An Artist's Perspective

[reinapepiada]

shipping a consensual, safe & sane pairing all the while i'm shaking my head in disapproval so the audience knows i still love wildly toxic abusive fictional dynamics

[crashednerd]

Image by yours truly

[judgejudyofficial]

stop letting miserable people on the internet convince you that you must have a concrete, well-constructed opinion on everything that has ever existed.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

[judgejudyofficial]

everybody say thank you Marcus Aurelius

[once-a-traya]

henry of skalitz, master swordsman | A Woman's Lot DLC, Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018)

(practicing in secret one day before the main story of kingdom come: deliverance begins in earnest)

[designatedloveinterest]

a Taxi Driver reference? In MY medieval flower picking sim?

[tsunflowers]

reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way

[omgshiftercat]

"Ok, but how do I show that my noble character is good to their servants and/or subjects?"

Well, start by thinking of what makes a good boss: gives generous wages, ensures good working conditions including breaks*, doesn't presume they know your area of expertise better than you do, etc.

Sexual harassment and coercion of female staff by male employers was unfortunately pretty common; if appropriate to the story, you might note that your nobleman not only keeps his hands off the maidservants, but has the same rule for his fancy guests.

(It's worth noting that levels of familiarity could vary even within the same region and era: there's an aside in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell about how a country gentleman might make small talk with his staff and ask about their families, but a city gentleman would keep things more distant and professional.)

Then consider that if your noble is part of a feudal society, as a local authority they may be called upon to settle disputes. Making fair rulings will go a long way to earning the respect of the citizenry.

*I recall one book in which a foreigner is assigned a page-boy, and someone informs him that the boy, being a personal servant, is not allowed to rest or take breaks unless specifically given permission to do so.

[tsunflowers]

reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way

[ariaste]

#okay but now what is the optimal way to be a good boss in this situation i genuinely wanna know#its easy to guess what makes a bad boss or a mid boss. but what is a good boss#specifically in such a highly structured hierarchal situation (via @rainbowroach)

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

(for more discussions of the ethics of fealty and what it means to be a good boss when you are an exquisitely beautiful twink of a prince with a hot beefy bodyguard.... [fingerguns] read A Taste of Gold and Iron)

[weatherman667]

The question of exploitation comes up, and everyone forgets the answer.

mutiny

Self-interest.

Lords draw rents from their peasants. If anything bad happens to your peasants, or their lands, you have less people you can draw rents from.

The best thing you can do as a lord was not trying to be best friends with your servants, but by protecting and improving your domain. You improve roads, you get trade, which nets you more rents, along with tariffs and transit fees.

If you impose too many fees, your realm will suffer. Your peasants will suffer, but so will you. If you work your peasants too hard, they will grow ill, and might never recover. If you don't make sure they are properly fed, they can't work.

Serfs pay rent with work, either working the lord's fields, or as manual labour for the lord. In exchange, the lord gave them inheritable rights to their own fields. There was often statutory maximums and minimums for their work every week, (more during planting and harvest).

But, if the lord wanted to build a bridge, he would hire a few skilled stonemasons, (likely one master, who would bring his own apprentices and pay his own journeymen), and then the peasants show up in the morning, and say, move the heavy rocks from the quarry to where the bridge is, and help the masons put everything together. To the peasants, this is a day of work, and the noble is the boss. But, he's not the boss that actually knows what he's doing, and the worst thing he could do is micromanage, rather than leaving things to the expensive master stonemason he hired. In fact, his loitering around the worksite too much would actively interfere in the construction, and talking directly for the serfs, other than to make sure they don't have problems, would be counter-productive.

Runtime: 2:29

One of the reasons nobles are expected to not spend too much time talking directly to servants, is that - they have a job to do.

If he wanted to accelerate the bridge build, he could pay itinerate labourers, and a successful noble might use hired labourers for everything. Because hired labourers have no requirements, other than pay. You can fire them whenever you want, whereas serfs have to be taken care of, not just for life, but for their's first son's life, and his first son's life, and his first son's life.

Instead of labour, peasants might pay with a portion of their grain harvest, which was used as pseudo-currency, by - every - single - sedentary farming culture in Humans history.

