rowan i would love to hear your take on hans and henry's barely restrained 'we looked each other in the eyes when we came and i thought you might be dead but you've come back holy shit wait we're in public quick what do bros do' dap when they reunite in suchdol
basically i think it’s a monumental hansry moment perhaps top 3 hansry moments. up until that point henry has performed acts of terrible violence for one reason or another, all in pursuit of his father’s sword/revenge. when he returns to suchdol there is a clarity of purpose in his fighting i think we haven’t seen before. by the end of the game, powerful and wearing full plate armor and swinging his fathers sword, istvan dead von aulitz dead, his purpose is achieved but still he finds the strength to wield this sword and kill everything he sees on his way back to the inner courtyard. he’s fighting very hard, killing the most famous swordsman in the kingdom in like two swings, he fights four on one on the battlements alone, he’s fighting for a purpose that is different from what he’s experienced in battle before, he found something else to live for, something worth fighting for. all his fights and battles have hurt him back in some way but this one he fights not to hurt, his goals already achieved, he’s here purely for love
when he gets to hans i think he feels some of the clarity he expected to feel when he found his father’s sword and killed von aulitz, his original objectives from the first game finally achieved, but after he did those things he still kept going and pushed himself to the brink of death many times and only stops when he reaches hans, HE DOES NOT STOP MOVING UNTIL HE REACHES HANS, and now he’s stopped moving he can look at hans and see in him that clarity, and sees himself also like a mirror, and i think he is very happy with what he sees and the things that his feelings for hans have brought out of him, from amidst all the blood and the violence it took to get here. henry points his sword at the floor when he takes hans’s hand, and hans uses both his hands to hold him back, and we can hear the rest of the courtyard cheering but don’t immediately see them because henry is focused on this, a clarity a stillness on hans his face his eyes that reflects a henry that he can be proud of
