#and who can't disapprove of you making death threats in their name

[utilitycaster]

Without FAIL every single person I've seen throw a fit over people "being mean" to fictional characters is extremely awful towards the real people they perceive as being insufficiently respectful towards the pretend people

[jazzmckay]

'Killing's what swords are for': an Oghren analysis

companion piece to my other meta, 'I am your Paragon': a Branka analysis"

upon walking into the orzammar commons, you encounter an argument between two groups of dwarves that turns into a fight, resulting in one being killed. this is your first introduction to the political situation in orzammar, to bhelen and harrowmont, and to dwarven culture itself. the captain of the guard laments that the warden--an outsider--happened to arrive in time to see this, as it makes the dwarves look violent and disorderly. he seems to disapprove of the fight being witnessed by an outsider more than he disapproves of the fight happening at all.

behind him, a grand bridge stretches across the city, a bigger and more eye-catching landmark than anything else around it, even the doors that lead to the diamond quarter, which houses the shaperate and the royal palace. this bridge leads to the provings, where dwarves pit themselves against each other, sometimes to resolve grievances, sometimes just to fight for fighting's sake.

the dwarves are fighters. with the constant threat of darkspawn pushing at the borders of what's left of their empire, they have to be.

orzammar is also thoroughly structured. the caste system defines who a person is--who they must be. everyone has a role, given to them by birth. there are rules, and the dwarves follow them strictly. duty is the most important thing, and the cost of rebelling is steep. if an individual should step out of these rigid boundaries, the only recourse is an honourable death by joining the legion of the dead. otherwise, the casteless are left in the destitute dust town, or they go to the surface; both options involve that dwarf being removed from their people's records, no longer a recognized member of their society.

between this strictly regimented system and the value placed on their warriors and defenders, dwarven society exists on the razor's edge between violence and order. in some ways, it's a blend of the two. in other ways, the impossible dichotomy can ruin a person who only ever sought to be what orzammar needed them to be.

oghren is a member of the warrior caste, and he is also a beserker. his purpose in life is to be a fighter, a defender, a protector. the warrior caste is the sword and shield of orzammar. without them, darkspawn would likely overwhelm the legion of the dead and then lay siege to the city, and so they are trained--and expected--to be as fearsome of a warrior as they can be.

as a warrior, oghren was successful, and gained respect and renown. being an exemplary member of the warrior caste, he was chosen to marry branka, who was an exemplary member of the smith class. oghren was already interested in felsi, but he did his duty to his people and gave her up to marry branka. they were both recognized for their accomplishments and upheld as role models, all the way to branka eventually being named a paragon, a living ancestor, akin to a god.

and then branka disappeared.

and orzammar gave up on her.

anyone you talk to about branka will tell you what a genius she was, about the invention of hers that earned her paragon status. they'll also tell you that she's been gone in the deep roads for so long that there's no way she's still alive. people have accepted that she's gone, and it's a waste to send search parties out after her, as they'll just lose more people in the process.

oghren can't let this go. branka is his wife, and it's easy to see how much she means to him--even though their relationship was rocky--in how he talks about her accomplishments, her cunning, her tenacity. to him, it's a disrespect for orzammar to give up on her and assume her dead. he's convinced she's still alive out there, and the lack of belief from others, the lack of action, is maddening for him.

oghren describes being a berserker as "mad rage". he says:

Oghren: The hard part is getting in touch with your rage. We all learn to hold that back. It's why we don't kill every duster who looks at us sideways. You need to shut that off.

being a beserker on behalf of orzammar means unleashing that mad rage in defense of the city, and when orzammar abandons oghren's wife, their paragon, he is understandably livid. this leads to him demanding action, and killing a lord's son who doubted branka was still alive, in a duel that was meant to only be to first blood. the warden first encounters oghren when he's arguing with loilinar ivo about the lack of support for branka, and he'll explain the situation oghren is now in, two years after branka's disappearance and as a result of him killing that lord's son:

