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So...

The thing with Cécile Renault and Nicole Bouchard. They were somewhat mentally ill, cute-looking girls who were executed for the sake of making anti-Robespierre propaganda.

Executing children was seen as messed up even by XVIIIth century standards, so these girls looking like children even though they were late teens did stur up the majority of the audience. It was so messed up because they were so obviously innocent, that Desmorest l'ainé refused to tie them, and Charles-Henri Sanson had straight up hallucinations.

The older Desmorest brother was Charles-Henri's right hand man, and he was taken in by the Sanson family as a twelve year old orphan. He also married a certain Gabrielle Sanson, the youngest of Jean-Baptiste children. His younger brother was only fifteen during the Revolution, and he was called "Le Jeune" by Charles-Henri to differenciate him from his brother. They were distant relatives, and the two Desmorest, but also Legros would use the term "cousin" as one of reverence. (G. Lenotre did retranscribe the letters of the Sanson assistants, all calling Charles-Henri Sanson their cousin, even if Legros was not related).

The real-life Charles-Henri Sanson straight up went insane from the Terror and kidney stones, spending his older years in constant physical and mental pain. He got to see his grandson, but I'm not sure this man wanted to live that much longer, exept if he feared hellfire.

So yeah, in Innocent, Shinichi Sakamoto either didn't knew about or ignored but...Him writing Charles-Henri as closed off until the death of his son is...interesting.

trying to think of how my superior and totally correct rewritten ending would work without turning Robespierre into a one dimensional gay woman-hating supervillain and the whole...mess that was done by the end of the Reign of Terror "arc"

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I am a fan of Innocent. I ship Nicolas and Soubise.

I hate that the "Innocent" fanfom is so so small (and half of it doesn't speak english), but at least we don't fight over ships and have pros and antis for every character <3

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Bonus point if it happens in their decrepid "vacation" home, which seem to be the kind of house that you are unsure if it's falling appart or haunted, but neither is good.

On the other hand...

Charles trying to walk in the gardens, fresh after the brodequins:

"Don't trip, don't trip, don't trip...Ssss!

-Hello !" (peasant NPC)

Charles stop scaring the random peasent with your attachment issues and fix his mf arm

(The fact that the Sansons do free healthcare is hilarious to me, this has probably happened idcccc)

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Hi, I love your psychological analyses so much about DL boys! May I ask why you don't attribute Laito to Borderline Personality Disorder? he kind of looks like who have it

The biggest reason I don't see borderline in Laito is because of the major component of impulsivity in borderline symptoms. That's probably the main symptom for that disorder. I don't see Laito as impulsive. Kanato, Subaru and Ayato are good examples of impulsive personalities. But you don't see that in Laito often. He's very methodical and deliberate in his behaviors and manipulations. He will take great care to analyse every aspect of you to find the ways that would hurt you most. That's his way of gaining power over you. He enjoys using all kinds of manipulative cruelty, both physical and emotional, to gain power and control over his victims. He gains sexual gratification from this form of power and control. It's his way to gain power and control over the trauma of his CSA. He inflicts sexual pain and control on others as a form of control over what happened to him.

These behaviors fit sadistic personality disorder best, imho. But that diagnosis was removed from the dsm for various reasons, mainly because of stigma from the bsdm community, I believe? But from what I've heard, it's being reconsidered in the context of nonconsent and disordered behavior. I have not properly spent time looking into this though.

The dsm 5 does have a sexual sadism disorder, but I don't think it fits Laito as well as sadistic personality disorder. The difference between the two diagnoses is that sexual sadism disorder is for sexual pleasure, whereas sadistic personality disorder is for control in general, not just sexual control.

So yeah, I still haven't settled on a current dms 5 diagnosis for Laito. But, I haven't actually had time to sit down and really dive into it to find a good fit for him.

