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Céleste Defarge is a major commissar of the Medine Soviet and an architect of the Red Terror that swept through Revolutionary France. She is nicknamed the "Red Punisher" by some due to her reputation for ruthless efficiency in purging class enemies and perceived counter-revolutionaries.

Despite her cruel and sadistic tendencies, Céleste Defarge has a tragic backstory that explains her desire to enjoy the suffering of the aristocracy. As a young girl, she grew up in poverty in rural France, living in a dilapidated farmhouse with her parents and siblings. Her parents were harsh and abusive, and often took out their frustration on Céleste and her siblings. Céleste's only escape from the abuse was to immerse herself in books and history, dreaming of a life of luxury and refinement.

As she grew older, Céleste became involved in the revolutionary movement and soon looked back on those old stories with a growing sense of disgust at how those of a higher social station willingly hoarded and amassed great wealth and capital despite the needless suffering of the underclass. She soon came to a realization that her own life of poverty and neglect did not need to happen, and was instead inflicted upon her by the elites essentially for their own amusement and profit, especially in a world where automation and artificial intelligence were a reality and yet pointlessly hobbled to make way for greater cruelty.

She amassed a physical bookshelf full of firsthand accounts of aristocrats being led to Madame Guillotine in the 1790s, counts and princesses rotting in GULAGs in 1919 Russia, and landowners being dragged out of their homes and shot by Chinese peasants in 1950. She began obsessing over revolutionary justice and retribution. She would devour anything she could find about the Reign of Terror, the Red Terror in Russia and China, the post-revolutionary violence in Haiti, Cuba, and Vietnam. Tales of the rich, aristocrats, business elites, reactionary petit bourgeoisie, slavemasters, military brass, and clergy being violently overthrown and subjugated by those they once oppressed.

She quickly rose through the ranks due to her intelligence and ruthlessness. When the Eurasian Revolutions finally toppled the Seville regime, and the Maquis Rouge and Socialist Revolutionary-Maximalists came to power, Defarge was given a position of power in the new government. She saw it as an opportunity to finally escape her miserable upbringing and to inflict suffering on those who had always looked down on her. Rejecting any more sentimental outlook or offers to be part of another officiary of the new revolutionary government, she instead became a key architect of the Red Terror, relishing in the opportunity to punish and humiliate the aristocracy and bourgeoisie.

As such, she was assigned as a chief commissar over the artificial island of Medine. Medine is a prison island constructed in the 2030s by a Fascist Britain to house undesirables and foreigners, but when the fascist government fell, it fell into disrepair. Most of Medine looks like a supersized Hashima Island, with its dilapidated buildings and Brutalist architecture. The only exception is the glamorous Sun City and its underside, Underlondon, which were maintained as upscale residential districts (though Underlondon took on a seedier appearance). After the Revolution Medine was used by the Maquis Rouge to house political enemies, class enemies, and general workers, with the proletarians being the highest caste on the island, allowed to exclusively live in Sun City. This turned Medine into an ironically inverted cyberpunk dystopia, with the former people, highborns, and titled wallowing in the gutters of Lower Medine while the victorious and increasingly prosperous proletariat would live and occasionally labor up above in Sun City and Underlondon.

Medine is a pseudo-police state. It is very heavily surveilled by drones, cameras, spies, and robots, but this only applies to class enemies, of which there are extremely few left on the island by the time Meki's story formally begins.

Despite Defarge's fearsome reputation, Empress Marie-Aurore de Bourbon-Seville (AKA Meki) can't help but sense a hint of frustration from Defarge towards herself and the other Trio of Nobles, Princess Madeleine d'Orléans and Marquis Étienne-Dominique de la Trémoille. Defarge sees the trio as pitiable, their masochistic class guilt driving them to actively seek further humiliation and abuse, denying Defarge the pleasure of total victory. This can get on Defarge's nerves as she would much prefer them to be vengeful, bitter, and longing for their old privileges.

Meki can't help but feel a twinge of guilt for not being the bitter, reactionary burzhui that Defarge would prefer. She knows that her open embrace of the revolution and willingness to be subjugated is not what Defarge wants to see from a class enemy. But Meki can't help but feel a sense of liberation in her submission to the will of the people.

Meki and Defarge essentially represent how a sadist and masochist would actually get along: the sadist would be eternally frustrated by the masochist as the sadist wants to see the masochist suffer, but the masochist revels in suffering, denying the sadist their satisfaction.

