#styrbjorn

[caernua]

ASSASSIN’S CREED: VALHALLA | IN THE HALL OF THE SLAIN

[ljufvina]

#the hidden ones approve

[berryshiara]

Randivor-April - Challenging Day

From my AU Where Sigurd dies when Eivor is 10 Called

I've Got You This is the day they leave Fornburg for England

AO3 Link if you prefer “EIVOR!!!! COME OUT HERE YOU CURSED DOG OF THE RAVENS CLAN!”

So it began…

A gentle hand touched her arm, another her back. Randvi leaned into her, their brows pressing. The hand on her back worked up and down under her cloak, fingers pressing into taut muscles down her spine.

“This is not your battle, Eivor. You have been nothing but a dutiful daughter. Proud and honorable.” Randvi tipped her chin up, their eyes met. The most beautiful color she could imagine met hers. Touched her, held her enraptured. “It is our fight now my love.”

“I CALL YOU EIVOR!”

“What we do we do with King Styrbjorn’s knowledge if not his blessing. He does not begrudge you this. You owe Dag nothing.”

Randvi’s hand slipped down to her’s covering it. Holding her. “Leaving without answering him shows strength on your behalf, not weakness Eivor. He is getting everything he ever wanted and still he can not let you leave in peace. Do not answer his call my love. Please, let there be no bloodshed between us and Fornburg.”

“EIVOR! YOU TROLL’S ARSE! BRING YOUR HONORLESS SACK OF SHIT OUT HERE!”

Randvi’s hand tightened as the muscles in Eivor’s jaw did.

“You are without reproach, and you are stronger than he will ever be. That is why I chose you. I chose you, Eivor.”

“YOU DO NOT HAVE THE BALLS TO FACE ME!”

The kiss that Randvi gave was the sweetest balm she had ever known. Her strong love thick and rich like honey, the healers touch to her betrayed heart. She leaned into it, pulled her wife closer, let herself be drowned in its radiant glory.

“We are ready Jarlsoknas.” The warm gravel of Gunnars voice interrupting them.

Eilif gave Eivor a questioning look, a worried expression. Eivor stole one last kiss before she shouldered her travel bag. “All the supplies we need for the trip are packed and no more?” Eivor asked. “Yes my Jarl.” “Good. We will not strip our loved ones of their livelihood and wealth.” Her eyes shifted to Randvi. “We will find our own riches soon enough.” She cast a final look across the home she shared with her wife and sister one last time before they moved for the portal.

Gunner stepped to one side of her, and Eilif the other. She paused then, feeling Randvi lean into her back. Her words a whisper. “Let them.”

The tension in her shoulders softened a little. She stepped forward again. “Have we heard from Nott’s ship?”

“It awaits us at the mouth of the Fjord.” Gunnar responded, taking up step with her again. “They did not want to agitate Harold’s men.”

“Seems we all walk with soft boot’s this day.” Eivor smirked. She didn’t know Nott of all people had it in her to not step into a fight.

“It is the wise hunter that gets the prey, my Jarl.”

“You are right Gunnar.”

“EIVOR! You leech!”

Her stride did not break even as Dag tried to get a rise from her. Confident in his larger frame, blinded by his superior size and misplaced anger to know she would slaughter him. She did not even recognize him as they headed for the docks.

“Sucked all the marrow from the Raven’s clan now moving on to greener shores?!”

She did not respond. Her eyes looking to the crowd that gathered. The people they were leaving behind. She caught Valka on the far side of the settlement. Shrewd eyes watching. Her words whispering even now in Eivor’s ears.

‘Do not let your hunger for glory steal all that you hold dear, Wolf-Kissed.’

Did she hunger for glory?

She handed her bag down into the ship.

“I did not take you for a coward on top of being a soul stealer, Wolf-kissed.”

Eivor stopped, his words making heat rise up into her body. It burned and bit like flames up her spine. She stiffened and turned.

What she saw as she did left her both shocked and immensely proud. Randvi had dropped her travel pack and walked straight up to the idiot. The savage kick to his knee brought him toppling down to her level. Her fist met his face with such a resounding blow that the block head was knocked unconscious by it. She kicked dirt onto him and gazed at the crowd with her bloody fist still clenched. Shoulders squared, center of gravity dropped, feet planted. A beautiful example of the perfect fighting stance. “Anyone else want to disparage my wife’s honor?” She asked in a thick warning growl.

When no one moved, or challenged her she turned to pick up her dropped bag.

Eivor raised her fist and cheered. Breaking the tense silence. Her crew behind her cheered right along with her.

“I thought this was going to be without blood letting.” Eivor teased, as she caught Randvi’s hand to look at it.

“Consider it a sacrifice to wiser gods.” She growled, and then hissed as Eivor placed a kiss upon her already discoloring hand.

“I love you.” Eivor crooned, helping her wife into the boat. She hand her gently down to Eilif.

Eilif picked Randvi up by her hips, setting her down onto the deck of the boat and pulled her into an embrace, her brow meeting Randvi’s “God’s thank you Randvi-wise-fox.”

Eivor slipped into the boat and bid them cast off. Her eyes going to find the man who had been her father longer than her real dad had.

Styrbjorn gave a sad but proud smile to Eivor, and to her relief, raised his hand bidding her farewell.

She returned it. A silent sign that neither left with hard feelings.

“God Randvi, I am going to have to spin a song just for you, layer out of giants.”

Holger clapped her on the arm.

Someone snickered. “Only now you notice?”

