The LaVedier Family

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by GabrielLaVedier

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"	His hand was on the lever laid, His oil-can soothed the worrying cranks, His whistle waked the snowbound grade, His fog-horn cut the reeking Banks; By dock and deep and mine and mill The Boy-god reckless laboured still! -Rudyard Kipling, "The King"

I've been slowly developing a concrete world for Gabriel to inhabit, not just a generic thing latched onto something else. I'm starting to get a clearer picture of what it's like, and how it looks, and this is one thing. A family insignia. Looks noble, doesn't it? Not quite. That's not a concept for his family anymore, and the reason has to do with a major theme for me, the Revolution.

The LaVedier family, as the name implies, made money in forestry, from logging to hunting. But they were always forward-thinking individuals, both in technology for business to social concerns. They joined proper salons and talked social philosophy, disputing many thinkers who had ideas about those from other shores. Their salons, indeed, were very positive about those from abroad and were against slavery and discrimination.

Then the Revolution came. It was actually physical LaVedier hands that threw bricks and torches at the Bastille, and LaVedier advanced muskets in the hands of sans-coulottes that had royals running. There was a split in this timeline, one of heavy significance. Robespierre and his lot were set to turn a revolution into a bloodbath. But a stronger, more motivated group grew out of the weak and loose Girondin faction. They wanted slower secularization, freedom for those who wanted to dissent, and they backed General Tomas-Alexandre Dumas more fully and completely than others. This coterie got bloody, but only once. They personally thwarted Robespierre and the Jacobins, feeding them to the guillotine to ensure stability.

The Committe of Public Safety never had a chance to seat itself. It was replaced by a collection of those that had united against them, a kind of early Directory that pushed for anti-monarchism, abolition, and expansion of ideas, not borders. The group really had no name, they had been more concerned with stopping Robespierre and maintaining revolutionary ideals and goals. It was mostly relatively young, forward thinkers with zeal and a love for the good the revolution could do. Initially a joking title, they did take on the official moniker of Les Enfants de la Révolution, The Children of the Revolution. With General Dumas at the head of the revolutionary army, they went forward, into the land of Austrians and Prussians, but waited on the Russians. They couldn't reliably take on the Tsar. They did have one problem that made himself known in Egypt that bothered their great General. A miserable upstart Cosican called Bonaparte. An anti-revolutionary with delusions of grandeur. He was recalled to Paris, and never became famous. Just executed for his crimes against the state in trying to gather momentum for a coup d'etat, the first harsh act of Les Enfants to protect their government and themselves. It was a statement. They would defend the people that relied on them. No King, no Emperor, no Bonaparte, no Jacobin, no Bourbon would threaten them and the stability of a world made for the freedom of the people.

European History shatters there, being nothing like in our world. Everything changes. General Dumas, with the full support of Les Enfants, becomes the legend of the world. The Irish Rebellion of 1798 is successful. For all it was worth. Horatio Nelson and the Duke of Wellington are paltry footnotes for history nerds. 1066 happened twice, and the second time they booted out the king entirely.

It gets much more complicated after that because there was no age of imperial colonialism, not really, not as we know it. Explorers actually explored, and worked very hard to make peaceful contact and tell those they met what they had and how they could form a trading relationship with the expanded French state. And this also leads into an interesting quirk of a kind of... prestige among Les Enfants. They recognized, before others, though with first-hand information given the mess that was the former Hapsburgs, that purity was a lie and stupidity. They wanted strongly varied, fresh genes. It was a point of pride to be able to legitimately claim non-coerced ancestry from something other than their presented breed (they were mostly dogs, poodles, papillons, chevaliers, doge de Bordeaux, and the like). The LaVedier family favored hyenas, but weren't interested in sapping populations from the freed colonies. They got very lucky that a family member, Jean-Etienne LaVedier, made contact with a hyena tribe on a trade expedition. A few months of language learning, friendly relations, established trade deals, and a rite of passage later, he was eligible to marry a (lesser) daughter of the chieftess. Lesser or not, he was happy. They became a regional power thanks to LaVedier material support and participated in a quite unique system of this timeline/world. The Exchange. After relaying information about the look of local buildings, they were built to specs, while a French-style area was built there. Then, with consent, selected, special persons are sent between the two places, distant natives living in the heart of France, and French citizens living in the other land, with encouragement on both sides to mix freely and learn from locals. This kind of mutual colonization ensures the flow of information and good relations.

But to the image. Les Enfants continue to the modern day, but only if they can earn it. It's essentially a technocratic directive position, a bit like an executive branch with input for legislature. The members of families must demonstrate competence, and some families have been removed to be replaced by others. The LaVedier family has always been interested in technological efficiency, making this setting a lot more... not really dieselpunk, because it's not a crappy world. It's nice in its technological advancement. They believe all things can be solved with labor and innovation. This current iteration was newly designed by Gabriel, who just recently passed the brutally crushing suite of exams and practical tests to demonstrate competence to replace his father on the committee, in due time. He added the gas mask elements to the traditional plague doctor mask, updated some of the tools being held, and emphasized the hyena side. They have branch members who had hyena blood but the main line was never so blessed until recently, with Gabriel taking up with Marakees, from Tanganyika, a highly placed warrior-clerk of Lungu descent (though she admits to extensive Khoisan ancestry) from the region contacted by Jean-Etienne, which became a major player in the area. Trumpeting main-line intermarriage is seen as gauche, but everyone does it, openly. This can be seen as an expression of what the LaVedier family is, what it values, what moves them. Attachment to the ancient ways, seen with the figure dressed as a sans-coulotte, a powerful acceptance of their non-poodle ties, the emphasis on industry and innovation to solve problems. This is what Gabriel, via his family, is all about.

Imagery is mine, influenced by Kipling.
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