#rote references

[smoothlyunseentower]

In honor of my favorite book series of all time. Tattoo artist : @belleink.tattoo on instagram

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Introduction

Hello everyone! You might know me as Maddy! I have two more blogs that share stuff about the ROTE fandom @maddyisenough and @maddyhope-art! So what is this one about?

Months ago I started gathering quotes about the appearance of the ROTE characters slowly for my art ideas and then I wondered why not share these with all of my fellow ROTE fans?

So this blog is going to be an archive of canon quotes for several characters. If you have a character whose appearance is a bit vague after reading and you wish to draw them and you want me to research those quotes, you are free to send me an ask about it ^^

Keep being awesome everyone and I wish you all a lovely day!

Thanks for sharing this post for more people to see it!

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Regarding the appearance of The Fool, FitzChivalry Farseer and Burrich I believe for the first trilogy, Robin Hobb had mentioned the below in her AMA on reddit from 11 years ago:

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FitzChivalry Farseer's appearance in Royal Assassin Part II

✤ "I was sensibly dressed, in snug leggings, an undershirt of soft cotton, and a leather jerkin over that. I had considered some sort of mail, but Burrich had shook his head over it." [...] So I had abandoned any thought of mail or armor. At any rate, today would be a rowing day, and what I wore was comfortable for that. No shoulder seams to strain against, no sleeves to catch on my forearms. I was inordinately proud of the chest and shoulders I was developing." ✤ "She smiled proudly as she told me this, her fingers toying with my warrior’s queue […]" (Chapter 16)

✤ "I washed, shaved, smoothed my hair back into a tail, and donned clean clothes." ✤ "I stood up, tugged my shirt straight, smoothed my hair back, and then threw the scroll onto my hearth fire." ✤ "My hair had come loose from its tail. She pulled it forward to frame my face, then set a fold of her red cloak across my forehead." ✤ Molly says to Fitz: "She traced a finger down the musculature of my chest speculatively. “The other day, in the washing courts, some were saying you were the best thing to come out of the stables since Burrich. I think it is your hair. It is not near as coarse as most Buck men.” She twined strands of it through her fingers. ✤ "I walked disconsolately home through gusting winds and pelting rain. I had not rebound my hair and it whipped in lank strands across my face. The wet blanket stank as only wool can and bled red dye onto my hands." (Chapter 17)

✤ "I pulled my hair back into the warrior’s tail that I felt fully earned now, and tugged the front of my blue jerkin straight. It was a bit snug across the shoulders, but so was everything I owned lately." (Chapter 18)

✤ "I thought of the emeralds hidden in a corner of my clothes chest, but within me Verity was quiet." (Chapter 21)

✤ "I pulled on yesterday’s clothes. I thought of splashing my face with water, or smoothing my hair back into its tail afresh, but those thoughts occurred to me halfway down the stairs." (Chapter 22)

✤ "I dragged on trousers and a tunic, ran for the door barefoot with my hair draggling about my face. I halted there." ✤ "I tugged my jerkin square again and smoothed my hair back. As I went to stand before my king I was painfully aware of my bare feet and tousled hair." (Chapter 24)

✤ "When I was finally dressed in Mistress Hasty’s latest set of clothes for me, I looked almost as fine as the Fool. I had decided that as yet I would not mourn Verity, nor even give the appearance of mourning." (Chapter 25)

✤ Chade cuts Fitz's hair for mourning Verity's assumed death: "I reached in back of my head, to where a leather thong bound my hair back in a warrior’s tail." [...] With a single clip, Chade took off my hair at the knot. It felt strange to have it suddenly fall forward, short, not even to my jaw. As if I were a page again. I reached up and felt its shortness as I asked him […]" (Chapter 26)

✤ "And so I stood, an uncomfortable victim of a shirt with overfull sleeves and some very itchy leggings, patiently awaiting Regal’s entrance." ✤ "I went to my own chamber and, with great relief, changed into sensible clothes. As I tugged on my shirt I felt the tiny bulge of Wallace’s poison, still sewn into my cuff. Perhaps, I reflected bitterly, it would bring me luck." (Chapter 29)

✤ "I was tempted to pick my shirt free of the cuts on my arm, but forced myself to leave it alone. As long as they were not festering, I would not bother them." (Chapter 30)