ETA: Laito also doesn't have the feelings of worthlessness that is also a main component of borderline. I think he has subconscious feelings of worthlessness, but that's just my opinion. He never outright says he's worthless, the way people with borderline do. He does have the mood swings with hostility and irritability and some antisocial behaviors, but I don't think he's self destructive or self-harming the way borderline disorders tend to be, and he's not suicidal in the least.

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The Wizarding World is a dystopia.

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How plausible it is to have a Matriarchy with female torturers in a Renaissance setting? (Yes, I am talking about the Drows)

To be frank, I haven’t heard of such a thing in real life. Matriarchy that practices ritual torture. Easy to find, especially if you study Native American History. However, most of the times, the ones doing the physical aspect of the session were men, just like in most other societies. 

Also, it depends on what definition of the word “torture” do we mean, because if you are a torture scholar (lawyer or historian), you will most likely focus exclusively on it as an interrogation technique while Amnesty International has a much broader spectrum to it. 

In most of Europe’s history, torturing was considered a filthy, socially taxing task that was undertook by three types of people: people who were absolutely desperate, slaves and people suffering systematic discrimination, with these realities only changing during the late XIX century, with the expansion of the British Empire. 

Now, most female torturers we know of, do NOT come from Matriarchal or even gender equal societies. The only two european countries that had female executioners were England (only once in the countrie’s History) and France (though only for floggings). Most modern countries that have officially (that I have heard of) payed female torturers are ex-French colonies or Saudi Arabia. 

Yikes. 

Now, unless you bribe me with some West African data or some South American data, I would say that such a structural coincidence is quite unlikely. 

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Writting professional torturers

Look at Scripttorture, she’s amazing. 

Another thing to consider is that professional torturers do not usually have long careers, 10 years at most. 

Historically, they were in terms of family background the youngest siblings in a family, but not always. It was simply because of their recruitement: they were often times, the foltermeisters and the questionnaires were the younger brothers in family of executioners who didn’t want to serve their older brother. In the case of the “Hopital général”, they were often times the youngest sisters in a household who went to work there because their parents no longer had the ressources to help them find a husband. 

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Drow system of clothing

Okay...an esclavagiste society that lives in literal darkness of caves. Also “Moon elves” will be classified here as “dark elves” because of their low-light lifestyle. Cool. Let’s just say we’ll have three main nations. The nation of the Peroxyde, for igneous rock, with caves formed by lava. The nation of Gneiss, which would be characterized by the caves carved by the sea near mountains and would symbolize metamorphic rock. The nation of Lime, which would characterize caves carved out by rain in limestone and would symbolise sedimentary rocks. 

Let’s imagine that in this type of fantasy, some kind of geo-thermic energy-feeding organism developed to take a niche similar to the one of plants in the outside world. 

For the Pyroxene nation, I will imagine albino-fishskins, fish bones,  tanned intestines, centipede shells and spider silk as raw materials. The skin, hair and nails of any execution victim or fallen enemies might also be used. For metal, I will imagine nickel, coper or tin. For gems, quartz, olivine and pyroxene would be the most common gems, with a few very rare moonstones, with topaz, granites and apatite in between. I will imagine a system of clothing with loinclothed, belts and/or sashes and slippers. Any free person would ware fish-leather slippers or mocassins, belt and loinclothed. Due to the absence of materials to make cloaks and so on, many would wear their hair quite long, tied them most of the time except when they have to visit colder places. In preparation to visit hotter parts of the cave, the hair might be logged with cold water to help with heat. However, slaves and criminals would be naked and shorn, sometimes even have their fingernails removed. I think men’s belts would be wider, almost corset-like to provide protection for dangerous jobs while women would wear narrower belts, except those doing “men’s” work. Children would probably wear no belts at all. To commemorate healings, people might wear their washed silk bandages in elaborate sashes. The upper class can wear elaborate metalic belts embeded with jem stones. Belts made out of elven materials will be reserved for the judicial class. 

