It pains me to write this one, but here
goes: how would history have been altered if Biggles had never found out that
Marie was a German spy?
Well, to begin with, Algy and the rest of
266 would be buried under the weight of several bombs, so it would be unlikely
that any of them would have been best man at Biggles’ wedding.
 |
| Biggles Looks Back Image from Yet Another Biggles Site |
Would Biggles and Marie have eloped?
Possibly. I don’t see Biggles leaving the RFC for her (although with Algy and
the rest of his friends gone he might feel so heartbroken that it’s possible.
Evil woman!! Bet that was her plan all along!!)
Let’s go a little deeper. What if Biggles
had never offered to deliver the fatal letter to Marie’s “father”? Would she
have lost interest in him and found some excuse to break it off? Or was she as infatuated
with him as he was with her? I personally find it unlikely that a woman in love
would have asked her beloved to deliver a death-trap letter, but then again,
people have strange ways of showing their affection. She did write that letter asking
him to meet her, however, so maybe she did kind of like him (or liked having
someone to wrap around her little finger).
If Biggles had not delivered the letter and
266 had remained intact, I feel that Biggles would have remained completely and
utterly in love with Marie. (Because she was basically the first girl he’d ever
really seen in his entire life, and
also because, as we all know, Biggles can be an idiot where women are
concerned.) Would he have secretly married her? I’m not sure about this one,
because on the one hand I feel like Biggles would want to seize the moment, but
on the other hand he knew the risks of being a war pilot and would feel
uncomfortable with marrying a woman who might at any second become a widow.
And what on earth was Algy doing when
Biggles was hanging around moonlit courtyards and stone benches?!! Why didn’t
he recognize Marie for the evil monster she was and just hit her with something
extremely lethal and hard?
Sorry if this is a bit pedantic, but Biggles didn't actually find out for himself, Intelligence found out and tricked him so he delivered the wrong location for the bombs. They didn't tell him until after the bombing.
ReplyDeleteIf her plot had worked he would never in this (or any other) world have eloped with her. He would never have forgiven himself or her and probably would have gone on a mad shooting spree in a Camel and killed himself.
If he hadn't offered to deliver the letter, I expect she'd have found another young pilot to do it. EVS said in Looks Back that she was resourceful, I seem to remember. To do that she'd have had to drop Biggles - so if he was then heartbroken, he might have gone on a mad shooting spree in his Camel and killed himself...
As for Algy not stopping Biggles, maybe he thought it was good for Biggles to have a girlfriend - and maybe he was busy getting one for himself too, in Amiens... where the tender often seemed to go :-)
Even if everything had gone right (for the horrid Marie) and Biggles had married her, I can't see their marriage being a happy one. Biggles had a lot of principles, and Marie had none. They'd have ended up despising each other. Marie would probably have left him for someone else as soon as a more beneficial opportunity came her way.
ReplyDeleteAnd Biggles wouldn't even have had Algy to turn to in his hour of need.
Whichever scenario one thinks of Marie is bad news....
I detest Marie but she must have made a fairly strong impact on the young Biggles (strong enough that he would fly out to rescue her all those years later, anyway), so it seemed worth while to do an Alternate History about her. I don't think Biggles would have been happy even if he had never found out about her being a spy and had managed to get married to her after the war (which came only a few weeks after he met Marie). There would be too many secrets between them--she with her spy work, and he trying to hide all the nastiness of war from her, thinking she was some innocent girl...they would have drifted apart at some point, and Biggles would have rung up Algy and asked him if he was doing anything special, or would he like to fly somewhere...
ReplyDeleteHad Biggles not been in a war he'd have probably done the usual and played the field (and, dare I say it) a few wild oats anyway. At that age hormones would have been r, so I'm not surprised he fell for a young pretty girl. He might have fallen out of love with her a few weeks later. unfortunately for him, he found out what she was while he was still in love, and we all know what happened next.
ReplyDeleteWell now... I don't see Biggles 'playing the field' somehow. Algy, possibly. Biggles, no. I think he was too serious and intense to fall in and out of love.
ReplyDeleteStrange how everybody hates Marie. She was only doing her job. And that did not include falling in love with the person she was trying to manipulate. I feel quite sorry for her really. And for poor Erich who was hoping she'd marry him.
I wonder why she fell in love with Biggles. She must have done the same sort of thing wih other young men prevously in her career as a spy, and not fallen in love.
He was of course extra special... :-)
I'm not convinced that Marie ever did truly 'love' Biggles. I think she only made out she did because she thought he would be a useful person to have on her side should the bottom fall out of her little spying scheme. She was resourceful,remeber? She wouldn't be too hasty to let go of anyone who might still prove useful to her...