✤ "At that moment, Bolt’s fist connected solidly with my nose. Blade had once described to me the sound that he heard as his nose broke in a brawl. Words did not do it justice. A sickening sound combined with incredible pain. Pain so intense it was suddenly the only pain I was aware of. I blacked out." [...] That person bent over me, took a firm grip on the bridge of my nose, and dragged it straight again. That crude setting of it hurt worse than the breaking, and once more I dipped down into unconsciousness." (Chapter 31)

✤ "My lips were cracked and swollen, my teeth aching in my gums. But I put my shirt cuff to my mouth and found the tiny lump of the leaf pellet inside the fabric." (Chapter 32)

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So there is one more post in the queue for tomorrow for Lacey. I was thinking about first finishing Fitz and the Fool for the rest of the trilogies since they are the most drawn characters and then coming back to complete the rest of the cast. What do you think about it?

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FitzChivalry Farseer's appearance in Royal Assassin Part I

✤ "I had plenty to eat, more education than I sometimes cared for, clothes both simple and those annoyingly fashionable, and often enough a coin or two of my own to spend." ✤ "I donned the garments that Jonqui had furnished for our winter journey through the Mountains and across the plains. For me there was a long red shirt, padded with wool quilted into it. The quilted trousers were green, but embroidered with red at the waist and cuffs. The boots were soft, almost shapeless until my feet were laced inside them. They were like sacks of soft leather, padded with sheared wool and trimmed with fur. They fastened to the feet with long wrappings of leather strips. My trembling fingers made tying them a difficult task. Jonqui had told us they were wonderful for the dry snow of the mountains, but to beware of getting them wet. […] At first, I smiled at my reflection. Not even King Shrewd’s fool dressed as gaily as this. But above the bright garments, my face was thin and pale, making my dark eyes too large, while my fever-shorn hair, black and bristly, stood up like a dog’s hackles. My illness had ravaged me. But I told myself I was finally on my way home." (Prologue)

✤ "I was fifteen, and my nightclothes were soft and clean. The fire in the hearth had burned low. My blistered fingers throbbed angrily." (Chapter 1)

✤ "I took clothing from the chest at the foot of my bed, only to find the garments oddly ill-fitting. My long illness had wasted the muscle from my frame, but I had still somehow managed to grow longer in the legs and arms. Nothing fit. I picked up my shirt from yesterday, but a night in clean bedding had refreshed my nose. I could no longer abide the smell of the travel-stained garment. I dug in my clothes chest again. I found one soft brown shirt that had once been too long in the sleeve for me, and now just fit. I put it on with my green quilted mountain trousers and buskins." (Chapter 3)

✤ "A clean nightshirt had been left across the foot of my bed; it wasn’t one of my old ones. It might actually fit me." ✤ "I threw off my blankets and dressed in my outgrown clothes, left the Keep, and walked down into Buckkeep Town." ✤ About the quality of Fitz's jerkin: "His hind legs tore at my belly, but my jerkin was thick enough to divert most of the damage." (Chapter 4)

✤ "Your hair looks like a pony’s winter coat, I’ll wager you’ve worn that shirt a week straight, and you’re thin as a winter foal." ✤ "My hair, shorn for fever when I was in the Mountains, had grown back as bushy and unmanageable as Verity’s. Worse, my beard was beginning to bristle as well. Twice Burrich had told me that I had better decide to wear a beard, or to attend more closely to my shaving. As my beard came in as patchy as a pony’s winter coat, I diligently cut my face several times that morning, before deciding that a bit of bristle would be less noticeable than all the blood. I curried my hair back from my face and wished I could bind it back in a warrior’s tail. I set into my shirt the pin that Shrewd had so long ago given me to mark me as his." ✤ About Regal and Fitz: "Almost, we could have been mistaken for brothers, I realized with shock. His hair was curlier, his features finer, his bearing more aristocratic. His garments were peacock’s feathers compared with my wren colors, I lacked silver at my throat and on my hands. Still the stamp of the Farseers was plain on us both. We shared Shrewd’s jaw and the fold of his eyelids and the curve of his lower lip. Neither of us would ever compare with Verity’s widely muscled build, but I would come closer than he would. Less than a decade of years separated our ages. Only his skin separated me from his blood." ✤ "Outside his door, I paused to push the hair back from my eyes." (Chapter 5)

✤ For Vixen's mourning: "I took my knife from my belt and cut from my head a finger’s-length lock of hair." ✤ "I dared not take the time to go back to my room for warmer clothes. So I borrowed Hands’s cloak to supplement mine and dragged the reluctant animal out of the stables and into the wind and falling snow." (Chapter 9)

