farina | It It Takes a Lifetime | Rose of Versailles

Title: If It Takes a Lifetime
Fandom: Rose of Versailles
Words: 5,294
Summary: Oscar and André survive the storming of the Bastille.
Pairing/Character: Oscar/André
Extra Info: This was originally posted on Fanfiction.net back in 2008. It is a full rewrite.
Rating: T.
Genre: Romance, Friendship, Angst and Stuff.

Notes:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I’m nervous to post this because I haven’t written for RoV in forever, but man when the iron is hot, you gotta strike, amirite?

Anyway, I was always really happy with my original idea for this story! The longer I marinated on the manga and anime, the more I pondered the what-ifs and whys of the series. I don’t think I know anyone who saw/read Rose of Versailles and wasn’t immediately like, “I wish Oscar and André had lived!” I wanted this story to be for them.

Or more accurately, I wanted this story to act as some kind of...I don’t know, definitive proof that even if Oscar and André had made it through the 13th and 14th of July, 1789, that they still had to contend with two glaringly tragic issues: André’s blindness and Oscar’s battle with TB.

In 2008, when I originally wrote this story, I had been writing regularly for a number of years (about seven), but I was still very...inexperienced.

I still remember a close friend of mine telling me my writing was “too emotional” and I’m pretty sure the original version of this story, though not one she had ever read, was a classic example of that issue. When I re-read the original story, there were some good elements in place, but it felt underdeveloped—almost lazy? Or maybe...uninspired?

Having rewatched the anime just now (and read the manga for the 10th time at least), I feel like I’m seeing the characters in a way 21+ year old me could not have seen them. I’m older now than Oscar lived to be in the series!!! And I think due to that, and life experiences, I just... Get The Characters.

So while the original idea remained intact (Oscar and André survive but the tragedy occurs anyway, just in a different fashion + we see them reincarnated as teenagers who tease each other about the “legend” of their past lives), I reworked much of the story to help it feel more natural.

I also had a particular desire to mimic the tone of the manga. I’m not 100% sure if the English translation for the later parts is going to sync up with the French or not, but the manga has this waxing-poetic way of speaking. It’s my jam. I love me some metaphors. And I wanted to incorporate some of that into the story, because otherwise...it just wouldn’t feel like Rose of Versailles to me!

If you do remember the original story, you’ll probably remember how bland the second part was. I broke the original into two acts, more or less: Act I was Oscar and André dealing with their own struggles (a blind man caring for someone dying of TB), and Act II was the teenage reincarnations talking about the story that has just been told and concluding in the end that maybe their shared names aren’t a coincidence after all.

I...love cheesy reincarnation ‘fics as much as the next person, but Act II as it was presented originally didn’t fit the characters enough for my liking. I can’t imagine that Oscar would ever believe the story deeply to begin with, so I had to scrap that. Instead, I had them tease each other and left André to be the character who “might” remember something of his past life, and let Oscar remain ignorant. I kept the original date of the “reincarnation” scene because it just...worked for me. With the current turbulent times we’re living in, it puts Oscar at a similar age to she was when she sided with the people in the French Revolution. :)

As far as Act I went, it wasn’t as flat as the second IMO, but it wasn’t very good, either. There was a lot of emotion without the right stuff surrounding it to make it feel Real, and part of my rewrite was just completely retooling those scenes. I think I was also trying for 3rd person omniscient and I hated it, so I rewrote it as third person limited, which meant scrapping lines and scenes anyway.

I also added a few scenes to make the passage of time feel better.

I’m pretty confident that the rewritten product is The Better Story, if only because I had clear goals and worked specifically toward them. The 2020 rewrite of “If It Takes a Lifetime” feels more to me like a Rose of Versailles fanfic than probably any RoV story I ever wrote.

So hey! I’m happy with it! And I hope if you read it, you were happy with it, too.