Though it already has a lot of tv and film adaptions, most of which tend to have a bunch of theatrical plays with rather broken fandoms as their ultimate bases instead of the book, which fortunately has a current fandom largely consisting of reasonably behaved fans from all walks of life.
However, the summary, though very idealistic with a few dark moments, is quite typical for its time period, with median cases of unintentional classism and all, despite being both much less propagandistic and somewhat more progressive for its day than most Russian language novels at the the time.
Lohengrin (also Known as Longren) has a consistently fitting name for his Baltic German roots, while Sola is Assol In All But Name, mostly because such a Soviet era Russian neologism rhymes with Asshole in a rather deservedly blatant and inappropriate manner.
Mr Menners Sr, Mrs Menners and Mr Menners Jr are all tongue twisters.
In longhand.
For beginners, my version of Lohengrin is a loving if quite dysfunctional man, whose beloved former partner and whose friend (who’s also her husband) are forcibly kicked out of thei house by his boss, himself a filthy rich man with a bunch of corporate lawyers as his lackeys. He is alright as Sola’s father figure, although he does have dysfunctional moments when going too far; such as forcing his daughter figure to become his mere servant when she’s more than just that. He also has a secret war with those same old corporate lawyers, which unfortunately results in getting him imprisoned by a bunch of equally corrupt cops repeatedly and severely so at times. He surely is a Woobie indeed.
My version of Mr Menners Sr is the well meaning but complicit foster father of Mr Menners Jr, who himself is the only birth son of two incredibly corrupt lawyers who abandoned him at the formers’ doorstep. However, while he’s a rather dysfunctional parent and a not so great man overall, he does have a few fairly redeemable qualities. He also seems to be the unfortunate victim of many a violation.
For my version of Mrs Menners, she was functionally screwed up in terms of parenting; if the main red flags are indications of her awfulness as a whole. She was known for punishing Mr Menners Jr far too severely and denying him most but not all of the essential things that most actual children have even in today’s world. Not only was she a godawful foster mother, she’s also a rather bad woman anyway for a good reason.
I’m somewhat aware that my version of Mr Menners (itself a possible Russian corruption of Menezes) Jr is more like a wedging, foulmouthed coward of an antagonist than all his literary, theatrical, tv and film counterparts before or since. Having been dreaming of my variant on Menners Jr reluctantly admitting mistakes while also having a pretty godawful dead foster mother (who also violated his whole life by conceiving a son, Mr Menners the third, out of his sperm) and a neglectful, henpecked father (whom the mother also abused till she died in the woods (of factory induced poisoning), as he himself was a former military brat) named Menners Sr. These ones, that thing and the much scarier implication of his birth parents being two of the town’s most corrupt lawyers (both of whom already were middle aged when he was born), seems to say it all.
Arthur Grey is the youngest foster son of impoverished Szlachta Leonora Cebulinski and the former military brat Marius Grey, a Cape Coloured Anglican. He is cute but troubled and very incredibly foulmouthed, sometimes to the point of being caged into a dollhouse, itself inspired by my dad’s awful daycare experience. There are hopeful implications that his much older blood brother Errol deservedly punished the admittedly screwed up Mr Grey and Mrs Cebulinski mostly for spanking him too far in front of the latter’s other siblings as well.
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