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kcd x peanuts!

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✨Audentes fortuna iuvat!✨

This was incredibly fun to draw! I love this game so much 😭

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just them

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Bianca and Theresa sketch ☺️

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The Alchemical Herbs of Kingdom Come: Deliverance (PRINTS)

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i really, really appreciate the nuance in KCD and in A Woman's Lot DLC regarding gender and class in medieval europe

like yes theresa does have to get married eventually. that's an imperative for a woman in her station of that time period. the survival and economic stability of herself and her family depend on it, and she does not necessarily get that much of a say in the ultimate decision. but she's more upset at her future husband being older (and not henry) than the concept of getting married itself. and in the days leading up to the attack on skalitz, she can drink ale and haul flour and learn how to shoot a bow and arrow and traipse around skalitz with her dog and get mud on her dress.

there are absolutely Rules that structure her life, but they are definitely Not The Same Rules that structure the life of women born into a higher station.

like even the nuance with her father arranging a marriage for her! her father does spring the idea of marriage on her, which is a bad look for him. however, it is still his responsibility to take care of such things, and economics feature heavily in that decision making process. but it's not the end of the world if it doesn't go well immediately, if theresa gets cold feet for meeting with her fiancee-to-be. there are no potential alliances to be built or broken, no lands to be fought over, no livelihoods to protect - the stakes are generally lower.

there's room in the relationship between father and daughter for discussion, for apologies, for the potential of feedback that never gets realized.

i just. A Woman's Lot DLC.

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radzig was a beholder to henry’s life not out of lack of care but precisely otherwise. it needs to be understood that radzig could never have been a warm participant, and certainly could not have played the doting father.

and put oneself in the shoes of henry’s mother, whose pregnancy not only infringed wedlock but class, yet whose child was raised by a socially sound and kind man. she loved martin and could do so freely! they were so secure in their love, in fact, that they could share a joke about their son’s blue-bloodedness without an ounce of insecurity. she found her disposition a great blessing! imagine having this unique contentment within your grasp while living by the palisades of an over-involved lord? a lord whose entitlement won over his judgement? a lord who invites rumor and ignores anxiety? a lord who loves but fails to see he does one more thing above all: to lord over.

all three of henry’s parents acted as wisely as they could have. radzig’s abstention was a kindness. even after the reveal, prudence remains the better part of valour: he may not hold his son’s hands but he allows them to be equipped. henry’s lot in life was sealed by pragmatism which can look a great deal like indifference to modern eyes. but make no mistake, he was and is cared for.

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Good Boy!

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You silly doggy!

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managed to successfully hunt game for the first time in KCD when a roe-deer spawned on the path ahead of me near rattay (after siccing mutt on a hare north of ledetchko and then immediately getting insta-killed by bandits)

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no one talk to me my nieche yaoi just went canon. painting

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Yesterday's chores were anything but routine. Let's hope it's quieter today.

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girl save me

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oh, fine. let's talk about sin.

This is a note about religion and KCD2—particularly how it applies to Hans & Henry’s relationship development.

It isn’t my intention to write the definitive post on this subject, and this is certainly not an academic summary, a Tumblr History Lesson, or a thesis statement on why you can’t write whatever the hell you please. But as much as I detest fandom discourse, I also dislike seeing my words misused as a bludgeon against fan writers, and so I am stepping in to provide what I hope will be some useful CliffsNotes to everyone.

Take them or leave them, they are here with the intention to help fic writers make (briefly) informed decisions about how to embark on their creative research. KCD2 spoilers under the cut.

The medieval Catholic Church's doctrines were not representative of a homogeneous, mythical One Medieval Worldview on everyday life—nor was the MCC a monolith of its own. It is important to differentiate the Catholic institution from “the average medieval person’s ideas about daily life.” A quick foray into documents and moral treatises written by church officials at the time will reveal that the clergy was also not a monolith, but a hierarchy of individuals with vastly different ideas and recommendations on how humans should live. We simply cannot stamp a single religious document, decree, or interpretation (that was successfully published and preserved for hundreds of years; the vast majority were not) as a one-size-fits-all primer on what your average village blacksmith thought about things. I would certainly bristle were a historian from 2800 to suggest my country’s government & preeminent religious institutions painted an accurate picture of my (or my neighbors’) moral opinions on every subject under the sun. I bet you would, too. Critically, this does not mean all the common people embraced same-sex romance and all the religious officials reviled it. Indeed, it means people are people and their opinions will differ based on their personal experience, environment, personality, and priorities. Christianity profoundly affected the medieval world and mentality in ways both conscious and unconscious, much as any major global religion does, but it does not and did not make Europe into a dystopian Christian hivemind that thoughtlessly parroted a single unified view of every topic under the sun.

