[The Phantom of the Opera] Meg Has Something to Say

A note up front: You don't need to have read The Phantom of the Opera or its sequel, Love Never Dies, to enjoy this.

At thirty, Meg is a mere tool in a legendary play. Her lively, cheerful nature is snuffed out in a foreign land, and she ultimately becomes a murderess who accidentally kills her friend, serving as the villain who gives meaning to the age-old love between Christine and the Phantom.

Crushed by guilt over her friend and numb to life, she finally swallows a gun and ends her ridiculous life.

What if the thirty-year-old Meg from Love Never Dies returned to the age of nineteen, before Christine had made her stage debut, already knowing everything about The Phantom of the Opera? What would she do?

Meg Giry: Please stay out of my life and my best friend's life, Phantom. Don't spend a moonlit night with Christine and get her pregnant, wrecking my best friend's marriage. And don't flee after committing murder and head to America with my powerful mother to start a freak show, squeezing me, a working girl, into dancing the can-can by day and sleeping with the powerful by night.

Later,

Meg: Oh no, I think I just kissed the Phantom.

She saw the bashful expression beneath that terrifying, grotesque mask, smacked her lips, and decided it wasn't so bad after all.

Furious at her fate, Meg decided to let loose: So what if he's a monster? Who does the Phantom think he is? Employers who exploit people should be ready to face their workers' revenge! I want money, and I want love too!

And yet, the judgment of fate would inevitably come...

After making sure her friend was settled and everyone she had once wronged had been treated kindly by fate, Meg used the skills she had learned to slip away from France and pursue her dreams beneath the vast open skies.

The Phantom, abandoned by her in Paris: Heartbroken, shattered, crawling through the darkness.

As it turned out, the already deranged Phantom went even more insane than he had when Christine ran away with the Viscount.

The Phantom: Is breaking the nightingale's legs the only way to make her stay with me?

"I promise to love you fiercely until death."

Genteel, obsessive genius × carefree social butterfly

The Phantom from the original play × Meg from Love Never Dies

Notes:

1. The romance in a nutshell: Healthy love matters, of course, but twisted romance is truly thrilling. The heroine is a little mischievous, and the hero is more gentlemanly than in the original play, but still very mad.

2. The side couple, Raoul and Christine, will end up together, but they won't take up space in the main story.

3. The heroine has a character-growth arc and is slightly self-destructive at the beginning.

Theme: Love yourself before you are loved.