Okay, we start out in modern day England. Well, maybe not modern day, but something today’s audience can relate to. We join a small group of people who are scouring England for the true identity of “The Scarlet Pimpernel”. (Even though any true fan could’ve told them... but that’s beside the point) However, we quickly discover that their true motive is to find the fabled “Pimpernel ring” that would be worth quite a bit today. (Heck, I’d buy it! *grin*) During their searching one day, they run across an old photograph of a beautiful young woman... wearing the Pimpernel ring! They are overjoyed, especially when they receive word from an old lady living in England under the name of Marguerite Blakeney. (This is why I didn’t say modern day. I won’t even try to do the math to find out just how old that would make her...) Anyway, Margot agrees to meet with them and when she does, she begins her tale.
We go back in time to Revolutionary Paris. The people are happy and are dancing the streets! (In between making arms for their citizens and cowering in terror) We meet Marguerite St. Just who is, at the moment, getting a tour of Paris with her brother Armand and her fiancée Chauvelin. (Oh, come on. You knew I was going to do it! Who else did you expect, the Prince of Wales?) We find out that Marguerite feels trapped with her role in society as the actress. But, oh well. Enough of Margot, it’s time to find Percy!
Percy, at this time, is at the Fisherman’s Rest, winning at cards with his friend Andrew Ffoulkes. They win, then run out to catch the tide. However, they make a brief stop before heading to France so they can pick up Tony Dewhurst. He enters the ship with a servant lagging behind. “Well, I wasn’t about to wait all day for ya, sonny!” (Tony = Molly Brown? Anyone else find this as amusing as I do?) They set sail straight for Calais and while on their way, because the script says so, Percy climbs up on the front of the boat and screams “I’m the King of the World!” (To which the Prince of Wales, who happened to be taking a promenade, screamed “No, you’re not!”)
We shift our gaze back to Margot, which really makes us ready for Percy and Margot to meet so we can quit shifting our gaze back and forth. Margot, her brother, and her fiancee are having lunch with Ropespierre and Tony. (Disguised as Ropespierre’s body guard) Margot gets disgusted with her brother and their important dinner guest, and goes running outside. Percy, who is waiting outside with Andrew, chances to see Margot come running out, and falls head over heads. Their latest acquaintance, Hastings, quickly tells Percy to forget her ~ she is after all engaged to a revolutionary leader.
The rescues go swimmingly and Percy, Tony, Andrew, and Hastings manage to get all the rescued aristos safely on board the DayDream. They must, however, wait a little bit for the tide to change. While they wait, night starts to come.
In the meantime, Margot has escaped from her fiancee and run away to Calais, intent on drowning herself. (What she doesn’t know is that Chauvelin has followed her as well as dragged her brother along with. In addition to this, Ropespierre has heard word from his spies that the Scarlet Pimpernel’s boat is the DayDream, and went to Calais as well. Confused? So am I. Just bear with me.)
ANYWAY, Ropespierre sneaks onto the DayDream and hides down below, hoping... I don’t know what. Chauvelin and Armand are on board too, following Margot. And Margot has made her way to the back of the boat, intent on throwing herself off it. (Why Margot had to come all the way to Calais to kill herself, I will never know. I guess she’s not as clever as Europe thought she was)
Percy, inevitably, finds her and convinces her not to jump. He, in fact, asks her to come back to England with him. She accepts, nearly falls over the back of the ship, then gets dragged back onboard. After making sure she’s all right, he has the crew weigh anchor and tells Chauvelin and Armand to come out of hiding. *ha-ha* He invites them both to join him at his table for dinner the next night, as well as Ropespierre, who has by now been found by Tony. He assigns these guests their own rooms, then bids them goodnight.
Chauvelin comes into Margot’s room and says that he feels bad that she’s been so moody lately. (Like we believe him...) He tells her that he has something very special for her, and presents her with the ring of the Pimpernel! I don’t know HOW he got it, but somehow he did. And without knowing just who the Pimpernel really was too. Hmm... That will take some thinking over... Anyway, I know this isn’t the Heart of the Ocean, but if you think about it, it still would be something pretty precious to Chauvelin ~ the ring of his enemy. Margot better feel pretty darn special.
