#ambrmerlinus

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ambrmerlinus liked your photoset

seeeee we should WATCH IT

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ambrmerlinus replied to your post: Nothing will ever be okay ever again a NEWSPAPER??...

Okay I have no idea what’s going on because I’ve never seen this version but you make it sound absolutely magical.

BUT KEN YOU WOULD LOVE IT, we'll have to livestream it sometime, WHO ELSE IS IN

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ambrmerlinus said: Ragebeard. Now I am imagining what the Hollow Crown would have been like if Henry V’s beard had spontaneously appeared when he delivered the “I was not angry since I came to France UNTIL THIS INSTANT!”

omfg i had to do a LOT OF POKERFACED SUPPRESSED LAUGHTER at work today because of this. RAGEBEARD.

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ambrmerlinus said: Okay yeah that sounds awesome.

YES IT IS TRULY GREAT, I highly recommend it.

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ambrmerlinus replied to your post: I think there needs to be some kind of livestream...

What… was that…

I DON'T KNOW BUT I FOUND THE WHOLE THING AND I'M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT IT, AAAAAH

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hotspur genderswap

She's six when she tells her father "Being a girl is dumb" for the first time; she repeats it every month after that, and she's seven when he finally says "Would you like to be a boy then?" She only realizes years later what a great man her father is to say "Yes" to her, but by then, she's nearly forgotten her true name; there is only Harry.  She still isn't a man, but that's all right, she's fine with being a woman; being a girl was the problem.

Kate is a stroke of luck; it's so rare for a woman to love a woman that Harry had given up on finding a spouse, but her father had said "Kate will not run away when she knows your secret," and Kate really, really doesn't; she's nearly as brash and fiery as Hotspur is (and more than a little jealous of Harry being Hotspur) and they look at each other with laughter in their eyes whenever anyone says how well-suited they are with each other; they've broken at least two beds and Kate watches Harry with fire in her eyes.

When Hotspur's told of the king's words—"Would I have his Harry, and he mine!"—she laughs and laughs and laughs; she goes to court and defies the king to his face.  When Vernon describes Harry Monmouth's speech in glowing terms, Hotspur's disgusted; she knows about the prince's drunken carousing, and the idea that in a different lifetime she would almost certainly have married the prince haunts her with the cold certainty that Harry Monmouth is not what he seems, that a marriage to him would have borne a remarkable similarity to an iron cage, and she cannot help but shudder.  When the prince says to her, "Two stars keep not their motion in the same sphere," she cannot help but laugh at the final irony, and there's a dying spark of victory in her eye as she dies, because she's been a better son all her life than he, and they were never in the same sphere to begin with, were they?

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Poins. 1850s American West.

It's a sunny day when Poins, more than a little shocked, watches Harry Plantagenet—the cotton baron's oldest son, goddamn—swagger his way through the salon door and up to the bar, where he slaps his gun down on the table and says in an accent that's really far too northern to belong but somehow does anyway, 'Whiskey, please.  Make it a double,' and then, as his eyes slide across to meet Poins', 'Call me Hal,' he says with a small smile and a promise in his eyes; Poins isn't sure what it is, but he can tell already that this man is dangerous and not to be trusted; he can also tell that he won't care.

It's sunny when Hal rides out with Poins on the year's cattle drive; everyone thinks it's a bad idea, Poins and Falstaff the bartender and presumedly Hal's father, although Hal never much likes to talk about him; Hal wants to go and so Hal goes, and that's the way things work; and Poins tries not to think about how really he's delighted Hal's coming and why because that's wrong, isn't it, but it doesn't feel wrong at all when Poins enlists Hal to help him hunt down a rogue calf; when they're dunked laughing into a stream the calf had somehow managed to cross on its own; when Hal, dripping, looks Poins in the eyes and pulls him by the back of his neck down into the water and kisses him; when the moon shines down on them as they share a bedroll later that night as the wind screams across the prairie and the cows low in their sleep; but the promise is still there in Hal's eyes and Poins isn't at all sure what it means, but he still can't trust Hal at all.

It's sunny on the day Hal's father dies and for all intents and purposes Hal dies, too, becomes Henry Plantagenet V, takes on the reins of his father's business and rides through the dusty street on a horse Poins has never seen before, a black thoroughbred that wouldn't survive the hard work of the plains for a second; it's sunny when Henry looks Falstaff right in the eyes and says 'I know you not, old man' in a northern accent that Poins wonders how he could ever have thought belonged; it's sunny when Poins realizes what the promise in Hal's eyes means, has always meant; he still can't regret a second of it.

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prince hal. pirate au. go!

AAAH DAMMIT I FORGOT THAT WAS IN MY QUEUE okay here goes.  NOT QUITE PIRATES I'M SORRY BUT THERE ARE SHIPS?

It would surprise his father to know that Hal's favorite retreat is not in the cabin of the much-maligned Captain Falstaff or the companionship (and occasionally the bed) of Midshipman Poins; rather, he enjoys the lofty heights of the crow's nest, perched high and alone with the birds and the wind as company.  

It's here that he decides when he goes back to his father the General (because, despite the screaming arguments and impulsive decisions, he knows his return is a 'when' rather than an 'if') that he will be a different kind of General than his father: he'll command his sailors without the iron fist his father seems to favor and he won't let the weight of authority crush his shoulders; it seems to Hal, looking over the ocean's constant motion, an easy thing to do when one remembers the lightness and insatiable recklessness of the sea.

A decade later, as he paces behind the rows of sailors preparing their cannons frantically to fire upon the advancing French armada, he'll remember that thought and laugh to himself about his youthful naivite; he'll also wish, just for an instant, that he could go back to the times when his relationship to the sea wasn't plodding and dull; when the only things that belonged to him were the lightness of the sky and the foam on the waves' crests and the salt in the air.