Chapter 17/50
Current Word Count: 149,438 words
Summary: With the start of a revolution putting their safety at risk, Oscar and André flee to England where they hope to build a new life for themselves.
Pairing/Characters: Oscar/André, Bernard, Rosalie, Original Characters
Warnings: Sex scene in this chapter.
Extra Info: Sequel to Say It's Possible.
Rating: E
Genre: Romance, friendship, angst
Notes and behind-the-scenes stuff under the readmore:
Riverhill House is an interesting place. Being a country estate, they’re not nearly as beholden to the social rules they would be if they were in, say, London. They do things rather differently, here. In fact, it could be argued that they break the rules.
I think, if you wanted to consider Mr. Campbell’s role in Sevenoaks, those familiar with Jane Austen’s Emma might look at him as something of a Mr. Knightley-like character. Though he does not walk everywhere to save his servants the trouble of readying and driving the carriage, he and his wife have a vested interest in being part of, and serving, their community.
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The fact about the “river” in Riverhill House being “rither” -> Hill Hill House is actually found on their website.
Knole House is incredible. It is in the top five of England’s largest houses, which I thought was cool, but what really sold me on Sevenoaks as the place André and Oscar should go is the fact that the owner of Knole House at this time was John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset—who happened to be the British Ambassador to France from 1784 until the French Revolution brought him back in August of 1789.
It doesn’t truly matter for the sake of this story, but it is a fun nod, so I felt like it was a sign that Sevenoaks was the perfect backdrop for OA’s country estate adventures.
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I’m a certified Horse Girl™ but hear me out: the horses have names to contrast with the fact that Mr. Mead’s horses did not. Just saying.
And so here we have more original characters in the horses (sort of): Miss Star, of course, Gideon (the greedy draft horse palomino), Clover (pretty bay), and Jack (blue roan pony). Nobody asked for pictures (and I doubt anyone needs them), but too bad. HORSE IMAGES BE UPON YE!
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The Andrew + André combo was very amusing to Sara and I when we were writing our RP, but I have to admit that I did not foresee the specific irritation of writing both of those names in tandem with any regularity. I cannot tell you how many times I wrote “André” instead of “Andrew” by mistake.
Anyway, the important part is that André has help with caring for the horses!
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Mr. Campbell is kind of a Wife Guy, but in his defense, his wife’s quilts are very well done and something he is most certainly proud of. This is a small way they are involved in their community.
The Mowatt children were a lot of fun to write. I wish I had more to say than that. Just know I was having a good time.
“I am not a sir,” was a line stolen straight from the live-action. If you recognized it, give yourself a pat on the back. Or a smile. (SORRY, THAT AWFUL FILM LIVES RENT FREE IN MY BRAIN. 😂) More seriously, I did like that tiny blip of an interaction in the live-action between André and Rosalie, and while it didn’t for a moment feel believable there, it does feel like a reasonable possibility in this story that André would be called “sir” and that he might respond to it in this way.
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Thanks so much for reading. <3 I’ll hopefully see you all again next week.
Chapter 22/50
Current Word Count: 194,358 words
Summary: With the start of a revolution putting their safety at risk, Oscar and André flee to England where they hope to build a new life for themselves.
Pairing/Characters: Oscar/André, Bernard, Rosalie, Original Characters
Warnings: Sex scene.
Extra Info: Sequel to Say It's Possible.
Rating: E
Genre: Romance, friendship, angst
No notes for this chapter because 1) I don't really have anything to say as it is a shorter chapter and everything in it is self-explanatory, but also 2) now that I am over 500,000 words into the story, and just a few chapters away from the end, I would prefer to spend those extra hours working on the story itself rather than unnecessary notes.
Chapter 21/50
Current Word Count: 187,343 words
Summary: With the start of a revolution putting their safety at risk, Oscar and André flee to England where they hope to build a new life for themselves.
Pairing/Characters: Oscar/André, Bernard, Rosalie, Original Characters
Warnings: Mild sex scene.
Extra Info: Sequel to Say It's Possible.
Rating: E
Genre: Romance, friendship, angst
Notes and behind-the-scenes stuff under the readmore:
HORSE CHAPTER!
This is for all my horse girls and guys. And all the sentimental readers, too, while I’m at it.
When am I not referencing Black Beauty (the book, but also the 1994 film, starring Docs Keepin’ Time, which is the only good film version ever made)? One of my favorite parts of the story is when Black Beauty is bought again at the end. In the film, it’s his former groom, Joe Green, that recognizes him and buys him—but in the book, it’s Farmer Thoroughgood and his grandson that buy him to “make him young again.” When he is healed, he is given to three ladies on a trial basis to see if they like him; his groom there is Joe Green, who recognizes him by his markings and thus he finds his happy ending.
