You know, I was looking through the massive stack
of research we pulled for today's Deep Dive,
and I just kept coming back to this really, well,
this really uncomfortable, but fascinating paradox
at the center of our pop culture. Oh, yeah. I
think I know exactly what you're talking about.
Right. Because, I mean, if you think about the
archetype that completely dominates the box office
right now, for you listening, you know exactly
what it is. It's the superhero. But specifically,
it's that, that Bruce Wayne algorithm. The Bruce
Wayne algorithm. I actually really like that
phrase. You mean the whole the wealthy, somewhat
detached elite guy who puts on a mask to go save
the world. Exactly that. The dual identity, the
billionaire playboy by day and then the dark
Avenger by night. But when you trace that specific
algorithm back to its actual source, and we are
going all the way back into the historical sources
today, you don't find some progressive forward
thinking idea about justice. No, you really don't.
You know, find a comic book writer in 1930s New
York dreaming of fighting gangsters, which is
what I always assumed. You find a woman, a Hungarian
Baroness, born in 1865, who was, uh... frankly,
absolutely terrified of poor people. It is such
a jarring realization when you really sit down
with the primary sources. We are talking, of
course, about Baroness Orsi. And you're spot
on. The deeper we dive into her life and the
biographical details we have, the more it looks
like the entire concept of the secret identity,
which is literally the foundation of the modern
superhero, wasn't just a clever plot device.
It was a coping mechanism. It was this massive
psychological fortress built by a woman who was
suffering from a very specific kind of aristocratic
trauma. And that for me was the big aha moment
right off the bat. The mask wasn't originally
invented to fight crime. It was invented to hide
privilege. So today for our mission on this deep
dive, we are going to completely unpack the life
and the incredibly messy legacy of Baroness Orsi.
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack. We're going to
trace how this Hungarian refugee who was fleeing
a peasant revolution ended up in Victorian London.
how she seemingly failed at everything she tried
to do, music, art, you name it, and then just
accidentally wrote the blueprint for Marvel and
DC. While simultaneously, and we absolutely have
to get into this later running, one of the most
controversial and aggressive public shaming campaigns
in British military history. Yeah, that part
of the research is intense. Her legacy is incredibly
complicated. It's not just a cute story about
a famous book. It's a deep dive into the intersection
of fiction, real world political influence, and
the sheer persistence of what the sources call
the aristocratic ideal. So we have a ton of ground
to cover. We've got our biographical details.
We're looking at the publication history of her
work, theatrical records, which are just wild
to read through, and some pretty intense analysis
of her literary themes. So let's start where
she started. The old world. And we should probably
address the name first. Oh, yeah. Please do.
Because if you see it on a book spine or in a
library catalog, it looks formidable. Her full
name was Emma Magdalena Rosalia, Maria Josefa
Borbala, or C. de Orsillo. It is a total mouthful.
But she was pretty specific about how people
were supposed to say it, right? Because I read
in an old copy of the Literary Digest that she
insisted on the pronunciation. Ortzi. Yes, Ortzi.
Yeah. And she went by a nickname that I actually
find really charming, considering how formidable
she became. She went by Imuska. Imuska. That
means little Emma in Hungarian, right? Exactly.
Little Emma. And in her own letters, she explained
that you have to put the accent on the first
syllable, and the EZ is pronounced like an SH.
So it's EM -muska. Yamushka. It sounds sweet.
It almost sounds disarming. But there was absolutely
nothing little about her background. She wasn't
just a wealthy person. She was historic. That's
the perfect word for it. Born in 1865 in this
place called Tarnors in Hungary. Her father was
Baron Felix Orsi D 'Orsi. And he wasn't just
noble. He was a composer who actually ran in
circles with Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt.
Right. And her mother was Countess Emma Was Descentegy
at Siege. I mean, to really understand Orzi,
you have to try and understand the social landscape
of Hungary in the late 1860s. We are not talking
about a modern democratic European state here.
