Enjolras - Wild, Wild West

A bit of fun! A scribbled self-reward at work for getting through a pile of budgets and finance material.

CorvidAngel started the Wild West meme rolling with her amazing Javert painting : [link]

And then TheZippyOlive kept it rolling with her fabulous "How the West was Miserable": [link]

Her Zapista Enjolras (complete with facial hair!) started a conversation about how he probably came from a wealthy family back East, probably Bostonians, before he came West to work on the whole rebel thing.

This started a train of thought...if not a Zapista, then what? Taking the side of the homesteaders against the big ranchers, like a sort of Jimmy Steward character from "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance", but with no Stewartesque qualms about using violence to make his point?

Then I thought - aha! He's been caught up in the abolitionist movement in New England, and came down to Bleeding Kansas to further the struggle against slavery. He doesn't just want to contain it, he wants to bring down the whole "peculiar institution". Feuilly will have to be an escaped slave - I'm seeing a self-educated man in the mould of Frederick Douglass, but one young enough to fight physically when combat breaks out. Combeferre is the town Doctor who went to university with the young lawyer who is determined to change things. ZippyOlive has already designated Courfeyrac's role: he's a honky-tonk pianist! (pic on the way, at her request, complete with saloon girl, just as soon as I get a chance).

I see Enjolras as the character who walks into a saloon and asks for the whereabouts of the villain - in this case, a slaver working to expand his trade into the territory. Much sneering ensues, followed by comments on wet-behind-the-ears boys who should go back East to their mamas, which of course Enjolras coldly ignores. When they go for their guns, Enjolras beats them to it and takes them all out in rapid-fire from the hip. When the smoke clears, he re-holsters his gun and again, just as coolly, repeats his questions.

He'd have to go by the name "The Parisian Kid". Or something.

I can see this rapidly heading scrap-ward...