ReplyDeleteThe reason I dislike her is because she wasn't just spying - she was playing a very dirty underhand game. She was prepared to let the unwitting Biggles, her supposed beloved, risk getting shot as a traitor, and essentially sent him of to indirectly kill his own friends. If that was Marie's idea of love then Biggles was much better off without it... : - (
Did someone say something about Algy playing the field???? *dangerous tone*
ReplyDeleteI don't know that Marie had done very much spy work. She was only about Biggles' age, wasn't she? So around 17, 18, perhaps even younger? Not to be on her side or anything, but maybe she mentioned Biggles to her "father" and he was the one who hatched up the plan? Would she really understand the consequences of asking him to deliver her "letter"?
I don't know that she loved Biggles; perhaps like him, she hadn't seen many boys her age (I mean, Erich was quite a bit older than Biggles and he wanted to marry her, but she probably thought of him as a nasty old man...)
She had been trained at the same high-powered spy-training establishment as EVS - I don't think she was so young. My guess is that she was more likely to be a few years older than the 19-year-old Biggles.
ReplyDeleteShe was old enough to scheme and run rings round him... and a girl in her early twenties could easily look young and beautiful, especially to a rather naive and innocent pilot caught up in the horror of war, the exhaustion, the loss of friends and possibly the disillusionment. By the end of 1918, pilots were starting to question what they were being ordered to do. WEJ doesn't mention this as far as I remember. There are some things he kept quiet about.
In such peaceful surroundings, to Biggles it must have seemed like heaven. Briefly.
And she wasn't supposed to fall in love with her innocent victim that's for sure. Don't you think that it is most likely that she started her plan of deception when she was presented with the opportunity, and only later realised she loved him. Not that 'later' was very long of course - was it a week, or a fortnight at most?
Also, in wartime, that sort of spying wouldn't be considered underhand. You can be sure that women on both sides used sex/femininity (call it what you will) to obtain what was asked for by those in command of them.
It was their job to succeed and to defeat the enemy. It was what they were trained to do. It didn't follow that they necessarily liked what they had to do.
After all, probably most fighter pilots most of the time wouldn't have liked killing people. But it was their job to down the enemy and as often as not that meant they killed them.
I have always thought that Marie didn't like deceiving Biggles. It's not easy to destroy somebody's trust, especially if you have started to care about them. As to whether she really was in love, EVS says in Looks Back that there was never another man in her life so...
WAS she really in love with Biggles? She was risking his neck to carry out her orders! I try to be rational when talking about Marie, but the truth is I hate her about as much as most of you hate Jane! She could have so easily destroyed Bggles, as well as Algy and everyone else in 266.
ReplyDeleteThat letter she wrote asking Biggles to meet her on the road just before the bombs were starting to fall--was she going to tell him the truth? Or just watch his face as he saw all his friends getting bombed?
In so many ways Marie seems so selfish to me. She wanted to do her job, but she wanted Biggles as well. So she used him to deliver the letter, and then she tried to get him to meet her on the road, and then, when that failed, she wrote him another letter to ensure that she would stick in his mind for a long time (pretty much his whole life, as we know.)
And the very fact Erich talks about her maybe marrying him shows that she was probably flirting with him as well. And never having another man in her life? I suspect that was just wishful thinking on Erich's part--could a woman like Marie NOT have other men in her life? She was only 18 or 19 in WWI and she'd already burnt two men (didn't see Erich with a girlfriend ever, so she must have gotten to him as well), so goodness knows how many other hearts she broke along the way...
Well, that's Marie sorted then!
ReplyDeletePresumably Erich was still under her spell as he went off to try and rescue her and then dragged Biggles in to complete the job.
HOWEVER, she is NOT as bad as Jane because she didn't get Biggles in tow after she was rescued - he stayed with Algy and the others :-)))
Well, Biggles did laugh at the idea of them "carrying on where they left off"--"What? At my age?" Presumably he'd worked out that he owed her a little something for trying to save his life, but he didn't love her anymore.
ReplyDeletePresumably he worked out that life was better with Algy, Bertie and Ginger :-)
ReplyDeleteLife is always better with Algy.... : - )
ReplyDeleteOF COURSE life is always better with Algy :)
ReplyDeleteBiggles didn't think so. *sniff* when he preferred Jane. *another sniff*
ReplyDeleteAh, but as we all know that was the mind-controlling tea and cigarettes he was being secretly ministered with effecting his judgement ;-)
ReplyDeleteYou do know that the drugged tea stuff is all in your heads and NOT REALITY, right? :P
ReplyDeleteBesides, if she did drug his cigarettes, why would she stop him smoking?
Because she was then in a position to drug his tea of course, and didn't want the smell of stale cigarette smoke about her hair and her expensive designer clothes.
ReplyDeleteWhen you put it that way...
ReplyDelete