I’m new to this fandom. I only watched the film the other day and I really want to read the book but I need to know do you think enjolras liked grantaire and did grantaire like enjolras???

enjolra-s:

So at the beginning I’d like to say that even though I’ve read the book multiple times, those are just my personal thoughts! And I’d also like to mention that I see Enjolras as a heavily gay coded character (in a way that Victor Hugo would still be able to publish the book in 1860s, of course) (and Grantaire as a bi character but I have less sources for that than for Enjolras being gay). 

So.. I believe that there was no secret relationship between Grantaire and Enjolras. As much as I think they’d be able to keep their relationship secret in the 19th century Paris, I don’t think anything in the book indicates that there could be something. 

But! I do believe that there could have been something. We are only given a few chapters in which we see them interacting but even from the description of Grantaire Hugo is trying to tell us something? “Grantaire admired, loved and venerated Enjolras’’, “He had a need of Enjolras. That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to himself having occurded to him.’’. Then Hugo compares Grantaire and his relationship with Enjolras to, for example, Hephaestion (close friend and probably a lover of Alexander the Great), Patroclus (again.. close friend and probably a lover of Achilles from  Homer’s Iliad), Pechmeja and Pylades (I spoke about them in THIS post which is very old and I’m gonna redo it one day because I haven’t mentioned of some things in it). 

So yes, I think that both had some feelings for the other one, but due to the times they lived in, their own rather stubborn, sometimes clashing personalities and the lack of time, they never learnt about them and their relationship forever stayed in the ‘maybe’ phase. 

And I think that Hugo knew what he was doing (for all those who think that I’m lying – Victor Hugo knew about gay people and he even mentioned the possibility of a man being attracted to another man in Les Miserables! It’s not like they made us all in 1980s.)  

I’d be more than happy to discuss everything about enjoltaire and all chapters and comparisons but as you mentioned – you haven’t read the book and I don’t want to make you see some spoilers!