For Gneiss nation, I will imagine a similar system of clothing, but with more copper, tin, iron and zinc than Nickle with some occasional gold and silver. Their closeness to the sea would. Gems would be lapis lazuli, jade, beryl, zircon, turquoise,  rubies, sapphires and emeralds. There would also be more sea-shells and maybe even pearls. The closeness to the sea would insure the possibility to consume many marine creatures and use their bones in ornamentation. To the simply fish skin and guts will be added any marine mammal unfortunate enough to cross paths with them as well as many birds. The same “skin, hair and nails of unwanted people”. I would imagine a slightly longer style of garments, with leg and arm warmers added to the mixt. Since in most societies, it was men who did the riskier jobs, the warmer, more protective clothes would be considered masculine garments. Men would probably wear loin-clothes, corset-like belts, mocassins arm warmers and leg warmers of fish-skin or out of tanned fish-gut macromer, or for warriors, light plate armor and would typically wear neck-long hair. The women of such societies would wear less clothes simply due to material scarcity and less need. Loin clothes, belts and mocassins would do the trick. They would probably wear their hair long with many small ornaments. The upper class would wear quite elaborate jewlery with imbedded gems. Spider silk would be used for minor things such as bandages or ribbons. 

For the Limestone nation, the only available metal would be Iron. The same fish-skin and spider-silk will be used, along side maybe algae cloth. Clay broches would also be used. Here, only the poorest would wear nothing but mocassins, loin-clothes and belts, preferring the addition of algae tunics to the wardrobe. Only slaves or religious penitents would go completely naked. I also imagine they would really like necklaces and bracelets. 

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How to write dynastic executioners...

Yes...

First: 

Decide your setting.

Second,

Executioner dynasties often times form because of ostracism however, once formed, they will hardly end until the abolition of death penalty. They tend to cut across natural and man-made disasters. 

Often times, executioners are recruited from despised minorities or tend to take wives from this minority. For exemple the Ottoman empire recruited executioners among the Romanian gypsies because it was considered more humiliating to be whipped or killed by a “sub-human”. 

Third,

Psychology. Torture and execution is a transgressive universe that tend to form distinct subcultures. A dynastic executioner will have a very different vision of what is normal than the average person. What we consider normal very much depends on our family. Just now imagine if that family were dad kills for a living, uncle tortures for a living, big brother is helping dad and mom cleans the death instruments. This is the kind of family one must think about. 

The blood, gore and ostracism created an environment were transgression of the main stream culture is the new norm. 

If it was in an era before universal schooling, this social isolation combined with their transgressive environment would push the dynastic executioner to have huge gaps in his knowledge of what is socially acceptable. 

Most of them were by their adult years, thoroughly desensitized to anything transgressive.

Their subculture also tends to be completely apolitical (to the point they don’t care if their country gets invaded). 

They do have a conception of honor, but one divorced from reputation and main-stream society.

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Much Needed Acknowledgement

Today is Canada day. I am quite embarrassed to say the least that my country was responsable for such harm towards children in residential “schools” and refuse to present any kind of archive after wards. Thoughts and prayers. 

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Big Thanks to Scripttorture

@scripttorture

Thank you for your awesome research! I do my own plentiful research (including primary sources), but I she’s still far more knowledgeable about the subject than me. 

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Correction:

“du Moyen Âge à l’abolition.”

The biggest personality difference between Shinichi Sakamoto's Charles-Henri and the real historical figure

The real Sanson was kind of...eccentric, to say the least, with a lot of botched executions when he was well into his adult years and just overall high jinks. The Mémoires of the Sanson, which is fictionalized to portray him in POSITIVE light have M. Sanson needing to get his FATHER's friend drunk and have his step-mother feed him plenty of vegetables and eggs for him to socialize with someone. His first attempt to have a sexual partner is essentially: hearing about a girl, stalking the girl, trying to woe the girl by a lecture on chastity and make a fool of himself in front of said girl. And that is ROMANTICIZED Charles-Henri Sanson. The real man got into petty arguments with prostitutes because they refused to have him as a client (it might not have been purely sexual as many visited prostitutes for things other than sex such as having someone to talk to) on the basis that sleeping with the executioner (who's not allowed to be their client anyways) might deprive them of their clientele (no matter how ugly or more importantly violent this clientele might be).