✤ A Forged one bites Fitz: "He flung his arms around me, pinning one of my arms, and then suddenly, horribly, his teeth sank into my flesh where my neck met my shoulder." ✤ "I don’t recall that I felt the pain of that pounding, and the torn flesh at my neck seemed but a warm spot where blood flowed." ✤ "My forearm was snugly bandaged and invisible inside a voluminous sleeve. The wound itself was not that severe, but it was painful. The bite between my shoulder and neck was not so easily concealed. I had lost flesh there, and it had bled profusely. When I had seen it with a looking glass the night before, I was nearly sick. Cleaning it had made it bleed even more profusely; there was a chunk of me gone. […] I had managed to get a dressing on it, but not a very good one. I had pulled my shirt high and fastened it in place to conceal the bandaging. It chafed painfully against the wound, but it concealed it." (Chapter 11)

✤ "I peeked at the dressing on the bite on my neck. It was an ugly wad of cloth, saturated with blood." ✤ "I put more wood on the fire, then avoided her gaze as I gathered my scattered clothes and put them on. She was not so shy, for as I looked up from fastening my belt, I found her eyes upon me, smiling." (Chapter 12)

✤ "I stood, bared to the waist, and shivered as I washed myself with unwarmed water, and belatedly changed the bandaging on my arm and neck. I did not deserve for those wounds to look as clean as they did. Nonetheless, they were healing well. I dressed warmly, a padded mountain shirt going on under a heavy leather jerkin. I pulled on heavy leather overtrousers and laced them close to my legs with strips of leather. I took down my work blade and armed myself with a short dagger as well. From my working kit, I took a small pot of powdered death’s cap." ✤ "The healer was building the fire up while behind me a stonily silent Burrich was swabbing pine needles and dirt out of the gouge on my neck." ✤ "Burrich had run a length of bandaging across my chest and under my opposite arm and up again in an effort to keep a dressing in place on my neck. It was useless. The bite was right atop the muscle between the tip of my shoulder and my neck." (p.273) (Chapter 13)

✤ "I paused before Shrewd’s door and balanced the tray with one hand as I hastily smoothed my hair back and tugged my jerkin straight. My hair had begun to be a problem lately. Jonqui had cut it short during one of my fevers in the mountains. Now that it was growing out, I didn’t know whether to tie it back in a tail as Burrich and the guardsmen did, or keep it at my shoulders as if I were a page still. I was much too old to wear it in the half braid of a child. Verity skills: "Tie it back, boy. I’d say you’d earned the right to wear it as a warrior, as much as any guardsman. Just don’t start fussing about it and twining it into oiled curls as Regal does." ✤ "With one free hand, I turned up the collar of my jerkin to expose the red-stoned pin I was seldom without." ✤ "As I straightened I carefully returned the pin to my jerkin lapel." (Chapter 14)

✤ "After an hour or so had passed, I stood in Verity’s tower room, shirtless and sweating." (Chapter 15)

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Lady Patience’s appearance in the Assassin’s Apprentice book

✤ Context for Patience and Chivalry moving to Withywoods but it is important since it references her home province: ✤ "It was for her sake as well as for propriety that Chivalry had given up his throne and taken his invalid wife back to the warm and gentle lands that were her home province." (Chapter 4)

✤ "The lady slowly sank back into her seat. I wondered privately what someone of her rank was doing alone in the kitchen at night. For her high birth was something that could not be disguised by the simple cream robe she wore or the weariness in her face. This, undoubtedly, was the rider of the palfrey in the stable, and not some lady’s maid." ✤ "I rushed through my food, wanting only to escape her hazel eyes and straight silent mouth." (Chapter 11)

✤ "Standing on the garden path, in a simple shift, she looked at first glance to be little more than a girl. She was slender, and less tall than I, though I was not overly tall for my fourteen years. But her face was a woman’s, and right now her mouth was set in a condemning line, echoed by the brows knit over her hazel eyes. Her hair was dark and curling, and though she had tried to restrain it, ringlets of it had escaped at her forehead and neck." (Chapter 12)

