Line #32 Tearjerker/Innocent


1	[[folder: Innocent]]
2	* The very first chapter of Innocent is already a sob fest in and of itself, as it revolves around Charles-Henri (who is just 14 years old at the time), being scorned by the public, and, during a family dinner, vocally resists against training to become an executioner and huddles up on the floor. Not only that, but the chapter ends with him being sent to the torture chamber to be punished.
3	* The following chapter:
4	** Charles' father, Jean-Baptiste, use the brodequin on Charles to literally beat him into agreeing to become an executioner. Charles eventually passes out. He dreams that he's a large flower field, naked and with other wild animals. At the sight of his old tutor, Father Grisel, Charles smiles, believing that he had actually died and went to Heaven. However, this dream quickly ends as Jean-Baptiste forces him back to reality by using hot coals to heat up the boards separating his legs - represented as the beautiful landscape and Father Grisel bursting into flames. As Charles is consumed by them, the sky turns into the face of his father, saying:
5	--->Jean-Baptiste: There are no dreams in this world. You must live with despair.
6	** Once Charles comes to, Jean-Baptiste agrees with Charles over the fact that the Sansons will always be scorned by society, and a panel shows the man shedding a SingleTear as he says that Charles has no other path but to sever the necks of men. Once Charles agrees, shedding tears as well, Baptiste quickly removes the hot planks and embraces Charles, saying that he's glad he's made it in time. It looks as if Baptiste shows that he actually cares for his son after all, but then comes this line:
7	--->Jean-Baptiste: "Now I will no longer be scorned by you-..."
8	* The very fact that the moment you work for the Sansons, are married, or worse, are born into the family, you are immediately shunned by the rest of society. This stigmatization goes so far as people pelting you with rotten food or human excrement.
9	* While practicing, or trying to practice, his swordsmanship, Charles meets with a young boy around his own age named Jean.
10	** The audience is shown that Jean was just washing his mouth after being forced to sexually please a soldier, an act that Jean despises, and hears Charles' cries. Standing before him, Jean asks Charles why was he crying as well, but before he can get an answer, Charles quickly flinches away from him and turns to leave. Jean asks Charles if they'll ever meet again, but Charles leaves without a word.
11	** A few days later, during the summer solstice festivities, it's revealed that Jean is the son of Earl Chartois, the man who hired Jean-Baptiste and Charles to demonstrate their swordsmanship. After filling in for his father when Baptiste suddenly collapsed, Charles believes that, now with his lineage exposed, Jean won't want to meet him again. After arguing with Earl Chartois that the lion that was brought to display his skills can't be executed, as the animal's mane wasn't cut and therefore is considered proof of his innocence, and by extension King Louis XV is benevolent, Charles doesn't meet with Jean until a few days later. Jean apologizes for ignoring Charles and sheds a tear while saying, "May the world have been all crumbled", then kisses Charles.
12	** Jean then reveals to Charles that [[RapeAsBackstory he sleeps with his father]] and asks Charles if humans are truly superior to other animals, as humans just suffer by living. Later on, Jean is taken prisoner for the crime of being part of the Church of England, although the truth was that he was a scapegoat for Earl Chartois. When Charles goes to the Concierge to meet Jean, Jean has been beaten and is heavily implied to have been raped all night. Despite Charles trying to get through Jean, Jean spits back at Charles and curses him, saying that he should've never known him in the first place. The next day, Charles attempts to execute Jean without hesitation, but misses when Jean mentions the name of his little sister. The sword misses its mark, and in a panic, Charles swings down his sword multiple times until Jean is nothing more than a bloody pulp. The crowd pities Jean and one guy denounces Charles as a devil that likes killing people. Following this, Charles is judged by the hundreds of onlookers as a "murderer", and he screams to the heavens that he isn't a murderer, and sobs that he was made to do it, and that he's innocent.
13	** To twist the knife even further, it's revealed that Charles had written a petition to spare Jean's life, but was confiscated and sent to Anne-Marthe, Charles' grandmother. Without a hint of remorse, she burns the letter and vows to "tempter that weak heart of [Charles]".
14	* The entire friendship between Charles-Henri and Damiens: from having Damiens' son sent to the Sansons' mansion, only to reveal to the man that his son might not have long to live, all the way to Charles trying his best to execute Damiens via ecartelement as quickly as possible and release from his suffering.
15	** When Damiens has Charles go with him to go to his old village to sell some farming tools so he can properly pay back Charles, not only is his whole house emptied out, but an old, cross woman is wearing the very dress that Flora, his late wife always wore - up until she was buried in that dress. Damiens is rightly pissed at the woman for desecrating a grave just for new clothes.
16	* Nicolas-Gabriel's attempts at earning his mother's love, ever since he was a young boy, as Anne-Marthe purposefully focused more on Jean-Baptiste in the past.
17	* In a way, Griffith's execution: Instead of being chopped up to bits as Marie had intended, since he was the man who raped and sexually abused her, Griffith is decapitated by Jean-Baptiste, called a hero of France, and had his corpse properly taken care of.
18	* In the chapter where Charles defends himself during a sham trial, he tries to convince Marie that he's a changed man. She rebukes him with her belief that all of humanity is dirty, with every person trying to kill or exploit each other. [[EtTuBrute Is it any wonder how 13 year-old Marie]] [[RapeAsBackstory came to]] [[ColdBloodedTorture such a conclusion]]?