Originally, Scarlet was not meant to be seen again, as she was a means to an end, primarily ensuring that André run into Mr. Campbell in London, but I had a stroke of genius on 18 January 2026 and decided to bring her back. This added another chapter to the story and forced me to adjust several later events, but now that the story is over 450,000 words long (from my end), I can say with complete certainty that I feel it was a wonderful choice.
I grappled with the idea of bringing Ebony back with her, but decided against it. This story is, ultimately, very self-indulgent, but I have to draw a line somewhere, and André running into both horses together just felt far too convenient, especially this many months later.
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They end up buying another fine carriage because they don’t really have a good backup for the main carriage if something happens to it, and Mr. Campbell usually opts for a closed carriage rather than an open one, because he dresses well and does not wish to get dirty/covered with dust.
Open carriages are nice for like, a lazy Sunday drive, but the Campbells don’t tend to indulge in such things, and when Mr. Campbell is going somewhere, it’s for the purpose of business.
A plain carriage for the staff to use would be nice, but it’s not really that necessary and it’s quite a bit more work for him without really benefitting Mr. Campbell. Jack and the pony-cart will typically suffice. And in an emergency, if someone needs to go for a doctor while André is out with the carriage, the special carriage can still be hooked up and used without a problem.
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Oscar does pretty well without André, but I think it helps that there’s nothing pressing happening at home—and that she can distract herself pretty easily with work. If either of those things were different, she would have struggled far more.
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Of course Oscar isn’t going to assume that this horse who looks like Scarlet is Scarlet, but when she finds out, she mirrors the goodbye she gave her when she left Canterbury, but this time as a hello. <3
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Oscar unpacking the cats means that she has accepted this place as home. I’m sure you all understood that, but just in case. <3
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Oscar finally gets to ride a horse and she looks beautiful doing it. 🥺
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Thank you all for joining me on this horse-filled chapter journey! I hope to see you again next week. 💕
Chapter 18/50
Current Word Count: 159,326 words
Summary: With the start of a revolution putting their safety at risk, Oscar and André flee to England where they hope to build a new life for themselves.
Pairing/Characters: Oscar/André, Bernard, Rosalie, Original Characters
Warnings: None for this chapter.
Extra Info: Sequel to Say It's Possible.
Rating: E
Genre: Romance, friendship, angst
Notes and behind-the-scenes stuff under the readmore:
I think, for Oscar, one of the worst things she can be is bored. She just has a personality type that isn’t suited to it: she likes to be occupied and have a purpose. An aimless Oscar will be depressed. That said, even though André worries about her, she can’t help but think about the fact that this place is leagues better than any of their previously-held positions. Boredom sucks, and waiting sucks, but it could be way worse—and has been.
They really should just talk about it more, and in a deeply honest way, but this is the sort of thing they may always disagree on. André will hate that she isn’t happy, and struggle to separate “not feeling happy” from “unhappy” even though they are two different things. Pedantic, sure, but words have meanings, and being unhappy isn’t the same as not being happy: unhappiness is an active feeling, but “not being happy” is the absence of happiness (more neutral).
(The word ‘happy’ looks fake to me after I wrote it out so much.)
To be fair, André has a point, but no matter what he says, there’s little to be done about it until they find their footing, here. Being new, they’re not going to want to cause problems or make waves.
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Mr. Campbell doesn’t have a valet or a steward. The latter isn’t such a surprise, as Riverhill House is his main estate, but he has the funds to hire someone to do a lot of that bookwork for him (accounting and the like) and chooses not to, instead being very hands on about managing his properties.
Oscar and André are also right about Mr. Drake (the butler) doing some valet-like duties.
The arrangement here is mostly a product of being in the country and simply not needing the extra staff. Mr. Campbell has the money to hire a valet to go everywhere with him and to be a second set of eyes and ears, but because of where he is and the fact that he has to take a carriage literally everywhere, why shouldn’t his driver fulfill that role? By the very nature of his job, he is already there, anyway.
That is one less servant he needs to pay a salary, feed, clothe, et cetera. Not that Mr. Campbell is stingy (he’s clearly not), but, despite his somewhat informal way of doing things, he is largely practical.
