Everyone’s favourite Georgian hero-thug started life as the
put-upon protagonist of Bernard Cornwell’s blood-and-thunder historical action
novels, before a certain gruff-voiced heart-throb made him a small-screen icon
of British TV in the 90s. While Sean Bean’s portrayal is a sympathetic soul
with some endearing rough edges, Sharpe as originally envisioned is a damaged,
brutal man, whose difficult military career and troubled private life are as
likely to provoke him to sullen bitterness or berserk rage as to plucky
defiance.
The lowest of the low in his class-stratified society, the Army life
was the only hope for young Richard Sharpe, and he soon found himself in
strife-torn India during a turbulent period that would make his name. Bumped up
to the officer class for conspicuous derring-do and transferred to Spain as the
Peninsular languishes in the grip of Napoleon’s legions, he found himself
sneered at by blue-blooded peers who resented him for his origins and (at
first, at least) despised by his own men for much the same reason. Yet through
stubborn ferocity and an undeniable talent for competent soldiering, Sharpe
survived and thrived, winning over a loyal circle of friends and comrades and
coming alive through countless large-scale battles and other violent scrapes,
while bedding an unseemly number of well-born ladies along the way.
Sharpe is neither idealistic nor likeable by nature, being often
boorish, sometimes bloodthirsty and useless at anything that doesn’t involve
war and killing. He freely admits his dearth of patriotism, having the
self-awareness to know that he would have fought just as fiercely for Bonaparte
had he been born French. However, his harshness is softened by redeeming
virtues, like intense loyalty, endless physical bravery and a Solomon-like
affection for the women in his life. Enough, in short, to make him a
tailor-made protagonist for this sort of work; a daredevil barbarian hero as
likely to take savage revenge on one of his innumerable foes as he is to charge
headlong into the powder-smoke of battle for the sake of a friend.
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