Your color palette swap Quasi reminded me of a video I saw recently. It's by a Romani content creator who explains Rroma culture and history really well and he's talked about HOND several times. This specific one was about how Quasimodo's original color palette is an allusion to the racist myth that Rroma steal white babies, and that still today Rroma women are scared of having a baby that's "too light" because they can get falsely accused and in some countries have their kids taken away. It added a whole new layer of the terror Quasimodo's mother felt and why she didn't let them see him :( I super recommend the channel btw. Very concise videos and very knowledgeable. It's florida.florian on YT and TikTok
I would love to think that Quasimodo's mother was indeed his mother and that his skin tone is just part of his overall deformity. I can't help but think that no woman would fight tooth and nail to keep a baby that wasn't hers like that. I don't think he was stolen.
HOWEVER, I also really love how they fixed that in the stage musical;
In the stage musical, Claude Frollo has a brother named Jehan and they both grew up in Notre Dame. While Claude became a perfect specimen for the church, Jehan kept breaking the rules. One night, Jehan brings a Romani woman, Florika, into Notre Dame with them and Claude tells on him, resulting in Jehan being banished from the church - this wasn't what Claude wanted by the way, he wanted to save his brother, but it wasn't his decision to make what would happen to him because of his constant rule breaking.
Years later, Claude receives a letter from his brother and he goes to see him. Florika fell ill and died and Jehan is also dying from the same illness. He tells him he and Florika have a son and asks Claude to take care of him, if he even has a heart to do so, just before Jehan dies in front of Claude.
This explains Quasimodo's skin color, Jehan was Caucasian and Florika was Romani, it's not impossible that Quasimodo would have a light skin tone because of that - and it makes Claude's character even more interesting. I really do love stage musical, it made everything even better.
I will ALWAYS recommend this stage musical as I genuinely see it as perfection. They fixed the flaws of the animated version and made it even darker and more adult - and it was already a very dark and adult cartoon.