One of the worst things a noble could do is to be absentee. Randomly beatings your peasants is not a good way to get them to be productive, but even worse is not tending to your own lands, and only extracting from them. Everyone suffers, including the noble.

One of the problems England had with Ireland and Scotland is that the lords didn't want to actually live out there. They wanted to be hobnobbing with other nobles in London.

And, at the end of the day, mutiny is always an option. Failure to prevent a mutiny is one of the only ways nobles can be stripped of their lands, other than treason. It really doesn't matter if you survive the mutiny, the king will decide you cannot control your lands and take them away from you.

[tsunflowers]

reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way

[beautifulduckweed]

OK so speaking as someone who grew up with servants (extremely common in the upper and upper middle classes in SE Asia up until the 2000s, can't speak to what the norm is these days), I do think it makes a huge difference if they're live-in servants, and double especially if they're nannies and housekeepers. Because the fact of the matter is, these people do become part of your family. My family went through a few different nannies and housekeepers when I was growing up (who left because they moved to a different city or got married), and I can tell you that I personally became extremely attached to most of them, except for one housekeeper whom I actively disliked. My oldest brother had the same housekeeper-cum-nanny for decades and everybody cried when she retired. They still talk about her regularly. His kids view her as basically an aunt/second mom.

Which isn't to say that master-servant relationships aren't and can't be fraught! There's an immense and inherent power imbalance. Abuse happens, is under-reported, and almost never followed up on. Anything bad you can imagine could happen to a servant definitely for real has.

But for servants who serve for a long time and whose duties include care labor, like, it's reasonably common for an emotional bond to develop. I don't see a baron in a historical going to visit his former nanny or going to the kitchen to have a cuppa with the butler or housekeeper as the author trying to signal he's woke. He's going to hang out with someone who was probably more of a parent to him than his actual parents were. Not to say it isn't a trope, because it clearly is, but it's a trope that has a strong basis in reality.

(Abolitionist protagonists, on the other hand, or those who explicitly opt out of participating in the bloody business of the British Empire—now that's how I know an author is trying to signify wokeness. Which isn't a bad thing! I've seen it handled extremely well. But when it's done clumsily, I find myself wishing the author had just left out the details entirely. My default assumption is that rich people from colonial powers are profiting from war crimes and genocide. And you know what? I don't fucking care! I just want to read about them falling in love and boning. This is fiction! Fiction isn't praxis! If the author wants to sell me on a character's woke traits, they better do a very good job of either convincing me [KJ Charles] or distracting me [Laura Kinsale], or my brain is going to nitpick this to death.)

I also want to point out that in the English system, there's a huge difference in status between e.g. a scullery maid or a random stableboy and e.g. the head groom, butler, housekeeper, valet, lady's maid, governess, nanny, etc. There are strong hierarchies within the servants' hall. A viscount having a private tête à tête with scullery maid would in fact be weird and probably a prelude to sexual harassment. A viscount going to see his old nanny is not especially notable.

Also, and this is something that can be hard for us to accept, especially the Americans in the audience who've been, for lack of a better term, liberty-pilled, a lot of servants in Ye Olden Tymes genuinely felt pride in the family they worked for, especially if the service had been passed along for generations, and double especially if the family was titled or came from an old and distinguished family line. If you squint, it looks a lot like patriotism. Or, like, inheriting a sports fandom from your parents, except the sports team has employed your family for four generations and is the biggest employer in the county, and if they go down, everybody's kind of fucked.

We like to declare allegiance for all kinds of reasons, and not all of them are rational!

All of this to say: servants, especially servants for the British aristocracy in the early 20th century and earlier, are yes technically employees but not in the way it's conceived of in 21st-century America, and it's all tremendously complicated. Like, way worse and better than you think. The past is a foreign country, not only in its actions and norms, but in its entire mindset. The farther back in time you go, the more alien it becomes.

[underprivilegedcactus]

ee

[tsunflowers]

reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way

[ariaste]

#okay but now what is the optimal way to be a good boss in this situation i genuinely wanna know#its easy to guess what makes a bad boss or a mid boss. but what is a good boss#specifically in such a highly structured hierarchal situation (via @rainbowroach)

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

(for more discussions of the ethics of fealty and what it means to be a good boss when you are an exquisitely beautiful twink of a prince with a hot beefy bodyguard.... [fingerguns] read A Taste of Gold and Iron)

[designatedloveinterest]

The Man From Sasau

Erik’s arse hurt. 

