Oh, my, someone else who knows and loves Young Blades! Welcome! Welcome!
Um, please don't let me scare you away with my lengthy reply. :-)
The last time that I got to chat about Young Blades was in an early iteration of this ficathon, years ago now, when a very generous person wrote me a YB story featuring Jacqueline and Queen Anne!
I suspect that the best way to discover what Jacqueline would do with the rest of her life if Mazarin and the Order weren't in the way would be to write them out of the way. ;-) That is, what if the musketeers succeed -- the Order is disbanded, Mazarin disgraced and exiled, Louis equipped with wise and trusty advisers, France secured for a generation of peace -- what then? Before the finale, "Secrets," I would have confidently predicted that Jacqueline would then go after her brother! Now... like you, I just do not know. Hunt down that secret, naturally. But theoretically set that aside, too. What would she do once her mission was fulfilled?
...find a new mission? Become a nun? Take the captain's place someday and train up a new generation?
I suppose that I really don't see Jacqueline -- who is ever the conscience of our squad, as d'Artagnan its heart, Siroc its brain and Ramon its spirit -- feeling that her mission is truly accomplished while Louis or France (or Louis as France, for that matter, by the lights of their era) is in danger. That may lead to a lifetime of celibacy for her, but I think she would freely choose that for what it wins her and those she guards. (And, after all, celibacy is theoretically not that strange, and even culturally admired, in her society! At the least, it's officially praised and justified, unlike in ours where it's largely held in suspicion and scorn.) Now, I do think Jacqueline would privately grieve the choice -- not only for romantic love (her interlude with Charles establishes her interest there) and family (she adores her family), but for continuing to live a lie -- but she would still make that choice. And within the story, I really, really enjoy what I see as her tension with that sacrifice (or what will surely become more and more a sacrifice as the years pass). She's not innately a liar; but the lie saves her life, and may yet save France...
d'Artagnan, as a nobleman, really can have it all. She can't. Not as a woman, not as a peasant. It's not at all fair, but it's also barely something to question in that era. The Revolution is yet far off... but perhaps already growing, deep under the soil, for it grew long and long before ripping free.
I agree that our d'Artagnan would very much wish to be on hand for his family! I think that he would actually be delighted to be a rural noble with an exciting past and comfortable present. But if he does choose to continue partnering with Jacqueline, whether strictly as comrades or also in marriage, he's going to get carried along by her drive and purpose, I think.
To fall back on a storytelling trope that nineteenth-century European writers were often happy to use and abuse... perhaps if they did wish to be a married couple, and to continue adventuring independently, they could pass themselves off as, or join, some Roma people? But, no, what then of Siroc and Ramon?! Ramon does have his sister waiting to see him again someday, and Siroc could doubtless win his way into a university faculty someday, but...
Perhaps everyone needs to go off and fetch back LaRue and have New World adventures before presenting him to his brother in Paris. ;-)
As you note, the show is often quite ridiculously fantastic, so it would be feasibly in line with canon to have Siroc invent effective birth control, or for someone to discover a magic object, or a foreign elixir, or something of the sort. That could be fun! But it would be less than the show accomplished if such lighthearted absurdity weren't paired with real moral dilemmas.
Imagining that Jacqueline did fall in love with d'Artagnan (which I'm not necessarily convinced she had in canon), and that they did marry and continued serving the king as musketeers while maintaining the secret successfully because Jacqueline never conceived (either deliberately or to their surprise)... I can imagine that lack of children, either way, to be a grief and strain to them both.
Throughout history, women have dressed as men to go to war! Some get discovered; presumably, at least as many don't. But Jacqueline's war is not a series of literal battlefields, and if her ongoing pose is exposed, she's theoretically liable for blasphemy (for passing as a man) as well as for the price on her head for killing the man who murdered her father. There were a few women adventurers in the early modern era who did get away with wielding swords and wearing variations on men's clothes for a while, but they were considered terribly scandalous; it would sting and lash Jacqueline to be sneered at as scandalous, when she's really so careful about the things that she believes really matter; she could and would bear it, of course! but it would hurt her, inside, as it wouldn't hurt someone who had meant to showboat on purpose.
Okay, I'll hush now. :-) Thank you, again, so much! Come back any time!