Loilinar: It was a huge scandal. Oghren should've been executed, but he'd won honours in the Deep Roads. Instead, they stripped him of all weapons, and forbid him from engaging in fights within city limits. If he breaks the decree, he'll be exiled.

loilinar also aptly refers to oghren as "practically gelded". oghren is a warrior, and a berseker, who served orzammar well enough to gain honours and be part of an arranged match. his rage has been a tool for orzammar's protection. he played his role perfectly, up until orzammar abandoned branka. he gave everything to orzammar, and only lost everything in return. he may not have been exiled immediately, he may still be oghren of house branka, but house branka no longer exists in the eyes of most. the entire house, oghren excluded, disappeared, and is presumed dead. oghren is still allowed in orzammar but he isn't allowed to carry weapons, he no longer has his family, he no longer has his people's respect. the only thing that's left to him now is drinking away his sorrows and trying, again and again, to convince someone, anyone, that it's worth sending a group after branka.

when you first get to speak with oghren, he's drunk, angry, and distrusting. he calls you out for doing dirty work for one of the potential kings. he doesn't believe you genuinely want to help him find branka out of the good of your heart. and what reason does he have to think otherwise? no one else is willing to help him, especially not without ulterior motives. the warden is just a stranger, or worse, a lackey for the kinds of people who have disrespected branka and ignored his pleas. his rage has been simmering without an outlet for two years. his city has given up on him as much as it gave up on branka. the oghren you meet is a shadow of his former self, beaten down, practically a nobody.

oghren was orzammar's sword. killing is what he is for. all he ever tried to do was be what orzammar needed him to be, to fit in that strict caste system, but how could he, when he was taught to give into a wild, mad rage, within a society built on rules and order?

oghren himself says it best later on, when you ask him about the warrior caste:

Oghren: You get a sword or an axe and are told to go out and defend your city. It's the best thing in the world, that is until you try to live in the city you saved. I mean, they train you to kill, teach you to harness your rage at the first noise you hear, then try to set a hundred sodding rules about it. Like those Provings. Ancestors show their favor through the strongest arm, right? So why so many rules saying how to fight and when you win, and not to bloody kill? Killing's what swords are for! You toss a nug to a deep stalker, you don't expect it not to eat the thing, right?

while branka is lost and doomed in her drive to live up to orzammar's standards, oghren still has a chance for escape. after completing paragon of her kind, oghren leaves orzammar without any hesitation. becoming a surfacer is exile, it is to be casteless, and many dwarves are wary of what lies beyond their city, with that vast open sky above. but oghren doesn't hesitate, and he's hardly fazed. later, he expresses that he doesn't miss orzammar:

Oghren: What? Miss Orzammar? Are you mad, in addition to being ugly? They treated me like a puddle-fly back there. I'm never going back.

and that he prefers the broader, less strict world of the surface:

Oghren: No one has any idea who you are. Or what you're doing.

in essence, he's free. he has a blank slate. he isn't a member of the warrior class, he isn't the husband of a paragon, he isn't oghren of house branka. he is a companion to the warden, and will fight against the blight, but these are connections he chose and willingly aligned with. when all this is said and done, he can do anything he wants with his life.

oghren's personal mission isn't just about hooking him up with an old flame. it's about helping him get what he truly wants, if felsi will have him back, and a second chance at a life that will make him genuinely happy. in the awakening dlc, his personal mission then is about balancing the person orzammar made him into with having a family. everything that happened in orzammar has left a mark on him; settling down completely may never be possible for him. he feels like killing is all he's good at, and now he has joined the wardens as well, but with the right encouragement, he can embrace fatherhood.

it may not be the most picture-perfect ending, but it works. oghren has gotten to make choices for himself, and the grey wardens provide him an outlet, give him the chance to still fight orzammar's main enemy on his own terms, and to fight along comrades who are all equal, who see him as a brother-in-arms without any politics, expectations, or additional obligations in play.

in the oghren the family man quest, when encouraged to stay in touch with his family, oghren says:

Oghren: And hey, (chuckles) the little one will grow up thinking Daddy's a great hero.

and maybe that is all oghren needs to be happy, in the end, after giving all of himself to every fight he has faced: to be seen as a hero.