Sakamoto's Sanson makes a deep friendship with a boy his age as a teenager (what I described above is Charles-Henri as a young adult, just imagine how awkward he must have been as a tween or adolescent). He's also portrayed as friends with Damien. While the real Sanson turned out to be a gentleman and capable of polite conversation, he was still a lot less socially skilled than his fictional counter part.

On the scaffold, he was not skilled at all and had a reputation of being quite clumsy through his youth and even most of his adult life. His reputation as a "good executioner" were not about his skills but the content of his character.

Mémoires des Sanson

Les Bourreaux de France, du Moyen Âge à aujourd'hui

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About Sanson

The more I study this man...the more I have the impression that he had spent a certain portion of his childhood with the Jesuits. We do have letters that seem to be authentic, or so I was told. The letter was scanned on Gallica, which I of course read. I talked to my history professor about the sheer neatness of his handwriting, and I asked where someone in the Ancient Régime could have learned such calligraphy. Even his signature is squeaky clean. So, my professor told me that the Jesuits taught calligraphy. So, it left me into a bit of research about the Jesuits and their pedagogy. Nothing on handwriting though. But, I currently have not read any complete book nor could purchase one so, this thread must be continued later. Also, Frédérique Armand does use Ménétra as a source for discovering a bit about this Sanson, a humane and gentle man. According to this source, Charles-Henri Sanson was extremely promuicuous and the rumor of the time attributed him to have a sexual affair with an aristocratic musician. Now, several source attest of Sanson sleeping around with almost any woman who would take him, under various names. Now, why would be he linked to a musician in this sort of manor, keeping in mind the fact it was frowned upon in those days, just buggles me. How would he get into an lord's entourage. And not even one that was famously depraved and liked having sex while watching executions...Yeah...The pieces do start to gather. It's just a theory.

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Scripttorture is best blog I found yet.

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A fluffy paragraphe

The two boys were entitled to one each. The older of the two tasted it. The drink was delicious, refreshing, subtle and bitter, of a comforting warmth and smooth of texture. He quickly guessed the mixture of dandelion powder and oatmeal. The only thing missing was being able to sit down, but that wouldn't happen for a week. " Thank you! Said the two children in unison.

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Best thanks to Scripttorture for helping educating the public and me.

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The curious situation of the Sanson Fourth generation

There is a lot of strange behavior in this tangled family tree. I’ll go sibling by sibling, eldest to youngest

Madeleine-Claude-Gabrielle Sanson, 

Eldest child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and his first wife Madeleine Transon. We know very little of her, but the few details we have are...Interesting. She was born in circa 1738 and married Pierre Hérisson in 1754, at the young age of fifteen. Now, here is the interesting part. This probably was not a love marriage, since he was at least 10 years older than her and lived in another city (which ment they had even less opportunity to let them know each other). 10 years isn’t a huge age gap for an adult, but she was only sixteen. Also, it is important to note that the average age of marriage at the time was not so different from today. But, for an arranged marriage, it didn’t really benefit her family that much. He was poorer than the Sanson family, and he took none of her brothers as apprentices. They had one daughter: Marie-Madeleine Geneviève Hérisson, born in 1762, when her mother was 24 years old. She herself married in 1779 to her own uncle Louis-Cyr-Charlemagne Sanson. Now, why Madeleine was married to this Pierre Hérisson, the most likely explanation to me was that her family wanted to put her out of the reach of her father’s rivals (who was handicapped at the time), who may or may not be the most scrupulous in the means to achieve their end. They were a case were the rival of an executioner beat his rival’s children in an attempt to provoque them into doing something illegal. She died in 1779, age 41.

