One idea constantly floating around in WNU circles I particularly don't like is Captian Nemo being the same person as Professor Moriarty. First of all it contributes to the White Washing of Nemo, Nemo should be Indian which is one of the few things I give Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentleman credit for. But also it just doesn't fit personality wise or archetypically, Nemo like Robur opposes the British Empire from without not from within. I'm all for the idea of Moriarty actually being a nationalist rebel against Britannia, but based on him and Moran having Irish surnames and The Valley of Fear it would be Irish nationalism carrying on the mission of Fergue O'Breane (Of Feval's The Mysteries of London) and Sarah O'Neil (Of Feval's John Devil) through The Gentlemen of The Night. (The recent Anime Moriarty The Patriot is a pretty decent exploration of the idea of Moriarty as a Revolutionary, I haven't seen season 2 since it's not Dubbed yet but I suspect it will be.)
While Public Domain characters are the focus, plausible connections to non PD characters for the purposes of Fan Fiction will come up occasionally.
My unique combination of interests makes me an Otaku looking to strengthen the ties between the lore of Lupin III and and the original Arsene Lupin. The CoolFrenchComics Lupin Genealogy has connections I like and would keep and others I would discard or adjust. I think their Arsene Lupin Timeline is pretty solid except that I would probably at least not directly mention any stories not written by Maurice Leblanc. I won't be able to comment on the Borostyria=Montenegro theory till I read The Woman with Two Smiles for myself. Now the only versions of Lupin III that can really fit a shared universe like this, at least with the "Third" part being literal, are period pieces set in the 60s and 70s, of which my starting point would always be The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. Maybe some stuff set in the 80s or early 90s could still work if you're willing to imagine the characters actually now look older then they're being drawn, after all the original Arsene Lupin had a career the spanned over 30 years.
The mother of the Arsene Lupin The 2nd who's the father of Lupin The Third I have decided should be Florence Lavasseur. I have also decided that Albert d'Andresy descends from Hortense Daniel, that of course probably conflicts with the Nestor Burma theory CFC endorses, but I imagine that theory had problems on it's own. It's a decision that is symbolic of my viewing Albert d'Andresy as the heir of the 813 form of Arsene Lupin (Jean-Marc & Randy Loffcier's analysis of 813 in the introduction to their translation is spot on).
As far as the ancestry of the original Arsene Lupin goes. For those who don't know Theophraste Lupin comes from Maurice Leblanc himself. C .Auguste Dupin actually being a Lupin and Theo's father with Poe simply changing the first letter for some reason I like, however I feel the generation between Dupin and Balzac's Bibi-Lupin (who I think could be the same person as Alexandre Dumas' Monsieur Jackal in The Mohicans of Paris) is unneeded, Bibi could easily have sired Dupin directly. And their lineage going back to the protagonists of Paul Feval's The She Wolf and The White Wolf I also like.
Next is the question of the Lecoq line. Farmer created Albert Lecoq to be the grandfather of Gaboriau's Lecoq with probably no idea a candidate for the in-between generation already existed, in fact I bet Farmer only knew of Gaboriau's Lecoq because he was mentioned in A Study in Scarlet.
I am going to keep Feval's Lecoq as the father of Gaboriau's Lecoq in-spite of it's problems because of how it fits on a Meta-Level with Feval having been Gaboriau's Sensei, and Gaboriau contradicted himself on Lecoq's backstory anyway. I also keep the Ballmeyer-Rouletabille connection and the Lecoq children who kept the last name in the Fan Fiction of Fortuné de Boisgobey, William Busnach & Henri Chabrillat and the 1908 La Fée au Vitriol memoir of Lucien, and I'd like to somehow add Beautrelet of The Hollow Needle. [Note: I'd missed or forgotten that Beautrelet was already on CFC's Lecoq family tree, still I think I may want to change where, I think I like Beautrelet as a younger brother of Rouletabille.]
However my imagination extends the genealogy even further to make Lecoq the real meaning of the L designation in Death Note, Lawliet can still be his forename, he wouldn't be the first Lecoq named alliteratively.
Albert Lecoq is rendered unnecessary by no longer keeping Wold Newton itself. Albert as the forename of Toulonnais L'Amitie's father certainly isn't a problem, but what Wold Newton writers familiar with Feval and The Blackcoats like Rick Lai and Win Scott Eckert tend to do with Albert doesn't actually fit Feval's lore. A Normandy family like the Lecoqs would not have become affiliated with The Colonel or the Veste Nere until they first set up shop in Paris in 1818. In fact I'm pretty sure The Colonel didn't actually use the title of Colonel or even set foot outside of Corsica till then either.
But there is an even bigger issue I have with the CFC's Lecoq tree, and that's making Marguerite Sadoulus the mother of Monsieur Lecoq and Albert's wife a descendent of Milady De Winter.
First of all in Heart of Steel it's pretty clear to me that Marguerite's relationship with Lecoq doesn't begin till 1832 so it exists 100% contemporary with her marriage to Joulou and her formally holding the title of La Comtesse DeClare, so any son she bore then would be presumed to be Joulu's and raised as a potential DeClare Heir and thus not have had the Lecoq name even if Lecoq was the real biological father, so Inspector Lecoq must have had a different mother, maybe a secret marriage Toulonnias had in his native Normandy.
But also, given how often there are Meta symbolic reasons for these Wold Newton style genealogical connections. Why make Marguerite's boyfriend an heir of Milady De Winter rather then Marguerite herself?
Usefulcharts did a series of videos on hidden European Matrilineal family trees starting with the House of Garsenda, in order to try breaking away from how patrilineal by default the study of genealogies has long been. Well the writing of fictional genealogies has mirrored reality in this regard. So I've been working on constructing a Matrilineal family tree of fictional French Femme Fatales with Marguerite Sadoulus being the focal point. I shall post here what I have so far but it is subject to change.
Update; I'm already half regretting some aspects of that, but the gist of that is still my starting premise.
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