Fitz Chivalry Farseer from Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice. AA and RA era.
I fell in love with tudor blackwork shirts, i like the idea of Fitz constantly looking like he was pulled through a hedge backwards while wearing a fairly simple shirt, with rich embroidery as befits his status… (and he thinks he’s just wearing a ‘simple’ shirt….)
My favourite bit in The Elderling Saga has got to be when Chade is forcing Fitz to set aside his personal needs for the sake of the crown (for about the 11th time at that point) and he starts having an internal monologue about having to balance the needs of the crown with his own. This goes on for like a page until Chade points out he hasn't answered the question and Fitz goes "I'm thinking" and gets another page of internal monologue.
Can we just talk about all the revelations that took place in Chapter 30 of Assassins Quest? Never thought I would see a love declaration take place in the middle of a discussion of one's sexual/gender identity, but I was here for it. The way the Fool is written in the first two books--as a very mysterious character--really adds to the whole element of people wondering their gender. In this chapter, I really feel like Fitz starts questioning himself as the Fool challenges his perspective on things. Fitz is stuck on what he cannot have, what he lost (Molly and his choice of life), and that is why he gets defensive of his love for Molly. Then he turns around and says he loves the Fool, “as a man loves another man...”. The Fool “leered” at him as the book says, because the Fool finds it so funny Fitz, after all he has been through, never considered what love between men could look like. Fitz is holding on to a very archaic idea of sexuality and gender, one rooted in the very rigid life he grew up with in royalty, yet Fitz has also felt what it is like to be the outcast in that system. The Fool challenges that, leaving Fitz to acknowledge his love for them, but Fitz is still left with questions. We see Fitz open himself up to these alternate realities in the end of Assassins Quest. (Plus, the kiss the Fool gives Fitz at the end *falls over*)
Also, the Fool referencing gender as “plumbing” had me cackling.