#if only s1 Stede knew.... that he's going to have a man in his bed soon.... oh if only he knew.....

[figmentof]

OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH 1x01 \\ 2x06

[teeny-tiny-revenge]

The scene where Ed says he never apologized for anything is basically framed by scenes where various crew members stress that they were never apologized to (notably these are Revenge crew people, not Ed's original crew). I always thought it was meant to be read as "look at all these pirates who are from a culture that doesn't do apologies". Does anyone think Hornigold apologized for anything ever to Ed? He clearly doesn't! No, he feels that killing a kid over taking food is just a thing that's done, tough life, gotta move on man. And yes, this Hornigold is in Ed's head and not real, but he's based on the real Hornigold Ed grew up sailing under and I don't think this part is exaggerated. And! We see other pirates not apologizing and being basically unfamiliar with the concept of apologies, forgiveness and second chances: Zheng and Auntie for example. Does anyone think the Pirate Queen goes around apologizing to her crew for things? Does anyone think Spanish Jackie goes around throwing out hugs and apologies? They don't do that! We get basically shown not a single character from the culture of piracy who has genuinely experienced apologies!

And I always thought that's so transparent and obvious, and that it's also obvious that the scene with Ed isn't only meant as "oh look he's learning a new thing" (which is good btw!) but also as "oh fuck look at all of these poor guys (including Ed!) who never heard any apologies for anything".

Pirate culture is not good for you. I think this is something a lot of people misunderstood in season one, where we mostly get to see Stede's romantised look at pirate life. Season two shows us several other instances of normal pirate culture, from Zheng's ship(s) over Jackie to Ned Low and the guys at the Republic of Pirates, we are shown so many established pirates who aren't Ed, and all of them live this miserable life full of cruelty. S1 only hinted at why Ed wants out of piracy, S2 took people basically by the hand to go "hey look piracy bad!" And people did not get it! They instead decided that only Ed is bad, because he never apologized, obviously sucks as a person! And this is not at all the message the show is sending. Either everyone who is a pirate sucks, or they are all victims of a cruel world, including Ed, who was once a young pirate like various of the Revenge crew members are now, and who had to learn to play by pirate culture rules to survive, so no, he doesn't apologize to anyone ever and he doesn't have any friends. (Why do we think Calico Jack says pirates don't have any friends and only fuck each other over? It's because Jack too is from this culture of never being nice to each other and never apologizing, bit hard to make friends there!)

We see Ed get betrayed by several "friends" and peers: Izzy, Jack, Mary and Anne... Note how none of these people think about apologizing to him for any of it (except for Izzy on his literal death bed, which is several of betrayals in).

He says it so casually, but Ed never apologizing and never having heard an apology in turn, is a tragedy and I think it was meant to be read this way. We are supposed to be sad about it, just like we are supposed to be sad all the other pirates only knew this cruel culture before. We can also be hopeful for them, though, because all of them now have a chance to heal.

"I never apologized for jack shit as a pirate captain" is a statement about the role and station of pirate captain much more than a statement about Ed as a person.

Hey so I know that Ed says that as captain he never apologized for anything, but how often do you think anyone ever apologized to him? Not just a "sorry boss, we didn't find the loot," but a genuine, heartfelt apology from someone who really hurt him in some way? Because I'm willing to bet that before he met Stede, the last person who would've even thought to offer that to Ed was his mother who he hasn't seen in decades