#his stupid fortune cookie ass self (bursts into tears)

[faworsley]

@captain-poodle

U get it … I think I could fix him. And also break him like a toy skinamarink phone that rolls down the stairs. He’ oh rats. Nvm post derailed now I’m thinking sad things abt him going to war so young again. Ughh sorry y’all I’m gonna get academic with this one

It was so common like 200 years ago for young boys to begin military/navy/sail training before they were even teenagers, but something about not just beginning tutoring for a military career, or even beginning an apprenticeship on a boat, but straight up shipping off to the OPIUM WAR at that age.. (ok. So like. Infodumping separated from Actual thoughts by the brackets, but also by the next reaction image). ALSO! I will use * to denote when I’m merging real life info with whatever is going on in the show because the two are combined in my head.

[For more context he was born in 1825 and went to serve in the Egyptian Ottoman War at 15 before going directly then to the First Opium War in China.

The Egyptian Ottoman War was one of the first (to my meagre knowledge) opportunities for the British Navy to show off the effective training of HMS Excellent—which Charles Des Voeux was also trained on, along with (though at different times) others y’all will recognize: Robert Sargent and James Walter Fairholme of HMS Erebus, and John Irving and George Henry Hodgson of HMS Terror.

But HMS Excellent was firing from offshore, and there were comparatively extremely few British casualties. Charles Des Voeux was under the command of Charles Napier, who began with an offshore attack before (with CFDV in tow) leading a troop in a land assault.

So this 15yo is not aboard the ship while everyone is manning the artillery (sorry that may be the wrong word, I know many of my mutuals are wiser on this than me, so feel free to chime in on any of this!), he was on the ground in active combat. He had been sailing, but he hadn’t seen combat before this point. On a side note, while under the command of Charles Napier during the ground assault, he would have first met James Fitzjames, who came ashore for the assault and was recognized by Napier for this unnecessary self endangerment (as he wasn’t a part of Napier’s force). Fitzjames isn’t related to the ‘Ough’ of it all but I do know he’s also not Erebus Crew Member 7 with no lines as they say, so he’s a good frame of reference for Terrorists.

And then right afterward, CFDV went on to fight in the First Opium War alongside first William Parker and then Frederick Grey. He was a part of the Battles of Amoy, Ningbo, Woosung, and Chinkiang. Amoy would’ve been an offshore assault from where Des Voeux was participating, but each of the other battles would have had him advancing on land. While he was working closely with Viscount Gough he would have been at the Battles of Canton and Zhapu—both more intensive ground assaults—and while with the Cornwallis would’ve also been privy to the Treaty of Nanking.

And for the Fitzjames enthusiasts, his time first with Parker on the Cornwallis would have included his meeting Stanley, and again Fitzjames, when Fitzjames came aboard for treatment (for the single musket-ball, size of a cherry). Though he had probably already met Fitzjames, this is the point when they would actually get to know each other.]

So yeah. All that yapping about the historical events is to say basically. Regardless of the time period and the social expectations of the Victorian society I think it is absolutely crazy that you would send a 15 year old to fight on the front lines with no prior military experience and quite possibly no sailing experience. A 15 year old should not be put in that position! Of having to do and witness those things, as they say, for the economy. And for a country that clearly does not really care about their wellbeing. Though NOT in defense of it all, but more as an explanation, he was Irish. Which to the Victorian Navy may have made it more acceptable since he was going to grow up to be an Irish Adult. Victorians hated to see it.

As usual I tend to incorporate what little we know from other accounts of his real world personality—via Fitzjames, an “unexceptionable, clever, agreeable, light-hearted, obliging young man” and “a great favorite of Hodgson’s besides”—with his show self, but I draw my little parallels. I consider how these experiences etc. made him into the nasty little chihuahua we see aboard Erebus.*

I mean this is a child, this thing is barely even a teenager, and certainly not an adult. Any old adult can sign up to be in the military, any old adult can form whatever political opinions they want and take drugs and go sailing and leave their family behind. This single Irish bacterium . I can’t get him out of my head.

I think what sticks so solidly in my head about it all is that it started so young, and we like to tell ourselves that this doesn’t happen anymore but it very much still does. 15 year-old real life Charles Frederick Des Voeux would almost certainly not have thought that he was racist, a colonizer (at least with our modern attitude about it), part of the British Imperialist machine, but he absolutely was, and his going into all that no more than a single apple tall doesn’t change it.

And—this is heavily merging his show portrayal and his real self—the changes between the way he’s described during the Opium Wars and the way he behaves aboard Erebus are in some way symptomatic of all that. He still makes a lot of jokes with the other crew members, most notably (to me <3 I think I did describe this in another one of my annoying and looooong CDV contemplation posts but I shan’t bother finding/linking it lmao) his attempts to get Stanley’s attention and stay friendly with Dundy.

But he is never cheerful or in a good mood aside from that. He is consistently pissed off to have to be doing this job. And it’s not a pleasant situation to be in, of course, but he seems to be taking it worse than the others. From day one, not even considering the time they’re stuck in the pack, or worse, when they have to abandon the ships and begin sending out parties for the cairns, he looks consistently frustrated that he has to be doing all these tasks that just come with his rank. On the trek with Graham, on watch with Dundy, in camp with Hickey, in sickbay with Stanley, and even, rather critically, at Carnivale once Crozier shows up.

He is trying so hard to just make it through from day to day, and he is really not succeeding. From the looks he gives Goodsir when he is bringing dinner to Silna to the way he stands when Goodsir is bringing out the meat for the mutineers I notice over the course of the expedition, even as he is promoted and his rank is higher, he is reduced to the age he really is in comparison with his elder, more experienced, more mature, and perhaps better equipped peers.

His last scene, final girl Charles Des Voeux dying on the shale as Silna leaves him in the dust, is just a wee glimpse of that.* I would love to say that maybe at least in this last moment he realizes that his being liked by his peers (pre Erebus*) and having been successful enough to become a Lieutenant at age 19 (officially, though 22 out on the shale*), all of that was his own world. And the orbit of his actions extends far beyond that, in ways he likely has never bothered to consider, and those ways have exclusively been to the detriment of people he will never meet and quite possibly doesn’t consider to be people in the way that he is.

I don’t think it’s too far out of left field to think that way about it, either, considering how thoughtfully Dave wrote the show. But more realistically for him (CFDV, not Dave), at the end of the day that last weak grab for the sledge was, in my opinion, just his own selfish frustration with Silna. I think even in the end he thought she was being unfair, or that he didn’t deserve to die like that.