These are gonna be mostly based on the RSC production, because it’s my favourite one, and also maybe a bit of history. I hope that’s okay!
A. Richard doesn’t like people touching his hair. If you’re allowed to touch it, you’re probably one of his favourite people- or a small child who doesn’t know any different. They get let off.
B. You know how some of the recipes in The Forme of Cury are a bit... weird? If the food is trendy but disgusting Richard will force it down and pretend it’s delicious, and he expects everyone else to do the same.
C. Richard went to pray for Anne’s soul the day she died and found that he couldn’t, all he could do was cry. It was the only time his faith ever wavered- and it wasn’t that he believed any less, just that he didn’t know why God would take Anne away from him and he was too distraught to think about it any further than that.
D. Any and all modern AU versions of Richard are super into David Bowie and you’d have to pry that headcanon out of my cold dead hands
The Excessively Detailed Headcanon Tumblr Meme: Okay, obviously I want Richard II. If at all possible, ALL of them. If not, these are my main things: 1, 2, 3, 6, 10, 14, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 36, 47, 48, 49, 50. This is still a LOT, I know. So, you know. If you'd start at 1 and then go as far as you like, that would be okay with me.
[CACKLES] I admit that I immediately thought of Richard with the sample-menu one so here we gooooo.
1. What does their bedroom look like?
THE WHOLE OF ENGLAND IS HIS BEDROOM (literally and metaphorically) but the only fic I think I have where a large amount of the action, so to speak, takes place in Richard’s bedroom is the Epiphanyverse fic where Richard ends up having a lot of audiences while on bedrest. (Both the sexy kind of visits from Aumerle and the unsexy kind from like, Chaucer, and John Holland.) In that fic at least the biggest eye-catching element is the presence of multiple diptychs for religious-contemplation purposes. Other than that: his bed is big and fancy, things consistently smell nice sometimes to an overpowering degree, and there’s dogs to trip over.
2. Do they have any daily rituals?
In addition to observing all the more or less daily obligatory rituals of life as a head of state and general medieval religious life, I can imagine him being the kind of person who has a really firm sleep schedule that he is rigorous about observing when not disrupted by sex and/or politics.
3. Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?
Dude has a positively evil metabolism but I assume he only has pretty standard medieval-aristocrat hobbies -- he’s a lover, not a fighter. Is horseback riding exercise? Does group sex count?
4. What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?
Complain vigorously! And probably head over to Bolingbroke’s to usurp his kitchens.
5. Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)
Richard is pretty tidy even by idle-rich-people standards -- basically he’s the human equivalent of an indoor cat. He enjoys bathing for bathing’s sake, and he’s pretty scrupulous about the actual cleanliness of his person, but I imagine without an extensive personal staff he’d be a lot less efficient and capable at maintaining an actual clean space.
6. Eating habits and sample daily menu
[OBLIGATORY FORME OF CURY LINK]
Richard will eat absolutely anything, at any time, anywhere. Food is also probably his love language, tbh. Apart from a completely satanic metabolism I think it’s just safe to assume he enjoys fine craftsmanship in the kitchen.
7. Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time
Hunting and causing drama. His feelings on wasting time are well-documented.
8. Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging
Modern-AU!Richard would be OBNOXIOUSLY knowledgeable regarding wine and I think by medieval standards Richard Classic(tm) would be too. He also likes expensive holidays across England, bankrolling his Welsh fanboys, and showing off in front of the French.
9. Makeup?
Apart from RSC Richard’s fantastic gold nail polish and the stagings that have Richard made up like an echo of Elizabeth I, I can’t imagine Richard really caring much for makeup. (Even though I still identify gold-colored everything as a R2 look, without fail.) He’s not remotely insecure about his masculinity or how he presents himself but I think it’s a weird point of pride that he’s an ~unkempt natural beauty~. Despite being extremely kempt. He takes scrupulously good care of his hair and beard, though.
10. Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?
Oh boy, he’s a few. I think most of them identifiably date back to the Appellants’ crisis and the whole “my boyfriend was exiled and later died horribly” thing with RdV, if not back way further to growing up in the royal family -- he’s not as screwed up as he might be, but I think his pride and his capacity for deep despair/convulsive anger both have a lot to do with having a sense of himself mostly defined by kingship.