No, not at all. This is a deeply, deeply semi
-feudal society. Her grandparents on both sides
were royal counselors. They were Knights of the
Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George.
They were members of parliament. Wow. They were
completely entrenched in a system where the aristocracy
truly believed they were divinely appointed to
rule and the peasantry was essentially just there
to work the land and serve. It sounds like something
straight out of a fantasy novel or maybe like
Downton Abbey turned up to an eleven. But this
is exactly where the trauma comes in. That highly
privileged seemingly perfect world wasn't actually
stable. No it was incredibly fragile. Right.
The historical research highlight that this wasn't
just some polite political divide it was a physical
terrifying threat. You have the Ortsy family
sitting in the big house enjoying high culture
and music. with list, and literally just outside
the gates, you have a peasantry that is starving,
angry, and becoming increasingly organized. Precisely.
And in 1868, when Amoska was just a toddler,
she was three years old, that tension finally
snapped. The records show her parents packed
up the entire massive estate and just fled to
Budapest. The sources cite the specific catalyst
for that move as the fear of a peasant revolution.
I really think we need to pause on that for you
listening. This isn't just, you know, we moved
to the city for better schools or a job. This
is fleeing for your life because you firmly believe
the people who work for you are going to march
up and burn your house down with you inside it.
It is the defining trauma of her entire life.
Try to imagine being a three -year -old child
in that environment. You wake up, there's absolute
panic in the house. Your parents, these people
who are supposed to be infallible, powerful,
almost godlike figures in your world, are suddenly
terrified. And they aren't fighting back. No,
they aren't fighting. They are running. And that
deep, visceral fear of the mob never left her.
It shaped everything she did. And this is exactly
what fascinates me about her writing later on.
Yeah. Because if you look at the Scarlet Pimpernel,
the villains aren't some foreign invading army
or evil super criminals trying to take over the
world. The villain. is the mob. It's the French
Revolution. Exactly. It's the dirty, unwashed
masses trying to drag the fancy people out of
their homes and kill them. That is the key insight
into her psychology. To Ortsy, the concept of
safety meant the aristocracy remaining in power,
full stop. And chaos was democracy, or at least
any kind of violent revolution that upset that
natural order. Right. So when she eventually
creates her hero, Sir Percy Blakeney, He isn't
fighting for the little guy. He's not Robin Hood.
Not at all. He is literally fighting the concept
of equality. His entire mission is rescuing the
special ordained people from the ordinary people.
Which completely flips the script on how we view
superheroes today. I mean, today you have Superman
swooping in to save a bus full of public school
kids, right? In Orsi's mind, the superhero exists
specifically to save a carriage full of dukes
and duchesses. Exactly. And the secret affinity
is the mechanism she invented to make that possible.
Think about it. If the mob knows you're an aristocrat
who opposes them, they just send you to the guillotine.
Right, you're dead. So the mask of the Scarlet
Pimpernel isn't there to protect his loved ones
from standard criminals like Peter Parker does.
It's there to protect his class status from the
general public. It's a survival strategy that
was born directly from that frantic flight to
Budapest back in 1868. It's incredible how a
childhood trauma just gets woven into global
pop culture. So the family flees to Budapest,
but the sources show they don't actually stay
there. It seems like that sense of displacement
just kept going. It did. nomadic childhood. From
Budapest they moved to Brussels and then eventually
to Paris. And in Paris she really tried to follow
in her father's footsteps. Right. I read she
studied music hoping to become this great composer
or performer, but the biographical details are
actually quite blunt about this. She basically
failed. She did. She just didn't have the innate
genius her father was surrounded by. And that
has to be tough. You have a father who hangs
out with Wagner, and you just can't make the
cut in the Parisian music scene. So you're a
failed musician. What do you do next? You go
to London. The family finally arrived there in
1880 when she was 14. And London in 1880 is a
completely different universe. This is the absolute
height of the Victorian era. The smog, the massive
industrialization. in the sprawling empire. For
a Hungarian teenager who speaks French and German,
it must have been an overwhelming sensory experience.
