Something a Little Byronic

"What is this? The inspector of the Yard, the sniveling, bowler-clad officer on a holy crusade to clean the streets of London, Sir God-Save-The-Queen, the almighty champion of innocence and all things pure and good, um? I think not, L'éventreur. Or should I call you 'Ripper'? We're all Englishmen now, aren't we? Either way, I know who you are; but they don't, do they? It's quite a little act you've got going here. I don't think they even have a clue of what you're capable of. Oh, but I know. I was there..."

Chief Inspector Vole often finds himself the butt of Sherringford Basil's many jokes, saying that he probably had his bowler hats screwed on too tight when he was still in diapers. However, Vole was, in truth, a rebellious youth and he doesn't like to talk about it:

Born Jean-Alexandre Grégoire de Vole in the walled port city of Saint-Malo, Brittany, France, he grew up in a strict military family. His mother died during his childbirth and his father was absent at sea or at war. Young Grégoire was groomed since birth for a soldier's career, with reservations at a prestigious military academy in Saint-Cyr, but rejected his responsibilities and went as far as getting himself kicked out of seven consecutive schools, eventually burning down a building wing to get his point across. He dropped out at fifteen, was on-and-off the streets before he ran off on his own in Paris, fell in with the worst crowd that would have him, and delved into criminal activity for pleasure and/or gain, where he achieved local infamy under the moniker, "L'éventreur" (or "Ripper"). He eventually moved his activities to England, although his criminal career there was brief. He lived hard and fast and, as a result, crashed and burned. He eventually accepted his destiny as a "military man" on his own terms by joining the civil service.

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The exact reasons of how Vole received his grisly nickname, "L'éventreur/Ripper," is a secret he'll carry to his grave. However, after nearly twenty years of service to the Crown, his juvenile delinquency of his past came back to haunt him when a number of serial murders in the Whitechapel were committed by "Jack the Ripper" in 1888 and Vole became a suspect in the case when he was already a seasoned Detective Inspector. He was eventually cleared, however this suspicion stained his sterling reputation and, as a result, it is possible that he may never receive another promotion. (But don't worry. He'll eventually earns the rank of Detective Chief Inspector circa 1897 and the rank of Superintendent circa 1905.)

His experiences as a youth have proved to be an asset to his work, particularly as he has insight to the criminal mind and method. He is an prolific hand-to-hand fighter, noted for his speed and agility rather than strength, with skills in sharp-shooting, single-stick, and knife-throwing. His military background had made him an unusually innovative strategist and strict, but fair, disciplinarian. Considers himself a Breton before a Frenchman or a Englishman. Has a (faded) tattoo on his left shoulder that reads "l'éventreur" underlined with the Five-Fingered Hand of Eris, a Greek symbol of discord, strife, chaos, destruction, and death.

He forced himself to loose his French accent during his first year in England. However, he does retain some French quirks in his speech pattern, such as rolling his R's and elongating his S's, which makes Vole enunciate Basil's name as "Basssul," mixed with the nasalness of his voice.

I feel one of Vole's most tragic aspects of his personality is his self-destructiveness. He's a workaholic and, like all workaholics, he comes from a background of chaos and disorder, and so has this obsessive-compulsive, perfectionist need for order. Most of workaholics have really low self-esteem; they are typically brought up in families with low level of communication and expressing feelings openly, where there is a clear message for children to be strong, right, and perfect, to work hard and make something valuable in their life, so that parents can be proud of them and suffer from pre-disposal factors, such as phobias -- fear of failure, fear of boredom, fear of laziness, etc. Vole is no exception. He sees an enormous amount of injustice and suffering in the world and concludes that his only moral duty is to devote his life a hundred-and-ten-per-cent to his work. However, to commit a hundred-and-ten-per-cent to duty leads to self-destruction -- physically, psychologically, and behaviourally. He sacrifices so much for his work that he has no personal life -- no family, no friends, no interests, no vacations; he sacrifices his own well-being, his personal health and safety, simply because he has to -- and, in a way, he could possibly make amends for his past. He considers sleep and play as a waste of time; he can't relax and rest, and avoids personal relationships. He lives an extremely isolated and lonely existence, suffers from migraines and insomnia, feeling that he is unworthy to have a balanced life. His self-destructive behaviour is a form of self-punishment, connected with feelings of self-hatred and personal guilt. It is not attention-seeking because it runs much deeper; it's a coping mechanism. If he doesn't take things easier, history will repeat itself and he will crash and burn again, and we don't know what harm will result when the dust settles.

Nowadays, Vole is an all-around fuddy-duddy, but back then he was a mid-Victorian Byronic James Dean, à la Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and East of Eden (1955), and I wanted to reflect that in his youthful look -- that "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," to quote Lady Caroline Lamb about Lord Byron. He was rebellious, reckless, angry, and a little stupid; it's a part of his life that he's thoroughly ashamed of and hopes beyond hope that it's dead. But he wouldn't be the fuddy-duddy that we know and love if it wasn't for that past. For me, he harks back to the baby boomers of the 1950s and 1960s, which was a generation of sex, drugs, war, and rebellion, and they eventually just grew up and became our parents and grandparents... It's always the quiet ones, isn't it?

This is the first time I've revealed his backstory, so I don't know how believable it is to an audience, but I hope you get a new appreciation for his character. He's much more than he seems.

Inspiration - Inspector Lestrade (STUD, CARD, NOBL, BOSC, HOUN, EMPT, SECO, NORW, BRUC, CHAS, SIXN, LADY, 3GAR) | Models - Colin Jeavons, David Thewlis

Medium - 2B graphite, 2H mechanical pencil.

Chief Inspector Vole © Diane N. Tran.