The next day, Percy and Margot take a stroll around the boat deck, chewing over the weather and Margot’s acting career and finally winds up on the topic of Chauvelin. Percy pulls off this scene much better than... certain... other... people who shouldn’t have been given the part... (Did I say any names? I didn’t think so. Besides, can’t you just see Percy with his vulnerable little eyes asking softly, “Do you love him?” EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!) Margot gets flustered and looks at the book of poetry Percy is carrying with him. (Admit it, you wanted to know how I’d play THAT out, didn’t you?) She goes goo-goo over the love poems. (Sometime earlier in the movie, we’ll have had Chauvelin talk about his hatred of love poetry.) I think another scene somewhere else here played out in Titanic, but I don’t remember it. Ah well. Probably not all that important. (It didn’t have Percy in it, therefore it’s irrelevant) We go to another important scene where *bwu-ha-ha!* MARGOT teaches PERCY to spit! (Does anyone else think this would be exceptionally funny to watch? Especially when Percy gets spit all over his cravat.) Armand shows up and growls at Margot, pulling her away.
I decided that it just wouldn’t work to have Tony teach Percy how to dress. So, they all show up for dinner and have a grand old time with Percy entertaining them. Dinner is about to be adjourned, and Percy says he has to be going. He slips Margot a note, telling her to meet him by the clock. (There’s apparently a big clock in the DayDream. You didn’t know that?) When she does, he takes her off to where the rescued aristocrats are having a party. (This includes Andrew meeting up with a blonde foreign girl that he likes named Helga, er, Suzanne) Marguerite, in spite of her republican ideals, has a great time. ChauChau sends Ropespierre to spy on Margot. (Wait... ChauChau finally gets to have Ropespierre as HIS personal minion? I bet the citizen’ll love that!)
The next day, Chauvelin blows up at Marguerite, telling her to stay away from the aristocrats. She also gets a lecture from Armand, whom we all REALLY hate now. (Warning, if they ever do make this into a movie [Heaven help us] do not read Eldorado before seeing it) Percy attempts to see Margot again, but someone stops him. I really don’t care who. One of her cronies.
The captain is giving a tour to the guests, and Percy finally manages to pull Marguerite into one of the rooms to talk to her. He confesses that he loves her *Ohhhhhh...* and he understands that he’s not from her world, but... And, of course, she cuts him off and says that she is, after all, engaged to Chauvelin. (Whereas we all beat her to a pulp in frustration!) Percy is horribly disappointed and we all start to weep, throwing ourselves at the foot of the movie screen. Margot starts to go back to “her people” when she notices a little “sans-coulotte” orphan that Percy had rescued as well. I don’t know just what this symbolizes to her ~ maybe it had nothing to do with the girl, but rather that a shoe that an audience member threw at the screen actually hit her in the head and brought her to her senses ~ but she goes back to the front of the ship to find Percy. There, they reenact the ever famous “I’m flying, Percy!” scene as the sunsets. As the sunsets, I am reminded of another fact. Just how long does it take to cross the English Channel? Hmm... Obviously a little bit less time than to cross the North Atlantic... Ah well.
