While I’m in a Hal frame of mind, you know that tiny moment in episode 24 between him and Elodie? When he’s trying to get some money together for the food bank. That conversation was so … so funny, and also kind of heartbreaking?
Halandil Fang: I’ve come to you with hat in hand. Do you want to invest in the city’s future?
Elodie D'vyen: … Well normally I need to see a business plan before I make an investment. *sighs* When we first got together, my grandmother, when she was still with us, um, made me make one promise. The promise that she asked me to make, she said, ‘Elodie, you come from means’, and, ah, though I did not follow in the family business, I had to make my own merchant’s company myself, she said: ‘If you’re going to couple with an actor, you have to think now about what you’re gonna say’. And I said, grandma, what do you mean? And she said, ‘you need to think about what you’re going to say when he asks you for money’. How much are we talking about, Hal?
Hal, with a rather wobbly smile: Not too much. A few hundred gold.
Elodie, startled: Oh! Oh, a few hundred gold? Oh, my god, yes.
Like, it’s so clear that she was braced for a much higher number. A few hundred thousand, maybe. Seed money for a commercial venture. She’s so clearly stunned by the low ball. And it’s funny. It is funny. But it’s also so fucking sad.
In the first place, because of the sheer disparity of expectations here. Hal is just trying to get enough to scrape together a food bank, enough money to feed (admittedly a couple hundred) people just long enough for other options to open up, so they won’t be dependent on the city’s cult leader for jobs after a mass firing happened in the wake of political shenanigans. The Schemers were there calculating, okay, 1 gold per person per day, just for a couple of weeks, just until we can get options lined up. Just so these people don’t have to immediately join a cult to feed their families. They’re there trying to work out how many jewels from their thieves’ stash they can sell to keep people afloat for even a week or two. A few hundred gold. We’ve just got to give them one or two weeks without starving.
And then here’s Elodie, who isn’t even nobility, just one of the better classes of merchant, and she’s clearly … Like. She was clearly expecting at least a few thousand here. Possibly because he’d framed it as an investment? Investing in the city’s future. Her reaction when it’s only a few hundred is so …
You can tell which of them is used to having a few hundred to throw around when needed, shall we say.
And then, on the more personal level …
You need to think now about what you’re going to say when he asks for money. How much are we talking about, Hal?
And the thing is, we’ve seen this before, shadows of this. Hal and Thaisha. Her reminding him, carefully, around what were clearly old wounds and old discussions, that while she knew he didn’t like it, the Lloy money was there for him if he ever needed it. And Hal … not saying much of anything in response.
There’s so clearly an expectation. A view of Hal in operation. ‘If you’re going to couple with an actor’. Hal is an entertainer, a kid from the Rookery, a troublemaker’s brother. And he has children with not one but two entirely separate ladies of much higher class and means than him. And Thaisha was first. So by the time he got to Elodie, there was clearly enough of an opinion of him circulating that Elodie’s grandmother took her aside to warn her. He’s a gold digger, honey. You’ve got to start thinking now about how much you’re willing to give him.
(Also, if you’re going to couple with an actor? Not be with him, not have a relationship with him. Just couple. As if sex is all there is to it. Ouch).
There’s a view of Hal happening here. And Hal is clearly conscious of it. He’s not surprised at Elodie saying what her grandmother told her. He just looks … wryly sad. All rueful acknowledgement and lopsided smile. That line of his that finishes the conversation:
“You are always too good for me. Your grandmother was a wise woman.”
… How much does it hurt, that so soon after it was all going well for him, after he’d finally gotten the deed to the Hallowed Round, after he’d finally managed to start making a more respectable name for himself, that everything came crashing down? His brother dead. The city abruptly under siege from seemingly every direction. His every dream under threat. And now …
Here he has to be. Hat in hand. Playing the damned gold digger, just like everyone’s always expected of him, and not even for himself. Just to try and keep the city afloat.
He doesn’t want to. We know he doesn’t want to. Thaisha wouldn’t have stepped half so carefully around that conversation unless she knew it hurt him. This wouldn’t clearly be the first time he’s ever asked Elodie for money, the first time she’s ever had to mention what her grandmother said, if he was at all easy about it. It clearly is a sore spot for him, if only one you have to be as close as Thaisha to notice, maybe. And it’s a sore spot that makes sense. There’s so clearly a view of him that’s developed, and not on purpose, not by anyone’s intention, it’s not Thaisha or Elodie’s fault that they were born to money, no more than it’s Hal’s fault that he wasn’t, but there is …
An actor. An entertainer. A lover. And both his baby mamas are women of means.
Yeah. There’s a reputation there, I think. And I don’t think Hal likes it. At all.
(A reputation probably not helped by whatever the hell happened with Thjazi and Aranessa’s marriage, too. Those Fang boys, huh. A whole family of gold diggers over there. Hold tight to your money, ladies, the Fang brothers are in town).
There is such a theme with the Schemers. The working nine-to-five. The ones born in poverty or struggle, the ones who know how to fight to make ends meet.
It’s telling that they’re the party who thought to set up a food bank.
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