none of you can come up with a good take on a javert redemption arc bc none of you are related to any group of the romani people in any way
saying “through loving jvj and working through internalized homophobia with him gets him a redemption arc” is a deeply insufficient take, it is out of character, and it only works through a fandom and musical perspective, and only if the main focus is javert-jvj, not javert as a character. therefore, it can only be a partial redemption
saying “we should not try to redeem javert because he is a cop and experience showed us cops are all bad, therefore we should not try to make light of a cop even if he is fictional” dismisses the specificity of javert as a character; one of the only mainstream canon romani character there is in literature and art. it takes away the opportunity to bring the historical and actual oppression of romani people [in France in particular], just to avoid exposing the very few valvert shippers (and lesmis stans) who still exist in 2021 to copaganda, which they could avoid very quickly through critical thinking btw
javert’s personality is very simple and comes down to two events only:
- his family was jailed, separated, probably forced into slavery as it was common at the time, when he was not yet born, for being romani (i am going to assume, manush; that’s the group i know best btw so…..)
this resulted in him wanting to fit in in a system that was made to exclude him. in France, the earliest form of police authority were created to control and arrest the romani populations. that was the main reason for their creation.
to fit in this system, he had to blindly obey it and never put the authorities in place. this is why he incarnates human laws so well: his only goal in life is to respect and enforce it, because any mistake would bring him closer to him being born romani. his ethnicity is at the core of his character and his motivation is to stop being marginalized, which is fueled in internalized anti-romani racism
(edit: also, him being romani on both sides [once again, im taking liberties, but it doesnt make sense for his mother not to conceive him with a gadjo unless something bad happened to her] would probably make him stand out as physically non-white. him being a cop and visibly not white would cause issues as well)
- witnessing jvj offering him unconditional kindness, without any after thought, and even to the cost of jvj’s safety, made him change his entire outlook on life
because this is the realisation that you could be good for no reason. this contrasts with the idea that you could be bad for no reason: having his family jailed just for existing would be a good reason for javert to believe that human nature is, at its core, bad. spontaneous and innate injustice. this is rectified by jvj’s spontaneous and innate sense of justice, being good for no reason. this is also why interpreting jvj as manush as well could be interesting
in both of these events, javert is passive. his personality and his story are very simple, and every other character traits that are given to him were probably added by the musical or the fandom
you cannot write a redemption arc disconnected from javert being born manush, that would be a misinterpretation of the character and of les mis’s commentary on social injustice. you cannot write something about javert getting a redemption arc through loving jvj, that would be doing an injustice to javert’s character as a rom. a javert redemption arc has to be focused on javert, not on javert and jvj
but as a gadjo, you also cannot write a redemption arc featuring javert as manush, unless you do extensive research on romani culture, on romani oppression in france, and especially on manush specificities, because there are cultural divergences between the manush and the roma