From the shore Dag’s voice followed them out. The man having managed to find his senses before they were out of the fjord. “GO WOLF-KISSED! LEAVE! LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO!”

They were nothing to her. She pulled Randvi into her arms and kissed her, deeply, soundly. She knew what her wife had done. A triumphant cheer was the final insult to the defeated Dag as they left, the perfect answer to his scurrilous lies.

[hysterialevi]

Day 25 - Jarl

"There he sat in those desolate halls, watching as his son chased after the future that had been stolen from him."

"The boy ventured blindly into the arms of the enemy, fervent with determination to reclaim the glory he so desperately desired."

"But alas, he returned. Broken and bruised, he sought the end to his saga in the very same place it began, only to find his father chasing after a past that could no longer be repaired."

[sapphicusincorrectus]

#146

Sigurd: You ever listen to your Dad talk and be like "why are you like this?"

Source: Tumblr flyingvirgin

[theunsinkablesappho]

AC: Valhalla - Thoughts on King Styrbjorn

So this is almost certainly my profession influencing my views on fandom, but having now played The Prologue and The Battle for the Northern Way twice (and watched them SEVERAL times), I have very complicated views on Styrbjorn. Specifically, on his relationship with Eivor.

He is very sweet with Eivor in the Prologue, telling her that he is now pledged to her, forever more. And that's a very sweet gesture from a king to a little girl.

But then we flash forward to his interactions with young adult Eivor, whom he has raised after the loss of her parents. And the relationship is clearly strained. Eivor defies him, and does so without fear of the consequence, so I think it is fair to say that he has not been brutal toward her. To me his conduct, and Eivor's, speaks more to distance than authoritarianism. And yet, it begs the question that if he is so distant why did he even adopt her?

My theory is that it was motivated from a sense of duty. I think that Styrbjorn liked and respected Varin and Rosta. Even more than that, I think the Styrbjorn that adopts Eivor is very much NOT the Styrbjorn we meet later. I think his motivation in adopting Eivor was a mix of fidelity and generosity.

As for where it went wrong, why it seems so ass-sideways when she's grown... my theory on that is the trauma. Assuming that Styrbjorn knew Eivor before the night her parents died, he likely knew her as a curious but friendly, well-mannered child. That seems to be the child we meet in the Prologue - Eivor is clearly well-loved by her parents and it shows.

So that is the child that Styrbjorn is expecting to adopt.

It is not the child he gets.

Instead he gets a deeply traumatized 9 year old little girl. One who's entire world was, literally, butchered in front of her very eyes. One who can probably see, smell, and hear the final seconds of her parents' lives. And the lives of so many people she'd known. (We do know that quite a number of her clan do survive. Gunnar, Tove, Holger, and Svala, for example, were all present that night and yet survived. Not sure which clan Tove, Holger, and Svala were representing, but Gunnar appears to be a member of Eivor's birth clan. But enough of the clan died that it ceased to exist and survivors were absorbed into the Raven clan.)

And here is the thing about trauma, especially in children: it comes out in all SORTS of ways. Ways that even now, in 2020, with everything we know about the manifestation of trauma, you would never think to connect to trauma. (Did you know that trauma in children can look like ADHD? It can! And it is not uncommon for it to be misdiagnosed as ADHD.) And we're talking about the 9th Century here, in a culture where blood and death were part of daily life. They knew almost nothing about the effects of trauma.

Let's just be very blunt here: Eivor CLEARLY has what we now call PTSD. And I can prove it. When she picks up her Father's axe and she literally HEARS her Mother and Father's final words? THAT is what being triggered is: That is called a flashback. In that scene Eivor has been triggered. She isn't "imagining" it, she is RELIVING it, and you can see that shit on her face.

So you've got a 9 year old little girl with trauma symptoms probably oozing from every pore of her body. And PTSD can show up in ways that those outside of the professional fields find very very odd.

I think part of what happened (and quite frankly, this is something that happens NOW with adoptions, even intra-familial adoptions, so it is not at all a "judgment" on Styrbjorn. This is observation) is that Styrbjorn was expecting to adopt Varin's Good Girl Baby Drengr and what he got instead was a broken child who probably vacillated erratically between being absolutely desperate for his time and attention and defying anything and everything he said or did. A child who may have become both extremely aggressive with those around her and yet extremely sensitive to even the slightest of criticisms. One who probably stopped acting like a 9 year old (whatever the cultural expectations of a 9 year old were at the time) and quickly started acting MUCH younger. A girl who cried easily, didn't sleep or slept too much, withdrew from those around her, had frequent severe nightmares, and was likely preoccupied with the death of her parents. She may have developed some weird obsessions (particularly surrounding matters of death), started stealing things, become extremely inattentive, etc.

It would not be at all surprising for him to not be remotely prepared for this sudden and massive shift in Eivor. Unable to explain it, understand it, or cope with it, he proceeded to handle it very poorly and it damaged his relationship with Eivor (I think could argue that it also seems to have damaged his relationship with Sigurd.) Eivor's devotion to Sigurd, which tbh can be a little extreme, indicates to me that she latched onto Sigurd and not Styrbjorn.

That said, clearly SOMEONE in that village managed to help Eivor process her trauma. Somehow. Because while Eivor still clearly has PTSD and a lot of unresolved issues surrounding the loss of her parents, she's... actually pretty well-adjusted all things considered. She's pretty emotionally healthy, OVERALL.

[sweettomatosauce]

Unpopular opinnion: Styrbjorn was right.

[wolfkissed-drengr]

Someone take photo mode away from me. I am having too much fun.