You already know from El semen de los ahorcados that Courfeyrac had an ancestor who fought in the Thirty Years' War (and whom he dressed up as for a masquerade - before the rewrite, in which Courf dresses as Puss in Boots instead). Well, his story is about to be expanded upon, as a StrixAlluka 30YW AU with the Amis as Swedish Army deserters turned guerrilla soldiers of fortune is underway. It will be in Swedish and called "Efter Lützen". Enj is Prussian landed gentry and R a Moor by way of Marseille (Engelhart Schönherr and Razi/René)... most of the cast will remain French though with a few more exceptions (Musichetta, Leslie - Lesgle, Joellll - Jolllly)... Furthermore, Gustavus Adolphus will play the role Napoleon played in canon Les Mis!
The idea or bunny came partly from that reference to the musketeer Baron de Courfeyrac in El semen, partly from a mention of Lützen in Les Misérables canon, Colonel Pontmercy having fought in the Napoleonic battle. But I could not shake the idea of the 30YW battle off my head and wondered what if Les Mis had been set in that period and all the Amis sans Marius had been killed in that seventeenth-century war. And of course Colonel Pontmercy would have fought in a Swedish-French alliance and been killed at Lützen...
Engelhart Schönherr and Jules Combeferre + Hercule-Joffrey de Courfeyrac. There you have the rittmeister and his two lieutenants respectively, who keep the ranks they held in the Swedish military. The young Prussian of the landed gentry and his French teacher's son, who has a plan to sort out all flora and fauna a century before Linnaeus, both joined the Swedish military in their late adolescence in order to fight for freedom of worship. The young Gascon baron and lieutenant of musketeers came to the heart of Europe as an envoy to the Swedish camp, representing the Cardinal (Richelieu), with a certain Moor by way of Marseille (R, aka Razi, aka René) for a valet (and cupbearer, and squire...).
Enj is actually a Winged Hussar from Küstrin, on the Prussian-Polish border, yes, and those golden angelic wings are as impressive as they sound; he sells them to Sr. Álvarez/M. Thénardier in exchange for a big hen that turned out to be a meat chicken instead of an egg layer - and then, at the tail end of the war, he makes himself new wings, Icarus style, from all the woodland fowls that he's hunted.
Combeferre studied at Leipzig University, but was expelled for being a freethinker (agnostic) and subsequently press-ganged into Catholic service in a tavern (under the influence) then taken prisoner at Breitenfeld and joined the Swedish ranks.
Courfeyrac is from a Huguenot background and he fled Gascony to escape from an arranged marriage to a girl of his rank whom he didn't know.
All of the characters are sharing the same personality and character arcs as in canon, but adapted to the 30YW setting. Pairings are also the same as in the rest of my AUs (Enjoltaire, Courferre, Éposette, Montponine, Mariusette, Jolesgletta, Valvert, Baholly, etc)
Razi (René), the Moor who never has laid eyes on his parents' birthplace of Castellón, started out with his widowed mother Miriam (Marie) on the docks of Marseille; her husband having been killed in a street fight on those same docks. He became a petty servant in Courfeyrac's entourage, and then the Baron's confidant, thanks to circumstances beyond his control.
R was born on the ship from Valencia to Marseille; when Miriam died and he was orphaned, friends of the family on the docks took up a collection to send him to Paris. He happened to save Cardinal Richelieu's shoes from a muddy puddle by throwing his cloak upon the puddle, and became the Cardinal's personal cupbearer, secretary, and cat-feeder. Before being the personal assistant to Courf, he had those ranks and offices for the late King of Sweden.
The Álvarez (actually Thénardier) family - camp followers, confidence tricksters, and corpse plunderers, whose wagon home can always be found when an engagement has just taken place. Cosette's former guardians, who pretend to be Spanish nobles (according to the Thénardiers themselves, he's from Barcelona ---Fawlty Towers reference!--- and she's from Santiago de Compostela). Éponine alone, their firstborn, is not supporting this elaborate confidence trick; unlike her younger siblings Azelma and Gavroche - although the latter joins Engelhart's company alongside his eldest sister, as per canon
Cosette, Marius, and Valjean "the snowy owl..." Innocent orphan adolescent Fantine was, in this era, ravaged by a thirtyish officer when her home village was raided; she entrusted her daughter to the Thénardiers just like in canon for the same reasons and became a worker in a uniform cloth factory in Wallenstein's province of Friedland, with Valjean for an overseer - his backstory is also just like in canon (older sister and fatherless nephews, bread theft, prisoner camp... lock stock and barrel - only sans kindly bishop and with Wallenstein instead).
Musichetta - here she is a North Italian (Ferrarese) opera singer who was soubrette until a while ago to fairytale collector and primadonna her southern friend Adriana Basile (who compiled the Pentamerone alongside her brother Giambattista!). Not long ago, they parted ways when she decided to move up north into the war torn heart of Europe with the half of the company that preferred opera buffa to opera seria - in order to bring smiles to the regions with commedia-dell'arte style plots and gags.
The ending is just like in canon, and framed like the stories Marius tells his daughter with Cosette, Catherine Pontmercy.
Feuilly is now Romany and nonbinary; Jehanne Prouvaire is trans and descendant of Cathars (she hears angelic voices like Jehanne of Arc). Bahorel is still the thug-faced farm boy with the heart of a plushie.
Leslie (Lesgle)/Bossuet is a half-Scottish, half Mali mulatto ex-chamber Moor (Moor as in dark-skinned person, not as in Muslim) from a ducal court. And Joly went from being a Sephardic Jew called Joel... to being Jo-Lee "Jo-lee-lee-lee" from Joseon, who found himself in Europe due to mysterious circumstances (due to the historical webtoons I now read, Joseon is now my latest special interest!)
And Montparnasse is still the same old sociopath, a former street rat and self-made officer with a killer instinct...
The group name is now Freiheitskinder (instead of Friends of the ABC) and they at first live nomadically in the woods, then take an abandoned estate mansion, which they call the Engelsnest, as their headquarters