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Oscar didn’t tell André about her time with Andrew because she wants him to be able to surprise André in the morning. And I did not include Andrew telling André “bonjour” in the morning because I felt the scene wasn’t necessary to include (as it would have just been a few lines, anyway).
I’m also pretty sure it gets referenced, later.
I think you all understand the importance of that scene with Oscar and Andrew, anyway; she is trying to find something with which to occupy herself.
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There are a lot of original characters in this story that will be referenced or mentioned again later (the Mowatts from last chapter, for example), but please don’t feel as if you need to keep up with all of them.
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We learn two things, here, too, about the Campbells: they weren’t a love match, and Mrs. Campbell is the daughter of a viscount, with the unmarried name Seymour. This doesn’t really go anywhere in particular but is just meant to set up for their backstory a bit better.
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The future-past has to feel so strange to both Oscar and André, now. But there’s nothing like a dream about it to remind them that it was real and that it happened.
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Oscar makes an effort to be social, and we get a little of Nanette’s character, here. You might have very easily guessed that Nanette and Michael are both OCs that were pulled from the Manna-Sara catalogue for the sake of this story. It wasn’t my original intention to include them in Something Beautiful (indeed, like Henri and Lyne and Christophe, they were not in the original RP at all), but I needed a slew of new characters to fill the roles of servants at Riverhill House, and in particular needed these roles filled with strong characters.
The most difficult thing about adapting the RP to a full length novel (or series of novels, as the length of this story no doubt indicates) was in fleshing out the world and cast of characters in a way that felt rich enough to be believable, and interesting enough to (hopefully) warrant people continuing to read this story when so much of the old cast are relegated to the epistolary elements of the story (if that).
In other words, the original RP was very sparse on details and mostly featured just a few characters, so I have had to really build up this place and work hard to try to make it feel like a world, rather than just a painted set piece. There are times when writing something based on an RP is easier, but this is one of the ways in which it is often much harder. Our RPs focus a lot more on the main characters and their trials, emotional beats, and development, and not so much on the supporting cast or even the setting.
Because I am constantly building on this, the story continues to expand past its original outline, and that is why chapters keep getting added. What can I say? It’s for the good of the storytelling. :P
In the original RP, there were no Sunday gatherings, but I decided at some point in this story that there should be, because it’s very unlikely that everyone in the house would go to service every Sunday, and I established earlier that there is some religious consideration/tension/confusion going on with Oscar (which was also not in the original RP). This gives me a chance to explore it in a way that I hope won’t feel heavy-handed, but will also give Oscar some small sense of community that she wouldn’t otherwise get.
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André’s suggestion of an ‘or’ clause is truly just a product of him understanding how close some people are to poverty—something I think many modern-day readers can relate to. Mr. Campbell can stipulate anything he wants in a contract, but more flexibility ensures he will always get something, even in a bad year.
This feels especially valid for a big all-purpose farm like the Talbots. While it would be easy to say, “oh we get hay from Farm A and chickens from Farm B, and so all we need from the Talbots is pork”—what if disease runs rampant through the hogs one year and there is no pork? Not only would Riverhill House get no pork, but the Talbots won’t be able to pay according to their contract.
However, if the contract states they are to give a set amount of everything OR a % in consideration of a very good or very bad year, Riverhill House gets what can reasonably be provided and none of what can’t be, which prevents the contract from being broken.
Additionally, the Talbots don’t lose out if they produce a lot extra: in a very good year, Mr. Campbell still only gets a set % of the total production. So while they will be giving Mr. Campbell more hay if they produce extra, they will also be keeping more of it themselves (and/or selling it).
It requires more work in setting up the contract in terms of exact figures (to determine what exactly a very good or very bad year is) and bookkeeping in general, and does function a little on the honor system, but serves to protect both the interest of Riverhill House, which relies on the farm, and the farmer, who relies on having land to work.
It’s obviously more complex than I can really dump into the story, here (especially because it is an extended family running this very large farm), but the basic idea being presented here is that André is saying, “The Talbot Farm is the biggest tenant farm you have and I think it is worth complicating the new contract to ensure they have some bad luck protection while also ensuring that you continue to benefit from leasing to them.”
Hopefully that came across all right in the story.
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OA finally receive their first letter. 🥺 Now the epistolary part can begin! I won’t write out every letter they send/receive, but you will find them occasionally sprinkled throughout the story and I hope they add to the vibe rather than detract from it.
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Thanks for reading; I’ll see you guys again next week!
Chapter 20/50
Current Word Count: 177,867 words
Summary: With the start of a revolution putting their safety at risk, Oscar and André flee to England where they hope to build a new life for themselves.
