#i think it also speaks to how death kinda lacks weight in leo's world | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

xserpx · 3 months ago

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Someone clutched at his leg. Curly hair. Freckles. Looked bloody terrified. Everyone did. Didn’t seem to have a weapon. Maybe surrendering. Leo smashed Freckles on the top of the head with the rim of his shield, gave his horse the spurs and trampled him into the mud.

This was no place for good intentions. No place for tedious subtleties or boring counter-arguments. None of his mother’s carping on patience and caution. Everything was beautifully simple. In battle, a man discovers who he truly is, and Leo was the hero he’d always dreamed of being.

— A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie

The Young Lion himself! On his great warhorse with his officers around him and his sword drawn. A bloody hero, like in the storybooks. Starling joined up ’cause of what that man had done at Red Hill. And beating Stour Nightfall in the Circle, and all. He’d seen the way the girls gasped when they heard the tale told and thought, Bloody hell, that’s the job for me.

#the first law #the age of madness #leo dan brock #a little hatred #the trouble with peace #the cycle of it all 😔#i also like how there's not much storybook heroism to leo's fighting style #scared kid surrendering gets 0 mercy 'no corpses no glory'#i think it also speaks to how death kinda lacks weight in leo's world #as if people don't die & the promise of glory makes up for it #it makes me think once again about his relationship with hal & how he haunts leo's narrative #and like i really don't think joe thought it through THAT much but still #leo's strongest beliefs are SO insubstantial it's canonically almost absurd #but they're literally insubstantial too - consigned to memory & myth & fiction #i have no textual evidence but i really think leo hasn't processed his father's death #or maybe he actually is empty inside and just doesn't care about other people to the point where they're like NPCs that despawn #but Something is going on with his attitude towards death #bc i feel like he SHOULD be hot-blooded enough to care deeply #but he's just so unbothered #even with ritter he has that 30 seconds where he's ready to practically give the widow the clothes off his back #and then IMMEDIATELY goes back to being cheered and applauded and he just forgets all about his dead friend #i am rotating him like a rubiks cube

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