Sebastien le Livre
| Character | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Sebastien le Livre/Booker |
| Occupation: | Forger, Soldier, Mercenary |
| Relationships: | |
| Fandom: | The Old Guard |
| Other: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Sebastien le Livre, primarily known as Booker, is a character in The Old Guard. In the film adaption, he was played by Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts.
Canon Overview
Booker was a criminal and forger; upon being arrested, he was offered a choice of prison or Napoleon's army. He fought in the 1812 French invasion of Russia, but deserted. When he was captured and hanged for his crime, he did not die, but pretended to be dead long enough for his captors to leave. Until Nile Freeman joins their team, he was the youngest known immortal, at just over 200 years old.
Unlike the older members of the Old Guard, Booker is young enough to remember (and grieve for) his family. He mentions having had a wife and three sons. His youngest son was named Jean-Pierre and was the last of Booker's children to die, succumbing to cancer at the age of 42.
Promotional posters state Booker's birthdate as 1770.
Fandom
This article or section needs expansion. |
Common Tropes
- Booker whump
Pairings
Within a month of the film's premiere, the most popular pairing for Booker on Ao3 was the Booker/Joe/Nicky. This is still a pretty rare pairing in the fandom overall. Many Booker-centric works focus on his gen relationships with his fellow Immortals. Andy/Booker is a het rarepair. A pairing gaining traction in some parts of the fandom as of August 2020 is Nile/Booker.
Fan Response to Booker's Story Arc
Fan reaction to Booker’s story arc in the Old Guard varies. Over the course of the film, it is revealed that Booker has sold out the rest of the members to the principle antagonists, and conspired and acted to help capture his fellow immortals. While he later seems remorseful and helps the other members of the Old Guard escape, the rest of the team must contend with Booker’s breach of trust. At the end of the film, Booker is told by the other members that they’ll meet up with him in 100 years; until then, he’s on his own.
Fan responses to this betrayal arc and the consequences thereof have varied widely. Where controversy has arisen, it seems to be in regards to whether Booker's motivations and actions justify the choice of the rest of the Old Guard to temporarily remove him from the team; but, in general, fans recognize the moral complexity of the situation.
Some fans feel that there was no 'right' way to handle things:
Anonymous asked: i think it's hard, if not impossible, to categorize the 100 year time-out as right or wrong, because there's too much that comes into play, and that's why it's so heartbreaking. i don't think they were right, not because i think they were too harsh on him, but because there ISN'T a right in this situation, there's only choice. same thing with booker, he wasn't right, but he felt like that was his only choice because that's what 200 years of depression and self hatred will do to a personOP: “there ISN’T a right, there’s only choice” yeah i think this is a really, really good way to put it. and NONE of the choices here are easy for anyone. [1]
One user who has created several pieces of meta on Booker writes:
The way they [the showrunners] handled Booker’s punishment is one of those things that still makes me think. Because on one hand, the story made us empathize with Booker’s struggles, we understand why he did what he did, we know it was not some evil malicious intent. But on the other hand, we also know that his actions carry consequences, and that just because you don’t mean to do something, doesn’t mean you haven’t hurt someone and that you shouldn’t be held accountable. It’s this eternal struggle of what kind of punishment and accountability is appropriate then, and is there ever truly a “right” way to handle things?…
I mean, this is really as complex of a issue as it would be in real life. Because yes on one hand the people around you maybe should have seen the troubles and done something to help, but then if your struggles end up hurting the people you love, are they not allowed to remove themselves from the situation? Booker’s actions did hurt Andy, Nicky, Joe, and Nile, so is it really fair for anyone to expect them to have to stay by his side to help him fix his issues at the expense of their own hurt and pain? [2]
Another user mentioned that Booker's backstory was among his top favourite scenes from the film, and how Booker's interactions with Andy show that the two of them turned to unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with their respective grief. [3] Booker is suggested through the film to suffer from depression and alcoholism, stemming in part from guilt that he was unable to share his ‘gift’ with his own children, one of whom died from cancer and blamed him for not helping.
One user writes that they understand why Booker betrayed the others:
That soft “oh Booker” Andy lets out hurts so much, can you imagine for how many years it was Andy and Booker together while Joe and Nicky were off doing their own thing?How many times it was Andy and Booker alone, thinking about their loved ones, mourning together, comforting each other and thinking “at least i have this, there’s someone who understands”
This just makes Booker’s betrayal so much more painful because he genuinely thought Andy would agree after he explained why he did it, he thought Andy was as desperate to end things as he was. And maybe pre-meeting Nile Andy would’ve agreed, but this Andy had a new purpose, and you could clearly see that when she said they’d been doing a poor job of living.
