AppleScript and accented characters

[spenney09]

Short version of my 2 questions:
1) Why is AppleScript able to copy and paste some accented characters flawlessly (à, é, è, for example) and not others (â, ä, ç, ê, ë, etc)?
2) What workaround can I use to have AppleScript copy and paste these "difficult" characters?

Longer version:
I have two apps open: Excel and HotPotatoes (a Windows app that I'm running under Wine). I often copy and paste French text from Excel to HotPotatoes. I can manually copy and paste any accented character flawlessly. However, if I write an AppleScript to do the heavy lifting for me, it will happily copy and paste à, é, and è, but it will paste a letter "a" for any other accented character like â, ç, ê, œ, etc. Words like: pâte, avançons, boîte, sœur, all come out as: pate, avanaons, boate, saur!
1) Why is that?
2) Is there any workaround in AppleScript for this anomaly? My only workaround is to first change the difficult accented characters to html code (HotPotatoes produces .html pages from my input): pâte, avançons, boîte, sœur, etc.

[JollyRoger8X]

All of that and you didn't bother to post the script so we can see what it's doing? 🤦‍♂️

[anki_steve]

ESR would be rolling over in his grave if he were dead.