It is all too easy to drift away from a saga, particularly if you’ve had to wait a long time for the next volume to appear. Now that this large story is ready for a read-through, that might be less of a problem. But life intervenes. You drop the book, and it is some time before you pick it up again.
A saga inevitably has many characters, so a refresher on them may be a helpful thing to have.
So here they are, as you meet them, from the first book of the saga, The Baron Returns:
In Devon: Sempronie Wentworth, widowed; Justin, her eldest child; Amelia (Amélie), her daughter; Arabella Wollaston, Amelia’s friend; Sir Francis Wollaston, her father; Captain Yeo, naval officer and family friend; Grace, Arabella’s maid; Andrew, Arabella’s groom;
In Brittany: Gilles, a young orphan; Babette, who adopted him; Grosjean and Yaelle, their friends; Laurent Guèvremont, wealthy cousin to Sempronie; Joséphine, his daughter; Le Guinec, Guèvremont’s steward; Captain Nicolas Leroux, French Republican army; Lieutenant Vernier, his subordinate; Eugene Picaud, Justin’s friend.
People, and places. This saga stretches from Devon to Brittany, and ultimately to London and Brighton, and to a battlefield near the Rhine. But most of the action is in Devon and Brittany.
At the heart of it are the two manors: Chittesleigh in Devon, and Kergohan in Brittany. Although you won’t find them on any map, Chittesleigh is situated to the north of Dartmoor, in the region of Hatherleigh and Okehampton, while Kergohan is in central Brittany, some way above the large town of Auray.
Plymouth, London – the village of Hampstead, and streets near the Thames – and Brighton need no special introduction here. Plymouth Dock is now Devonport, in the western part of the city.
Kergohan, situated in central Brittany, should be relatively close to the towns of Pontivy and Auray (with its harbour at Saint Goustan), and lie on the southern edge of the forests of the landes. Close by to Kergohan are the villages of Brandivy and Plumergat.
The invading force of French royalist émigrés was landed in June 1795 from a British fleet in the bay of Quiberon, in southern Brittany, on the shore of which lies the village of Carnac.
Further characters from the three later books of the saga:
In England: Colonel George North, friend to Justin and Amelia; Caroline North, his sister; Drusilla Marriott, their friend; Lieutenant Jowan Tregothen, a militia officer; Thirza Farley, an actress; Coline, alias for Marie-Rose Heaume, a British spy; Loic, Coline’s runner; Major Francis Houghton, Royal Marine officer; vicomte de Biel-Santonge, Eugene’s father; Dick Courtenay, a London host; Alphonse, a young émigré; Charles Hoare, a militia ensign;
In Brittany: Daniel Galouane, steward of Kergohan; Héloïse Argoubet, his niece; Bernard Sarzou, butler to Guèvremont; Robert Harker, American sea captain; Raoul Lafargue, slave overseer; Clémence de Moire, friend to Joséphine Guèvremont; Mael Sarzou, former steward of Kergohan; Jeanne Cariou, Gilles’s aunt; Katell Floch, Héloïse’s friend; Roparzh Floch, her brother.
Saba, the mother of Héloïse and sister of Daniel, was taken as a mistress by Octave Argoubet on the Galouane plantation in Saint-Domingue, and died on the plantation. Daniel, Saba, and Héloïse were freed by Argoubet.
In any historical fiction there are historical figures, and these few appear briefly as speaking characters in the novels. Georges Cadoudal, the renowned Breton leader, who brought the Chouan army to Quiberon; Jean Rohu, a tenacious and daring lieutenant of his; William Windham, a Secretary at War under the British Prime Minister William Pitt; Anna Laetitia Barbauld, abolitionist and radical and influential poet; Banastre Tarleton, officer and supporter of the slave trade; George Hibbert, a spokesman for the slave trade; Abbé Carron, active in Jersey and then London on behalf of orphaned children; Lord Thomas Pelham, Surveyor-General of Customs of London.
Philippe d’Auvergne was resident in Jersey in the Channel Islands for many years on what amounted to a British pension, supervising the flow of information from Brittany and France to the British government through a network of spies.
Graham Ley 