Oh, it had to be a total shock to the system.
The sources say they lodged with a fellow Hungarian
expatriate on Great Portland Street. And since
music was a bust for her, she pivoted to visual
art. And she was actually pretty good at this.
She attended the West London School of Art and
then moved on to the Heatherly School of Fine
Art. She even got some of her paintings exhibited
at the Royal Academy, which is no small feat.
It's a huge achievement. She clearly had talent,
but art school provided her with something perhaps
even more important than a career path. It is
where she met her husband. Henry George Montague
McLean Barstow. Yes. Montague Barstow. He was
the son of a clergyman working as a commercial
illustrator and honestly this feels like the
one area of her life that wasn't touched by anxiety
or fear. By all accounts in her memoirs it was
a profoundly deep connection. They got married
in 1894 and she described their relationship
as perfect happiness and understanding and perfect
friendship for nearly half a century. It is rare
to see such an uncomplicated, joyful description
of a marriage in literary biographies. Usually
you dig into these lives and there is some secret
strife or resentment, but they were true partners
in every sense. They really had to be because
they were totally broke. That whole starving
artist trope was very real for them. They were
doing translations and minor illustrations together
just to scrape by and pay rent. And that crushing
financial pressure is exactly what brings us
to the birth of the Scarlet Pimpernel, because
there is nothing that motivates a career change
quite like needing to pay the bills. Especially
after their son, John Montague, was born in 1899.
So you have new baby, you have very little money
coming in, and you decide, OK, I'm going to write
novels to save us. Which is a bold strategy.
Very bold. But she didn't just hit a home run
on the first swing, did she? Not even close.
Her first novel came out in 1899 called The Emperor's
Candlesticks, total flop. Then she dried again
in 1901 with a book called In Mary's Rain. That
one did slightly better, but she was essentially
churning out what critics called racy mannered
melodramas that nobody was really buying. So
where does the lightning strike? Because this
is one of my favorite parts of her entire story.
It is just so cinematic. The historical records
say she actually conceived the character of the
Scarlet Pimpernel while standing on a platform
on the London Underground. The tube. Yes. It
is a wonderfully contrastive setting. You have
the grime, the thick smoke, the noise of industrial
London, the very definition of the modern working
class world that she probably found quite ugly
and distressing. And right in the middle of all
that dirt and noise, she just has this vision
of the ultimate Pristine aristocrat. Sir Percy
Blakeney. Sir Percy. She sees this character
who is an English fop. He's obsessed with the
latest fashion. He seems totally useless to society
on the surface. But secretly, he is crossing
the channel to rescue French aristocrats from
Madame Guillotine. I love the imagery of that.
She is standing there, probably surrounded by
tired commuters and coal smoke, dreaming of satin
suits and sword fights. It's pure escapism. But.
As we know, just because she had a brilliant
idea didn't mean the world was ready to embrace
it. No. She wrote the novelization of this idea
and she submitted it to publishers. And the research
says she was rejected by 12 different publishers.
12 rejections. We hear these stories today about
J .K. Rowling or Stephen King getting rejected,
but in 19 or 3, getting 12 doors slammed in your
face had to be demoralizing. Why do you think
they hated it so much? Well, you have to think
about the literary landscape of the early 1900s.
The trend was heavily moving toward gritty realism
and naturalism. High adventure and romantic melodrama
were seen as a bit old fashioned. Like a bit
lowbrow. Exactly, a bit lowbrow. The publishers
just didn't see a market for a story about a
guy in a disguise saving dukes from the guillotine.
It felt out of step with the times. But Orsi
and Montague, they didn't quit. And this is where
that partnership you mentioned really shines.
They couldn't get the book published, so they
pivoted to the stage. Right. They sat down and
co -wrote it as a play in 1903. And this time,
they finally got a yes. They took it to Fred
Terry and Julia Nielsen, who managed a theater,
and they accepted it for a West End production.
