#I have several posts about Barney in the works actually so stay tuned for those ig

[localwhiskeyuncle]

In my last post [x] I briefly touched on (book) Hannibal showing repeated kindness to women, children, and animals and I feel like that's worthy of expansion so here's my breakdown on that:

As far as the animals go - we see this as early as like 13? 14? years old when he beheads Paul Momund. He kills Paul, but he takes the time to free all the fish he had hooked on his line.

We see it again when he is in the last stretch of his revenge killings. After killing Kolnas, he knows he is low on time to find Grutas and save Lady Murasaki, but he still takes the time to free all the ortolans in the cages before setting course for the boat.

And, perhaps this is a little disconnected, but it happens again with Mason Verger. Mason is keeping dogs in a cage, starving them just to see what will happen, and in his attempt at murdering him, Hannibal makes him feed the dogs (his own face, but still lmao).

You'd think a man like Hannibal wouldn't react well to children, but there's material to back up how patient he could be with them.

To start, Mischa is a glaring example, and perhaps the driving influence as to why he is so forgiving to children later in life. Even before tragedy struck, he was described as an odd, cold child - but not with Mischa, never with Mischa. He had an instant overwhelming affection and fascination for her and sacrificed everything he had for her up until the very end of her life.

This trend continues - at the orphanage when Robert Lecter comes to pick him up, after he's found by the Soviets, the headmaster warns Robert of his violent streak. Robert expresses shock that Hannibal is a bully, but the headmaster clarifies that Hannibal is not a bully, he is violent only to the bullies.

Then in France, the reason he is booted from the local school is that he attacked a bully picking on a smaller, weaker child.

The last example you see is when he is leaving Florence, well into adulthood, and he is stuck next to a young child on the plane to America. The kid pesters him for the expensive meal he brought from France, and his parents are terrible and entitled and are offended when Hannibal (understandably) doesn't want to share with this random kid he doesn't know. He begrudgingly gives it to him (mostly bc the kid's mom already shoved her fingers in it and he was like uh gross) and retreats to his mind palace to pout pass the time. He falls into a nightmare about his past and comes to with a shout, making a bit of a scene, but the child shows him high levels of empathy and he is struck by it, and able to return it:

"You had a bad dream, huh?" The child is not frightened, nor does he care about the complaints from the forward rows.

"Yes."

"I have bad dreams lots of times too. I'm not laughing at you."

[...] He bent his head to the child and said in a confidential tone, "You're right not to eat this swill [airline food], you know."

At first he only kept his cool because he was trying to lay low and not draw attention to himself, but the child's reaction to his momentary fear was to comfort him and he was almost stunned by that, and instead of becoming further upset, he starts looking for something to like about the kid. That kid would even drive me insane, it's impressive he could not only keep his composure but find kindness for someone that annoys him so deeply (bc we all know how he feels about annoying people; he killed that cello player in Florence simply bc they sucked but were a nepo baby and wouldn't be fired and he was not gonna put up with bad music lol).

And I suppose you could also tie Mason Verger into this category as well; Mason was an unpleasant man, there were plenty of reasons for Hannibal to want to kill him, but I do think that his crimes against children - children Mischa's age - especially disgusted Hannibal. This is never explicitly stated, but he has a special kind of disdain for Mason.

And lastly, because I believe he feels this the strongest, is his fondness for women.

Very early on in his life, his mother was clearly one of his favorite people. The very first room he built in his mind palace was her bedroom. We don't get a ton on his relationship with his parents, but it's clear he preferred his mother to his father. He admired her beauty, her lineage, her grace, her class. And while Mischa falls under the category of child, she is also a woman, and he loved her most of all.

The next woman he shows reverence for is Lady Murasaki and - while that was driven by romantic feelings - he was still incredibly respectful and kind, even when he felt overwhelmingly bitter about her rejection and her friendly relationship with Inspector Popil.

And then there's Clarice. He did drug her a whole lot for a bit there while he poked around in her psyche (very on brand lol), but he also loved how rough around the edges she was, how she was a 'rude' woman (the kind of woman that gets called a bitch and a cunt by insecure men), how expressive she was, how she had "too much nerve for her own good" (as he put it), he described her as "cursed with taste" much like himself, and he deeply valued her opinion and input. He derailed his entire plan for his (their?) future because he was more than willing to sit and genuinely listen to what she had to say instead of sticking steadfast to his own ideals. When Barney is called on to talk about his take on Hannibal's relationship with Clarice, he first hears a (stupid) psychiatrist talk about how Hannibal only responds to Clarice when she's in distress (I'll get into that whole convo in another post because there's a lot to dig into). In response, Barney says: "In the asylum, Dr. Lecter responded to her when she held onto herself, stood there wiping come off her face and did her job. In the letters he calls her a warrior, and points out that she saved that child in the shoot out. He admires and respects her courage and her discipline." Barney didn't really spend all that much time around the two of them and he was still able to grasp the level of admiration and respect he had for Clarice (and know how stupid it was to believe that his sole interest in her was her distress).

Say what you will about Hannibal Lecter, you cannot deny that he had a soft spot for victims/marginalized people. He was deemed a 'monster', but he was honestly kind of gentle at times. Of course, he was also highly dangerous, but that was not always his default mode.