drafted a joke-post about the fitz-verity sex livestream in royal assassin but i'm making this instead because i'm actually getting heated thinking about it. okay walk with me. you're verity. your beloved older brother who you adored more than anything sent himself into exile — where he was murdered — because he had unprotected sex with a woman beneath his station. ring ring! you get a midnight facetime from your fatherless nephew fitz. guess what! he's having unprotected sex with a woman beneath his station. sound familiar? :) like if i were verity i'd be haunted. verity stared into the repetitive cycle of time's cold dead eyes and saw chivalry's mistakes rising from the grave so he calls fitz to his study and then what does he do?? "haha lady red skirts amirite" LIKE ohhh verity you deserve death for not taking any of this seriously at all. obviously a teenage boy will do as he wants and make his own mistakes, but the fact that fitz-verity sex livestream was treated as mere comic relief in royal assassin makes me want to chew nails like what do you meaaan verity saw his cherished brother's death rearing its head in fitz and all he did was make jokes. father that boy challenge. i'm pushing him off the tower. verity you would be the failuncle of all time but your little brother is a poisonous conniving murderer. anyway. rant over. i think verity farseer would have really rocked with nettle
Knight, exasperatedly: my lady, "chivalry" just derives from owning, and knowing how to ride, a horse. The whole honour thing has come along later, so we hold ourselves to the highest moral standards
The lady, slowly lowering her skirts: so you wouldn't deflower a beautiful maid? 😭
Knight, feverishly doffing her hauberk: I said not such thing-
character meta about chivalry farseer (and burrich) because what else is this blog for. a lot of this is textual and obvious but i love to yap. let's all just go crazy together yay ❤️
ownership is such a prevalent theme in rote, and especially in chivalry and burrich's relationship. it's a master-servant relationship, of course, but it's also compared to the owner-dog relationship — "for the rest of the day, (chivalry)'d have me at his heels. like a dog, as you say." he's constantly referred to possessively as "chivalry's man."
and that's pretty pronounced in the text. we also know chivalry closed burrich off from the skill, except for himself. (not enough time to get into the implications of this, if we assume everyone has some shred of the skill, the magic that connects you to other people and the world. what did it do to burrich's psyche, to be completely closed off from that innate aspect of being human?) this was the move of a paranoid prince, sure — chivalry had every right to be paranoid about usurpers — but you are lying if you think that's the only reason.
we also get the earring. the freedom earring. the FREEDOM earring. a token of burrich's freedom, the freedom of his family, is given away and given to chivalry. like, sure, it's romantic and yearning to give your jewelry away to your lover as a token of your affection. hey, that's also the only thing that identified burrich's family as not being slaves. and he gave. it. away to chivalry. (meta about fitz being burrich's new master, blah blah blah. meta about the fool and his prophecies being a master over fitz? perhaps but this might be a stretch) anyway this is crazzzyy stuff that goes beyond gay yearning i fear
so what's the picture we get of chivalry, here? a young man who was raised by shrewd, in shrewd's image — the king who famously took ownership of little fitz for his own purposes. and just like shrewd had affection for fitz, that affection never overrode his paranoia. that contract was made because shrewd was so afraid of fitz being used against him. chivalry is just like his father: i believe he had a deep love and affection for burrich, but burrich was ultimately a tool that could be won, wielded, and discarded. owned.
it breaks my heart, a little, to think about chivalry being raised this way. surely, shrewd pushed his heir hard. i'm sure no relationship in chivalry's youth, besides verity (but even then, knowing shrewd, perhaps not) was ever allowed to be a simple, happy companionship. how can you use them, chivalry? how can you dominate them, control them, so they can't hurt you? imagine being a little boy raised to think that way about everyone and everything.
so i think part of the draw of patience, for chivalry, is that she is someone who cannot be used or owned. this is also part of the reason, i'm sure, that shrewd disapproved — beyond her relatively low noble birth and eccentricities. i think it would have been a relief for chivalry that she likely didn't look to him as a master, but as an equal — something burrich was never able to do. patience is free and wild, and i think the most beautiful aspect of their marriage is the partnership and companionship they likely found in each other.
anyway. chivalry and burrich's relationship is so toxic yaoi that if they existed in the real world it would contaminate the entire continent of north america. like chivalry's brain is so effed up he is CRAZY. this is my chivalry-was-so-crazy propaganda. chivalry always gets painted as this even-keel, normcore good king but guys he was sooo crazy
you might be thinking. wow chivalry literally owned burrich he probably could've walked him on a leash. yes. you're thinking, hey that's problematic. yes, of course. but it's also awesome.
do not mistake me friends: i am looking at all of this and spinning among the grasses with my arms outstretched because the hills are alive with the sound of music. chivalry and burrich you guys are doing it crazy style and i'm going yayyyyy! ❤️
issues with my aunt reading rote — she just finished assapp — are a) not spoiling fitzloved by asking her a million questions about the fool b) not being utterly insane about dead dad chivalry farseer. if you know me you know that i ❤️ dead dad chivalry farseer who you never meet. unfortunately: not everyone is crazy
was reading a post from the akotsk fandom about baelor breakspear and they namedropped chivalry farseer and let me TELL YOU seeing my darling abdicated prince’s name in the wild incinerated me instantly i 😵 it was like that one gif
