andre grandier アンドレ・グランディエ 1972 - working class hero

Andre is a true working-class hero. His family is in service to the wealthy De Jarj Ayes family in pre Revolutionary France, and he is brought up as companion to the youngest daughter of the family, who is christened Oscar Francois and raised to replace the son her father wanted.

At first the two are raised as equals, but when Oscar goes to court to serve the king and becomes captain of the young crown princess’s guard, the social gulf between them opens. Andre goes with her as her stableman, but he loves her, and this class division and his natural sense of justice lead him to study the revolutionary ideas being talked of in Paris. Oscar falls in love with another, but eventually realizes she and her childhood friend are made for each other. Andre joins the revolutionary thinkers but tragically goes blind.

After the royal family is executed, Oscar and Andre join the revolution and die for their country and the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Rose of Versailles (Versailles no Bara) was serialized in Margaret magazine. Its creator, philosophy graduate Ryoko Ikeda, also produced alternate-universe stories set in the same universe in RoV New Chapter (VnB Gaiden) in 1986. Ikeda made her debut in 1967, at the age of twenty, in Shojo Friend magazine. Famous for her use of European settings and historic themes, she took a long career break at the end of the 1980s, but returned to the manga scene in 1998.