Defarge is a true believer in the Revolution, but she is not going to pretend she isn't using the Revolution for vengeance.

A more humane comrade might think "But Meki surrendered all capital the moment she had control over it, outright wresting it away from her fascist father's control just to give it to the workers. She openly and willingly advocates total rejection of the imperialist system. What point is there in her subjugation?" A more pragmatic comrade would say "Despite her innocence, she is still the Imperial Empress; it is unfortunate, but she remains a symbol of the Old Order and a rallying maypole for the reactionaries, no matter her good deeds and revolutionary fervor." Defarge isn't even that; she is unapologetically driven by nothing other than a desire to crush the Old Order underneath the bootheel of the revolutionary proletariat, admiring Lenin's words that you need only look into the files of one's social background to determine their fate. Hence why she derives pleasure in abusing and subjugating Meki and her noble cohorts, and thus frustration that the Trio welcome such abuse and subjugation with no resistance and instead open glee and masochistic deference. This isn't at all what she intended to happen and is part of what makes Meki's story (whether Mother Meki or Babylon Today) so unusual.

Defarge's justification is one shared with Meki (to Defarge's further frustration): What is a brief moment of revolutionary cruelty compared to thousands of years of sadistic oppression? See Meki and Madeleine's discussion of the "martyress of the wealthy" concept

In her free time, Defarge enjoys knitting, a hobby she shares with her namesake from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

Defarge has no strong opinions on the rise of technism, compared to her comrade Jean-Baptiste Javert who views technism as a betrayal of the human spirit. To Defarge, whether the proletariat is liberated from the strains of labor by machines and artilects or continue working themselves is unimportant, so long as society is reorganized. If anything, seeing the prosperity allowed by technism just makes the sense of victory even more palpable and further drives her to action: thanks to the rise of technism (social technism in the case of Eurasia), prosperity is so widespread and readily available for all to the point of allowing for the proletariat to begin forging itself into a "petit aristocracy." Which renders the old aristocapitalists' hoarding of wealth even more unforgivable; there was no loss of prestige and prosperity in sharing ownership. All that would have been lost was the elites' sense of raw power, and that was clearly too much for them.

Description
Generated with Midjourney

Céleste Defarge is a major commissar of the Medine Soviet and an architect of the Red Terror that swept through Revolutionary France. She is nicknamed the "Red Punisher" by some due to her reputation for ruthless efficiency in purging class enemies and perceived counter-revolutionaries.

Despite her cruel and sadistic tendencies, Céleste Defarge has a tragic backstory that explains her desire to enjoy the suffering of the aristocracy. As a young girl, she grew up in poverty in rural France, living in a dilapidated farmhouse with her parents and siblings. Her parents were harsh and abusive, and often took out their frustration on Céleste and her siblings. Céleste's only escape from the abuse was to immerse herself in books and history, dreaming of a life of luxury and refinement.

As she grew older, Céleste became involved in the revolutionary movement and soon looked back on those old stories with a growing sense of disgust at how those of a higher social station willingly hoarded and amassed great wealth and capital despite the needless suffering of the underclass. She soon came to a realization that her own life of poverty and neglect did not need to happen, and was instead inflicted upon her by the elites essentially for their own amusement and profit, especially in a world where automation and artificial intelligence were a reality and yet pointlessly hobbled to make way for greater cruelty.

She amassed a physical bookshelf full of firsthand accounts of aristocrats being led to Madame Guillotine in the 1790s, counts and princesses rotting in GULAGs in 1919 Russia, and landowners being dragged out of their homes and shot by Chinese peasants in 1950. She began obsessing over revolutionary justice and retribution. She would devour anything she could find about the Reign of Terror, the Red Terror in Russia and China, the post-revolutionary violence in Haiti, Cuba, and Vietnam. Tales of the rich, aristocrats, business elites, reactionary petit bourgeoisie, slavemasters, military brass, and clergy being violently overthrown and subjugated by those they once oppressed.

She quickly rose through the ranks due to her intelligence and ruthlessness. When the Eurasian Revolutions finally toppled the Seville regime, and the Maquis Rouge and Socialist Revolutionary-Maximalists came to power, Defarge was given a position of power in the new government. She saw it as an opportunity to finally escape her miserable upbringing and to inflict suffering on those who had always looked down on her. Rejecting any more sentimental outlook or offers to be part of another officiary of the new revolutionary government, she instead became a key architect of the Red Terror, relishing in the opportunity to punish and humiliate the aristocracy and bourgeoisie.