[heartofstanding]

I think that's a very fair assessment. It makes a lot of sense for them to be linked. IIRC, the charges against Arthur and the other four members of Humphrey's household who were arrested appear to be that they were conspiring with Humphrey to free Eleanor and make Humphrey king and since they were arrested at the same time Humphrey was, it suggests that was the specific accusation of treason against Humphrey. So I think you can see Humphrey's and Arthur's arrests as an extension of Eleanor's case. Juliana Ridligo doesn't seem to have had any real connection with Humphrey or Eleanor (she wasn't part of their household or did business with them - at least as far as we know) but obviously her defence of them links her to their cases. In a rather weird twist, she told Henry that he would be the death of Humphrey. Which. Wasn't inaccurate.

But yeah, there does seem to have been a serious falling out between Henry and Humphrey, possibly driven by Eleanor's case though possibly also relating to a split between them earlier (possibly Humphrey's very public and vehement disapproval of the release of Charles, Duke of Orleans), and the accusations against Eleanor and the ecclesiastical court finding her guilty would have only further alienated Henry from Humphrey.

I absolutely think that the belief in Eleanor's guilt is just... convenient for a lot of historians. You often find the idea that she was "really guilty" in the work of historians writing revisionist histories of the Beauforts (like Nathen Amin), Suffolk (John Watts) and Henry VI (Lauren Johnson), because her innocence makes them look bad. It's a pretty gendered thing, really, because these same historians often declare that everyone was justified in going after Humphrey (or York or whoever) because he was, or had been, a "threat" to them, and it exists in this sort of grimdark medieval world full of macho posturing. To say that Somerset and Suffolk set Humphrey up to deal with the threat he posed characterises them as wily and badass and, simultaneously as victims acting in the name of survival. Humphrey, even though he was an ageing, sick man who posed no real threat to the regime, could be imagined to be a threat in masculine terms. He could raise and command armies, put his enemies to the sword, act with the authority of parliament.

But Eleanor, as a woman, is left with the weapons of soft power/influence and magic that she can't wield herself. She's a much, much weaker opponent and Suffolk and Cardinal Beaufort seem much more like weak bullies to deal with her in an underhanded way. And if the accusations are false, it makes Henry VI seem overly credulous and superstitious for not seeing through them and for his harsh treatment of her.

And of course, there's a big difference in the sense that the attack on Humphrey resulted in Humphrey's probably-natural death and the arrest and pardon of five of his household, while the attack on Eleanor left her alive but three people dead, two in horrific circumstances (Roger Bolingbroke was hanged, disembowelled and beheaded, Margery Jourdemayne was burnt to death - both at the centre of spectacles; Thomas Southwell died before he could be executed, possibly from suicide, possibly from the conditions he was kept in).

God, I know. And of course you have to filter things through a medieval perspective so you don't end up with "they believed in the divine right of kings, ergo they had narcissistic personality disorder!" type of reasoning. One of the things that I constantly think is John Blacman's life of Henry. He was quite close to Henry so he's a good source in terms of accuracy... except he was writing to promote Henry as a saint, so it is a hagiography and employs the tropes of hagiography so Blacman is probably not interested in recording the truth but crafting Henry's sainthood.

