[FICATHON] Not With the Empty Hollowness, for speak_me_fair

[angevin2]

Title: Not With the Empty Hollowness
Author: angevin2
Recipient: speak_me_fair
Play: Richard II
Characters/Pairing: Richard/Anne, Richard/Aumerle, Richard/Robert de Vere, with reference to Richard/Isabel and Richard/minions
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1876
Warnings: Somewhat graphic illness and decay; medieval English attitudes toward the Irish; gratuitous vomit;

Comments

[speak_me_fair]

Firstly: You have broken my heart. Which may have been inevitable with this theme, but still. Wow.

ANYWAY.

Images that stood out for me and were just so immediate and perfect that I ached: Anne singing. Oh God. That just -- there is no comfort possible for Richard having witnessed that.

Robert's desperation: his own eyes were red-rimmed and wet, and his voice sharp. Because sharpness in someone's voice is so often used to mean anger, and here it's despair, and that's perfect.

Richard knowing what he's doing to Edward and unable to stop -- I kept thinking of the quote at this point "The wood of the Cross is cut from the Tree of Knowledge", and marvelling at how apt the whole thing was.

The tomb. Just that entire little perfect section

[angevin2]

I am so so glad that you liked it; as I keep saying, I was really worried! Because you are awesome and deserve awesome fic, and the fics you wrote are so amazing!

Also you were a pretty major influence on the bits with Edward especially. And I kind of get now why people don't usually write Richard/Aumerle from Richard's POV; it's really hard to strike the right balance between affection and toxicity (of course in the Victorian AU Richard talks about it all the time, which helps, though I think writing Richard's POV would still be hard).

(Also also, I was especially proud of the tomb part myself. :D)

[speak_me_fair]

Trying to strike that balance is hell-on-earth, I can see why everyone avoids it!

(and you should be. Because it was SIMPLY AMAZING.)

[angevin2]

It also makes me want to try it and THAT WAY LIES MADNESS.

...which probably does make for a more effective Richard POV, but still!

[gileonnen]

This is really affecting--I couldn't help being struck by all of the ways that Richard attempts to honor life by courting death, by sculpting it and enshrining it, because he's medieval and there is no other good way to mark the value of what is lost. At the same time, though, there's that soulful omnipresence of the dead--it's in part a haunting, yes, but it's also, incredibly, an almost architectural feature of Richard's life. He's built himself upon those losses, housed himself in them, lives in hope of sharing space with the dead. This fic is an incredible series of sketches of loss and mourning, and I'm deeply impressed.

[angevin2]

You always leave such wonderful comments -- they always make me go "Oh yeah, that is what I was doing, isn't it?" :D

I realized belatedly that my epigraph should have been the "thou King Richard's tomb, and not King Richard" bit. I've changed it to that for the AO3 version.

[highfantastical]

Aaaaah, I was reading away and I had comments AND THEN THERE WAS THE END. *trembles brokenly* I mean it is utterly brilliant, but OW OW OW, the pain. Oh God, this is so goood. Richard/Robbie was AGONISING. I mean nice things by listing how upsetting it was, honestly! RII fic should be like this. I loved every moment of it.

[angevin2]

The Richard/Robbie part was really hard to write and I'm not even sure why! It's possible that I was just really emotionally wrung out after writing Anne's death scene and that made the rest of it harder work. So I'm very glad it worked for you.

[eldiablito_sf]

Wow, this just bummed me out PROFOUNDLY. Nice work! Also, nice touch with the Bohemian singing - Eastern Europe is the cradle of depression, after all.

[angevin2]

Hee, thanks. The actual song is not even sad -- it's rather sexy, actually, but in this context, good Lord.

[gehayi]

Richard's new father-in-law is truly mad, so much so that he knows himself only rarely. Sometimes Richard envies his condition.

These two sentences say everything about how much pain Richard is in. I want to hug him and tell him that everything will be all right...and it won't. And I wish that I could give him his Anne and his Robbie, because he loves them both so much, and what's a life without love?

Also, I want to smack Henry for not going to Richard's funeral. I'm sure that, being Henry, there were good and sufficient reasons for that--mostly political--but I still want to box his ears for not going.

[angevin2]

I wanted to hug him too! I often do, which is possibly why I beat on him so much in fic (well, that and that it's canon). ;)

To be entirely fair to Henry, he did attend the requiem mass held in London, but the actual burial was a very low-key affair. There's a really interesting section in Paul Strohm's England's Empty Throne about Richard's burial and reburial.