A wholesome trip to the petting zoo gives Henry exactly what he loves most: Hans being soft, devoted, and stupidly in love with Henrich. For a few precious minutes, goats are fed, gentle hands are praised, and Henry’s strange little family feels almost peaceful. Unfortunately, peace has hooves, a grudge, and an excellent memory. When Hans recognises his old goat enemy, the family day out becomes a viral public incident involving screaming children, lion-costumed zoo security, one tiny plastic rake, and the worst possible rescue driver.
Henry expects many things from loving Hans Capon. Emotional turmoil, secrecy, devotion, occasional madness. He does not expect Jitka to appear at breakfast and request an assassination so delicate it may ruin romance, trust, and possibly Henry’s chance of surviving supper.
Hans and Henry’s monthly hunting trip is the one time they can be truly alone, away from duty, secrecy, and the chaos of Rattay. But when Henrich begs to come along, both men nearly crumble until Jitka reveals their beloved little star is less heartbroken child and more tiny criminal fleeing justice after an incident involving forged accounts, traumatised scribes, and one very strategic pig.
Gotta rush to Sir Hans’ side before it's too late! 🏃♂️💨
Couldn't resist making a Hansry version of this cute meme! This is my first time making a video, so please excuse any animation glitches. Hope you enjoy it!✨
Hans Capon has survived war, marriage, fatherhood, forbidden love, Peaches, and the growing suspicion that his four-year-old son is already smarter than him. But when his Henry returns from a four-day “bread delivery” covered in mud, blood, leaves, and rural nonsense, dinner descends into chaos. Between Jitka’s sugared-plum hypocrisy, Henrich’s vegetable litigation, and the traumatic return of the carrot demon, Hans realises too late that his son has played them all beautifully.
Kingdom Come by Kintsugi Perfumes: A Review from a KCD Fan and Fragrance Collector.
Normally, I use this blog for my fanfics, and to be honest, I often write when I’m trying to sort my head out after something difficult.
One of my other hobbies, when I’m not throwing fictional medieval men into emotional ruin, is fragrance collecting.
So when Warhorse Studios and Kintsugi Perfumes decided to make a Kingdom Come: Deliverance perfume, I wanted it immediately. It was two hyperfixations in one bottle.
I had seen a couple of reviews before buying it, and I wasn’t sure whether it would work for me. The note breakdown included a few things I was nervous about, particularly mint and honey. Honey can go very wrong on my skin. It often turns synthetic, cloying, sticky and cheap-smelling, no matter how beautiful it sounds on paper.
For context, my current scent obsessions are Molinard Habanita, Paris Corner Rifaaqat, Serge Lutens Ambre Sultan, and Carnal Desire by Aromatix X French Avenue. My scent habits are a bit like my Spotify habits: I obsessively use the same bottle on repeat, nonstop, then abandon it for months before returning like nothing happened.
If you recognise those fragrances, you’ll probably spot a pattern. I tend to love scents that are resinous, smoky, leathery or warm. By resinous, I mean fragrances that smell rich, sticky, golden or dark, almost like heated amber, tree sap, church incense, old wooden boxes, or spices warming in a market stall. They often feel deep and textured rather than clean, airy or fresh.
So when I saw Kingdom Come had fresh herbs, mint, apple and honey, I was wary. I am not usually a fresh-and-herbal person. But then I saw incense, leather, papyrus and birch, and thought this could either be a terrible purchase or a brilliant one. I adore leather in fragrance, and incense done well can be beautiful.
I should also mention that I’m a cis woman, and while I don’t personally believe scent has a fixed gender, I am aware that perfume is often marketed and described through gendered language. To my nose, Kingdom Come definitely leans masculine, though I would still call it unisex. It just pushes quite far towards the masculine side of unisex.
So, how does it smell?
On me, the honey is surprisingly well-behaved. As I said, honey can become an absolute crime scene on my skin, but here it is used subtly. So subtly, in fact, that you could easily miss it. It does not become syrupy, synthetic or cloying. It sits quietly in the background and softens the composition.
Apple lovers may be disappointed, though. I don’t get a freshly bitten crisp apple, the kind Henry might have picked from a tree while covered in mud and poor decisions. I also don’t get warm baked apple pie. What I get is more like dried apple, almost like apple chips. The apple is there, but it’s dry, muted and slightly sweet rather than juicy.
