Sharpe (novel series)
In contrast to the honourable Horatio Hornblower - the inspiration for the series - Sharpe is a rogue, an unabashed thief and murderer who has no qualms about killing a bitter enemy when the opportunity arises.
He has a deep scar on his right cheek which pulls at his right eye, giving his face a mocking expression when relaxed; this disappears when he smiles, which is not too frequently.
Cornwell had enjoyed C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels, which depict a Royal Navy officer's career from midshipman to Admiral of the Fleet and retirement.
Struggling to come up with a name as distinctive as Horatio Hornblower, he used a placeholder based on the rugby union player Richard Sharp; eventually, he kept it, just adding an "e".
Bean took over the part from British actor Paul McGann, who more closely resembled Cornwell's description, when the latter was injured playing football during filming of the first episode.
Richard Sharpe is born in London circa 1777 (he believes that he may be 22 during the early months of 1799) to a prostitute residing in "Cat Lane" and possibly a French smuggler.
With no known relatives to raise him, Sharpe is deposited in Jem Hocking's foundling home at Brewhouse Lane, Wapping, where he spends his days picking his assigned quota of oakum.
Fearing the high mortality rate among apprentice sweeps (who are forced to climb inside chimneys and remove soot by hand), Sharpe flees to the Rookery, a slum in St Giles, and is taken in by prostitute (and later bar owner) Maggie Joyce.
To avoid arrest, Sharpe takes the "King's shilling", joining the 33rd Foot, as a result of the blandishments of recruiting sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill.
Sharpe escapes during the siege of Seringapatam and prematurely detonates a mine meant to devastate the British army when it breaches the city wall.
In 1803, he is the sole survivor of a massacre of the garrison of a small fort carried out by a turncoat East India Company officer, William Dodd (Sharpe's Triumph).
Sharpe single-handedly saves the general's life, killing about half a dozen enemy soldiers and holding the rest at bay until help arrives.
Sharpe receives a cold welcome from many of his fellow officers, who dislike him due to his low birth, and the common soldiers, who resent being commanded by someone from their own ranks, and he has great difficulty adjusting to his new status and role.
While sailing from India to England to take up his post in the 95th Rifles, in 1805, Sharpe is caught up in the Battle of Trafalgar, his first direct encounter with Napoleonic France as an infantry officer.
Sharpe's fortune (from selling Tipu Sultan's jewels) is seized by lawyers who believe it to be part of Grace's estate.
He returns to Wapping and robs and kills Jem Hocking, the abusive master of the foundling home where Sharpe was raised.
Sharpe considers settling down there, having fallen in love with Astrid, the daughter of Ole Skovgaard, the chief spy for the British in Denmark.
When Captain Murray is mortally wounded, he leaves his heavy cavalry sword to Sharpe, giving him his signature weapon, used in all the subsequent books.
Cut off from the main body of the army, he takes command of a handful of mutinous riflemen (including future best friend Patrick Harper), while protecting a small party of English missionaries.
These include capturing a French Imperial Eagle at the Battle of Talavera in 1809 (fulfilling a promise to a dying captain he respects), and the storming of the breach at Badajoz.
He also takes an active role in the first siege of Almeida, the battles of Bussaco, Barossa, Ciudad Rodrigo, Fuentes de Onoro, Salamanca, Vitoria, and Toulouse.
Over this period, he rises in rank from lieutenant to captain to major, eventually taking unofficial command of the entire regiment.
His intelligence work for Wellesley brings him the long-lasting enmity of the fictional French spymaster Pierre Ducos, who conspires several times to destroy Sharpe's career, reputation or life.
En route, they meet Napoleon, in exile on Saint Helena, who makes Sharpe an unwitting accomplice to his escape plot.
During the earliest (chronological) books Sharpe is a private and later sergeant, and so his uniform and weapons largely are in line with Army regulations.
By the time of Sharpe's Prey as a junior rifle officer, although still carrying a regulation Pattern 1796 light cavalry sabre, Sharpe has begun carrying a Baker rifle as well, and is noted to prefer a heavier sword like the cutlass used by the Navy, as the point of the curved sabre was never where he expected it to be and also lacked the weight to block attacks from a musket and bayonet in close-quarter battles.
Sharpe continues to wear his green jacket even whilst serving in a regular infantry battalion out of pride, as do Harper and all of the other elite riflemen.
The author, Bernard Cornwell, in answer to a query on his website, wrote a riddle which he claims contains the father's identity: "Take you out, put me in and a horse appears in this happy person!".
They have two children, Patrick-Henri, who becomes a French cavalry officer (and a character in Bernand Cornwell's The Starbuck Chronicles), and Dominique, who ultimately marries an English aristocrat.
By 1861, Patrick-Henri, then a colonel in the Imperial Guard Cavalry observing the Union and Confederate armies during the American Civil War, mentions that his mother is "very lonely", so it may be assumed that Sharpe has died sometime before that date.