11. Intellectual pursuits?
He probably enjoys music and period-appropriate drama, he enjoys and bankrolls visual art, and he certainly enjoys poetry and literature -- the RL Richard seems to have at least a passing interest in astrology and astronomy, but I think that’s as far into STEM pursuits as Richard really goes.
12. Favorite book genre?
Man, you know, I’m honestly not sure -- he probably has an appropriate appreciation for metaphor and allegory, and has enjoyed a dream narrative or two.
13. Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?
My!Richard is the world’s most bisexual man -- he’s had meaningful sexual and emotional relationships with both men and women, and if he was aware in a period-typical way of identities outside that binary I think he’d take that pretty emphatically in stride. He’s not a total lust-at-first-sight type, mostly because there are very few people in his social circle he hasn’t known for a long-ass time (apart from Anne, and even Anne was probably not the most prepossessing partner) and and I think he has a little bit of a tendency to romanticize his partner whatever they might actually look like. (Which is nice if you’re a less-studly-looking minion.)
14. Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.)
He’s got a bit of a depressive/hot-and-cold streak (to say the least) and would probably benefit from an anachronistic time-traveling therapist, but he’s physically able by the standards of his time. In the Epiphanyverse, I would definitely say he’s disabled and he considers himself more or less as such, but in every other iteration I think he’s dodged some of the health issues that will later affect his cousin Henry, or that affect Anne during their marriage.
15. Biggest and smallest short term goal?
Oof, this one is a hard one given how hard his status crashes down over the course of his life -- I’m not sure.
16. Biggest and smallest long term goal?
Biggest: Repair the relationship between England and France and usher in a new sophisticated age across Christendom, avenge personal slights against himself both real and perceived. Smallest: maintain beard.
17. Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress
FANCY, gold, dags, shoes. He’s aggressively stylish and 100% knows how to make hay out of being an enormous leggy Plantagenet while wearing things that would make someone a foot shorter or significantly heavier look less intimidating. He’s a full medieval accessorizer and doesn’t see anything weird about being dressed by other people or undressed by other, much luckier people.
18. Favorite beverage?
Wine’s a beverage. (Unlike Hal, I’m not sure if he’s all that familiar with small beer and co.)
19. What do they think about before falling asleep at night?
Honestly, he probably has a rich and interesting prayer life, bar some vicious railing at life’s unfairnesses.
20. Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?
I’ve never given this one much thought but he was probably a pretty vigorous, hearty kid -- apart from getting profoundly worn-out by major family events, visiting mummers, his own coronation, etc. If he had any childhood illnesses, even minor ones, they were a cause for significant alarm disproportionate to their actual severity.
21. Turn-ons? Turn-offs?
Turn-ons: good hair, nice reverence, good legs. Turn-offs: severed heads, bad manners, machismo.
22. Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?
Like every other obnoxious Plantagenet, I think he’s probably got a couple personal mottos he’s prone to doodling on everything.
23. How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life?
As mentioned earlier, I think he’s a fairly organized person in terms of his daily itinerary, but that this organization falls apart when he’s removed from his position of being waited on hand and foot.
24. Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all?
If he’s got one area he excels in besides being aggravating and taking other people’s stuff, it’s poetry. Or the act of fornication. Mostly poetry, tho.
25. How do they see themselves 5 years from today?
SUPER DEAD. Jk, before shit hit the fan with the Lancaster family I think he probably expected to be either negotiating more with France or pursuing fatherhood again (in any version where his second wife is a Shakespeare-aged young lady and not an adorable child)
26. Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?
It’s safe to say Richard has zero contingency plans for being anything other than king, unless you count fleeing to another country and trying to stump up support there.
27. What is their biggest regret?
He’s still probably pretty fucked-up about not patching things up with John Holland before their mother died.
28. Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?
Honestly after his separation from Robert de Vere and the death of Anne he probably considers York to fill the “best friend” role, when it’s not occupied by assorted sycophants. Thomas of Woodstock can eat a big bag of dicks.
29. Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)
Leap into action, which is to say, launch into delegating -- he’s capable of personally mediating hairy situations like peasants’ revolts and such, but he’s a strong believer in buffering himself against disaster with as many layers of allies as possible. If it’s not something both overwhelming and not actionable, stalk around being really pissed off and complain bleakly.
29. Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies)
Go apeshit, lock down into rigid control mode, break somebody’s nose at the deceased’s funeral.
30. Most prized possession?
Do crowns count? The crown, in kind of an abstract sense.
31. Thoughts on material possessions in general?
The more, the merrier. I don’t think he has excessive and overly intimate attachment to specific objects, just because he’s used to having a lot of them -- but he’s pretty enthusiastically material-oriented.
32. Concept of home and family?
Pretty much interchangeable for Richard. He’d be happy living life on a constant gyration between various castles, ideally accompanied by Anne and as many polyamorous boyfs as can be housed at any given time.
33. Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?)
I’m not honestly sure -- I think he has a reasonable understanding of court gossip and the potential for international incidents and all that, but he does have a marked tendency to offload whatever he’s annoyed about when he thinks he has a sympathetic audience, so he’s clearly a talker.
34. What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?
Baths.
35. What makes them feel guilty?
Older relatives. (Even Gaunt manages to get under his skin, though he’d be pissed off to admit it.)
36. Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making?
I do think emotions factor into his better analyses -- he’s pretty interpersonally astute apart from his massive blind spots related to people he cares about -- but when his emotional state is breaking down he’s more likely to vacillate.
37. Would they consider themselves a Type A or Type B personality?
Richard is ABSOLUTELY type-A, but barring total breakdown he seems to more or less manage the associated stress of that.
38. What recharges them when they’re feeling drained?
39. Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?
Is it a complex if you genuinely are positioned above everybody else in your country? Nah, he probably errs more toward the superiority side of that equation, but that self-conception is not super robust in the face of setbacks.
40. How misanthropic are they?
He seems to have a sweeping scorn for whole classes of people (including... the poor, sheesh) but I don’t know if I’d consider him misanthropic in the way somebody like Richard III is. He’s got a pretty middle-of-the-road estimation of human nature that’s more reflective of his temporary mood than an overarching philosophy.
41. Hobbies?
Hunting! Riding! Hobnobbing with the Welsh. He’s probably got some strong feelings on contemporary gambling, and is damn good at it, apart from people letting him win.
42. How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education?
He’s probably had mostly private tutors, and gave up on the whole “continuing education” thing at some point in late adolescence, determining that he’d had about enough. So I don’t think it’s at the top of his personal priority list, but it’s not like he didn’t anticipate having his social position on lock. In a setting with more conventional education available to him, I think he’d be casually snobbish about the whole thing, but not out of a lot of personal investment.
43. Religion?
I think he’s a pretty orthodox medieval Christian, with a fairly touchy-feely approach to his elevated personal relationship to the Christian God. Anne had a slightly unorthodox approach to scripture (namely... that lay people should be able to read it, including women) and I don’t think Robert de Vere was remotely devout, but his worldview is founded on a pretty concrete belief in a Christian cosmology.
44. Superstitions or views on the occult?
He probably believes to some extent in ghosts or at least dead people showing up in your dreams to bug you. He’s sentimental about dead bodies. I don’t think he sees any interest in omens/astrology/etc. as being superstitious as such -- for his worldview they’re as much instruments to understand a changing world as more conventionally understood sciences.
45. Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?
Good luck getting him to shut up! But he’s a fan of gestures.
46. If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal?
I think he at heart has pretty elevated warm-and-fuzzy ideals for loyalty, fidelity, and in particular shared interests and companionship among men -- I don’t think he had a concrete ideal of what women were like before he met Anne and she had the advantage of blazing that whole trail (sexually) but it’s more of a polyamorous polymorphic courtly clusterfuck model of an ideal social life that happens to involve a lot of banging than really wanting a lot of romantic/sexual novelty or adventure in his life. But good luck maintaining that as an actual adult and head of state, so he gets some weird tumult in his romantic life anyway.
47. How do they express love?
By making somebody duke of something, generally.
48. If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like?
He’s a little bit of a blitz attacker -- I don’t think he’d be good for much on a battlefield, or that’s his natural element, but he’s pretty comfortable lashing out in anger and I don’t think it would really occur to him that anyone would actually contend against that.
49. Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?