That dried apple, along with the subtle honey, helps reduce the dryness of the incense. Sometimes incense fragrances can catch in the back of the throat if they’re too sharp or dusty. Here, the sweeter notes stop it from becoming too severe.
One note I don’t get as strongly as I expected is the leather, which made me a little sad. I thought the leather would be much more prominent, but on my skin it takes a back seat. It is present, but it is not the big rugged saddle-and-armour moment I was hoping for.
The main stars of the show, for me, are incense, birch and papyrus.
This smells like walking into a historical church. It smells like Mass, old paper, smoke, wood and solemn rooms where important people are making decisions that will ruin several peasants’ lives by lunchtime. It gives me less Henry stomping through the forest and more the room in Rattay where you always seem to find Hanush and Radzig.
I’ve seen reviews saying this smells like trudging through the forest as Henry, but that isn’t what I get. To me, this is not really the outside world of Kingdom Come. It is not mud, horses, wet leaves and campfire. It is interior. It is stone walls, parchment, incense smoke and political scheming.
It makes me think of churches, monasteries, noble chambers and the sort of room where Jobst is probably saying something clever, threatening and deeply inconvenient.
That sounds like it could be stuffy, but it isn’t. Kintsugi’s use of the herbal and sweeter notes keeps it from becoming too dry or oppressive.
The chamomile, apple and honey soften the edges. There is a comforting quality to it, possibly from the chamomile, possibly from the incense. It has a strange sense of safety to it, like being inside somewhere old, quiet and candlelit while the world outside is doing medieval nonsense.
As for longevity and sillage, this performs very well on me. My husband said he could smell which rooms I had been in, which is usually a good sign unless you are trying to be mysterious. Longevity was also strong. I could still smell it on myself the next morning, which is impressive because my skin is dry and often eats perfume like a hungry Henry.
Overall, Kingdom Come by Kintsugi Perfumes is masc-leaning unisex, and I do think it pushes the boundaries of what some people expect from a unisex fragrance.
On me, it smells mainly of incense, dry paper, birch and papyrus, softened by quiet herbal and sweet notes. The honey is subtle, the apple is dried rather than fresh, and the leather is softer than I expected.
For me, this is not the scent of Henry riding through the night with Pebbles, covered in mud and regret. It is the scent of monasteries, churches and rooms where serious discussions are happening. There is something solemn and strangely comforting about it.
If you want a fragrance that feels more like Henry trudging through mud, getting on Pebbles and riding through the night, I would recommend Francesca Bianchi The Black Knight instead. That one gives me more dirt, leather, darkness and medieval outside-world energy. It may also be easier to get if you are outside the EU.
But if you want something that captures the quieter interior atmosphere of Kingdom Come, the incense, paper, stone, smoke and noble-room tension, then Kingdom Come by Kintsugi is worth considering.
I was worried it would be too herbal, too honeyed, or too fresh for my taste. Instead, on me, it is dry, smoky, comforting and atmospheric.
Not quite Henry in the forest.
More Radzig, Hanush, and other important people are in a room, and whatever they’re discussing is about to become everyone else’s problem.
When four-year-old Henrich Capon realises his beloved Daddy has been rescued by Henry an alarming number of times, he does what any reasonable noble child would do: gathers evidence, interrogates witnesses, and weaponises Bartoš’s debate lessons like a tiny velvet-clad solicitor. Armed with a fairy-tale book, Hans’s private journal, and his mother’s deeply inconvenient eyes, Henrich sets out to prove one ruinous truth: Sir Hans Capon is not the knight. He is Henry’s princess, and shouting is not a rebuttal.
Henry goes looking for Hans who has forgotten archery practice, only to find Rattay collapsing under the weight of one pregnant noblewoman’s patience, a traumatised sheep, a cabbage scandal, and Peaches in a matching dress. What begins as irritation becomes tenderness when Henry finally finds Hans hiding in the wine cellar, drunk, frightened, and trying to learn how to be a father from Henry's memories of Martin.
This meme is so cute that I had to do a version for them! 😂 I really wanted to capture how Henry is perceived by other 'dangerous' people… especially in a situation where their date gets interrupted! 🗡️💖
Nearly every book on the Hussite Wars uses his chronicle as a key source. To Warhorse Studio and us, he's the chronicler, knight, and handsome hero - Black Bartosch or Bartholomaeus of Drahonice.