No amount of talent as a horseman was going to compensate him for the agony of nearly a full day of riding through treacherous terrain, heading up a group of surly mercenaries whose main ambitions in life were drink, fight, fuck. He did not crave company, but a bodily feeling that was not a cramp, bruise or welt might be fun. Just for a change, like. 

His sanity was worn down enough that he attempted to engage the Chief in conversation. 

“Gallows.” He nodded at a shadow perhaps half a mile ahead. 

The Chief was not about to admit he couldn’t see it. “Do you envy them, Erik? We will make camp soon enough.”

“No. Just curious.” 

They approached the object in silence. As they got closer, it became clear that the individuals had not just been hung - they had been trapped in a single cage and left to starve. The cage was strewn with the remains of vegetable matter. 

Sodomites. 

Istvan left it until the scene was a decent way behind to say “That, Erik, is why we give no quarter.”

“Sir?”

The Chief’s voice was low enough to keep it between themselves. “We do not beg for permission to exist. We do not accept the fairy tale of heaven. We take what is ours and we do not wait for anyone’s blessing.” 

Erik chewed on this for a mile or so. 

“How do you…”

Istvan stared ahead, stonily. 

When he finally realised Istvan wasn’t going to prompt him, Erik finished “...how do you know?”

The Chief barely glanced at him, his mouth bunched up in that perpetual moue of contempt. “Know what, boy? Use your words.”

“If someone is… like you.” 

This won Erik more of a glance, but the same amount of contempt. “No-one’s like me. You should know that by now.” 

Well, that was certainly true, as far as Erik could know. He had certainly never seen anyone quite like Lord Toth, although he had only had about seventeen years to do it. 

“What about that man in Sasau?” 

Istvan’s next look made Erik, young and impulsive as he was, quite sure that he should probe very, very carefully. 

“...you looked at him differently, Sir.”

Erik had several seconds to wonder if he’d just made the most portentous mistake of his life. Then Istvan laughed. “I’ll make a spy of you yet, boy.” 

Emboldened, Erik explained himself. “You looked at him like you recognised him. But you’d never met.”

“How do you know that?”

“...I suppose I don’t - wait, no. You introduced yourself. You don’t do that for people you’ve met before.” 

“All right. What do you mean I looked at him like I recognised him? What does that look like, boy?”

Erik thought hard. After a few lengths of the fence they were following, he said “Your head raised a bit and… your face was more relaxed? Not as, you know,” drawing his index and middle finger downward towards the bridge of his nose. 

“I really need to be more discreet.” There was pride in Istvan’s voice as he said it. 

“But how did you know he was-” Erik turned his head to ensure no-one was close enough to hear. “You know.”

“I didn’t. You don’t know until you’ve got your cock in his mouth and even then you should assume nothing.” 

Erik tried very hard not to think about the Chief and cocks. “So you can’t tell? Ever?” 

“I didn’t say that. I said you should assume nothing. Unless you fancy ending up like our friends back there.”

“So what made you think…”

“What do you think?”

“That’s just it! I don’t know. He looked like any other man to me.”

“I should think so. There’s no sodomite livery, though I have always wondered about the Colleoni.”

They fell silent for some time, horses trudging through the rolling hillsides in a view that might have been stunning if Erik gave a shit. He distracted himself by thinking about the man in Sasau, who certainly had no obvious mannerisms - an ordinary hail-fellow-well-met, unremarkably clothed, neither very handsome nor very ugly, his Czech unaccented as far as Erik could tell. What was the Chief seeing? 

“Was he indiscreet? Did he, I don’t know… but that happened after you met him, and… you ended up in the barn somehow.”

Istvan frowned. “Which you should not have seen. I really need to watch myself.”

Erik was not about to confess that he saw it precisely because he was looking for it, had inferred correctly that the man from Sasau was not inviting Lord Toth to discuss local resources or strategic locations, and had been very fortunate that he had not had time to get his hand in his braies before Istvan spotted him and indicated in no uncertain terms that he should fuck off.

“Have you ever been caught?” 

