I never thought I’d use the phrases “talking animals” and “historically accurate” in the same sentence, yet here I am: Aviary Attorney is the most historically accurate video game featuring talking animals that I’ve played. This is not to say that talking birds who used Twitter helped shape the social climate of 1840s Paris, but this game does present a question relevant to the time: What, exactly, is a just society?
For those of you not in the know, Aviary Attorney is an adventure game inspired by the artwork of 1800s French caricaturist J.J. Grandville, specifically his book Scènes de La Vie Privée Et Publique Des Animaux (Scenes from the Public and Private Lives of Animals). It was Grandville’s illustration of animals at court that made developers Sketchy Logic decide to create a game featuring Grandville’s characters with an Ace Attorney bent.
Much of the current writing on Aviary Attorney focuses on its connection to the Ace Attorney games–and understandably so. It’s easy and accurate to summarize its avian tribute as “Phoenix Wright with talking birds.” I’ve done it myself. But beneath the puns and pop culture references lies a glimpse into the issues of social class and justice that Parisians grappled with in February of 1848.
You may remember the French Revolution being a pretty straightforward affair. The rich nobles ruling France abused their power, the lower and middle classes held an uprising, and now we have the French government as we know it, right? But the truth is, it wasn’t until 1958 that the Fifth Republic–France’s current system of government–was founded. Between 1789, the birth of the First Republic, and the creation of the Fifth Republic, France experienced two empires, a monarchy, and a German occupation, not to mention Republics Two through Four.
Aviary Attorney takes place during during the 33 year-long monarchy between the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte’s First Empire and the creation of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s Second Republic/Second Empire. Specifically, it’s set right before and during the February Revolution of 1848, in which King Louis-Philippe was dethroned and forced to flee to England after members of the lower classes rebelled against the upper class. While the February Revolution is never explicitly named in the game, the events and major players are there if you put the pieces together.
In fact, the February Revolution is the crux of Aviary Attorney’s climax, and the player’s actions in the third case of the game determine what protagonist Jayjay Falcon does during this uprising in the fourth case. After a major twist that happens at the end of the first case, Jayjay struggles with the definition of true justice, especially in a court system that favors the corrupt upper class–a surprisingly complex conundrum for a talking bird named after Jotaro Kujo.
In the 1840s, the French were struggling with a similar dilemma. They had ousted King Charles X from the throne in response to his policies that favored the oligarchal aristocracy to the expense of the up-and-coming bourgeois class, which was positioned between the upper and lower classes at the time. To replace Charles X, the French people crowned Orléanist prince Louis-Phillipe. However, France found that while Louis-Philippe lauded himself as “the bourgeois king,” under his rule the grand bourgeoisie, or the richest members of the bourgeoisie, had replaced the aristocracy as the ruling class, repeating the structure of Charles X’s reign. Aviary Attorney presents Louis-Philippe as an eccentric penguin that considers himself on the level of the common people but is actually ignorant to their struggles, which is not very dissimilar to his real-life, human counterpart.
J.J. Grandville, much like his fellow caricaturists of the time, used his work to critique the ruling bourgeois class. In Scènes de La Vie Privée Et Publique Des Animaux, published in 1840, he creates a cast of anthropomorphic animals that mimic the people of France at the time.
Grandville used these animal-human amalgamations as a metaphor for class issues in Paris during the 1840s. While the French people were promised a just monarchy where the common people had their say, in reality they received a society where the rich were just as privileged as before. So, Grandville used his menagerie to show the grande bourgeoisie as he and other commoners saw them–predators that took advantage of the small and weak, and gluttons that took as much as they could get.
In both the real world and the world of Aviary Attorney, the disenfranchised French people (and animals) took justice into their own hands, toppling the court of Louis-Philippe and naming Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte the new president of the Second Republic.. As for Jayjay, depending on what happens during the game’s third case, he defines justice on his own terms, whether through vigilante justice or a fair trial in court.
But as we have learned from this brief foray into French history, justice has always been a work in progress for the French people, and the Second Republic soon became the Second Empire with Louis-Napoléon as its emperor. Even though France has had its Fifth Republic for almost 60 years, like any other country, it has numerous social inequalities to resolve, especially egregious in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015.
Grandville never had the chance to witness the events of the February Revolution, for he died on March 17, 1847, a mere 11 months beforehand. So, in a sense, Sketchy Logic brought Grandville’s grande bourgeoisie the revolution that he couldn’t be present for. We’ll never know whether or not they executed his vision the way he would have wanted, but his previously obscure work has been brought to light again, helping us find our own version of justice.
(Author’s note: Many thanks to Sketchy Logic for providing a press code. All analysis and opinions are my own.)
Melissa King writes for FemHype, Unwinnable, and Critical Distance. You can find her thoughts on video games, social justice, and whether love can bloom on the battlefield at her portfolio and Twitter.
