i think it’s soooooo interesting how much hans’s view on the whole entire world is challenged throughout both games, this guy grows up with a very particular idea of what the world is. he is a lord and a knight, he will rule rattay when he’s older, he will fall in love with a beautiful girl and defeat bad guys in glorious and righteous combat. he reads and writes love poems and memorizes stories about chivalry and duty. then his father dies and hanush takes control over his lands and doesn’t want to give it to him. bohemian nobles who should be good and righteous end up siding with a king who pillages hans’s domain. he’s bored and friendless and drinks himself into a stupor every night. he’s well trained and has nothing to do with all his training. a peasant boy comes to rattay and immediately has more to do than him, more responsibilities, more riding on him than on hans. hans is the one who needs rescuing, him a knight and a future lord and a trained warrior, he needs rescuing again and again and again and it’s not a knight who rescues him it’s a peasant. and he sees war but it’s not what he thought it would be, it’s ugly and crude, and he falls in love but it’s not how the stories say it’ll be, and he does get married but it’s not what he wants anymore, and everything changes and everything is very different from what he always thought and the world is different and love is different and it keeps changing. it’s like a coming of age story in the middle of a story about a violent civil war and bloody revenge and a peasant becoming a warrior. most 20 year old things to ever happen and we get to watch it as it happens. game ever