Yes -- I think the fear of leaving things unfinished/in disorder, or dying in a state of personal failure. I don’t think he’s inherently afraid of the state of being dead (cf. question 43) however -- just the process of dying and what happens on earth to all your stuff after you’re dead.
...wait, holy shit, there’s supposed to be 50 of these, I missed a number somewhere! Fuck.
That’s a surprisingly hard trope to write in canons that don’t have any sort of supernatural or alien element unless you want to go really dark in a way I can’t actually see any of the characters in the histories going (maybe Richard III but I don’t really write much with him in).
That said, the closest thing I could think of is my yet-to-be-written epic “The Day Richard’s Court Got Infested With Sex Pollen But Nobody Noticed” (E, everyone/everyone else, 1,000,000 words). That counts, right?
Oh my god, this is a trope I haven’t touched much but it seems rife with hilarity, not least because a) I love size differences and picturing people hitting their heads on light fixtures b) everybody I like has vaguely embarrassing personal habits and they’d loathe knowing somebody else was screwing up their carefully planned personal routine in their own bod
Who I’d write it for:
Fuck it, this would be really funny for Rust Cohle and Marty Hart and you know it. Also, kinda sad, because five bucks says Rust’s always in some kind of low-level physical pain.
Richard II and Henry IV, because ditto the above but with Henry’s various kinds of health shit and with Richard’s RICH BOUNTEOUS GOLDEN HAIR
Luke and Leia. Leia’s like *CRACKS KNUCKLES* “okay, let’s figure out how to solve this” and Luke’s pranking the shit out of Han and Chewie while failing to learn how to braid hair (do they swap Force powers???? how does that work???)
...is it too rude to say Fletcher and Neiman from Whiplash because Fletcher’s dialogue coming out of Neiman’s mouth (and Neiman suddenly having Fletcher’s ANCIENT TITTIES)
I was just doing the dishes and in the middle of it it hit me, holy fuck, this is an optimal Reed Richards/Victor Von Doom scenario, even pre Mr. Fantastic-ing, so I would write... that.
The fanfiction meme! This is about the Richard II epiphany thing. Unsurprisingly. No pressure or anything. (Seriously. Seriously seriously.) But, regardless, #8. If you are up for it. I'd love to know what you are using, and what not. And all this stuff.
EPIPHANYVERSEEEEE
8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?
Yessss. (But not like... well; I am not cut out for facts-based historical fiction and the fact that this fic has taken me so long and so many drafts to write is the concrete proof.) There are three big historical presences in this fic that I don’t normally write about:
John Holland, Duke Of Exeter
RICHARD’S HALF BROTHER with whom he had about... a million beefs (beeves?) and a thorny personal history. They’re not close personal friends, even within the universe of this story, but his loyalty and willingness to go to the mat for Richard are standout qualities and fun to write around. Part of my trouble drawing this fic together is sketching out an idea of Holland's personality -- pugnacious asshole? probably -- but I picture him as James Garnon in Duchess of Malfi, just ‘cause.
Geoffrey Chaucer
I’m having a bit of a tough time with Chaucer -- he’s a hell of a contributor to the world of literature and I like his work very much, looking at accounts of his life and death are a great way to get a feel for society/culture/domestic life in the relevant parts of the 14th century for Richardfic. His life is closely intertwined with patterns of court life and patronage, and in terms of literary perspectives he makes a really convenient person to have Richard touch base with when he’s contending with one of the most dramatic and gnarly life events he’s ever encountered. But the tail end of his life is sort of mysterious, falling right up against the timeframe of this fic. (IRL he died October 25, 1400; the fic takes place in spring and summer of 1400.) Idk how much he’s going to end up involved in the final product here, but it was a great excuse to read a bunch of Chaucer stuff.
Hal’s brothers (Thomas, Duke of Clarence / John, Duke of Lancaster)
Why are these little preteen rascals relevant here, you might ask? because they 100% get murdered, by John Holland and a gaggle of Richard’s Welsh supporters during their (successful) assassination of Henry Bolingbroke during a tournament. (Ok, Thomas gets murdered, I haven’t decided if I wanna kill John.) Holland doesn’t feel bad about it, but Richard will, and first and foremost it puts the fear of God into Hal. (Who Richard doesn’t want dead, but other people have their own thoughts on the matter.)