Religious opposition vs. religious guilt. Remembering that “people are people,” it is likewise important to differentiate religious opposition from religious guilt. Male lovers, particularly those in a position of high status (who were expected to produce heirs), would certainly face opposition to their desire to fuck off into the woods and kiss their boyfriend forever. It would certainly not be prudent or safe for a minor lord like Hans Capon to openly flaunt his romantic love for his squire; religiosity-fueled accusations of sodomy were useful as political bludgeons to threaten enemies and de-legitimize rivals. Caution is required. However, I find it is also important to note that Hans and Henry seem to express no personal guilt over their love for each other, religious or otherwise. It is telling that they do not step back from their relationship after consummating it under duress; on the contrary, both of them immediately seem to take it for granted that they will continue sharing their lives without any further negotiation required, and admitting their romantic feelings for each other has changed little of this, save for bringing them closer and providing relief. It is also telling that if Henry chooses to confess to his dream-parents that his devotion to Hans is romantic in nature, they react with surprise, but do not lecture him about sin. (In fact, his mother immediately leaps to Henry’s defense after his father reacts with shock.) Henry himself expresses no grief to them beyond a vague acknowledgement that hearing this must be a surprise. This is important—Henry’s parents appear in his dreams as representations of Henry’s inner doubts, guilt, grief, and misgivings. They do not throw up any real opposition or disgust to his intention to “settle down” with Hans. (Which is frankly a bonkers thing for Henry to say in any sense.) Despite the opposition they face from their environment and the expectations of status placed upon them—and despite Hans’s anxiety about being forced into a betrothal and how this may frustrate his intention to spend every waking moment with Henry—Henry and Hans both seem to feel completely positive about consummating their romantic relationship. For all intents and purposes, they canonically provide each other with comfort, love, and certainty. Not a shred of guilt or self-hate bubbles up into the canon text where each other is concerned. (This isn’t to say you can’t add this element in your fanworks if you choose. I’m not your dream-Martin!) NOTE: There is one moment during The Kiss scene in which Henry shows clear inner conflict. After Hans initiates a kiss (that Henry visibly rushes to accept), Henry turns his face away from him briefly, which causes Hans to perceive rejection and scurry away. Henry's expression is visibly troubled before he turns to the door. I see a valid argument for interpreting this brief expression of distress as gut-reaction frustration or revulsion, either at himself or even to the physical kiss, but we don’t really have enough canon input to say for certain what causes this flash of doubt. In any case, when it’s gone, it’s gone. At least for the purposes of KCD2 where it left us. You can’t “break up” with Hans after this or back out of the romance; Henry has decided for himself that the only way to go is forward.

Everything’s the same—but different. Homophobia in the 1400s was a different beast from homophobia in the 2000s. I will not dive into this here because I've written about it elsewhere to share background research on my own monastery fic, and because the topic is far too large to summarize in a bullet-pointed list. Simply, the medieval world did not codify sex acts or romantic feelings as identity markers in the way we do; while sodomy was certainly a taboo, this was a classification of non-reproductive sex acts, not slang for “gay man.” We cannot, in essence, “backport” our contemporary homophobia into the Middle Ages; it doesn’t make sense. Similarly, we cannot backport our bizarre late-1900s+ anxiety about pregnancy termination into 1403, but if you think I'm going to dive into that here except by way of brief comparison, you are cuh-razy. Worth noting that taboo also does not mean alien... or secret. More on that below.

Normalcy, Secrecy, and Taboo. One thing KCD2 (and KCD1, to a lesser extent) does very well is dismiss the Victorianized pseudo-history that same-sex romance, sex, and affection were some sort of widely-kept secret from society that did not dawn upon people until the second half of the thousands. In KCD, no one is surprised or bewildered by stories, both fictional and local, of same-sex lovers. Yes, medieval people knew about gay sex and no, “discovering” that it exists would not have shocked them—because a taboo is not necessarily an unknown. While NPCs react with different shades of opinion to conversations about same-sex romance, the world does not treat this as alien; it wasn’t. It is discussed casually, albeit with some discretion depending on context and company. KCD2 even enables you to play a Henry who has had prior sexual experience with men (see the Black Bartosch interactions) and has already embraced his own same-sex attraction to the extent he can confidently, casually sexually advance on men.

The Elephant in the Room: Class. Remember that the class divide at hand provides as much—if not more—opposition than the religiosity. Feudalism itself was built into medieval Catholicism. I sometimes think KCD downplays the importance of class, especially in KCD1, as it allows Henry to openly speak to Hans in ways that are unthinkably inappropriate given the feudal consciousness of the time, with almost no punishment or reaction from those around them. Not just because these interactions might indeed arouse suspicions of same-sex romance, but because a commoner risks severe punishment (or death!) for putting his hands on a lord, interrupting him, and insulting him in public. (Yes, including a noble’s bastard, a designation which is more harmful than not in many ways.) That's not to say Hans himself would not allow Henry to speak to him in this way; it's clear he desperately enjoys the novelty of someone who speaks to him freely, even in the earliest hours of KCD1, before they are tightly bonded. But it is strange there is so little blowback or external punishment for Henry when he baps His Lordship upside the head and calls him a buffoon in front of a gaggle of His Lordship's soldiers, on the precipice of dangerous military action, with Captain Bernard no doubt on the verge of apoplexy nearby. For this reason more than any other, I would argue, Henry and Hans’s relationship spits in the face of feudal order—and it does so even without the romantic consummation.

That's enough of that now, Jesus. I hope someone finds this to he a helpful bullet-point summary and it facilitates a more confident venture into historical fiction research! So TLDR; regarding the fandom's current anxiety of, "Am I making the Sin of it all too big of a deal?" my ultimate answer is yes, but also no, for it deeply depends on the context and the creator's intention. Love you lady, buhbye.

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Do you know how I feel right now. I am a chronic rarepair fan and I have NEVER had a ship go canon. Now I am, as a humble lifelong medieval history nerd, after SEVEN YEARS of dev silence (and <20 fics on ao3 last time I checked, many written by yours truly), witnessing the altright fandom melt down into nuclear waste in real time. Because their ~antiwoke hero~ studio just dropped a major sequel confirming my ultra rarepair lgbtq+ nothingburger never-gonna-happen ship was endgame all along. They suck face horizontal ON SCREEN. We went in expecting Kingdom Under Heaven: Braveheart II and we got fucking Maurice with Swords. I could bend steel with my pinkies. This is my Roman empire. This is video game Christmas to me. I am unkillable right now do you understand

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gosh this game is pretty