Pairing/Characters: Oscar/André, Bernard, Rosalie, Original Characters
Warnings: Sex scenes in this chapter.
Extra Info: Sequel to Say It's Possible.
Rating: E
Genre: Romance, friendship, angst
Notes and behind-the-scenes stuff under the readmore:
Chocolate, especially for the purpose of making something like hot chocolate, usually came in a brick and you had to shave off bits of it and mix it in. No fancy powders in 1790!
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Baby François! In the Napoléon sequel, François seems to mostly take after Rosalie in terms of hair/eye color. Babies usually start with blue eyes and then over the course of around six months to a year (and sometimes up to three years), they change into what will end up being their final color.
Baby hair also mostly falls out and is replaced by more permanent hair and sometimes when this happens the color changes, too.
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If you remember from Say It’s Possible (and the canon!), promotion in the military requiring your family to have held noble rank for x amount of years was something that had a lot of people very angry before the start of the French Revolution, and was, in fact, one of the reasons the French Guards were brought over so easily to the side of the people.
Reversing this change is a pretty big deal and would actually allow for Alain to get promoted, now.
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FESTIVAL TIME! Riverhill House does employ a good number of gardeners, and of course they have Mr. Shepherd as the groundskeeper/one leading them all, but it is a rather large estate and fairly constant work throughout the spring/summer/fall to maintain, especially in light of always adding to the gardens and redoing things.
One fun, cost-effective way is to employ the townsfolk and turn it into a party, where everyone comes together to handle the work with a barn-raising mentality. At Riverhill House, though, it’s not about “community” for the town so much as it is about partying and getting paid for very limited work.
Sending townsfolks through the gardens to pull out all the grass and other weeds and turning it into a contest may be genius. It’s fun and kind of low-stakes, and come June, most of the weeds are a lot easier to spot (compared to earlier in the year where you’d probably have a lot more people pulling up plants by mistake). I like to imagine the gardeners are out and about kind of helping to keep an eye on things to prevent mistakes, but still.
Anyway, plenty of people don’t participate which is what makes it fun.
Scything to keep the grass short is of course how people “mowed” lawns before easier methods existed, and to be frank someone who is really good at scything can be quite quick and efficient at it. Obviously they leave this one lawn alone for the sake of the festival, and use the cleared space to then host the games for the children, so it’s okay if it doesn’t look the best. It’s also out of the way of the rest of the party; I was picturing it being in the area below on the property (in purple).
In teal is the "west" lawn where they eat lunch.
Also, here’s a video of someone scything. It’s very satisfying to watch.
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André’s déjà vu is from the end of Chapter 6 of Say It’s Possible. I thought it would be fun to kind of show (much, much later, of course) some of his perspective for that.
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Next week André and Andrew go with Mr. Campbell to the horse sale, and Oscar has to deal with being away from him overnight. Hope to see you guys there! <3
Chapter 14/50
Current Word Count: 118,962 words
Summary: With the start of a revolution putting their safety at risk, Oscar and André flee to England where they hope to build a new life for themselves.
Pairing/Characters: Oscar/André, Bernard, Rosalie, Original Characters
Warnings: Sex scene this chapter.
Extra Info: Sequel to Say It's Possible.
Rating: E
Genre: Romance, friendship, angst
A few notes behind the readmore:
I decided to skip the travel to London because I had no particular plans for anything to happen on the way, and the characters are from a large city area so seeing London for the first time isn’t likely to really impress them.
Some of the details about Soho Square are real and documented, including the statue(s) and the area having been established with the intention of being a place to attract the wealthy. However, by the time Oscar and André arrive in town, that concept has been given up on, and many old mansions were torn down already or repurposed as public dance halls or gathering places.
Oscar and André get the short end of the stick in terms of living situations, this time, but someone has to rent the worst room in the house, and it’s oftentimes cheaper.
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The button factory. Soho was a craftsman district at this time, so there weren’t any mills in operation, here. There also weren’t necessarily button factories, but let’s just say including one was an artistic choice and not at all random. England was a big force in the button-making industry at this time, and some factories even partnered with Wedgwood to produce porcelain buttons. And as it just so happens, there was a Wedgwood showroom and shop in Portland House at 12 Greek Street in Soho.
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The chapel on Warwick Street was real. It was destroyed in the 1780 Gordon Riots but was rebuilt in 1790.
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Oscar’s violin…and that blasted G string. Once again I feel the need to state that I am not a historian and certainly not a musical historian. I did my best to find data about historic instruments and the cost of them (as well as their strings) but it was INCREDIBLY difficult to find and data wasn’t exactly reliable. I did find quite a lot of modern data, though!
