Based on your headcanons, do you think Mercer is even capable of love? Of is he just a sociopath since hes capable of extreme violence without caring? Although I think even Beckett has trouble with human emotions if that were the case... is it just "employment with benefits" for them?
I do! I've always head-canoned that he's capable of love. It would be limited to a very few amount of people and I'm not sure he is good/capable of demonstrating it but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel it. For their relationship - I don't know if either man would ever identify the emotions he feels as anything in particular. I doubt they would allow themselves to do so or even care to do so.
It's more than employment with benefits, though. At least, to my mind. Especially because I choose to interpret Beckett's face in the final battle, when it becomes that look of pure loss and horror and realization - that face only happens once he clocks that Mercer is dead. Only then does Beckett's world collapse.
So they had something messy and toxic and fucked up but hot damn were they devoted about it.
-- the below is me rambling a lot about Mercer things --
A person can be ruthless and capable of killing without strong sense of remorse and still feel love. Humans contain multitudes after all. Indeed, I know people capable of causing great harm/violence and have done it precisely because they love. I always caution against equating capabilities for violence and murder with things like sociopathy (insert caveats about the DSM and the term and its validity etc.).
I would also like to make it clear that Mercer seems to occupy a position as both Beckett's clerk as well as his personal mercenary/hired protection. Mercer isn't killing indiscriminately, only when Beckett needs him to or the situation calls for it. This is an important distinction. He is a sword for hire, not a serial killer.
Mercer also lived in a much more endemically violent society which can shift a person's view of the value and worth of human life. Depending on your personal opinion of when POTC takes place (1720? 1740? who knows!! certainly not the costume designers or the script writers), Mercer may have lived through some potentially wild times where ruthlessness is what allows a person to survive.
Obviously he would have been informed by the social, religious, and political values of the early 18th century, alongside the personal circumstances of his birth, family, early childhood etc. All of that play a part in how Mercer would interpret the value of another person's life in juxtaposition to his own, the life of the select five (5) people he cares for, his livelihood, his occupation, his ability to feed and clothe himself etc.
The world he was born into and lived through was one in a constant state of upheaval and radical change. This uncertainty can, in some people, bring out a necessary callousness as a means of survival.
For Example:
Let's say the movies take place in 1730(ish) and Mercer is 47(ish). He would have been born circa 1683 and was around five when the Glorious Revolution occurred. He is from Manchester, clearly working class, and statistically probably had many siblings.
Wool trade was booming, and had been since the Tudor era, and he would have grown up around a large and new Flemish population which supported the textile industry of the town.
Manchester had a bit of a radical political past in the 17th and early 18th century where they supported the Parliamentarian cause during the Restoration. This lost the city its Member of Parliament and they wouldn't have an MP again until the 1830s. It was also the centre of Puritanism and a lot of the reform movements of the C of E.
During the English Civil War (which would have been in Mercer's grandparent's lifetime) Manchester was besieged by opposing forces and held their own through the leadership of a German mercenary. Just for some local, cultural lore/flavour that Mercer would have heard about as a boy.
Mercer's family would have most likely been Protestant - possibly Puritan or one of the Reform churches (or not! I have fun head-canoning his family as being secretly Catholic and I had a friend back in the day who always head-canoned him as secretly Jewish). That faith background - whichever is chosen - is clearly not something that hugely influences him though it might give him that smidge of a more hopeful view of humanity than Beckett's opinion (re: their conversation in the Gov. Swann "what would you sell" scene). If that is the case, I would opt for him being regular Protestant or secret Catholic or Jewish over Puritan or Reform.
Defoe famously called Manchester the "greatest mere village" in England because they had the population of a proper market town in the process of full industrialization but they were still subject to the authority of a manor lord and had no local government.
Chaos.
Mercer would have been educated at the Cathedral school along with the local boys of the town and so his early schooling can be accounted for. Where the remainder of his education came from in unclear - I presume "on the job" and through whatever apprenticeship he ended up in. Perhaps he ended up in a factory and was seen to be bright/capable and taken on by the foreman or something. Who knows.
This is all guesswork, but it does provide a glimpse at what the dynamic and vibrant world of his childhood and early life would have been. Multi-cultural, multi-linguistic, politically radical, religiously radical - all of this swirling around him as he came of age.
And this isn't even getting into what the homelife may have been like. Who knows if he's the eldest or not, but he still would have been required to be a participatory part of the family and expected to begin bringing in money at a young age. Was there a drink problem in the family? Gambling? Abuse? Was it a good and loving situation? What was his role in the family unit vis a vis his father and other brothers? I could go on.
All of this is intended to demonstrate the incredibly complex world Mercer came from and that all of this informed who he was as an adult. Somewhere in there he picked up his ruthless abilities. Somewhere in there, he came to be ok with killing someone if asked. Was he a soldier during his life? Did he participate in the Nine Years War? Was he at Gibraltar? What other possible global conflicts could he have been dragged into? God knows there was no shortage of them.
I have come far away from the point which is that I believe Mercer can experience love, I just think he is also cold and ruthless and capable of murder/violence when asked.
--
Between the two of them, I actually think it's Beckett who has the harder time around feeling love/deep care for people outside of himself. I disregard the books (never read them) and so Beckett, to me, is a blank slate when it comes to his childhood.
I always head-canoned that he had a perfectly happy one but he came from a phenomenally rich family that could buy out the House of Lords 5x over, even if they aren't titled. (Something Beckett fixes, even if it's not a proper title.) And, as we all know, extreme wealth and class privilege have statically been shown to have negative impacts on the ability to feel sympathy or empathy for people outside of yourself. It speed runs solipsism.
I noticed how Mr Mercer is constantly turning up EVERYWHERE and the thought is so funny to me that he shows up at the most unexpected and random places but it progressively gets more ridiculous
Feel free to add your own
#i don't even know if this is remotely funny but to me it is #ignore the poor quality i literally had to take a photograph of my laptop display for this #it's 2am what am i doing