I’m not saying Booker was right in doing what he did, but I can see how a desperate, lonely and mourning man could do it. [4]
Some fans consider the 100 year ‘sentence’ too harsh, and are creating fanworks centered on reuniting Booker with the rest of the Old Guard before the ‘deadline’, or fics which ignore Booker's exile. Alternatively, some fans accept the period of exile but believe it would have a primarily negative impact on him.
Other fans find Booker’s motivations sympathetic but hold the opinion that other Old Guard members were justified in their response. For instance, one fan writes:
It’s one of the things I really like about the film – how compassionately it treats Booker, both on a narrative and on an inter-character level. In most genre films wrongs against the good guys are usually settled with riproaring vengeance, even if in some the hero conveniently gets not to be the one to enact it directly.But in the moment Booker’s betrayal becomes clear, character beats we have taken for mere melancholy click into place as heart-wrenching grief and suicidal depression. We’re encouraged to grieve for him. We see Andy and Nile’s empathy for him. We see Nicky urging Joe to stop shouting at him even before they yet have any hope of escape. We don’t see a moment of explicit compassion/restraint from Joe, but he does instantly put aside his anger to accept Andy’s decision that Booker’s coming with them, and does nothing to sabotage that choice. (In fact, it’s unthinkable that he would, but in plenty of action films it wouldn’t be.) And I agree with some of the arguments I’ve recently seen – the intensity of Joe’s fury isn’t necessarily a measure of how long it would last.
And then, as I say, they don’t punish him.
They don’t beat him up. They don’t work off steam killing and re-killing him. They don’t leave him for Kosak, or for the police. Of course they’d never do a full Quynh on him but putting him a box for … a year? Six months? A week? It would be an option. They don’t do that, either. They simply stop hanging out with him. And they have the extraordinary grace to promise this won’t be permanent. And Andy, whom he shot in the back, sees him off with a goodbye hug. [5]
One piece of meta reframes the question of Booker’s exile in terms of larger themes present in the film. In the post, which discusses ephemeral relationships among the Old Guard and how the core team could be less alone, a user writes:
The whole problem with The Old Guard is that it’s so damn small. It’s the 4/5/6 of them against the entire world. Even Nile’s team of Marines was bigger than that.The huge debate we’re having around the gang exiling Booker? Is all fundamentally because in keeping themselves safe, they’ve removed his entire social support system. And that’s fundamentally unhealthy.
...
I bet you Booker’s so fucked up at the end because he can’t, actually, go talk to a therapist, because to benefit from it, he would have to actually tell the truth about his life, and he’s spent the last 200 years learning not to trust anyone with the truth. [6]
There is some discourse about the way that fans have created works about Booker, and in particular how they contend with his betrayal of the group or his relationship with Joe and Nicky. By August after the film was released, one fan expressed concern that fandom's treatment of Booker might be problematic and feed into white victimization: that Booker was being infantilized by some fans to excuse his behaviour; that the fandom was pitting Joe and Booker against each other in ways that supported harmful stereotypes about men of colour; and that writers should evaluate their reasons for writing Joe/Nicky/Booker fic.
...these are just three examples. there are, i’m sure, at least a dozen more I could talk about here. but I want to wrap this up by reiterating that I am not saying you can’t like booker. i’m not saying you can’t sympathize with him. i’m not saying you can’t ship him with joe and nicky. but please, take a good hard look at your reasons for doing so, and ask yourself if the fact he is a white boy plays any role in it. would you, and are you, giving the same types of attention to other characters with similar arcs (andy, quynh)? are you infantilizing booker in a way that perpetuates white victimization? are your conceptualizations of his relationship with characters of color, especially joe, reasonable depictions, or do they contain implicit racial biases? [7]
A humourous take on Booker's exile was written August 18th by fantasticbeastsandheretofindthem, and took the position that his 100 year exile was going to be nearly impossible to enforce in the modern world [8]
Notable Fanworks
Archives & Links
- Booker | Sebastien le Livre works on Ao3
References
- ^ [1]Tumblr ask response by of-scythia to an anonymous user, August 5 2020, Accessed August 14, 2020
- ^ [2] Excerpted tumblr post by captainpikeachu, August 2020, Accessed August 14, 2020.
- ^ [3] Tumblr post by 04hands, July 21 2020, Accessed August 14, 2020.
- ^ [4] Tumblr post by ximenalightwood, July 15, 2020, Accessed August 14, 2020.
- ^ [5] Excerpted tumblr post by sophiamcdougall, Accessed August 14, 2020
- ^ [6] Excerpts from a Tumblr post by with-my-murder-flute, August 15 2020, Accessed August 15, 2020.
- ^ [7] Conclusion to a tumblr post by joeandnicky, August 13, 2020, Accessed August 14, 2020.
- ^ [8] Tumblr post by fantasticbeastsandheretofindthem (Archived Version), August 18th 2020, Accessed August 29 2020.