Re: YB - Jacqueline
Um, please don't let me scare you away with my lengthy reply. :-)
The last time that I got to chat about Young Blades was in an early iteration of this ficathon, years ago now, when a very generous person wrote me a YB story featuring Jacqueline and Queen Anne!
I suspect that the best way to discover what Jacqueline would do with the rest of her life if Mazarin and the Order weren't in the way would be to write them out of the way. ;-) That is, what if the musketeers succeed -- the Order is disbanded, Mazarin disgraced and exiled, Louis equipped with wise and trusty advisers, France secured for a generation of peace -- what then? Before the finale, "Secrets," I would have confidently predicted that Jacqueline would then go after her brother! Now... like you, I just do not know. Hunt down that secret, naturally. But theoretically set that aside, too. What would she do once her mission was fulfilled?
...find a new mission? Become a nun? Take the captain's place someday and train up a new generation?
I suppose that I really don't see Jacqueline -- who is ever the conscience of our squad, as d'Artagnan its heart, Siroc its brain and Ramon its spirit -- feeling that her mission is truly accomplished while Louis or France (or Louis as France, for that matter, by the lights of their era) is in danger. That may lead to a lifetime of celibacy for her, but I think she would freely choose that for what it wins her and those she guards. (And, after all, celibacy is theoretically not that strange, and even culturally admired, in her society! At the least, it's officially praised and justified, unlike in ours where it's largely held in suspicion and scorn.) Now, I do think Jacqueline would privately grieve the choice -- not only for romantic love (her interlude with Charles establishes her interest there) and family (she adores her family), but for continuing to live a lie -- but she would still make that choice. And within the story, I really, really enjoy what I see as her tension with that sacrifice (or what will surely become more and more a sacrifice as the years pass). She's not innately a liar; but the lie saves her life, and may yet save France...
d'Artagnan, as a nobleman, really can have it all. She can't. Not as a woman, not as a peasant. It's not at all fair, but it's also barely something to question in that era. The Revolution is yet far off... but perhaps already growing, deep under the soil, for it grew long and long before ripping free.
I agree that our d'Artagnan would very much wish to be on hand for his family! I think that he would actually be delighted to be a rural noble with an exciting past and comfortable present. But if he does choose to continue partnering with Jacqueline, whether strictly as comrades or also in marriage, he's going to get carried along by her drive and purpose, I think.
To fall back on a storytelling trope that nineteenth-century European writers were often happy to use and abuse... perhaps if they did wish to be a married couple, and to continue adventuring independently, they could pass themselves off as, or join, some Roma people? But, no, what then of Siroc and Ramon?! Ramon does have his sister waiting to see him again someday, and Siroc could doubtless win his way into a university faculty someday, but...
Perhaps everyone needs to go off and fetch back LaRue and have New World adventures before presenting him to his brother in Paris. ;-)
As you note, the show is often quite ridiculously fantastic, so it would be feasibly in line with canon to have Siroc invent effective birth control, or for someone to discover a magic object, or a foreign elixir, or something of the sort. That could be fun! But it would be less than the show accomplished if such lighthearted absurdity weren't paired with real moral dilemmas.
Imagining that Jacqueline did fall in love with d'Artagnan (which I'm not necessarily convinced she had in canon), and that they did marry and continued serving the king as musketeers while maintaining the secret successfully because Jacqueline never conceived (either deliberately or to their surprise)... I can imagine that lack of children, either way, to be a grief and strain to them both.
Throughout history, women have dressed as men to go to war! Some get discovered; presumably, at least as many don't. But Jacqueline's war is not a series of literal battlefields, and if her ongoing pose is exposed, she's theoretically liable for blasphemy (for passing as a man) as well as for the price on her head for killing the man who murdered her father. There were a few women adventurers in the early modern era who did get away with wielding swords and wearing variations on men's clothes for a while, but they were considered terribly scandalous; it would sting and lash Jacqueline to be sneered at as scandalous, when she's really so careful about the things that she believes really matter; she could and would bear it, of course! but it would hurt her, inside, as it wouldn't hurt someone who had meant to showboat on purpose.
Okay, I'll hush now. :-) Thank you, again, so much! Come back any time!