Fan of beautiful things, well-told stories, and complicated characters. Serial obsessive and contrarian. Current and forever obsessions are: Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth, Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, and film noir, and my latest love is the German series Babylon Berlin.
We shall offer ourselves to the holy fire and perform Jauhar! Those who lust for our body, would not even get their hands on our shadows! Our bodies will be reduced to ashes, but our pride and honour will remain immortal.
You're sore because you've fallen for a little drunk you tamed in Miami and you don't like it. It makes you sick all over, doesn't it? People will laugh at you, the invincible Devlin, in love with someone who isn't worth even wasting the words on.
NOTORIOUS (1946) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Ok I know I literally just said this but my favourite part is the fact Jaime refuses to acknowledge that he sent septa Donyse and is almost actively trying to hide it from the reader, like we didn’t get to see the scene where he asked for it even though we’ve been privy to every other mundane thing he’s done since being back, and then when he sees her he says ‘someone’ had dressed her in woman’s clothes like he doesn’t know who it was and then even still doesn’t acknowledge it after she tells us, it’s like he reeeaaally doesn’t want to explain why he wanted to see Brienne in a pretty dress (he has a crush)
It's not the first time he gets her clothes. I only recently realized that, but NO WAY Steelshank and his men care a fig if Brienne was or not comfortable in the infamous pink dress. Who, if not Jaime, to demand ALL ALONG THE WAY that "they found" her men's garb to make her feel better. And maybe even more because she's in deep despair after learning about the Red Wedding.
She cares for him after his maiming and his POV lingers on this, but HE cares for her between Harrenhal and King's Landing, and of course his POV barely registers it...
(George, I love you and hate for things like this, and because you still have not deliver the rest of the best love story I've ever read and that's unforgivable)
truly a travesty that clodius pulcher isn't alive today. my man was staging mutiny in the military and committing sacrilege in the 1st century bc like it was nobody's business. imagine how powerful he would be in the modern day and age. imagine the shitshow of modern italian politics with the addition of a man who had himself adopted by someone younger than him in order to attain a political position that he then terrorized the roman senate with. not to mention the cunt he would serve
So I mentioned on another post that this Lymond reread I was paying explicit attention to who Francis touches and how often because of Jerott's Checkmate claim that he's surprised by Francis's hug because he usually never touches people.
I am now at the end of DK and that's just not true.
A somewhat tangential thing I'd like to mention is how generally more open to people Francis is at the beginning of the series - especially QP and DK when everything is more or less right in his personal life - compared to the later books. He's often friendly or teasing or flirty and perhaps even gets into people's personal space more than many of the other characters. And I mean earnestly friendly, like openly happy to see people or plainly talking about what he thinks or feels with them, not in a sarcastic, guarded, half-ironic way.
SPOILERS UNDER CUT
The people he casually touches, like puts his hand on their arm or takes their hand or puts his hands on their shoulder(s) are Sybilla, Richard, Tom Erskine, Will Scott, Christian Stewart, Phelim O'Liamroe, Thompson the pirate and most importantly Jerott himself, REPEATEDLY, during his time on Malta. In fact, there's a scene where he takes Jerott to show him something by looping his arm through Jerott's own for absolutely no reason except that he feels like it. (I also very distinctly remember that he touches Philippa casually several times in PiF but I'm not at that part yet)
Similarly to this, my mostly PiF-based statements about Lymond not flirting with Jerott don't hold true for this part of the series: he actually flirts with Jerott as much if not more than he does with Will Scott in the early parts of DK, I'd just forgotten about it because PiF overwrote that part of my brain.
It appears that at some point he gets the message that Jerott isn't engaging in Lymond's favourite game of "you mouth off at me and then I give you a tongue lashing and then I give you the fuck of a lifetime and in this way convince you to agree with me and become sweeter and more obedient" but that he genuinely disapproves of Lymond and is genuinely religious, so he stops with the flirty statements.
However, then this happens:
Which is where I think Jerott gets the idea from - he expects a farewell hug from Lymond alongside the warm words but doesn't get it.
But he DOES get something much rarer, though I'm not sure he realizes!
A blush. Which is really fucking something, because Francis almost never blushes.
This is an unrelated thing I've been paying attention to for several reasons (I have an eye on drawing the characters and also I wanted to better sort out my Kuzum/Khaireddin parentage thoughts), and Francis a) doesn't have skin that's prone to a lot of flushing or blushing or reddening (actually he tans easily while Gabriel, for example, burns under the same conditions, and also rarely flushes under exertion, unlike, again, Gabriel who does so easily) b) he literally only flushes once again before he falls for Philippa: it's in a post-coital scene with Güzel and his face is actually red from laughter (at his own joke lol) and not emotion. And then he blushes with surprising frequency and all of it is Philippa-related: he blushes when Philippa lowkey hurts his ego with her banter or points out his womanizing, he blushes when he finds her in his bedroom to give him a piece of her mind after the party he throws in Paris, he blushes when John Dee reads his mind and implies that he now knows that he wants Philippa, he blushes at the end of Checkmate when Sybilla gives him a once-over while he's standing in front of her half-naked after clearly having spent two days fucking Philippa.
