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I remember the first time I read this as a wee sprog and I was totally taken in. Some books you just have to read at the "right" age for them; that I did with The Scarlet Pimpernel no doubt is a factor in my enduring love for it. It's hard for me to imagine that anyone could both come cold to this now and not realize what was going on. So with this book Orczy helped create the trope of the secret identity with which we're so familiar now that works to spoil her big reveal.
This time around, I paid particular attention to see if Orczy played fair with us in regard to Sir Percy's double identity. She mostly did, with a glaring exception early on when we were privy to Armand's thoughts at a time when he would have known who the Scarlet Pimpernel was; it was when Marguerite and Armand had their conversation about Marguerite's marriage on the clifftop in Dover.
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