I'll start with this art, because it resurrected me at the time.
The Masks of Nobility: Domestic Scandals (one-shot series)
The pie incident.
There were, Sir Hans Capon had long believed, few pleasures more satisfying than rewarding a deserving man.
And Henry had, tonight, been extremely deserving.
Hans lay on his back in the warm dark of Henry’s cottage, one arm flung above his head, feeling magnificently generous and very well pleased with himself. The shutters stood just open enough to admit a ribbon of summer air. Somewhere beyond them, on the keep grounds, a horse stamped and a guard coughed. Inside, the bed smelled of sweat, crushed linen, and the entirely respectable aftermath of two lovers behaving exactly as lovers did when granted privacy and poor judgment.
Hans was smug.
Not, of course, because Henry had lately accused him of being a pillow princess.
Hans was not a pillow princess. Hans was a lord.
But Henry, with the serene idiocy of a man too comfortable in his own skin, had recently informed him that Peaches and Mutt had apparently formed opinions regarding Hans’s conduct in bed.
This was already intolerable, because dogs ought not to hold opinions. They ought to bark, bite, and perhaps worship at table scraps. They ought not to assess a nobleman’s bedroom habits like old women at market.
It became worse when Henry explained while failing heroically not to laugh that Mutt had somehow conveyed to Peaches, Jitka’s ribboned goblin, that Hans, when abed with Henry, occasionally displayed what might be called a leisurely appreciation for being adored.
Which, according to Henry, the dogs had translated as pillow princess behaviour.
The insult deepened. Peaches had then, allegedly, compared this with Hans’s conduct with Jitka and concluded that, when with his wife, he “flopped about enthusiastically like a noisy dead fish.”
Hans had been so stunned by this that for one full moment he considered having Peaches made into a muff, Mutt into slippers, and Henry lightly exorcised for understanding any of it.
Instead, being a man of reason and uncommon restraint, he had taken the only proper course open to an injured nobleman.
He had made an effort.
And now, having just delivered what he privately considered a performance of uncommon vigour, artistry, and civic importance, he felt entirely vindicated. Henry would now, surely, be obliged to defend his honour against canine slander.
Beside him, Henry lay equally satisfied and much less decently affected by it, hands folded on his stomach, staring at the ceiling as though he had not just been the grateful recipient of lordly excellence.
Hans turned his head and examined him.
Henry looked warm, sleepy, and stupidly handsome, his hair wrecked against the pillow, his mouth softened into that loose, post-pleasure line which always made Hans want either to kiss him or boast at him.
Possibly both.
Hans chose boasting.
“Well,” he said, in the tone of a man prepared to accept praise with admirable humility.
Henry hummed thoughtfully.
Hans smiled to himself.
Then Henry said, in perfect innocence, “That was almost as good as Big Bess’s cheese pie.”
There was a pause.
Not a natural pause. Not a human pause. A divine pause. The sort of pause in which Heaven itself leans down to watch a catastrophe with interest.
Hans turned his head very slowly.
“What?”
Henry blinked at him. “What?”
Hans pushed himself onto one elbow. “What did you just say?”
Henry frowned, clearly attempting to retrace his steps across a field of traps he himself had laid. “I said”
“I heard what you said.”
“Well.”
Hans stared at him in growing horror. “You compared me to pie.”
Henry, maddeningly, still did not understand the weight of his offence. “Almost as good as pie.”
"Almost.
"It's good pie"
“You thought about pie while I was inside you
Henry had the decency to look embarrassed.
“Not at first,” he said, which was the worst answer yet given in Bohemia.
Hans sat bolt upright. “At first?”
Henry pushed himself up too, holding out both hands in the placating manner of a man approaching a dangerous horse with a head injury. “Hans, listen...”
“No, you listen. I have just given a performance for the ages, and you are lying there telling me you were thinking about a dairy product.”
“It’s not only dairy,” said Henry, with tragic sincerity. “It’s pie.”
Lady Jitka Capon had always maintained that if one wished to find Sir Henry of Skalitz in a state of emotional distress, one ought not search the forests, the taverns, or the chapel first.
One ought to begin with food.
