decided to comb through the newspaper in royce’s vid too bc why not? unfortunately there’s not as much information here as with susan bc there’s only one article and a lot of it is cut off, but here goes
- according to cyrus’s narration, johnny was the one who challenged royce to the drag. but according to the newspaper, royce was the one who challenged “a classmate” (johnny, presumably) to the race.
(so this one is probably just lazy writing and writers not cooperating with each other...but at the same time, it Does line up with my headcanon that cyrus is a bit of an unreliable narrator in the backstories so...I Will Allow It)
- also it was apparently due to a fight he and johnny had. unfortunately i couldn’t find out what it was over bc the cropping.
- someone (i assume one of royce’s friends) tried to stop royce but was shoved to the ground. so royce was Mad mad going into the race (fight must’ve been pretty bad then).
- royce might’ve had a sibling?? from the newspaper: “royce was survived by his mother and father, his [...]” the cropping cuts it off there but i think y’all get the gist.
- “royce had sadly lost his passion for baseball and had become more interested in drag racing in recent months.” okay so a part of me wonders if maybe royce was going through something during the last few months of his life, but another part of me wonders if this is just people reading too much into certain things in the light of a recent tragedy. saying that he “lost his passion for baseball” when in reality he 1.) can like two things at once and 2.) is also a teenager from a small town in the 50s (meaning he probably got bored a lot) who would be more likely to gravitate towards something that gives him more of an adrenaline rush.
- canon date of royce’s accident: october 11, 1957
- high school name: marshall high
- newspaper name: the madison times
(image id description under the cut)