There's stuff in it like Henry fleeing from the sight of topless women dancers or how he had secret windows on which he would spy on members of his household and "keep a careful watch ... lest any foolish impertinence of women coming into the house should grow to a head and cause the fall of any of his household." And you read it and go: what's going on there? Is it a sign of him having a pathological fear of women? Is he sex-repulsed and asexual? Is it a symptom of a mental illness (e.g. as Cory James Rushton speculated, for schizophrenia; or as @shredsandpatches speculated for scrupulosity OCD)? Is it even a true story, since the trope of the male saint tempted by beautiful women and violently rejecting it is quite common (St Benedict rolled himself in a patch of briars and nettles to rid himself of temptation; there's also the trope of the mystical castration, Henry's fleeing and spying look positively well-adjusted next to that)?

And. Like. we're never going to know. And some people get more concerned with the idea that Henry couldn't have a Bad Mental Illness™️like schizophrenia than the ableism and continued dehumanisation of Henry (literally saw Lauren Johnson quote-tweeting a tweet calling Henry VI a muppet to chide the repliers defending Henry because it's "problematic" to say Henry had schizophrenia). She also wrote a blog declaring Henry couldn't have inherited his mental illness from his maternal family because Charles VI had a Bad Mental Illness (schizophrenia) whose symptoms include "murder". Murder isn't a symptom on the DSM last time I checked so...

(And I mean, I don't necessarily think Henry did inherit his mental illness from Charles (I don't think his paternal family were that mentally healthy either) but we don't and can't know for sure. I do think it's "problematic" to list murder as a symptom when the murder occurred within a psychotic break when he believed he was being attacked, and that to effectively act like Charles had the Bad Mental Illness as if he's somehow responsible for it.)

#it's been so difficult to find out if Henry had symptoms before the catatonic episodes#because all you get is 'oh he was so dumb'#(when he provably wasn't)#Idk this entire situation is so murky on all sides#it feels like it's all really simple or really not

I vote "really not". My hunch is that there were probably symptoms before his first known breakdown but there's really no real way to know. Some historians think he just suddenly had a breakdown in 1453 (and his recovery was just as sudden), some read symptoms into the surviving evidence. I've wondered if he had some minor breakdown or health crisis in 1440 or 1441 that led to the accusations against Eleanor - whether it threw the problems of the succession into fresh light (the childless Henry dying and leaving his childless and ageing uncle king, the fact that a lot of people were probably Not Happy about the prospect of King Humphrey I,) or whether the trial against Eleanor served as a distraction and a reassertion of kingly strength. But of course that's just me speculating about evidence. The astrological chart for Henry that Eleanor allegedly commissioned is pretty interesting in regards to Henry's mental health because from what I've read, it really doesn't paint a flattering picture of Henry (Frank Millard argues iirc that the accusations against Eleanor were really more about suppressing the chart than any political strike against Eleanor or Humphrey).

Why do you think Henry went after Eleanor? What little I've read about it explains everyone else's motivations, but not Henry's, which is strange to me considering the whole ordering a woman to be crushed to death for saying Eleanor is innocent. It seems very ooc for Henry being such a pacifist. I could see it being guilt if his motives were political, but I really don't know enough. I've been meaning to ask you for a while, because it's bugging me

OK, so, one of the biggest issues with Henry VI's reign is that no one agrees on when, if ever, he began ruling in his own right. So you have Bertram Wolffe and Ralph Griffiths who argue Henry was involved politically (albeit in differing terms) and K. B. MacFarlane and John Watts who argue that Henry was incapable of ruling and was entirely absent as a king. It's also just really hard to get a sense of when Henry was behind something. Contemporary criticisms of his rule tended to frame themselves as blaming people close to him (namely Suffolk, Somerset and Margaret) rather than Henry himself (which isn't that unusual - you also have the "blame the favourite, not the king" thing in Edward II and Richard II's reigns) so it's often easier to put them at the centre of what was going on and to talk about their motivations rather than Henry's, even if their motivations are ultimately a construction of propaganda.