This was not cynicism. It was simply experience.
Henry, when wounded, hungry, angry, guilty, grieving, embarrassed, or mildly inconvenienced, tended toward eating with the solemn dedication of a monk pursuing sainthood. It was one of the things Jitka liked best about him. Reliable men were a comfort. Reliable men who could also be tracked by appetite were a gift.
So when Bartoš already one and a half cups into her wine and looking theatrically ravaged by the burden of other people’s feelings pointed out that Henry had taken Pebbles and therefore could be anywhere, Jitka did not alter her pace.
Peaches trotted at her heels in her jeweled gown like a malevolent little dowager.
Bartoš stumbled slightly on a loose stone, recovered with the wavering dignity of a man committed to pretending he was not at all drunk, and spread his hands.
“I’m only saying,” he said, “the man has a horse. He could be halfway to Uzhitz by now. Or dead in a ditch. Or brooding under a tree. Or picking a fight with a shrub.”
Jitka kept walking through the streets of Rattay, one hand at the small of her back and the other on the curve of her belly. “You don’t know my rabbit.”
Bartoš snorted. “Your rabbit is currently in a state of righteous heartbreak.”
“Yes,” said Jitka, “which means he is behaving predictably.”
“That,” said Bartoš, “is a bold thing to say about Henry.”
Jitka cut him a look. “He wouldn’t go far. He is much too loyal. No matter how furious he is at Hans, he is not leaving him.”
She gestured vaguely at her own person with the hand not occupied by the business of being pregnant.
“And he is certainly not leaving me like this.”
Bartoš glanced at her belly and had the decency to look chastened. “Fair.”
Jitka sighed. “Henry’s first instinct is always to protect. Even when he is wounded. Even when he is being an idiot. Particularly when he is being an idiot.”
“That does sound like him.”
They passed through the gate and onto the dirt road beyond the town, evening settling blue and soft over the fields. Rattay behind them glowed with hearthsmoke and ordinary life. Ahead lay the road, the low scattering of homes and farms that supplied the town, and if Jitka was correct a sulking knight eating his feelings out of a pie dish.
Bartoš shoved his hands into his belt and peered into the dimming road. “And if you’re wrong?”
Jitka smiled faintly. “Then I am a heavily pregnant woman stomping down a country road with a drunk soldier and a demon dog. Henry will come out of hiding to stop me before I’ve gone half a mile.”
Bartoš barked a laugh. “That’s manipulative.”
“Yes,” she said. “And effective. Also, if it goes badly, it can be added to the list of things Henry is mad at Hans for.”
Bartoš looked at her sidelong. “That hardly seems fair.”.
“Life with Hans is built on a loose relationship with fairness.”
Peaches sneezed as if in agreement.
They walked a little further in companionable silence, Jitka’s pace slower than usual but determined. The baby had spent most of the afternoon behaving like a tiny tyrant staging a rebellion against her internal organs. She blamed Hans. The child already had excellent timing and a taste for dramatic inconvenience.
“Another thing we know about our prey,” she said after a moment, “is that Henry gets hungry when he has big feelings.”
Bartoš made a strangled sound. “Henry gets hungry doing anything.”
Jitka nodded. “True. Emotion merely sharpens the condition.”
She pointed up the road with her chin. “There’s a little cluster of houses ahead. Farmers, millers, fishermen. People who sell into Rattay. And in one of those houses lives Big Bess.”
Bartoš turned to stare at her. “The one with arms like tree trunks and the glass eye?”
“The very one.”
“And that smell?”
“That smell,” said Jitka dryly, “is ambition, smoke, and poor drainage. But yes. Her.”
Bartoš rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I thought Big Bess was a tavern story.”
Jitka gave him a cool look. “Big Bess fought off a bandit raiding party with a spoon and a turnip while her husband hid in the stable.”
Bartoš blinked. “A spoon.”
“And a turnip.”.
“That seems excessive.”
“Yes,” said Jitka. “It is why she is beloved.”
They carried on.
“Anyway,” Jitka said, “Henry nearly married Big Bess once.”
Bartoš nearly walked into a ditch. “What?”
“She was already married, unfortunately, so instead they had a tumble in the hay.”
Bartoš stared at her in open delight. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Henry?”
“Yes, Bartoš. Henry. This is Bohemia, not a convent.”