For example, I found a list of instruments seized during the French Revolution and the price that was kept in bookkeeping for them, but it wasn’t very consistent (felt very much like the person writing the list may have been going on vibes, but it’s also hard to know for sure why the prices were selected in the first place; perhaps the condition of the instrument factored in but were not described).
I went with 15 shillings for the most expensive string. She could probably get a much cheaper G string, but considering the quality of her instrument and the other strings, it would be best to have one that matched. Unfortunately this is a price she simply cannot justify at this time, especially considering the cost isn’t just money.
I also went with Del Gesù as the maker because of the way his violins were described as having this very rich, warm tone to them. I thought that suited Oscar as the “light” and fell in line with her fiery, passionate nature that André is so drawn to. (The year it was made—1740—was also later in the artists’ life.)
Her instrument is probably worth more than she was offered for it, but if she were in need of money, or even just that desperate to play, it wouldn’t have been a terrible deal! However, she’s not going to part with the violin her father bought for her without very good reason.
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As always, feedback is appreciated. Thanks so much for stopping by to read again. I’ll see y’all again next week. <3
Chapter 12/50
Current Word Count: 100,556 words
Summary: With the start of a revolution putting their safety at risk, Oscar and André flee to England where they hope to build a new life for themselves.
Pairing/Characters: Oscar/André, Bernard, Rosalie, Original Characters
Warnings: None for this chapter!
Extra Info: Sequel to Say It's Possible.
Rating: E
Genre: Romance, friendship, angst
We're over 100,000 words posted now, baybee!! 🎉
Notes and behind-the-scenes stuff behind the readmore:
This encapsulates the vibe of this chapter:
I’m sure a few of you were holding out hope that André might get a good position in a rich house, but unfortunately we have to consider the fact that competition would be fierce in a busy town like this, and employers have the ability to be extremely picky. They can make almost any demand they want and find exactly the right person that way; there’s no need for them to settle for anything less than they want, especially if they’re willing to pay well for it.
This isn’t even getting into the fact that religious discrimination was just as bad in England as France, only the polar opposite (but I assure you, we’ll eventually see that as well; André just never made it far enough into any discussion to guess or imagine that his religion might also be holding him back from finding work).
I had him name drop General Jarjayes because it sounded more impressive—like this last-ditch effort to look credible that isn’t too high of a risk, here. Also it’s true.
Speaking of General Jarjayes, though, I feel like I should apologize for my shitty French and my complete inconsistency with how I’ve written and used surnames in this story so far. I promise when I eventually go through a thorough edit of everything (after I finish this ‘fic, no doubt), I will try to fix those issues. If you’re wondering what I’m even talking about—good! Carry on! LOL. (Since the ‘de’ is more of an indicator of nobility, as in, “of the house of” it doesn’t really go with/after military titles, but I have used it that way before. My bad.)
Anyway, labor work is a little easier to get in general, but one look at André would tell anyone with a brain that he’s not used to labor and isn’t worth the time or safety concern to hire. Mrs. Sharpe is right; more than half the issue is that long hair. It makes him look like a kept man; even the average domestic male servant wouldn’t have hair like that. The image he’s giving off is spoiled son who now has to work but doesn’t have any skills to rely on.
Nobody is going to give him a job operating machinery (too big of a safety concern), so he just has to take whatever low-risk position an employer is willing to give him.
There’s probably something to talk about here with how André was a servant who grew his hair long to try to fit in as a valet (as only men of a certain station could afford to care for long hair), and how his hair was one of the only things he had any control over in his life—until Oscar made him cut it, which very quickly resulted in him becoming disabled and unable to go back to Versailles at all. Now that he’s free of all of that, he has that control back—but it comes at a cost. The one thing he took some pride in is now a dead giveaway that he is either in a position to make that long hair possible to care for—or that he thinks he’s better than everyone else…and neither are good.
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So, in England at this time, there was a break of 12 days (Dec 25 – Jan 5) to enjoy Christmas. Not everyone was enjoying days off at this time, but it seemed to be pretty universally a break for labor jobs, so André gets lucky in that regard.
Oscar makes an effort to be understanding and practical, rather than give into her instinct to protect André from everything, but this does result in her putting her foot down just a tad too late.