ANYWAY, they go to Percy’s study where she gets him to write a poem about her. (No, for your information, I am NOT going to lower myself to write that Percy did something EXTREMELY uncharacteristic of himself and do something that he would blush horribly to even think about! And this includes both the drawing of Margot and going down to his brand-new carriage he was bringing back from Paris to... *ahem* do some things that would turn this fic from G to PG-13. So there) Anyway, he writes a poem and Margot just happens to bring out a ring that Chauvelin gave her, because she figured out the night before with all the aristos that he was indeed the Scarlet Pimpernel, and she figured that he deserved to have it back. They go out for a walk on the boat deck, where they see the DayDream hit an iceberg. I really doubt there are icebergs in the North Atlantic, but work with me on this one. They worried, but not as worried as they get when Chauvelin and Ropespierre sneak up behind them, knock Percy unconscious, and secretly handcuff him down in the bowels of the ship. (Chauvelin stealing back the Pimpernel ring) Margot, of course, goes nuts and is absolutely no help. Percy tells her to go find help, but she just gets lost instead and comes back with an ax. Fortunately to all Percy fans here, (Sorry to the Chauvelin fans) Margot somehow manages to hit the cuffs, not the hands. They head back up the stairs, where they find that the DayDream doesn’t have enough lifeboats. Percy is not having a good day. First the DayDream starts to sink, then he gets knocked unconscious, then his cravat gets wet! Chauvelin chaus (Sorry...) up and forces Margot into the boat after shoving his black coat on her. She is lowered away, looking up at Percy’s face as he sorrowfully looks down on hers and the flares go zooming over his head, illuminating his blonde hair that has now come out of the ponytail, and a small tear goes running down his distinctly British face...
Here at least we can cheer for Margot. She jumps back on the DayDream. She meets back up with Percy in a sorrowful moment, only to be broken a moment later when she accidentally lets slip in conversation that he’s the Pimpernel. Chauvelin, angered that she comes back for him, and even more that the Him mentioned is the Pimpernel, runs after them with a pistol. They go back down to the bottom of the ship, spend another half-hour of the movie down there, then finally resurface. The boats are gone. (Ropespierre has cowardly left on a lifeboat, proving that he was indeed supposed to be an actual character in this) Andrew is hit by the mast falling on top of him. Before he can get on a lifeboat, Hastings is shot by one of the ship’s crew. Tony and the aristocrats in his lifeboat, including Armand, paddle away. And, through another forty-five minutes, we see the proud DayDream sink beneath the waves. Percy and Margot surface and Percy leads Margot to a door he found floating nearby. He proudly floats in the water by her side, while they wait for the lifeboats.
Tony, meanwhile, has been trying to convince the guys in his lifeboat to go back. They won’t, however, upon hearing that the remaining may swamp the boats. Poor Tony.
Percy and Margot have a sweet scene where he tells her to go on to England and to live out the rest of her life. And to ‘never let go’ of the promise that she made to the Scarlet Pimpernel. She promises.
One of the League members finally convinces the aristos to come back, and they go searching through the bodies. Margot wakes up, happy to see the boats. She, however, finds they have come back too late and Percy is now dead. (Oops. I should’ve warned that you may need Kleenex) She tries to go back to her near-dead trance, but remembers the promise she made and gets the League members to come back and rescue her.
We time-warp back to the present, where the 233 year old (I finally did the math) Marguerite is wrapping up her story. (AKA Yet another moment for everyone to get sad and weepy)
“But now you know that there was a Percy Blakeney and that he saved me. In every way a person can be saved...”
The historians, very embarrassed for their treasure hunting ways, leave her alone and she wanders off to the back of the ship to dump the Pimpernel ring into Dover harbor. Satisfied, she goes back to her inn.
Sometime during the night, she falls into a “deep sleep” which everyone knows is really just her dying. (Heck, I made the poor girl 233! She has a right to die in her sleep) And, as everyone reaches for yet another Kleenex and the theater is filled with the noises of women sobbing their eyes out, the camera descends into the Straight of Dover, brings us back to the DayDream, and finds us in a kind of heaven where stand the League members and the aristocrats. (One can only assume that the “bad” people who were on the DayDream as well are downstairs, shovlin’ coal. *bwu-ha-ha!*) Margot is reunited with Percy. And they all lived happily ever after. Well, “lived” used in a rather ironical sense.
And the picture that the historians later found of Margot and the Pimpernel ring? You thought I had forgotten, didn’t you? Well, I did. So sue me! Anyway, Margot had it drawn a few years later and sent it to Chauvelin to taunt him.