Bartoš slapped a hand over his mouth, laughing.
Jitka went on serenely, “The point is not the tumble. The point is that Big Bess possesses a secret recipe for cheese pie with apple chutney, which Henry once described as heaven sent.”
Bartoš, still grinning, shook his head. “That can’t possibly be where he is.”
Jitka smiled. “Once, in an act of astonishing honesty and even more astonishing stupidity and even less self preservation, Henry admitted to Hans that he had thought of the pie during lovemaking.”
Bartoš stopped walking altogether. “That was the summer squabble?”
“Yes.”
“The one where Hans sulked about like a widow at her own funeral and refused to speak properly to Henry for two weeks?”
Henry’s day was turning surprisingly well, for a morning that had begun with market patrol and a minor disturbance between Haybarn Helga and her sworn nemesis, Toothless Gretal over their latest mutual conquest.
Luckily, it hadn’t been him this time. You see if Hans ever learned Henry had bedded Toothless Gretal again, Henry would never hear the end of it. Not from Hans, not from Bartoš, not from the very stones of Rattay, which would somehow develop mouths purely to mock him.
Henry had tried on previous occasions to explain rather scientifically that gums had their benefits in the bedroom after a certain amount of ale and a lack of light.
Hans had responded by making the sign of the cross at him and offering to pay for Henry to be exorcised.
Even Radzig had looked disappointed in him, which was saying something considering Radzig had spent his life doing things that would make priests faint and whores blush.
Henry was fairly sure Radzig’s exact expression had been: You survived Skalitz and this is what you choose to do with your second life?
There had been a moment very brief, but realwhere Henry had considered bathing himself in holy water and seeing if it hissed after sampling Gretals gummy delights.
Hans knew this with the quiet certainty of a man who had learned not to tempt the universe out loud.
Today was Saturday.
Today was his Saturday. His weekend with Henrich his shining star, his small, stubborn miracle with goat-themed opinions and a laugh that still knocked the breath out of Hans’s chest if he wasn’t careful.
He stood at the kitchen island, one hand wrapped around a mug of coffee that was aggressively strong, because he was going to need it. Henry and him were taking Henrich to the zoo. There would be chaos. There would be noise. There would be at least one emotional incident involving goats, small hands, or snacks.
Hans smiled into his coffee.
Across the open-plan kitchen, Henry was at the stove, sleeves pushed up, brow furrowed in concentration as he flipped pancakes like this was a sacred task rather than breakfast. The smell of butter filled the penthouse. Warm. Domestic. Ordinary in a way Hans still hadn’t learned to take for granted.
Normalcy had a weight to it. It settled in Hans’s chest, heavy and grounding.
He watched Henry move, the easy confidence he had around Henrich, the way he never tried to replace anyone or claim a space that wasn’t his. He just… showed up. Again and again. And Henrich sweet, sensitive, observant Henrich had taken to him like gravity.
Hans shook his head faintly at the thought. Poetic nonsense, he told himself. This was Henry’s influence. The man was a contagion.
Henry glanced over his shoulder. “Okay,” he said, authoritative in the way only someone holding a spatula could be. “Zoo. Petting section. Goats.”
Hans hummed. “Naturally.”
“So,” Henry continued, “do not wear anything you’ll complain about getting goat shit on or chewed.”
Hans bristled. “I’ll complain about goat shit on anything.”
“I’m not having a repeat of last time,” Henry went on, merciless. “You screamed at the goat...”
“It attacked my coat.”
“because it was chewing your Tom Ford the whole petting zoo heard you ,” Henry said loudly, “you slapped it...”
“I defended myself.”
“you made our little prince cry...” Henry continued.
Hans froze.
Our.
Rest of the chapter below.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Henry had made a lot of mistakes in his life because of the sight of a very good chest man or woman and unfortunately Hans’s abs fell squarely into the category of life-ruining architecture.
How was he meant to repair Samuel’s window when Hans sent a picture that might as well have said: RUIN ME AND MY OFFICE DESK.
Hans did it like a sultry siren. Henry did it like a foolish sailor, no thoughts in his head beyond yes, immediately, thank you.
If this entire situation was submitted as evidence in an academic assessment, Hans would say Henry used the line between idiocy and genius like a fucking jump rope.
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