And when it finally opened on January 5th, 1905,
it wasn't exactly an overnight sensation. No,
the initial audiences were quite small. The critics
were actually not kind at all. They found the
play silly and overly dramatic. But the audience,
the people who actually bought tickets, they
found it completely addictive. The sources show
it started slow, but then the word of mouth just
spread like wildfire across London. It ran for
four straight years in London. It broke stage
records. It ended up playing over 2 ,000 performances.
2 ,000? That is massive. That is Phantom of the
Opera or Hamilton levels of success, but for
Edwardian London. And naturally, once the play
was a certified mega hit, the publishers who
had rejected her came crawling back. The novel
was finally published and became a massive international
bestseller. And suddenly our starving artists
have total financial stability. They end up moving
out of their cramped quarters to a beautiful
place in Thanet, Kent. Talk about a turnaround.
A complete life changer. But I want to spend
some time really deconstructing why this specific
character works so well and why he is still so
relevant to you and me today. Because when you
strip away the 18th century clothes and the powdered
wigs, Sir Percy Blakeney is the very first superhero.
He really is the cultural blueprint. If you analyze
the character and break him down, you see the
establishment of all these conventions that we
now just accept as standard for the genre. So
let's go through them. The most important one,
as we touched on, is the dual identity. The alter
ego right before this heroes in literature were
usually heroes 24 -7 Odysseus is always Odysseus
Robin Hood is always Robin Hood Sure, Robin Hood
might put on a cloak to trick the sheriff of
Nottingham for an afternoon, but he doesn't go
home and live a fake life as a boring accountant.
Exactly. But Sir Percy does. He lives a completely
fake life as a boring, stupid fashionista. He
hides behind this meticulously crafted public
persona of a slow -thinking, foppish playboy.
He deliberately makes people think he is an idiot
so that no one suspects he's the mastermind.
And that is the Bruce Wayne and Batman dynamic
perfectly executed. It really is. Oh, Bruce Wayne.
He's just a rich idiot who fell out of a club
at 3 a .m. He couldn't possibly be the Batman.
Sir Percy did it first. And it goes much deeper
than just the personality split. He has the signature
symbol. The calling card. He leaves behind this
small red flower, the scarlet pimpernel, at the
scene of his interventions. It's a brand. It's
the bat signal. It's the mark of Zorro. It tells
the villain, I was here, I beat you, and you
didn't even see me. And he also has the support
network, the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Right. 19 devoted aristocratic followers who
aid his endeavors. It's the Justice League. It's
the Avengers. It's the whole idea that the hero
is so compelling that he inspires a movement
of people to back him up. And there is one more
point the research makes that I think is crucial.
His superpower isn't brute strength. He's good
with a sword, of course, but he wins his battles
because he is smarter than everyone else. He
has superior intellect. Yes. The ability to outthink
and outwit his adversaries. This was a completely
new kind of hero for a new century. A hero who
wins through cleverness, misdirection, and mastery
of disguise rather than just punching his way
out of a problem. And Orsi didn't just write
this one book, count her money, and walk away.
She realized what she had, and she turned this
into a massive franchise. Oh, she built an empire.
She wrote over a dozen sequels. I think the most
popular one noted in the sources was which came
out in 1906. That's right, and she kept writing
them for decades. The final book in the series,
Mam's El Guillotine, didn't come out until 1940.
That is a 35 -year run for a single -character
universe. And it crossed into other media almost
immediately, which is another hallmark of the
modern superhero. The story was translated into
multiple languages, constantly revived on stage,
and adapted into films. From the early silent
films in 1917 all the way to the classic 1934
version with Leslie Howard and even the 1982
film version, the cross media success was staggering.
But here's where we need to broaden the scope
of our deep dive. Because while the Pimpernel
was obviously her cash cow, she was also doing
some really innovative pioneering stuff in the
world of mystery and detective fiction. I actually
didn't know this until we pulled the sources
for today, but she was a founding member of the
Detection Club. Which is a very big deal in literary
history. The Detection Club was formed in 1930
and it was the elite inner circle of British
mystery writers. We are talking about heavy hitters
here. TK Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Dorothea
Sayers. Exactly. Being a founding member alongside
Christine Sayers puts Orksy right at the high
table of the golden age of detective fiction.
