A Place of Greater Safety is a 1992 historical novel by Hilary Mantel, about the French Revolution of 1789. It was the first novel she wrote, but her third to be published. It chronicles the Revolution through the dynamic relationships between three of its central players: Georges-Jacques Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Maximilien Robespierre. The novel is basically structured as a dramatized triple biography, covering almost the entirety of their intertwined lives from their respective formative years in the 1760s and 1770s all the way to the executions of the former two at the height of the Reign of Terror.
It is notable for being fairly epic in scope while maintaining an intimate tone and character-driven focus, and for averting Hollywood History. It also features vast supporting cast, all of whom are real historical figures.
Contrary to the tendency in Anglophone media to focus on the crumbling of "l'Ancien Regime," A Place of Greater Safety is explicitly told through the eyes of the revolutionaries, opting to explore the lives of the previously-unknown men and women who gained fame and infamy in the swells of the Great Revolution.
Some of the principal characters include:
- Georges-Jacques Danton: A gifted, pragmatic, ambitious young lawyer. "Erotically ugly" and thuggish in appearance due to a violent animal husbandry incident in his childhood. Married to:
- Gabrielle Danton: A royalist surrounded my revolutionaries. Willfully naive but principled, and subtler than others give her credit for.
- Camille Desmoulins: The sweetheart of the Revolution. A provocateur with a vulnerable-yet-audacious charm, he is Robespierre's childhood friend and Danton's right-hand man. Outwardly dashing, sensitive, and polite, Camille has a strange and destructive personality. Married to:
- Lucile Desmoulins: A beautiful young Parisian heiress. Clever, flighty, and fearless.
- Maximilien Robespierre: An earnest young provincial lawyer; slight, sober, and punctilious. He is unassuming, reliable, and competent, but a bore. Abhors the sight of blood.
- Fabre D'Églantine: An eccentric playwright and general layabout. Theatrical and quick to anger, a pathological liar. Twisted mentor figure to Danton.
- Jean-Marie Hérault de Séchelles: An young reformist aristocrat and legal dignitary, filthy rich and idle. Later called a "Dantonist". A gambler.
- Antoine Saint-Just: A young radical ex-poet, formerly emprisionné. A partisan of Robespierre's with significant ambitions of his own. Probably related to Camille, somehow.
And many, many others.
Tropes appearing in A Place of Greater Safety:
- Historical Domain Character: The main characters are all famous men of the revolution.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Idealistic young Robespierre just wants to make France a better place.
