When reading Cyrano de Bergerac and watching the movie, one of the main things I noticed was that I felt sorry for basically all of the characters (except for the little boy in the movie - things went pretty well for him). This makes it hard for me to say whether I would prefer to be in Cyrano's situation or Christian's - they both have it pretty rough. However, I would much prefer to be in Cyrano's position than Christian's.
Christian has the unfortunate position of being in a relationship that is artificially propped up by someone else's words and Roxane's superficial attraction and self-love. His relationship is real, and personally I wouldn't be able to live a lie like that. Even though Roxane's feelings were genuine, Christian was aware that they were not directed at him, except for his looks. The sad part of his relationship is that even when he comes to terms with it, he dies having been told a lie about Roxane's true affections. Arguably, this means that he dies contented, but contentment is not the same thing as the happiness that can be reached by living an honest life. Also, in Christian's position it is a lose-lose situation: he either accepts Roxane's love towards the words of another or he can reject Roxane entirely. Either way, he doesn't get what he wants.
Cyrano, on the other hand, is mostly just frustrating because he could have had Roxane's complete and real love if he had just been a little more honest. It's easy to see how in many places throughout the story, Cyrano could have forced the truth to come out in a tactful way so that he, Christian and Roxane could all be honest with their affections. Roxane was really in love with Cyrano's words much more than Christian's looks, so it would have been relatively easy for Cyrano to come out and tell her the truth. But of course he believes he is doing the right thing and making Roxane happy, so he would never do that. I don't think he really was making her happy. In order to maintain her belief in her love for Christian, he lets her mourn for fifteen years, which is not very conducive to happiness. Instead, it results in Roxane losing the man she loves twice. In his place, I'd like to think I would not have supported her and Christian's false relationship, and I'd like to think that I wouldn't have been able to be so dishonest about my true feelings for Roxane.
Unfortunately, Edmond Rostand obviously wasn't thinking of me when he wrote Cyrano's character.
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