“Plenty of times.” The Chief chose not to elaborate. 

“What happened?” 

Istvan shrugged. “Beatings. Being chased out of town. Couple of prison sentences.” 

“Prison??? How did you get out?”

A smile slowly cracked Istvan’s face. “Use your imagination, boy.” A pause for a couple of yards. “And close your mouth. A bird will fly into it.”

“Aren’t you worried about..?” He looked back at the gibbet, by now long out of sight, but burned forever into Erik’s memory. 

The Chief scoffed. “They haven’t built the gallows I’ll hang from yet, boy.” 

Which did not comfort Erik in the slightest.

[modwyr]

the martin-radzig dynamic is so fun to me especially when reading a bit of antagonism into it because obviously martin gets a very sweet deal out of being henry's 'dad' but also did he ever wonder what happened to sara? did he ever want to get up and find her, but he knew he couldn't because there was this baby boy he was pretending to be his own that needed him? did he ever resent the fact that radzig gave him henry to protect but continued to show up and be present in henry's life, put a sword in his hand despite martin's wishes and all but showed him off to a visiting noble? and on the flip side, there's the entire dynamic of radzig watching martin raise henry the way he wants to, be present for major moments in henry's life, give him advice and comfort him and teach him all the things he knows like why wouldn't he be jealous

[yourchocolatenachostudent]

An interesting fact about Isterik in Nebakov.

When Erik breaks into the dungeon where Istvan is being held, the first thing he does is look for him with his eyes.

And when he finds him, a brief smile of relief appears on Erik's lips, while Istvan turns and looks back at him.

Erik's nervousness was already obvious during the veiled threat from Zizka, but only in that smile we can see how scared and how worried he really was for Istvan's safety.

And Istvan. Of course, he had no doubt that his beloved boy would rush to help him even from the other side of the world, but just look at that admiring gaze.

He looks as if he has seen God.

[ithinkthiswasabadidea]

Losing my entire shit at Hanush having his little temper tantrum crash out moment over the fake coins and also Radzig head in hands and attempting to ignore Hanush in the background 😂😭😭

[bucketbender]

I just love how Henry scolds Hans "You were poaching ?! But that’s a capital crime !!" When it’s pretty much canon that’s my boy’s poached non stop does, deers, boars, hares, to feed the Skalitz refugees in kcd1. I like to think that Radzig knew (that he kept a close eye on his people and saw they were eating well shortly after Henry showed up in Rattay) but said nothing to Hanush. He was just proud Henry was taking care of their people. Besides - his son wasn’t POACHING. Only commoners poach. He was only… hunting in the territory of another noble. Without his permission, admittedly.

[madeofcheese]

Finnish meme 🤝 Kingdom Come Deliverance

[poisivey]

"It's like I always imagined it would be, teaching my boy to ride. Although it would be better if you were a little smaller."

babies!

[quorlynl]

I have a very random, weird headcanon that when Henry hit his first teenage growth spurt he became a bottomless pit for food. You could not feed him enough, he was constantly hungry. Fed up with this, Jana went to Radzig and demanded he pay for some of his food. Not because they didn’t have the money but The Principle of it. You helped make that black hole, you help feed it. She never told Martin and Radzig never had the guts to tell him either cause he did not want both Martin and Jana pissed with him. He did use it as excuse to get Henry whatever food he wanted though. (That boy got chill with Radzig somehow and food is the straightest path to his heart followed closely by physical violence contact)

[brittnodo]

I’ve been thinking a lot about this line lately and just…imagine little Henry trying to wrap his head around this feeling that something isn’t quite right, like a puzzle piece that just won’t fit in the overall puzzle. Maybe he brings it up to Ma and Pa and they gently dissuade him from chasing those thoughts because they want to protect him. Maybe later on he confides in Bianca and she tells him he fits in just fine with her. Maybe he gets a little drunk with Hans and they talk easier than they should and Hans just laughs and pats him on the back because doesn’t everyone feel like that sometimes? completely unaware of what he’s saying, that a few feelings might be mixed up there. Maybe Henry holds this offness in him for years and years and then the truth is just spat out at him with casual cruelty and everything and nothing suddenly makes sense and he’s back to being that little boy who didn’t fit in all over again in a brand new landscape