She wasn't just seen as a romance or adventure
novelist by her peers. She was a master of the
puzzle. So tell us about her detective characters,
because she broke some serious ground here. What
about Lady Molly of Scotland Yard? Lady Molly
is one of her most significant yet overlooked
contributions to the genre. Published around
1910, it's a very early example of a female detective
serving as the main character. Which feels incredibly
progressive for that era. It was. In a literary
world that was completely dominated by Sherlock
Holmes, this hyper -rational, cold, male figure
Or C, introduced a woman who was a recognized
professional police officer. Lady Molly used
female intuition and psychology, but she was
an active, clever agent solving complex crimes.
She wasn't just a sidekick or a victim. And she
also created another distinct archetype with
the old man in the corner. Yes. The old man is
the ultimate archetype of the armchair detective.
The guy who solves the crime without ever actually
leaving his seat. Literally. He sits in the corner
of an ABC tea shop in London sipping milk and
tying intricate knots in a piece of string. People
bring him the details of baffling crimes, and
he solves them just by listening to the evidence
and applying pure logic. He doesn't go to the
crime scene. He doesn't chase bad guys down dark
alleys. Never. He out thinks them from his chair.
Again, we see her emphasizing superior intellect
over physical action, just like she did with
the Pimpernel. It really seems like she had this
fascinating duality in her writing. On one hand,
you have the high melodrama, the sword fights,
the passionate rescues, and on the other, You
have this cold, hard logic and intricate puzzle
solving. Critics at the time described her overall
style as highly wrought and intensely atmospheric.
She knew exactly how to manipulate the reader's
emotions. Even when she wrote standalone historical
melodramas, she went all in. Oh, like The Nest
of the Sparrowhawk. Yes, from 1909. The plot
of that book is absolutely bonkers. Break it
down for us. Give me the elevator pitch based
on the plot breakdown in our source. OK, here
we go. The setting is Puritan Kent. You have
a malicious, greedy guardian who wants his wealthy
ward's fortune. So he disguises himself as an
exiled French prince to trick this young heiress
into marrying him so he can legally steal all
her money. Disguises again. It's literally always
disguises with her. Always. But it gets crazier.
He ropes in his widowed sister -in -law to help
him with the con. And during this elaborate plot,
she accidentally disgraces one of her sons and
then discovers her other son has been murdered
by the villain. That is soap opera level drama.
It is so dark. It's incredibly dark and convoluted.
And here is a really fun kind of cynical fact
about the marketing of that book. The publishers
knew the Scarlet Pimpernel was their massive
moneymaker. So even though the Nest of the Sparrowhawk
had absolutely zero connection to the Pimpernel
universe, different era, different characters,
they blatantly advertised it as part of the Scarlet
Pimpernel series. Just to trick people into buying
it. Just to drive sales. The classic bait and
switch. I guess the ethics of publishing marketing
haven't changed that much in a hundred years?
Not at all. Okay, so we had to pivot now. We've
covered the massive hits, the detective stories,
the literary innovations, but the mission...
of this deep dive is to look at the whole picture.
We cannot talk about Baroness Orzee without looking
closely at her politics, her activism, and the
controversy that followed her, because there
is a very sharp, very real edge to this story.
There is. And this brings us right back to the
why of her worldview. We have to remember the
trauma of her childhood. the flight from the
peasant revolution. That deep fear eventually
solidified into a very rigid, extremely conservative
worldview as an adult. She firmly believed in
the absolute superiority of the aristocracy.
Yes. The sources, including her own biographers
and critics, note that her attitude toward what
she called the lower orders was incredibly patronizing.
It was condescending, especially if anyone from
the working class stepped out of line or demanded
rights. She was a staunch supporter of British
imperialism. She supported militarism. And obviously,
given her background, she was vehemently opposed
to the Soviet Union and any form of communism.
