Since hux was kind to a kid in one of the novelizations, do you think he is actually fond of kids and may want to have kids? Or is he too focused on the first order/doesn’t want any due to his own childhood?
Thank you, anon, for this opportunity to blather. I’ve broken your ask down into two distinct questions, for the sake of organizing my thoughts:
How does Hux relate to children?
Does Hux want children of his own?
Let’s dive in.
HOW DOES HUX RELATE TO CHILDREN?
Since your ask alluded to the transport scene in Delilah S. Dawson’s Phasma, I’ll open with it here:
When faced with a traumatized young woman (Phasma, eighteen) and a terrified little girl (Frey, six), Armitage Hux (twenty-four) neither scolds the little girl for her outburst nor admonishes the young woman for her inaction; instead, he handles the situation with startling gentleness—and a clear aptitude for communicating with children.
Armitage’s motivations in this scene are opaque to the reader, but I see his attempt to soothe Frey as an attempt to spare everyone on the transport the ire of Brendol Hux. After all, who understands better than Armitage the dire consequences of disappointing his father? Or the fear and confusion of being torn from a homeworld at a tender age?
It’s not unreasonable to assume that Armitage sees a bit of his younger self in Frey, here, which is why I like to read this scene in light of the following passage from Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath: Empire’s End:
Funnily enough, the passage above is the second time child Armitage is packed onto a transport in as many books. We’re not shown the Huxes’ escape from the Arkanis Imperial Academy in Aftermath: Life Debt, but imagination can fill in the gaps; in the midst of a siege, perhaps under the cover of night, Brendol Hux rounds up his illegitimate son (Armitage, five), an attendant droid (DDM-38), and a few essential belongings before traveling with bounty hunter Mercurial Swift to join the Imperial Remnants on Jakku.
How well does Armitage remember the chaos of that flight? And how desperately did that redheaded boy want to hear words of reassurance from the adults around him? Very well and very desperately, I’d wager. So well and so desperately that his first instinct, when faced with a child in parallel circumstances, is to offer the comfort he was denied.
It’s hard to square this behavior with Armitage’s role in the First Order’s stormtrooper program unless we consider the idea that Armitage believes some of his own propaganda: that the life of a stormtrooper is a better future for the children absorbed into the First Order’s ranks than whatever might await them on their impoverished homeworlds. The First Order may be brutal, but its ordered brutality—contrasted with the “savagery” of the Unknown Regions—is virtually all Armitage has ever known. For all that it’s obvious to us viewers that abducting and training child soldiers is evil, Armitage genuinely believes he’s doing right—which isn’t all that surprising, if we consider the hand he’s been dealt.
One of the core tragedies of Armitage Hux’s character is that his sincere drive to “cure” the galaxy of its ills (to borrow verbiage from Kwame Mbalia’s The Last Order), combined with his upbringing in a military cult, grooms him into exactly the sort of zealot who can adopt a legitimizing narrative for geocide. While I doubt Hux has any personal desire to inflict cruelty on children, and I suspect he feels protective of them in a manner he considers shamefully revealing, he’s either unwilling or unable to let his suppressed empathy interfere with the Order’s purpose. In this regard, I find him an interesting foil for Andor’s Luthen Rael.
DOES HUX WANT CHILDREN OF HIS OWN?
My knee-jerk response is no.
Hux, at least in his private thoughts, canonically expresses a desire to build a legacy, but at no point does he connect his desire for a legacy with a desire for children. He’s too preoccupied with the war to take proper care of himself, let alone a child, and even in a hypothetical future where the First Order conquered the galaxy with Supreme Leader Hux at the helm (a Pax Ordinata, if that’s legitimate Latin), I doubt he’d be able to spare the time and attention a family would require while juggling the responsibilities of governance.
Also, as you pointed out, the specter of Armitage’s traumatic childhood looms large, and I suspect he’d prefer a childless existence to the possibility of becoming his father. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe Armitage would ever treat a child the way Brendol treated him, but that fear would be difficult to shake.
I could see Hux fulfilling a paternal role to a child somewhat against his will—that is to say, if the child in question chose him, somehow, or he was meaningfully attached to a single parent—but I find it unlikely that he would agree to have children of his own. Precisely because Hux would care for them, they would be a weakness others could exploit.
On your point on him not wanting children, for the number of reason you listed. I also believe it does create an interesting discussion for what would happen if a child came into his life. While I agree it would not have been something he asked for, likely something he actively fears, but as you said he would care about said child and would not wish the child harm, so I do believe if he was put in the position where he had to he would take the child as his responsibility. But that also doesn’t mean he wants a child anymore than he once did or that his fears of raising one are no longer present. The debate of whether or not he would make a good parent is always an interesting one to me.
I would say he would have good intentions but struggle. He has no examples of good parenting in his life. He is constantly fearful of becoming his father. But possibly the most interesting dilemma to me is if he had his own child he would have to directly face the reality of his stormtrooper program. He would be forced to examine his actual feeling about it, if we are saying that he previously put aside his empathy to serve the interests of the order. he may allow faceless children to be forced into the program but would he allow his own?
I’m so glad to have participated in the Careful Ren Kylux zine! Honestly, I hadn’t drawn illustrations in a long time before this. At the time, I was absolutely obsessed with the DOTF Kylo who cut his hair short because Hux didn’t like it… so I just had to draw these two 😇 I finished this art on the flight from Madrid to Shenzhen and twelve hours without sleep (I was just too excited!)
And a huge thank you to @carefulrenzine for organizing this! 🙏 I’m really sorry, but my Tumblr has been acting up, so for some reason I accidentally sent the draft without text directly last night…
"HE did it out of boredom. HE had the body of a young man sacrificed to HIM and an endless amount of time at HIS disposal. Of course, HE had to spend some of it compressing HIS true size into such a tiny shell, but HE managed it. The body began to move.
Inside the vessel's mind, HE found many interesting things. A name HE claimed as HIS own, and foolish human desires that had never come true. Armitage Hux dreamed of having a family and a house with a white picket fence.
HE did it out of curiosity. Humans had always fascinated HIM—they were persistent enough to keep awakening HIM with their songs and sacrifices. The screams of the sacrifices sounded better than their dubious hymns, but HE did not complain. HE wanted to understand what drove them to do the things they did, but perhaps the only way to grasp it was to wear human skin. So HE did. It took some effort to look like an ordinary human, but HE succeeded. Nothing about HIM betrayed that HE was not human. There was the suit, the job, the hobby... What else did humans do? They formed relationships, right. They liked to reproduce...
Finding someone HE likes is not easy, but HE manages that too. Of course, it's astonishing that among humans there could be someone so remarkable that this body's heart beats faster, but HE cannot help being captivated by those beautiful blue eyes. They shine so brightly.
Rumor has it that the neighbor who loved peeking through other people's windows saw something in someone else's bedroom that drove her insane."
My art for the Careful Ren Zine, dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Kylux!
Thank you so much @darthastris for allowing me to participate in this event, it was an amazing experience for me and I am very happy to be a part of this event.❤️❤️❤️
I don’t remember seeing this image back when huxsmug originally posted it and I love it so I wanted to get it back into circulation. This is from Star Wars Five Minute Stories Strike Back.
I will never stop my fox Hux agenda. Been practicing so much lately trying to get back to the level I used to be at with my art before I took such a long break. I hope this is good, I’m not into lads but I saw this image and had to draw it as my man
Never really drawn such maximalist stuff but i will say once you overcome the fear of beginning, the pieces fall better into place. Do zoom in for better enjoyment lol.
Lurking no Longer @kyluxquickly - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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