The second child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and his first wife Madeleine Transon was Charles-Henri Sanson, born in Febuary 1739. He and he sister lost their mother the following year. At around age of 10, he was sent to a boarding school in Rouen. The boy seemed to enjoy himself there (I do have my doubts on the subject) until in 1753, his identity was recognized. He was expelled. His father tried to sent him to another school, but it didn’t last long (maximum a few months). Then, he studied at home under an certain abbé Grisel as a tutor. He also began to assist his father full time as oposed to seasonally and very occasionally. He quickly gained the reputation for being extremely clumsy on the scaffold. In winter 1754/1755 , his father was hit by a stroke, leaving his clumsy 15 year old son as his replacement. To be fair, the techniques taught by Jean-Baptiste required a lot of cordination, which his eldest son lacked.  It went...not this well. In 1757, he proceeded to the quartering of Damien. He was still kind of clumsy on the job until his fourties. In the mean-time, in 1766, he married Marie-Anne Jugier after a history of scandalous affairs with loose women and men, for that matter. There was also rumors about him continuing to have affairs with aristocrates even after his marriage. He officially became executioner in 1778, a few weeks before the death of his father. (Mind you, at the time, Jean-Baptiste was severely handicapped and couldn’t harm a fly.) His wife gave him two sons (Henri, born in 1767 and Gabriel born in 1769) (the existance of the second is debated by historians), and potencially a daughter (who may or may not have existed, simply was not his daughter). When the Revolution hit, Charles-Henri was an advocate of the guillotine, for practical and humanitarian reasons. In 1792, a tragedy hit the family: the accidental death of Gabriel by a particularly clumsy incident. The Revolution had slowly eaten away at M. Sanson’s sanity, due to the sheer number of executions (the Royal family, the Terreur and many victims of political intrigue, including one of his ex-lovers, Madame Dubarry). The execution of a certain Cécile Renault, along with fiftie other people (chosen specifically for their innocence), for attempted murder of Robespierre, in an attempt to descridit him, really drived Sanson over the edge. Cécile Renault was very child-like, both in terms of looks, intellect and personality, which could have struck his more parental cord. He eventually quitted his job in 1795, due to a nephretic colic. He died in 1806, after seeing his two grand-children and spending the last decade of his life in physical and mental . 

The third child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and the first child of his second wife Jeanne Gabrielle Berger was Louis-Charles-Martin Sanson, born in 1744. He is in my eyes, the least sympathetic of this brotherhood. Little is known about his youth exept that he served as an assistant to his half-brother  until 1768, were he became executioner of Tour, and later Auxerre. He married his second wife in 1787, who was quite an agressive woman and the brother of an volunteering executioner. Unlike his brothers, Louis-Martin led a politically active career were he joined an extremist revolutionary tribunal in Tour, at the expense of his primary duties, causing a lot of butched executions. When he was (finally) arrested for his professional faillings and his sympathy for Hébert, his wife defended him quite wildly, and ended up reclaiming the head of a high placed man named Chalmel. He also got a post somewere in the South of France. It didn’t turn too well for him, since the prejudice against his profession was much stronger in the Midi. Instead of telling like an intelligent problem that he had trouble getting in and out of his house, he invented some story about being alergic to the Meditteranian climate. Naturally, it wasn’t believed. He died in 1817, leaving behind his wife and his adult son. 

The fourth child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and the second child of his second wife Jeanne Gabrielle Berger was Nicolas-Charles-Gabriel Sanson II (he had an uncle of the same name), born in 1745. He became an assistant to his brother until 1765, were he became executioner of Versailles as a replacement of his uncle of the same name. He gave this office to his older brother Charles-Henri in 1778, to take the post of questionnaire of Paris, in succession to a mysterious, not quite alive Jean-Baptiste Barré. He remained in this place until the abolition of judicial torture by Louis XVI in 1780. He kept assisting his older brother until he obtained the post of Blois in 1795, then Montpellier. He married during this year a certain Anne Françoise, devoid of surname, widow of François Fromentut. Nicolas-Charles was unable to keep any post long due to his love of the bottle. He died in 1800, of one too many alcohol poisonings.  

