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This is a tribute dedicated to a childhood first love of mine and many others –the a character who to me inspires love and the patience. A character who, for me, is a martyr and who will do everything for his true love: André Grandier from the well known manga and anime Versailles no Bara.

~updated on 10th December 2009 by Saya

This site is full of personal view on the character, because there is not much we can find about him, considering she is a character from a manga from the 70-80. Still, I did try to explain why she seems so wonderful to me using the facts that Ryoko Ikeda created.

Basic Information

Name: André Grandier
Also Known as: André
Date of Birth: unknown
Date of Death: July 13th, 1789 (not sure thou, I think he died one day before Oscar)
Title: no title
Occupation:
1. Oscar’s valet
2. Soldier of the Military Regiment B

Spouse: Oscar François de Jarjayes
Relatives:
1. Parents – unknown, died when he was young
2. Grandmother - Maron Glace (Oscar’s nanny)

It wasn’t decided from the first moment if Oscar will love him back, but from the moment he was born he was to be in love with Oscar, a one sided love. His concept was of being the male friend to the girl who has to grow up like a boy, to show how boys acted. Perhaps he is the only one besides his grandmother that sees her from the beginning as a female and can’t grasp the concept of her trying to be a man.

Story of a Life

This story is a sad story of love and life of a commoner, we could call it that. At very young age André comes to lose both of his parents and comes to the Jarjayes family as playmate for Oscar, the youngest daughter of the General who must grow believing that she’s a boy.His is grandson to Oscar’s nanny and at the beginning it seems everything ok, the two become great friends, but then they are growing up and Oscar becomes commander of the Royal guard and they slowly begin to fall apart.

He loses his right eye while he and Oscar try to catch the black knight, but it’s ok, if that means protecting his beloved. He is in love with Oscar, but as commoner can’t act on that love and it hurts him seeing her being in love with another man that doesn’t even know she is a female.

He tries to tell her what he feels, but unfortunately when he does he is drunk and is rejected, while Oscar wants to forget being a female, and tries to become a man chasing André away.

But André is stubborn so he befriends Alain and manages to join the military regiment B which is assigned to Oscar. Somehow he manages to befriend again Oscar, because for him the only need is to be besides her, even if she doesn’t love him back.

Everything changes one day, when he is almost killed by the citizens, when Oscar finally notices that without him her life would be meaningless, so finally she admits to him that she loves him and they are finally together.

But not for long. For one thing André is losing the sight of his left eye, simply because it’s fatigued, but in the manga that doesn’t stops him at taking Oscar’s bullet and giving up his life to save the one of his beloved, not long after she finally admitted her love for him. He dies happy.

Personality

I would simply begin with saying that he is a martyr, because that’s what he is. He is a commoner in love with a noble woman that almost doesn’t notices him if not as a friend. He is always by her side, he always take the blows that are directed to him – he loses his right eye, then the sight on the left eye and in the end the bullet directed to her, just a week (in manga) or a day (in the anime) after the person he loved finally loved him back. Definitely a martyr.

He is always ready to help and always with this nice smile on his face, even if lately we don’t see it as much as anymore, he tries not to be a burden, nor to Oscar nor to his comrades.

He is friendly and easily found surrounded by friends, that after coming to know him are happy to have him as one, because another thing André is – he is loyal.

Relationships

The relationship between André and Oscar, is actually the story of his life, and it begins when she was still a kid, when André come to live with them, after losing his parents and his only relative was his grandmother, who happened to be Oscar’s nanny. From the moment he arrives, he is to be Oscar’s playmate because the girl has to grow up as a boy and so she has to have male company. They become best friends, but soon André stops seeing her as his playmate, and maybe besides nanny he is the only one that sees her as a woman and not a man.

Their story is actually sad, he keeps being by her side even if he suffers really much when it comes to her, because she actually never notice at the fact that he loves her for what she really is and not for the title or something else, he is beside her even when she dresses for the first time as woman and goes to the dance with Fersen, he is there when she decides that she would not try to be a woman anymore, he is always there to protect her because she still is a woman, it doesn’t matter at how she dresses and he is the one who says directly to her that: “A rose will always be a rose, a rose will never be a lily”, trying to make her understand that even if she has chosen to live her life as a male, she will never be a male.

He is there even when she says she doesn’t need him anymore, when she leaves Royal guards to go at the Military Regiment, he finds a way to go there too, he becomes friend with Alain who helps him enter the guards, and Oscar finds him again there – she forgives him his drunken attack at her, where for a moment she was scared of him, and she notices his loyalty and caring and knows he loves her – but she will notice her own love for him, only when she for a moment will think of losing him forever, when he is taken away and the people want to hang him thinking he is a noble man, she desperately tries to save him and she realizes that she loves him and he was always the only one she ever will love and he is the only one who loves her for what she is and not what she represent .

Unfortunately they don’t have much time to be together in bliss and love… after their first night together, when they finally declare their love first André is shot and dies in front of her with a smile on his face – his dream has come true, Oscar loved him.

Alain de Soisson is the best male friend to André, that is for sure. The two of them meet, when André is depressed and rejected by his one true love, but he doesn’t tell him that in the beginning. He tells him just he needs a job and Alain makes him enter the Military Regiment, without knowing that André wanted exactly that.

There is a rough moment between them, when Alain finds out and he thinks André betrayed him, but then slowly begins understanding him, and also falls for the same girl as André.

Those two could be sold as brothers definitely, because they care great deal about each other, and Alain needs him even more after his sister’s suicide.
Their relationship is special because they come to the point at understanding perfectly each other, besides the fact that they are really similar when it comes to the personality even if Alain is bold and loud, while André is stubborn and silent.

Alain is there when he needs him, and Alain is there when he is no more, to keep his memory of him and then of his loved one.

My point of View

André besides his friend Alain is definitely my first love, when I was a young child I sometimes came to say that Oscar is stupid for not noticing the love of this man for her. I think André is what every girl dreams for – a perfect boyfriend or more.

His devotion to Oscar even if she rejected him is really something, sometimes to me seems stupid, but then I think about it, and I just smile and think how much he must love her to go thru everything to be with her, even after she decides to be a man and that she doesn’t need him, he stubbornly goes and joins the regiment she will be the commander of.

In the beginning I did love him, but not as much as I begin to love him in the end, not just because he changed the hairstyle, but also because he grows in such a nice man. I can say he was my first love, but then when Alain arrived, I left André for him, besides André had Oscar.

I definitely prefer the manga version of the story – one is because André has more then one day to be with Oscar, and what is a popular believe it’s that he saves Oscar from that bullet – it’s true when it comes to the manga, he actually jumps in front of the bullet, but it’s not true when we talk about anime or the movie (a really bad movie), in those two, the bullet is directed to him. I prefer the more romantic way, he died to save his loved one.
For me he is a perfect man, he is prepared to die for the one he loves.

Site

Why André

I never planed on making a shrine for him, but then after I actually in a dream saw myself making a companion shrine to the one I made for Oscar, I decided that in the end my Fille Brave, couldn't stay without her partner, her only true love, so I decided to make a shrine for him, unfortunatly there is not much known about this character even thou he does apear from the begining of the series till the end...


Layout

The layout was actually dificult to do because there is not much pictures where he is alone or such that are decent to use for a layout for him. I decided on a simple layout in black and white with an image from the manga. I used Photoshop CS4 for the graphics and for the coding Macromedia Dreamweaver MX


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Martyr (c) Saya 2009 | Versailles no bara: André (c) Ryoko Ikeda | Credits
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