“Je suis Guy Alphonse Guichenot, Comte de Montreuil. Capitaine du Hailaetus,” he executed a hand flourish, but without a bow.
And so the last villain of the upcoming historical fiction novel Sic Parvis Magna walks onto the page.
This is a very dark character, in many ways representing the world of some 500 years ago where right was determined by might in the true Machiavellian sense.
Guichenot claims to be a peer of France, for whom courtly life is too dull. He bought and outfitted his own ship, got letters of marque, and began his pirate or privateer career. The wealth of her master allows the Haliætus, easily a powerful warship in her own right, to outgun most ships of her period. Equipped with 16th century state-of-the-art cetbangs (Lantaka, or canister cannon) she rains down death onto the defender crews from her after deck and fo’c’s’le, outfitting the Tiger by a factor of 2 or 3 times.
But it is Guichenot that is the star of this scene’s show. A sadist that takes great pleasure in showing his power, he strides the deck of the Tiger and demands an almost-royal deference.
I painted Guichenot this way because I wanted a character that suffered some kind of childhood trauma that he could not grow out of. Perhaps he, when attending lessons at court that likely included his royal brethren, was bullied by them. Unable to respond, the victim grows into an abuser himself, unable to feel pity, empathy, or remorse. Psychopathy thrives in a world the limits of competition in which may be ill defined.
My goal was to create a character that will challenge young Drake or kill him. I think Guichenot is such a character. Vain and sadistic, he does not flinch as he kills one of the remaining crew to get an answer to a simple question. His responsibility is to set Drake on the final collision course with his destiny in this historical fiction novel.
If you are interested in some of the other characters of the upcoming historical fiction novel Sic Parvis Magna, please take a look at the sketch of James Reynard, another villain of the novel, as well as the sketch of Francis Drake. If you are interested in learning about the armed merchantman ship the Tiger, I write about how I created it here.
About the Image of Captain Guichenot
The portrait of Guichenot was started by an AI “Artist.” I heavily modified the generated image using Adobe Fresco and Photoshop to produce the image collage with a French frigate sketched by the real Willem Van der Velde (the Younger).