The fifth child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and third child of his second wife, Jeanne Gabrielle Berger was Louis-Cyr-Charlemagne Sanson, born in 1748. He was famous in his life for two things, one being the husband of his own niece and two, his diplomatic activities during the French Revolution. He began assisting his older brother Charles-Henri in 1760 at the age of 12. Although, how and why he was kept around his incompetent's older brother who routinely faced the risk of being lynched is frankly beyond me, especially given the fact he had a competant and adult brother-in-law. He became executioner of Provins in 1768, age of 20. In 1779, he married his own niece, who was 17 at the time, maybe during his sister’s funeral, at age 37. He became a widower in 1784, and eventually remarried a certain Marie Fare Gendron in 1792. It is more towards the Revolution that his life became...interesting. And by interesting, I mean dangerous. He became executioner of Versailles in 1790, after his post was abolished. Fearing for the future of his profession, he along with his half-brother, became the representatives of their social class, constantly doing a moutain of paper work to insure the future of themselves and their colleagues, and preferably, prevent the nomination of sadistic individuals. In the 10th of August 1792, he was imprisonned as a suspected royalist, along with two of his brothers. They were all released but he was imprisonned again at the prison of Abbaye, only to get out two days before the Septembre Massacres. After his release, he was buzier than ever before. He died in 1794, leaving behind his adult son and grand-children in abject poverty, without saving their reputation. 

The sixth child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and fourth child of his second wife Jeanne Gabrielle Berger was Marie-Josephe Sanson, born in 1751. In 1773, she married her first cousin Jean-Louis Sanson at the age of 22, who was competant on the scaffold but bad at paper work. She became a widow in 1794 and became a washer woman until her death in 1813. She would be one of the rare members of the family to eventually get out of infamy on her own merits. 

The seventh child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and fifth child of his second wife Jeanne Gabrielle Berger was Pierre-Charles, born in 1753. We don’t know when he died. He assisted his older brother Charles-Henri, then went to live in Eastern France as a riffleur, leading a discreet, lonely and honest life until his death. 

The eighth child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and sixth his second wife Jeanne-Gabriel Berger was Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Sanson, born in 1754 and who died young. 

The nineth child of Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson and seventh his second wife was Joseph-Claude Sanson, born in 1757 and who died at the young age of 22 in 1779, age 22, no spouse, no children, no charge. 

Gabrielle Sanson, youngest of the bunch, was born probably a year later. She probably died as an infant. 

Sources: 

DESMOREST, Michel et Danielle, “Dictionnaire historique et philosophique des bourreaux”

DELARUE, Jacques, “Le métier de bourreau, du Moyen Âge à aujourd’hui”

ARMAND, Frédéric, “Les bourreaux de France, du Moyen Âge à l’abolition de la peine de mort.”

MARCHAL, Gilles, “Bourreaux de Travail”

http://racineshistoire.free.fr/DOC/PDF/Dynasties-de-Bourreaux.pdf 

My history of the Renaissance course

The channel “Revue du monde”, a historical vulgarisation channel.

Also, this family tree website: https://gw.geneanet.org/geneavendeemili?lang=en&n=sanson&oc=0&p=madeleine+claude+gabrielle

https://gw.geneanet.org/antistar?lang=en&n=herisson&oc=0&p=marie+madeleine+genevieve

https://books.google.ca/books?id=6wdYK4KpO04C&pg=PA149&lpg=PA149&dq=charles-henri+sanson+n%C3%A9phr%C3%A9tique&source=bl&ots=bT6lYyNh1Z&sig=ACfU3U0WSOnLIzxAmaggCtG1J7ZNHtnDcg&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjGz7-RjezvAhUIQ80KHdG4AsMQ6AEwD3oECAUQAw#v=onepage&q=charles-henri%20sanson%20n%C3%A9phr%C3%A9tique&f=false