As the title suggests this fic picks up with the Epiphany Rising, organized by Richard supporters and others in late 1399 and picks up steam around Epiphany in January 1400 -- but instead of the Rising going to shit and John and co. ending up executed, they’re successful and manage to retrieve Richard from prison before he dies. I still need to pinpoint a precise place of historical divergence there but the story itself starts with the wannabe rescue party’s arrival at Pontefract so I’ve managed to cheat my way through that. The one thing I can find more or less abundant info about wrt the Rising is all the drawing and quartering that went on, but that’s not the world’s most helpful historical detail.
Another text I ended up leaning on for information about the transition of power between Richard and Henry was John Bradmore’s Philomena -- finding a copy of this text is a pain in the ass, or even extracts, but Bradmore is Richard’s physician in this fic and the cases he documents in the Philomena, his medical casebook of procedures he’s performed both during his time overlap with the timeframe of and in some cases may directly result from Richard’s deposition. I also get to steal Bradmore for a cameo as Richard’s physician, semi-unwilling but up for the medical challenge the king’s condition presents, at least. (S.J. Lang’s wonderful paper on the Philomena has been really helpful here and also in the writing of Nightingale Of Grace, the fic where Poins comes face to face with Hal’s arrow-wound scar for the first time.)
Fanfic trope meme: Wings. Or, alternatively, Tentacles. Or both.
WINGTACLES
My #1 wingfic would be Richard II fic, probably Richard/everybody like usual. I feel like somebody has to have written that already but I’m probably just thinking of that awesome R&J sexually-transmitted-wings fic. Any Shakespeare play is improved with wings, even the really depressing ones.
For non-PWP purposes (and what purposes are those, anyway) I would love to see tentacle AUs where somebody’s not simply a groovy alien/robot with unexpected interface attachments (though... now that you mention it, I’d write that for HAL/Dave, and Durandal/Security Officer, and Sam Bell/GERTY with inappropriate postcoital emoji use) but rather they came back wrong somehow from some cosmic experience and now their bodily structure is kinda... weird. (And so is the overjoyed survivor sex afterward. ”Oh, thank God, you’re alive!” “I sure am... sort of.” *CONSENTACLES HAPPEN* *fin*) I would totally write this for any given True Detective pairing, much to Rust’s annoyance no matter whose tentacles they are, and with Watney/Martinez and Watney/Lewis for The Martian. Hell, I’d read this for Buffy.
Every Watchmen character has tentacles now, it’s just a fact. (Or wings. Rorschach’s wings are tiny and spindly and with all his ornithological knowledge Dan can’t figure out how the fuck they’re supposed to work.)
It would also be fun to write Shakespeare’s Richard III with tentacles or wings -- I have complicated feelings about Early Modern understandings of disability and deformity and how it interlocks with monstrosity, and Shakespeare’s Richard’s weird physiology as very different and distinct from the historical dude, so that would be fun as fuck and also weird. (It would also make him being like “HEY ANNE, STAB THIS” *WINK* even weirder.) This has to already exist, right?
strangeparticles replied to your post: “Wait, what did I just read? Bryan Fuller’s doing a TV series of Anne...”
Vampires, you said? You know, Fuller did say he would love to cast David Tennant in something. I mean. I am just saying. (Disclaimer: I've never read Anne Rice.)
That’s right! I forgot. He most certainly DID say he’d love to cast DT in something! DT has played a vampire hunter, now it’s time to play a vampire! I think Marius would be a good role, though he doesn’t have the right hair and eyes (and I do NOT want blue contacts on him ever again). I can’t remember all the characters though. There are so many books and I read them so long ago.
@strangeparticles good point about the people who make romcoms vs the people who watch them. And you hit the nail on the head about no one being oppressed in romcom worlds. They’re a world where you’re supposed to take everything at face value, and ultimately, it’s all benign and happy. I think you’re right that might be why people enjoy them. It’s a nice fantasy where they can relax and feel happy for a little while, but obviously, if you’re someone who’s got scars or strong experiences to the contrary, the film isn’t just going to be unfunny, it could be very upsetting. @shredsandpatches There you go!