19	* The close relationship between Marie Antoinette and her sister Carolina was, much like in real life, cut short due to Carolina having been hastily wed to Charles III of Spain after Maria Carolina died of smallpox.
20	--> Antoinette: We were going to be together forever...I can't believe you were chosen to be princess of Naples in Josepha's place...Goodbye, Charlotte...
21	* A minor one, but Antoinette having to leave everything behind that came from Austria, including her dog Mops.
22	* The burning of Alain's school, and Alain's subsequent murder. While Marie was never a nice person, it's this tragedy that causes her to become a full-blown VillainProtagonist. Her descent into this is coupled after coming across Alain's body, lying in the snow with a gunshot wound, along with a sword stabbed into the chest. With the only man she ever had romantic feelings for dead, Marie decides to fully embrace being an executioner and tear down the aristocracy by any means necessary.
23	* By the end of Innocent, the warm relationship Charles-Henri and Marie once had has completely crumbled.
24	[[/folder]]
25	[[folder: Innocent Rouge]]
26	* One of the first executions shown in Rouge is that of [[DeathOfAChild Helene]], who was only 12 years old. Having been sold to a commoner family to in order to wed off her older sister, Helene winds up raped and pregnant. She attempts to abort the baby, only to draw the ire of her unwanted husband. While attempting to defend herself, she knocks her husband down the stairs, killing him, and is sentenced to death- but being pregnant means the execution must wait until the baby can be delivered. Following a successful C-section, Charles-Henri mentions that she's later to be hanged for murdering her husband, shocking his eldest son Henri. When the day arrives, Helene is relieved to no longer be pregnant with "commoner's blood". The crowd quickly turns against her, and she's hanged in a painful manner, her body weight being insufficient for the noose to render her unconscious. Charles-Henri requests anyone who is a family member to Helene to step forward and help release her from her suffering, but her biological family has avoided the execution out of shame and the family she wed into refuses, wanting her to suffer for her crimes, and for her perceived arrogance. Not wanting Helene to die all alone, Henri steps forward to act as the "weight", sending her off peacefully- and seconds after she succumbs to the noose, the king pardons all prisoners due to be executed that day.
27	* Charles-Henri executing Louis XVI, the person whom he referred to as "mon ami" ever since the king was a little boy.
28	* Antoinette being told by Marie that throughout all of her 19 years in France, [[FalseFriend all of the people that she surrounded herself with were only with her because it benefited them]], exemplified with Madame Polignac immediately abandoning Antoinette once the revolution comes.
29	* Like her real-life counterpart, Antoinette and her children were eventually separated, with her son Louis-Charles being abused by his caretakers, and her daughter Marie-Therese confined with Elisabeth.
30	* Equally heartbreaking is when Antoinette is executed by Marie, following Antoinette's decision to be executed rather than escape through a plan that Marie had created. A fantasy sequence emerges of the two Maries dancing together, with Marie smiling at Antoinette. When she's attacked right after executing the last queen of France, Marie gouges out the eyes of the man who stabbed her, and as she's bending the man backwards with her bare hands until she snaps his neck, a panel shows of Antoinette, smiling.
31	* A small one, but in chapter 84, Zero asks Charles-Henri if Marie is going to be killed. In the same chapter, during the family dinner, Marie tells Charles-Henri that the only way for the executions to stop is if a Sanson is executed, and admits that the only time that she was genuinely happy was when she and Charles-Henri were dreaming together.
32	* Combined with NightmareFuel is the entirety of chapter 85, where Marie is stripped, had the flesh on her back torn by a whip, beaten to a bloody pulp, hoisted up in the air by old-fashion torture devices, then raped by the spiked copper handle of a ship that St. Just uses. Charles-Henri, Anne, Henri, Andre can only beg for Marie to be released as they're held back and ForcedToWatch. Especially with, 7-year-old Zero, as they go from admiring Marie's way of never backing down to shedding tears as their whole worldview of liberty, equality and fraternity crumbles and their mother is dragged on the streets.
33	* Later on in chapter 86, it's revealed that Jacques Damiens, the man who inspired Marie to side with the revolutionaries, was eventually imprisoned and tortured until he was DrivenToSuicide.
34	* Following helping Marie escape her own execution, knowing that he'll never see her again, Charles-Henri sports some DullEyesOfUnhappiness and no longer feels any emotion whenever he decapitates someone.
35	* Charles-Henri, now an old man, bemoans how he was never able to achieve his single goal of abolishing executions,which wouldn't come true until 1981. From the very beginning, Charles' pure goal became a TragicDream.
36	* Marie-Joseph would never see her dream of the end of the aristocracy either, as she died right around the tail end of the 18th century.
37	[[/folder]]
38	[[folder: Innocent Musicale]]
39	* Alain's death and the aftermath. In the manga, when Marie comes across his body is when she vows to destroy the aristocracy and avenge him, culminating with her success of having De Luxe tried and executed (much to the whooping and hollering of the crowd). The musicale? Alain dies, surrounded by his allies, including Jacques Damiens, and Marie doesn't even know about it until Jacques mentions him while he and Marie are fighting. Marie stops the fight, looking like she's in a daze, and demands Jacques to tell her who killed Alain. She immediately hunts down De Luxe, finding him right after he enjoyed himself with a prostitute, fights him, and kills him (either by chopping off his head or slashing him right across the chest. However, the results come away more like a PyrrhicVictory; with Marie solemnly vowing to change the future in her own way. She sings a reprise of Mukunarumono, and Andre rushes in, stating that he'll always serve her.

Context Tearjerker / Innocent