She hated anything that smelled of socialism.
And this wasn't just idle talk at fancy dinner
parties. She didn't just write about these ideals
in fiction. When World War I broke out, she got
active, she mobilized, and this is the part of
the historical record that is genuinely difficult
to read about. She established an organization
called the Women of England's Active Service
League. This is where the romantic writer clashes
violently with the harsh, ugly reality of war.
Her goal with the League was to empower and mobilize
women to convince men to enlist in the military.
And the pledge they had to take was intense.
To join, a woman had to sign a pledge that stated
her intention to persuade every man she knew
to offer his service to the country. Orzi was
ambitious too. She aimed to recruit 100 ,000
women for this league. Did she hit that number?
She recruited about 20 ,000, according to the
numbers we have. But the controversy stems from
how they actually went about this persuasion,
because she was a founding member and a major
proponent of the White Feather movement. We really
need to unpack this carefully for you listening,
because you might not know the historical context.
The White Feather wasn't a badge of honor. It
wasn't a ribbon of support. It was a weapon.
It was weaponized public shame. The white feather
has been a traditional symbol of cowardice in
British culture for a long time. It actually
comes from cock fighting, where a bird that had
a white feather in its tail was considered a
poor, cowardly fighter. Right. So the movement,
which Orsi championed, encouraged these women
to carry white feathers, walk up to men in civilian
clothes on the street, men who were not in military
uniform, and pin the feather on them in public.
It was a direct, aggressive confrontation. The
entire symbolism was intended to publicly brand
the man a coward, to humiliate him so deeply
that he would be shamed into signing up for the
army just to prove his manhood. You are walking
up to a stranger in the middle of a busy high
street and calling him a coward to his face.
It's incredibly aggressive. It was a blunt instrument
of social pressure, and Orsi was right at the
forefront of it. She truly believed it was a
British woman's patriotic duty to shame men into
fighting and dying for the empire. But the massive
problem with this movement, as the historical
accounts show us over and over, is that these
women didn't vet the men they were targeting.
No, not at all. It was completely indiscriminate.
They handed feathers. to teenage boys who were
legally too young to enlist. They handed them
to men working in vital essential industries
like engineering or munitions who were explicitly
forbidden by the government from enlisting because
they were needed at home. And most tragically,
the records show they handed white feathers to
soldiers who were home on leave or men who had
been severely wounded in the trenches, honorably
discharged and were simply wearing civilian clothes
while they recovered. Just try to imagine that.
You've just come back from the horrors of the
trenches. Maybe you're suffering from shell shock.
Maybe you've lost a lung to mustard gas. And
a wealthy woman walks up to you in your hometown
and hands you a feather, publicly calling you
a coward. It was devastating. There are documented
historical cases of men committing suicide shortly
after receiving white feathers. It was a cruel,
deeply damaging campaign. So as we look at all
the sources, how do we reconcile this? The woman
who wrote these incredibly fun swashbuckling
adventures that bring us joy is the exact same
woman who is ruining real people's lives with
feathers in the street. I think it all goes back
to her absolutism. In her mind, the aristocratic
ideal she worshipped required a blood sacrifice
to maintain. Duty to the empire was everything.
If you weren't actively fighting to protect the
social order, You were part of the chaos. She
just couldn't see the nuance. She only saw the
cause. Exactly. It's a stark reminder that authors
are complex people of their time, often holding
prejudices and executing actions that we find
deeply abhorrent today. It creates a very complicated,
very messy legacy. She creates a fictional hero
who uses a disguise to save innocent lives, while
in reality, She uses her own fame and influence
to mercilessly shame real people into risking
theirs. She was both a pioneer of pop culture
and a wartime propagandist. You can't separate
the two. So let's move to the final chapter of
her life as we start to bring this deep dive
to a close. The First World War ends. The world
changes drastically again. Where does she end
up? Well, the massive wealth generated by the
Scarlett Pimpernel franchise allowed her to live
very comfortably. She bought a beautiful estate
in Monte Carlo on the Riviera. Villa Bijoux.