✤ "As a small child, her nursemaids found her stubbornly independent, and yet lacking the common sense to take care of herself. One remarked, “She would go all day with her laces undone because she could not tie them herself, yet would suffer no one to tie them for her.” Before the age of ten, she had decided to eschew the traditional trainings befitting a girl of her rank, and instead interested herself in handicrafts that were very unlikely to prove useful: pottery, tattooing, the making of perfumes, and the growing and propagation of plants, especially foreign ones. […] She seemed to be constantly afflicted with rashes, scrapes, and stings, was frequently lost, and never developed any sensible wariness toward man or beast." (Chapter 13)

✤ "When I expressed a curiosity about the tattooer’s art, she refused to let me mark my own body, saying I was too young for such a decision. But without the least qualm, she let me observe, and finally assist with, the slow pricking of dye into her own ankle and calf that became a coiled garland of flowers." (Chapter 14)

✤ "Look at Lady Patience and her woman Lacey. They are always about and doing things. Their apartments are a jungle of the lady’s plants, and the cuffs of her gowns are sometimes a bit sticky from her paper making, or she will have bits of leaves in her hair from her herbery work, but she is still just as beautiful. And prettiness is not all that important in a woman. […]” (Chapter 16)

✤ "I found Patience sitting up in a cushioned chair, an extravagantly embroidered robe on over her nightclothes. Her hair was down about her shoulders, and as I seated myself where she indicated, Lacey resumed the brushing of it.” (Chapter 19)

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The Fool’s appearance in the Assassin’s Apprentice book

✤ “The King’s new fool, but recently acquired, pattered after them, pale eyes agoggle in an eggshell face. He was so strange a creature, with his pasty skin and motley all of blacks and whites, that I scarce dared to look at him.” ✤ “At the door, the pale Fool paused. For an instant he looked back at me and made an incomprehensible gesture with his narrow hands.” (Chapter 3)

✤ “[…] there stood the Fool, pale hair floating in the light breeze. The blue and red silk of his motley jacket and trousers was startlingly bright against his paleness. But his eyes were not as colorless as they were in the dim passages of the keep. As I received their stare from only a few feet away in the light of day, I perceived there was a blueness to them, very pale, as if a single drop of pale blue wax had fallen onto a white platter. The whiteness of his skin was an illusion also, for out here in the dappling sunlight I could see a pinkness suffused him from within. Blood, I realized with a sudden quailing. Red blood showing through layers of skin.” ✤ “But I could not have focused my attention more completely on anything, and when he was satisfied of this, the Fool smiled, showing small white separate teeth, like a baby’s new smile in a boy’s mouth.” ✤ “He cocked his head at me, and the movement sent the dandelion fluff of his hair wafting in a new direction.” ✤ “He took a breath through his nose, and then shook his head violently, until his hair stood out all around his skull like a flame around a windblown candle.” ✤ “[…]thinking I should see a bush still swaying from his passage, or catch a glimpse of his motley jacket.” (chapter 7)

✤ “[…] The Fool was almost certainly born of the human race, though not entirely of human parentage. Stories that he was born of the Other Folk are almost certainly false, for his fingers and toes are completely free of webbing and he has never shown the slightest fear of cats. The unusual physical characteristics of the Fool (lack of coloring, for instance) seem to be traits of his other parentage, rather than an individual aberration, though in this I well may be mistaken. […] The age of the Fool at the time of his arrival at Buckkeep has been a matter for conjecture. From personal experience, I can vouch that the Fool appeared much younger, and in all ways more juvenile than at present. But as the Fool shows little sign of aging, it may be that he was not as young as he initially appeared, but rather was at the end of an extended childhood. The gender of the Fool has been disputed. When directly questioned on this matter by a younger and more forward person than I am now, the Fool replied that it was no one’s business but his own.” (Chapter 9)

✤ “Reluctantly I gave over my puppy. He stirred, awakened, and then wiggled in the Fool’s hands. No smell, no smell. I was astonished to agree with the pup. Even with his little black nose working for me, the Fool had no detectable scent.” (Chapter 13)

✤ “I waited until late, when all ordinary folk of the keep were in their beds, before venturing down to get Smithy’s food for him. […] But it was the Fool who came toward me, glowing as white and pale as the wax candle he carried. In his other hand was a pail of food and a beaker of water balanced atop it.” (Chapter 14)

✤ “His colorless eyes held mine.” (Chapter 15)

✤ “I tried to imagine the colorless, cynical Fool in the midst of all this color and art.” (Chapter 19)

✤ About Kettricken and the Fool ✤ "Her long white night robe accented her fairness, so that she seemed pale as the Fool.” ✤ “Pale beauty, I thought.” (Chapter 22)