As such, she was assigned as a chief commissar over the artificial island of Medine. Medine is a prison island constructed in the 2030s by a Fascist Britain to house undesirables and foreigners, but when the fascist government fell, it fell into disrepair. Most of Medine looks like a supersized Hashima Island, with its dilapidated buildings and Brutalist architecture. The only exception is the glamorous Sun City and its underside, Underlondon, which were maintained as upscale residential districts (though Underlondon took on a seedier appearance). After the Revolution Medine was used by the Maquis Rouge to house political enemies, class enemies, and general workers, with the proletarians being the highest caste on the island, allowed to exclusively live in Sun City. This turned Medine into an ironically inverted cyberpunk dystopia, with the former people, highborns, and titled wallowing in the gutters of Lower Medine while the victorious and increasingly prosperous proletariat would live and occasionally labor up above in Sun City and Underlondon.

Medine is a pseudo-police state. It is very heavily surveilled by drones, cameras, spies, and robots, but this only applies to class enemies, of which there are extremely few left on the island by the time Meki's story formally begins.

Despite Defarge's fearsome reputation, Empress Marie-Aurore de Bourbon-Seville (AKA Meki) can't help but sense a hint of frustration from Defarge towards herself and the other Trio of Nobles, Princess Madeleine d'Orléans and Marquis Étienne-Dominique de la Trémoille. Defarge sees the trio as pitiable, their masochistic class guilt driving them to actively seek further humiliation and abuse, denying Defarge the pleasure of total victory. This can get on Defarge's nerves as she would much prefer them to be vengeful, bitter, and longing for their old privileges.

Meki can't help but feel a twinge of guilt for not being the bitter, reactionary burzhui that Defarge would prefer. She knows that her open embrace of the revolution and willingness to be subjugated is not what Defarge wants to see from a class enemy. But Meki can't help but feel a sense of liberation in her submission to the will of the people.

Meki and Defarge essentially represent how a sadist and masochist would actually get along: the sadist would be eternally frustrated by the masochist as the sadist wants to see the masochist suffer, but the masochist revels in suffering, denying the sadist their satisfaction.

Defarge is a true believer in the Revolution, but she is not going to pretend she isn't using the Revolution for vengeance.

A more humane comrade might think "But Meki surrendered all capital the moment she had control over it, outright wresting it away from her fascist father's control just to give it to the workers. She openly and willingly advocates total rejection of the imperialist system. What point is there in her subjugation?" A more pragmatic comrade would say "Despite her innocence, she is still the Imperial Empress; it is unfortunate, but she remains a symbol of the Old Order and a rallying maypole for the reactionaries, no matter her good deeds and revolutionary fervor." Defarge isn't even that; she is unapologetically driven by nothing other than a desire to crush the Old Order underneath the bootheel of the revolutionary proletariat, admiring Lenin's words that you need only look into the files of one's social background to determine their fate. Hence why she derives pleasure in abusing and subjugating Meki and her noble cohorts, and thus frustration that the Trio welcome such abuse and subjugation with no resistance and instead open glee and masochistic deference. This isn't at all what she intended to happen and is part of what makes Meki's story (whether Mother Meki or Babylon Today) so unusual.

Defarge's justification is one shared with Meki (to Defarge's further frustration): What is a brief moment of revolutionary cruelty compared to thousands of years of sadistic oppression? See Meki and Madeleine's discussion of the "martyress of the wealthy" concept

In her free time, Defarge enjoys knitting, a hobby she shares with her namesake from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.

Defarge has no strong opinions on the rise of technism, compared to her comrade Jean-Baptiste Javert who views technism as a betrayal of the human spirit. To Defarge, whether the proletariat is liberated from the strains of labor by machines and artilects or continue working themselves is unimportant, so long as society is reorganized. If anything, seeing the prosperity allowed by technism just makes the sense of victory even more palpable and further drives her to action: thanks to the rise of technism (social technism in the case of Eurasia), prosperity is so widespread and readily available for all to the point of allowing for the proletariat to begin forging itself into a "petit aristocracy." Which renders the old aristocapitalists' hoarding of wealth even more unforgivable; there was no loss of prestige and prosperity in sharing ownership. All that would have been lost was the elites' sense of raw power, and that was clearly too much for them.