Yes, Villa Bijoux, which translates to the Jewel
Villa. Sounds like a nice place to retire. It
was idyllic, but history has a dark way of repeating
itself for her. She was living in Monte Carlo
when World War II broke out. And once again,
she was trapped by a massive violent conflict.
She was unable to return to London. And during
this time, she faced a profound personal tragedy.
One that she couldn't write a clever escape from.
Yes. In 1942, her husband, Montague Barstow,
died in Monte Carlo. And that just hits hard
when you read the biography. They had been together,
working side by side for almost 50 years. He
was her co -writer, her illustrator, her best
friend. His death completely broke her. She was
isolated, she was widowed, and she was living
out her final years in a Europe that was once
again tearing itself apart and destroying the
old order she loved so much. She spent those
isolated years writing her memoir, right? She
did. It's called Links in the Chain of Life,
and it was eventually published in 1947. Did
she ever manage to get back home to England?
She did, finally, after the war ended. She returned
to England, but she passed away shortly after,
on November 12, 1947, in Henley -on -Thames.
She was 82 years old. 82. Think about the sheer
scope of that life. She saw the horse -drawn
carriages of feudal Hungary. She survived the
Industrial Revolution of Victorian London. She
lived through two devastating world wars. And
she died right at the dawn of the Atomic Age.
It was a life defined by massive, sweeping historical
changes. So as we wrap up this deep dive, I want
to try to synthesize all of this information
for you. When we look at all the sources, the
books, the plays, the political activism, what
is the ultimate takeaway from the life of Baroness
Orsi? I think the core takeaway is the sheer
power of transformation and adaptation. You have
a terrified refugee who completely reinvents
herself as a wealthy British icon. You have an
artist who fails at music and painting, but somehow
becomes one of the best -selling authors of her
century. But mostly you have someone who took
her deepest, most profound trauma, that absolute
terror of the angry mob, and transmuted it into
a story that literally changed pop culture forever.
And we have to acknowledge that without her specific
anxieties, we might not have the modern superhero
archetype of the secret identity. It is genuinely
hard to imagine Batman or Superman or Zorro existing
without the template that Sir Percy Blakeney
provided. That highly specific combination of
the useless, foppish alter ego hiding the hyper
competent hero, that starts with Ahuska. It absolutely
does. And here's the final provocative thought
I want to leave you, the listener, with today.
Something to mull over. I want you to think about
the ultimate irony of the paradox we started
this show with. The inversion of her hero. Exactly.
Right. Or has he explicitly created the Scarlet
Pipernel to be a counter -revolutionary? He was
fundamentally a hero for the 1%. His entire purpose
was to fight the masses to keep the aristocracy
on top. Correct. He was a conservative icon.
But the trope she invented, the masked hero with
a secret identity, it evolved over the decades.
It got democratized by later writers. Now, when
we see a superhero in a movie or a comic, they're
almost always fighting for the common man. They're
the ones fighting against corruption. They're
fighting the elites. That is the ultimate historical
twist. The precise literary tool she invented
to protect the aristocracy is now used globally
in fiction to protect the vulnerable masses.
The creator's original deeply conservative intent
has been completely flipped and rewritten by
the legacy of her own creation. It just goes
to show that once you put a story out into the
world, it really doesn't belong to you anymore.
It takes on a life of its own. It belongs to
us. Precisely. The culture decides what the symbol
means. So the next time you're sitting in a theater
watching a Marvel movie or you see a trailer
for the newest Batman reboot, look closely for
the Pimpernel DNA. Look for the deliberate fop,
the clever disguise, the calling card. It is
all there. and it's all thanks to Imuska. And
maybe, if you're a fan of mysteries, give Lady
Molly of Scotland Yard a read. You might be surprised
by how modern and engaging her detective work
still feels today. Absolutely. Thank you for
going on this incredibly deep complex journey
with us today. It has been a wild ride through
history. It certainly has. We will see you in
the next Deep Dive.