#fuuuuucccccccccccKKKKKK K

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

Felicia Day voice-acted for Queen Wealhtheow in a read-aloud of Maria Dahavana Headley's translation of Beowulf.

This is a painting of Wealhtheow from an illustrated edition of Beowulf... circa 1908

...and Charlie is a complete Ren Faire nerd who LARPs SPECIFICALLY as the queen of a viking/anglo-saxon-esque kingdom.

The amount of SHEER BRAINROT this gives me.

Is it just a straight past-lives situation at this point? Were they always fated to find each other again?

What's more fucked-up(complimentary)? That in their next lives, the major characters of Beowulf still found each other, and although they are still cursed, still monstrous, Wealhtheow is a friend and ally to Grendel and his Mother? That she doesn't know that she's living out her past life through LARPing and other fantasy, just as they're living out their past lives through a very real, inescapable and fatal curse?

Or that it was the same way the first time? We don't know much about Wealhtheow's early life. She was foreign-born, either married to Hrothgar* in a political union or, depending on who you believe, given to him as a slave as part of a peace treaty (I'm not sure if people in that culture/time would have even considered these to be separate concepts). We don't know anything about where Grendel and his Mother were prior to the events of Beowulf, either, except that Grendel's Mother seems to have ruled here Mere (swamp) for a ~100 years, but also that the pair had wandered the wilderness and outer edges of society together since time immemorial.

Its not impossible that Grendel and his Mother, in their travels, could have saved the life of a foreign princess- become her friend, or her ally.

There are some theories that Wealhtheow may have been from what is now England. If we choose to mix folklore with utter disregard for academia or timestream, that puts her in the place (the culture of the Britons) and time (~500s a.d.) that King Arthur was said to have lived in**. Going by Arthuriana, their relationship with Mysterious, Sword-Bearing Water Women was MUCH friendlier than the Scandinavian cultures featured in Beowulf.

*will need to make a whole other post abt that guy

**spn aside, the Arthur/Beowulf thing is FASCINATING and I need to write something with it at some point

They could have been friends. Its not impossible. Their story could have begun the same as it did in spn...

It ended differently the first time (THE FIRST TIME. SPN WASNT THE FIRST TIME. FUCK!!!!). Still in tragedy, just a different kind, a slower kind. Did Grendel or his Mother see Wealhtheow at Heorot after she was married/given/captured? Did Wealhtheow see them? Did they speak, or part in silence, knowing that they were now on opposite sides of an impassable boundary?

Did Wealhtheow hold back tears as she saw Grendel's arm, and later his head, and learned what had happened to his Mother?

Did she remember her friends?

.....FUCKKKKKKK

Charlie has almost definitely read Beowulf, but I don't know if Sam & Dean ever told her (any version of her) about the Mark of Cain situation. Did she recognize them in the text? Did she recognize herself?