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Rougon branch

Pierre Rougon

Bourgeois landowner, politician

The legitimate son of Adélaïde. Cunning, cold, and entirely self-interested, Pierre had already cheated his mother and half-siblings out of their inheritance before the events of La Fortune des Rougon begin. During the coup of December 1851 he manoeuvres himself into political power in Plassans — rallying a token band of forty-one men, seizing the empty town hall, and presenting himself as the city's saviour after the real fighting is already over. The 'yellow drawing room' that he and Félicité keep is the nerve centre of Plassans's conservative establishment. He is rewarded with the Legion of Honour and a promise of preferment from Paris. He is the founder of the respectable Rougon line — a man who has always known exactly what he wants and has never had a scruple about how he gets it.
Heavy-set, ruddy complexion, with the calculating eyes of a man who has never acted without self-interest.

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