I was going to drag out André’s pain and suffering longer, but I ended up settling on him hurting his back early on because I felt the definitive proof that hard labor wasn’t for him was good to get out of the way, especially considering his determination to give the position a chance, even when he starts to doubt it will work out. Like, if he hurts himself this early there’s just no way he can justify trying again. Back pain is no joke.
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Thanks for reading everyone! I hope to see you guys again next week. 🙏💕
Say It's Possible, a Rose of Versailles fanfic >COMPLETE<
Chapter 28/28
Words: 348,056 words (total)
Summary: She died underneath the glow of the sun. Oscar remembers that when she wakes up—and everything else, too.
Pairing/Characters: Oscar/André
Warnings: None.
Extra Info: Inspired in part by ROE62865’s lovely art here.
Rating: E
Genre: Romance, friendship, angst
Finis!
Notes and behind-the-scenes bits-n-bobs for the last chapter and the story as a whole are below.
First of all, a huge happy birthday to my wormie @trash-god, my partner in crime and sidekick on this incredible journey. She deserves at least 20% of the credit for Say It’s Possible: for most of the idea of this story in the first place, for letting me ramble tens of thousands of words into the chat while I worked through the snags, and for giving me so much encouragement and advice over the course of the last six months. Oh, and for writing the part of Oscar in the RP that this story is largely based on, too. 🤭
This story, and especially its final chapter, would not be the same if not for her support.
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For the first time since the prequel, we get André’s perspective. And while you might think it would be refreshing to get into someone else’s head after so long, I have to admit that it felt strange after spending so long in Oscar’s head!
Oscar’s life is fully in André’s hands—and while she led them in the fight at the Tuileries Garden and at the Bastille, he is forced to take the lead, here, to ensure her life. Not easy, when doing so requires him to hurt the person he loves most. Because he understands the weight of his new responsibility, he focuses on that task and that task alone until she’s out of immediate danger. Fortunately, Rosalie is here to offer him direction, which he needs, not just when Oscar is in need of medical attention, but afterward, too, when he isn’t sure what he should do.
I don’t think I need to tell you how painful getting gunshot wounds treated is, but to have that ruined skin scrubbed and packed tight to keep it from bleeding and then bound? It’s no wonder Oscar struggles with it!
I will say that, typically it wouldn’t be recommended to take a bullet out of a wound because 1) it’s more important to stop the bleeding, and 2) depending on where the injury is it could be extremely dangerous to dig around in there. However, because Oscar’s abdominal injury came in at an angle, it didn’t get deep enough to be dangerous for André to retrieve it. Her shoulder wouldn’t be a recommended place to go spelunking with his fingers, either, but his fear here is pretty understandable: he knows there are only so many medical personnel and more injured, and so it could be a while before Oscar is seen. The potential for the bullet to bury itself further inside her (requiring them to 1) really hurt or even permanently ruin her shoulder to get it out, or 2) leave it in there forever and hope infection doesn’t take her life) is pretty scary.
Heck, even with everything getting scrubbed out and packed, infection is a very real concern. Poor Oscar; even though we barely cover the process from her perspective, you just know it’s the kind of experience she’ll never forget.
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Now for something funny. This typo I didn’t catch before @trash-god read over the chapter for me: 😭
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I tried to reference happenings in the aftermath of the Bastille for the rest of this chapter in a way that isn’t exactly true-to-life timewise, but is intended to feel more like Oscar learns things as she has the energy to be told/remember them.
Most of the Swiss soldiers ended up being fine thanks to the French Guards intervening to save and protect them. Marquis de Launay was um…not fine, though. His head was put on a pike and paraded around.
Oscar can’t stand the idea of André having been shot instead, because, remember, she watched him die from a gunshot wound. Technically he watched her die from the same thing, too (as he was at the Bastille waiting for her like her personal Angel of Death, Touched by an Angel style, RIP John Dye), but seeing as how he was the first to go, it really traumatized her.
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Oscar telling him, “I’m not dying” is her trying to reassure him that she’ll be okay.
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It’s not that André doesn’t know he can count on Rosalie and Bernard to let them have a corner in their home for a day or two, but he can’t wander around with Oscar in his arms trying to find her to get permission; Oscar’s really shouldn’t be moved more than necessary right now.
In the RP, Oscar cries when André carries her back to Bernard and Rosalie’s house because she’s trying not to scream from the pain. You can imagine that's happening here, too, but because it's in André's perspective, he doesn't know it.
