Innocent

Shinichi Sakamoto bases this on the real Sanson family, hereditary executioners of France in the decades before the Revolution. Charles-Henri Sanson inherits the post he never wanted: the man who breaks and beheads condemned prisoners on behalf of the king. He's gentle, idealistic, and horrified by what he's required to do, and the manga follows him and his fierce sister Marie-Joseph through a court rotting from the top down. Sakamoto draws it like a fashion plate and a horror comic at once, all ornate beauty and sudden brutality. It's historical fiction that takes real liberties, but it's after something true about a country building toward the guillotine.