That's a big part in why Henry's motivations aren't really discussed re: Eleanor. There's a lot more evidence of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester's feud with Cardinal Beaufort or potentially clashing with Suffolk so Eleanor's downfall is generally considered to be a result of those factors rather than anything from Henry's side. That's, of course, when the author isn't going "um have you considered Gloucester is everything wrong with Henry VI's reign and invented factionalism? so clearly his wife was guilty :) More importantly, there is NO EVIDENCE that my fave did anything wrong anyone but her own stupid ambitious female self had anything to do with it :) ".

There's no evidence of Henry's direct involvement in the accusations - but then, as I said, the same could apply to Suffolk and Cardinal Beaufort so I don't think we can rule it out entirely. I think there are a number of possible scenarios:

The witchcraft accusations were true, there was no plot framing Eleanor

The witchcraft accusations were exaggerated or false but Henry is not involved in their creation

The witchcraft accusations were exaggerated or false and Henry was involved in their creation.

In the first scenario, Henry reacts as he "ought" to and Eleanor is deservedly punished. Juliana Ridligo's declaration of Eleanor's innocence may be viewed either as ignorance or malignant. It is interesting that given Henry later pardoned unasked a man who spoke treasonably about him that he didn't intervene with Juliana's case, which might suggest he was particularly sensitive or felt Juliana was speaking on behalf of a much more serious threat that needed to be squashed.

The second scenario is one I tend to think is mostly likely (but then I would think that). I've personally tended to think Henry VI reacted emotionally, not politically, to the accusations. I think he believed the accusations and reacted in genuine fear, and that fear silenced any doubts he might have had about Eleanor's innocence. And then you get the guilty subconscious that violently shuts down any suggestion of her innocence because to doubt her guilt means to acknowledge some uncomfortable possible-truths about himself and his court. Like, if Eleanor was innocent, it means someone set her up and that person was probably someone who Henry trusted or was in the court. It's easier to accept the court corrupted by one bad person who is duly cast out than it is to accept the corruption might be widespread. It also means that Henry was ruled by fear and let innocents suffer because he couldn't see through the accusations. And Henry may well have felt relieved that Gloucester had the wind taken out of his sails so he could no longer be quite the thorn in Henry's side as he had been. Henry's non-intervention in Juliana's case is then about maintaining Eleanor's guilt and justifying his own reactions.

There's also a nastier reading of Henry in this scenario, brought to you by Bertram Wolffe who posits that the reaction to the accusations was an overreaction and links it to Gloucester's resistance to the release of Charles, Duke of Orleans the year previously. Wolffe's version of Henry tends to be motivated by spite so the treatment of Eleanor and Juliana may well be read as revenge against Gloucester's intransigence and against Juliana openly challenging him. I don't particularly agree with Wolffe's interpretation but it's worthwhile mentioning it.

There is no evidence that Henry was directly involved in the accusations as anything but a hapless and innocent victim and I don't think it's likely given that there are signs of Henry displaying anxiety around the accusations. But it is possible, particularly if we're building on Wolffe's spiteful Henry, that he may have been involved in their fabrication. If he was involved, it might have been for similar reasons given above - he wanted to punish Gloucester - or the motivations usually ascribed to Suffolk and Beaufort, i.e. he wanted to force Gloucester into retirement or to silence him.

It's also possible that the accusations were less about Gloucester than is usually supposed and actually about Eleanor. In the second scenario, where Henry's not involved, it might be that Eleanor was viewed as having too much influence over Henry or as a mediating force between Henry and Gloucester that needed to be gotten rid of if Suffolk or Beaufort wanted to shut Gloucester down completely. If so, Henry may have reacted in shock and horror, believing the accusations or at least not wanting to risk not believing them.

In the third scenario, the motivations may have been more personal than political. Henry might not have liked her and wanted her away from his court. He may have thought she influenced Gloucester in the wrong direction or, given the common reading of Henry as repulsed by sex and Eleanor's own reputation, it may well that he saw Eleanor as a malignant avatar of female sexuality that was best expelled from his court. Juliana Ridligo would also fall into the last category, a subversive woman to be silenced.