So I think he's into Jerott quite a lot, actually? He's just backed off because Jerott is such a cunt to him. So probably he stops touching him because he feels disgustingly lecherous about it, as he does with Philippa later. And when does he start touching him again, to Jerott's marked surprise? Once he falls for Philippa and presumably doesn't care for Jerott that way anymore.
Actually, except for Philippa, this is actually the most evidence we get of Lymond being into someone, I think. Like we get WAY less for Oonagh, for example.
I've always headcanoned him as probably having had a crush on Jerott as a teen, just based on how he reminisces about him, but I think he actually likes him a lot as an adult too? And it's really been clicking into place for me during this DK reread where perhaps earlier I found DK!Jerott too obnoxious to notice hah.
I think Lymond's early scenes with the Somervilles gain a lot more nuance and impact and emotional punch when you reread them.
Because, okay, on the first read they seem like kind, intelligent, respectable people who love each other very much - the warmth and connection and the instinctual wordless understanding between Gideon and Kate is immediately palpable - but at that point you don't really know enough about Francis to understand how they appear to him specifically. At this point he just seems like a callous cunt who takes pleasure in offending anyone who isn't Christian.
But think about it - artistic, intellectual boy grows up in a family full of constant acrimonious conflict (Mother bought a crate of books, Father burned it, they fought over it, Father drank...), his interests cnstantly belittled as too soft and his things smashed against walls until he learns to be vicious enough to defend himself. Father seems resentful about his very existence, angelic little sister has suicidal tendencies, Mother loves him but can be a manipulative bitch. He's a POW at sixteen, then groomed by an older woman, then sent to a probable death by that same woman. He's accused of treason over an incident that killed the sister, spends years as a slave suffering through every kind of abuse imaginable, tries coming back home but Father kicks him out because he doesn't believe him.
Ends up running a band of outlaws and considering how he later admits to hating the St. Mary's lifestyle - where his officers are all middle class intellectuals handpicked by himself - because he misses his music and his clever conversation and being friends with women? Can you imagine how he must have felt with the outlaws, where he, who used to read books on ethics for fun, had to constantly keep them entertained so they don't rape and pillage their way across their own countryside?
And then he goes to Flaw Valleys and sees a music room? And one of the first things to come out of Kate's mouth is how must not get many opportunities to play the harpischord with his kind of lifestyle, and how he must miss it a lot? She has no idea how much she's hit it right on the head.
And then he gets to know them, and they're... probably his Platonic ideal of a perfect family? He probably didn't think families like that existed outside of his own imagination (just compare them to every other family we see in the series). And then compare them to Francis's own interests and personality.
The husband is an accomplished musician, and the wife adores him for it and begs him to play every opportunity she gets. When he's in a mood, she knows how to draw him out of it skillfully and subtly and wittily and without being too intrusive. He, in turn, knows her well enough to anticipate her every need and delights in making her happy and giving her everything he can. There's palpable love and respect and understanding between them - they seem to understand each other wordlessly. They're both kind and empathetic and well-educated and keep themselves up-to-date on current events, on which they have nuanced and insightful opinions beyond picking a side. The wife is a master of witty conversation and enjoys and can keep up with Francis's own barbed back-and-forth. The husband and Francis come to an immediate understanding over politics despite technically being on opposite sides of a very complicated war. The husband's managed to keep his hands clean throughout it. Their daugher is already growing up to be a person of intellect, talent, and bold personality, because she's growing up surrounded with love and care and support and books and music and opportunities to be carefree and make messes and run around with the village boys.
He's barely twenty and he's been to hell and back so many times that he feels subhuman, and these picture perfect people take him in even though he's done nothing but treat them like shit, and they offer him their kindness and care and support and try to help him every way they can despite having zero reason to trust him or like him.
Can you imagine the kind of pedestal he'd put them on? It's no wonder he keeps coming back and maintains that friendship through everything. They're like the only stars he can see from his pitch-black gutter.
And I think this makes all his hand wringing over Philippa a lot more understandable, especially considering how he now sees himself as subhuman in ten additional ways after the extra trauma of the intervening years? On the first read you kind of just want to smack him because he's being so unreasonable, but really at that point you've spent so much time in Philippa's head and so little in Francis's that she's just Philippa to you (despite all the admiration she gets), while Francis is the one everyone is constantly panting over.
But to him she's part of a family so perfect and loving and healthy and aligned with all his ideals that he can't quite bring himself to believe that not only do they exist but they also like his miserable self, a family to whom he owes a great personal debt he can never repay (as he tells Kate in RC) and Philippa's the brightest and most impressive and accomplished member of that family. She is on a pedestal so high there's literally nothing he can do to measure up to what she means to him short of becoming a god.
And then consider how he later thinks that she's broken herself beyond repair over him. They're the only pure and flawless thing he knows of, the literal embodiment of how he dreams of people being in an ideal world, and he's destroyed it.
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