Still, the first thing she wants to know is how many people died. 🥺
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I wish I could have included more of the horses, but I couldn’t conceive of a way of getting them to England that didn’t involve a lot of optimism from Oscar and André. They’ve had these horses since they were young, so they’re close to the top of their life expectancy. Oscar never much thinks about their age, but they did talk about the concerns involved in caring for them. While they can swing the cost of food/board for a while, 1) it will draw attention to them for having that kind of money, and 2) it will limit the places they can live and the work they can accept. The former isn’t ideal, but the latter is potentially stupid.
Keep in mind that even though André has some useful skills (he knows his way around the stables, can care for, hitch up, and ride horses, drive a carriage, fire a gun, wield a sword, do valet and probably butler type duties), his options for work in a foreign country he’s never been to are limited to what is available and who is likely to hire him. Oscar is in a similar position but has fewer useful skills considering her gender, and therefore fewer options. She’s best suited to be a governess considering her high level of education, but she is married, and while it’s not impossible for her to find a position as a married woman, it’s much, much less likely.
Neither of them are guaranteed a good, well-paying position, let alone in the kind of place that would make keeping two horses easy or feasible (logically or financially). And then what happens to Lena and Chevis? They’ll have to be sold for a pittance, and they’ll end up pulling cabs or coaches or wagons until their bodies give out. What a horrible thought. It’s better that they send them back to her parents and hope Father will honor their wishes.
I really like how the anime portrays Oscar and André’s horses feeling like extensions of their riders, so I debated long and hard on the potential of one of the horses dying in battle—only for the other one to die, too, because there can be no light without shadow, and these horses have been raised and kept together nearly their entire lives (and animals grieve, too). Another consequence of the changes happening, and preferably to having to watch André die again, but in the end I couldn’t do it.
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Rosalie!! 🥺 I wanted to expand on Oscar’s thoughts about Rosalie as a mom so much, but there just wasn’t room for it here in this final chapter, so I guess I’ll have to save it all for the sequel.
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I’m beyond thrilled that so many readers have become invested in Oscar’s relationship with her father within the context of this story. It’s been one of my favorite relationships to write since I did an RoV plane-crash AU RP with @trash-god. In that story, Father’s relationship with Oscar is toxic and borderline abusive; she struggles so hard all her life to live up to his insane standards but always falls short. When her plane goes down and is lost, he’s forced to think about the way he treated her and deeply regrets how hard he was on her all her life. Years later, even when everyone else believes she and the others on board are dead, he is the only one who doesn’t give up on her. He funds search parties and keeps paying rent on her apartment, waiting for the day she will return. It pays off, ultimately, but not without his wife threatening to divorce him if he doesn’t go therapy and other such twists and turns. I know it sounds crazy (a modern AU plane crash story for ROSE OF VERSAILLES???) but that RP remains one of my all-time favorites, specifically because of how wonderful that relationship was, and how satisfying it felt to write Father’s character development.
Unfortunately in Say It’s Possible, there is no happy reunion in the 11th hour; no embrace; no forgiveness; no catharsis or closure.
But that’s why we have a sequel! As you are all very well aware, the Revolution is a frightening time. Oscar’s thoughts will be with him for a long time to come.
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French diligence coaches were the equivalent of stagecoaches, but cooler. No, really. I’ll go into them in more detail in the sequel, though, rather than here, but the one thing I do want to mention is that they featured Assigned Seating, where your ticket price matched the seat you were paying for. Seats over the front wheels, just behind or under the driver, were preferred, as they were considered the most comfortable ride.
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Bernard just strikes me as the type of guy to always know a guy. You know the sort I’m talking about.
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The description of André’s eyes mirrors the first chapter of the story.
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And that, my friends, is the end of Say It’s Possible.
But not the end of what I have to say about it!
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I just want to talk about some differences and what-ifs from the original RP, and how they influenced the story.
Let’s start with some funny things.
To start with, when we got to the Bastille scene in the RP, we weren’t sure how we wanted it to go, and in our discussion of it we talked about the possibility of, well, the worst-case scenario:
Needless to say, we didn’t end up going this route!
But we did decide that someone would get shot. The problem with that, though, is that we had to decide who.
"High" numbers are 51-100 and "low" are 1-50.
Random.org decided that Oscar would be the one to get shot in the final battle. Hilariously, I think this decision is what really leads into the sequel and makes it what it is. Short-term, it would have been very interesting for André to get shot instead (because it would be fun to explore Oscar having to deal with such a serious and terrifying consequence), but it falls flat long-term; he was shot protecting her in the canon, and in terms of post-Bastille stuff…eh. I feel like his canon situation of being blind is a much more compelling thing to take into a story where they have to flee France, so I’ll save that for another story. 😉 Someday.