And all of this is changed if we take the McFarlane-Watts belief of Henry as the "inane child" as true. In this view, the third scenario is untenable - these readings have Henry incapable of so much it's impossible to imagine him being involved in fabricated accusations as more than an innocent patsy. Henry's reactions to the (real or fake) accusations and to Juliana, would be emotional rather than political. It's doubtful that this Henry would have any real impact on the official response to both Eleanor and Juliana except as the innocent victim of their evil and subversiveness, though.

As I said, my personal interpretation is that he reacted in genuine fear and belief in the accusations. I don't particularly like the more spiteful interpretations of him - the "he wanted her gone because she was a lady who had sex" in particular is strikes me as some Freudian bullshit. And while I've referenced Bertram Wolffe's take on Henry, it isn't a view of Henry that's widely accepted.

[bgs-cave-o-thots]

I assume I should come here for this, but if I'm in the wrong spot, let me know.

Orbot and Cubot AUs? 👀 I'd love to hear some, please! 👉👈

Okay I'm gonna make a list of the ones I have some decent amount of stuff for but fair warning I do a LOT of angst so there's a lot of sad stuff. Everything's TW'd, you (or anyone else) can pick one for me to ramble about first if you want:

Soldierbot AU - AU where shapebots are weaponized and mass-produced like more intelligent Badniks. This particular AU focuses on a team of soldierbots that don't follow the social rules that have been imposed on the soldiers, which makes those in charge of them view them as a threat. My first Orbot and Cubot AU, also has a few shapebot OCs. TWs for abuse, minor character death, possible references to torture.

Stranded AU - This is less of a solid AU and more a collection of oneshot ideas based around the same scenario. Basically, Orbot and Cubot come online one day to find they've been left in the middle of nowhere, and are trying to get back to Eggman on their own before they run out of battery. No TWs apply.

Ask Cueball - I can't really ramble much about this one yet because I worry if I do I won't finish the actual comic, but anyone who hasn't read it yet can check it out at @ask-cueball.

Axleverse - It's several years after canon and Orbot and Cubot have accidentally made a son, Axle. Axle is a mix between Orbot, Cubot, and a little bit of Egg Pawn (and the fighter code in him from the Egg Pawn can cause problems sometimes). This one's mostly family shenanigans, but there is a bit of angst along with Eggman's harsh disapproval for Axle's existence. This AU has multiple spinoffs with varying types of content, but in the main Axleverse, no TWs apply.

Botfight AU - This one started as an Orbot and Cubot AU but has since extended to the whole cast. Heavily inspired by the show BattleBots. For the part involving the shapes though, basically botfighting is the most popular sport in the world, and Eggman is a legendary botfighting captain, his champion bot is Metal Sonic. He bought Orbot and Cubot off some other inventor and has modified them against his will into fighting robots and has them "train" for the big leagues in illegal botfighting rings. This is a more recent one that I've been fixating on a bit lately. TWs for abuse, heavy injury (not gore), minor/background character death.

KyOri (Human) AU - AU where Orbot and Cubot are humans (or human-passing androids, no one really knows except Eggman) named Ori and Kyu. Erin (Ergo, the Sonic Unleashed Orbot) is also human. The rest of the cast are still their canon species. TWs for abuse, heavy injury (not gore), starvation/ED, gaslighting/manipulation.

His Faulty A.I. AU - Loosely based on KyOri AU, Kyu (Cubot) is a young computer scientist that created O.R.I. (Orbot), an AI with sentience and personality. This one's basically a slowburn "robot that falls in love with its creator" story, because I'm a sucker for that trope. No TWs apply.

Those are all the ones I have a lot of ideas for, I have a few more (Transformers AU, SA2 AU, Bugsnax AU, probably a couple more I'm forgetting) but they aren't nearly as expanded on, some of them have nothing more than drawings.