This made me laugh out loud when I first read it, it's got great, what do you call it, comedic timing? Anyway. It still makes me laugh but it also makes me a bit sad because it's one of those things Roddy came up with and came to believe super sincerely because there was no one to tell him otherwise. (I can't remember any other major character being this superstitious, but I devoured both books in four days, so I might have missed something...).
And this is just one of those benign things, that only gives -him- mild panic attacks, but there are other notions, like his idea of absolute noble superiority and completely worthless peasants that are just absurd. And you have to wonder, just where did he get that from? His mum made him spend his entire childhood among the servants, right? And I think that's it. She never told him why. His dad obviously never explained anything to him either, so his child brain had to reconcile the fact that he was the crown prince with eating in the kitchens and playing with the servants, treated like some guy and nearly invisibile to his mother. Elena never being affectionate with him also contributed to his lack of self-confidence and the only way he seems to have retained some pride was by considering himself better than the ones he spent time with (or at least the servants, since his cousins were already his "betters" when it came to their sex lives, etc [Rust is the eternal exception up to a point]). I'm not even getting into the Hester part, her "explanation" was worse than I had thought... gods.
But! Hester talking about what an evil child Roddy became (lol) highlighted to me something I had suspected since the earlier parts of the first book ("wtf is a metaphor", "no one taught me protocol"), ie, that he was simply neglected and only received the bare minimum education and copious punishment when he didn't know/listen/obey. I have a feeling he turned "bad" after his father died (again, I may be stating the obvious...) and was just sort of abandoned after a couple of failed tries. And again we have Elena's distancing (found him "trying") and his obvious need for her affection that keeps popping up in both books. Kind of sad that the issue of a father figure was solved, but the mother figure remained a permanent sore spot.
And, well, Hester tried, and it's odd to me that she understood why he was like that, but then just said screw it and became incredibly hostile towards him. I sort of understand why she'd be fed up with his attitude but she never told him why either. Roddy's entire upbringing consists of no one telling him anything and him getting worse and worse as a result, it's just so...
(I actually decided to read the books because I was morbidly curious about Roddy's shit personality and wanted to see just how much I would come to hate him; I'm glad he disappointed me in this regard 😂)
i've been going through the entire index of images for seafort fansites on the wayback machine and i finally recovered some rodrigo fanart... from the same site i've posted about before, linked in reblogs