Also, look forward to a lot more Random.org decisions that were made in the sequel! 😂
I do want to clarify that, we only really do this because we’re not sure what route we’d like to go, and sometimes it’s fresh and interesting as a writer to have to work with something out of your control. Heck, I’d argue that turning random decisions into a cohesive narrative takes some level of skill, and is ultimately a very fun challenge. The key is just to use it only when it’s something that makes sense to be out of the characters’ hands.
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Just something stupid I said in the chat when we were writing the wedding night scene in the RP:
And god in this case was Random.org, which said…not this time, little guys.
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Turning an RP written sloppy-style into a fanfiction has been insane and so much fun, but also extremely challenging at times, especially because I’m the one always writing André, and this story was told almost entirely from Oscar’s perspective.
That said, it was interesting to try to get André’s thoughts and feelings across through his actions or through Oscar’s new awareness and understanding of him.
More interestingly, the bulk of this RP is actually content that will appear in the sequel: we rushed through the start of the RP to get to the Bastille, and that’s honestly where the real story began for us. Everything that came beforehand was just a fun and interesting preamble.
Which brings me to my next topic: the big changes and differences between the RP and Say It’s Possible as it is in its finished state.
To start with, I’ve said before that the RP did not feature future-past André at all; he was inserted into it because it seemed like the perfect setup for the story idea @trash-god and I were ping-ponging back and forth at one another.
In the original RP, André would sometimes dream of the future-past, and then go to Oscar to discuss it (and to get confirmation that it was a memory and not just a dream).
Anyway, because I think it’s fun to see The Process of Writing, here’s the conversation:
The more I reread this conversation the funnier it is. “5-10k” LOL. 😂 In my defense our original consideration for this story was pretty much just trying to take the core concept and turn it into a very very fast-paced one-shot.
But very quickly it morphed past that.
And while I had a loose idea of where the story was going, a lot of the core concepts of the story weren’t solid before I started.
Yeah, okay. And posting it on Bastille Day did NOT happen. NOT EVEN CLOSE. 🤪
By this point I had surrendered myself to the idea of six chapters, maybe seven, which would allow me to include more detail while still keeping up a very fast pace. So I did a quick outline (keeping some of the details of the RP in mind):
It’s actually SO interesting to go back to this and realize that a lot of what happens in the final version of Say It’s Possible doesn’t fit into this outline at all. It broke containment in such a big way.
Ultimately, the biggest issue that I had was just with details. As I included more details I had to make space for them, and part of the fun early on in this story was, for me, anyway, including details that never made it to the RP that I thought would have been cool there (in hindsight, I mean). In the first chapter, Oscar feels like she needs to do something about the fact that André saved her life in Saverne; she wasn’t just being polite when she told him in the original timeline that he thought he deserved the promotion more than her. And the minute she realizes the future-past isn’t a dream, the only choice that makes sense is to let her hone in on fixing that oversight this time.
But in fixing that oversight (getting him a title), I wasn’t able to let André have a title when she decides she wants to marry him. In fact, she doesn’t even get to have the conversation with Marie Antoinette about marrying André…because her father asks for her in Say It’s Possible! (I did fit most of that into the story in various ways but it was a challenge to rework all of that to be sure.)
Anyway, because I intended this story to be 5-10k (or maybe just 6 or 7 chapters), I started the story in present tense to give that “right there with the characters, in the action with them” vibe. Which was fine when the story was meant to be short, and felt insane the longer the story grew, even wayyyyy back in June:
Unfortunately at this point, after six months of writing in present tense, I literally cannot imagine writing in anything else right now. I’ll need a hard reset to go back to past tense. 😂
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Anyway, those are my notes for Say It’s Possible. If you have any questions, or you want more information or details about a specific scene (like how it was originally presented in the RP or why it changed), or there’s some specific curiosity in your brain about a detail of the story I never covered, please feel free to comment on this post, send me an ask here, or comment on AO3 (guest comments are always turned on!) and I will reply.
THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who read, commented, and let me know how much fun they were having while reading this story. You’re all a big reason I pushed through my awful health this year and managed to finish this beast. I didn’t think there would be much interest in this story, but knowing there were so many of you waiting patiently for updates, and a special few of you who would even tell me what you thought as the story went on, gave me a lot of courage and strength I wouldn’t have otherwise had—and enabled me to complete this story in only six months.
Seriously: thank you. I hope you enjoyed Say It’s Possible.
Please consider joining me for the sequel, Something Beautiful, coming in 2026!
