#ranger's apprentice headcanons

[rangertessadarling]

So I know that everyone’s headcanon is that George is the one who wrote down Will’s life, that the scribe, ever faithful to his old wardmates, was the hand behind the found manuscripts. That he was the one who preserved Will’s story in the Lost Stories, neat and orderly as really only George could manage.

But I will offer you two ideas here:

First, that George didn't write it all down, but Will did.

Will had watched Halt go through many waves of dementia in his old age. He saw the sharp eyes of his mentor dim, the stories fade from his memory, the names of old friends like Crowley, Gilan, and even Will himself -- slip away. He watched Halt get frustrated with himself because he knew his mind was deteriorating.

But Will refused to let the world forget.

So before Halt's final breath, Will came often, carrying parchment, ink, and a fierce determination, coaxing as much information as he could from the haze of Halt's head, and piecing together The Early Years.

And when Halt finally passed, something inside Will shifted.

He looked back on his own life-- not with bitterness, but with a sense of wonder. He had truly lived an epic. His life had been extraordinary. He loved deeply, fought bravely, and he had lost so much, gained so much, and through it all endured. Most of all, he endured. And he feared that one day, he too would forget. That silence would swallow it all, like it did Halt.

So Will started writing.

At 64 years old, he left the corps. Laid aside his bow and took up the pen. His friends thought it was a distraction. After all, he had always imagined retiring with Alyss, spending the last decade or so of his life traveling with her. Perhaps, he was lonely. Perhaps he was writing music again, the way he used to.

They had no idea.

For years he wrote in solitude, and when he died, Horace was the one who found the manuscripts. The hundreds and hundreds of written pages, the first being titled “A Ranger's Beginning” and the last being titled “A Royal Ranger.”

The second idea? a very slight variation of the first, very slight.

Will wrote the manuscripts-- but not alone.

When Halt died, grief shifted something in him, and he went to George--not the scribe this time, but the friend, the wardmate, the brother-- and Will asked for one last favor.

And so, for five years, four days a week, they met.

Will spoke. George transcribed. Together, they wrote thousands of pages, thousands of moments of friendship, love, laughter, tragedy, trauma, grief. All written in ink.

A record not just of one life, but of all of their lives.

Because the books weren't just for Will, they weren't just about Will. It was about all of them; it was ensuring all their legacies would be preserved.

Not as "lost stories."

But remembered ones.

[nightwingtheanimater]

y'know what

when cassandra was young she genuinly though crowley was her uncle. change my mind.

halt and crowley: *chatting in crowleys office*

6 y/o cassandra: *bursts in*

cassandra: uncle crowley, dad wants to talk with you

cassandra: *leaves without closing door*

halt: 'uncle'?

crowley: ... i would say i can explain but i dont know why she does this either

[eccevenitvulpes]

Morgarath is highly allergic to something really stupid, I just don't know what

[biggestqiblifan]

I bet that Horace is like the ultimate taste-tester.

Like, this man will win every all of those like competitions where you have to guess what you're eating.

Yeah.

But like the twist is that, if he goes into a kitchen, HE WILL SET IT ON FIRE!

[that-one-enby-ranger]

It's been talked about that part of the reason why Halt gets seasick and hates the ocean is because of Ferris trying to drown him, and poison him with seafood, and this is pretty much canon to me.

But picture this: Halt hates walking under big buildings, or walking straight under the walls or close to the walls of the castle, because of Ferris pushing the roof tiles on him.

Him just getting really uncomfortable and nervous, and occasionally when it's particularly bad, or maybe the day reminds him of that day, when he thinks no ones looking, he glances up, just to be sure.

[ultramier]

I read these books for the first time when I was like 10/11, and now I can finally draw what these mfs looked like in my head back then!

[ciarasombre]

Hey umm do you guys remember the scene where Halt muttering something but the words he mumbles don't make any sense to Horace I bet its because he was muttering in Hibernian so his own language

Because I can swear when he was unconscious he was saying whatever he was muttering in his mother language because his brain didn't translate it into the common language

[cabin-seven-kid]

just by the way, I headcanon that some cabin 7 kids read (and became obsessed with) the Rangers' Apprentice series by John Flanagan and have shared their obsession with any kids who haven't read it via oral storytelling and art. Also the poseidon kids are obsessed with the Brotherband series (also by Flanagan) and they mutually gush over the crossover books.

[celestelikestoread]

Here's a fun little Gilan headcanon I'd like to share with you all.

While I don't think Gilan's parents were bad parents I do feel like they would have been very strict. Obviously he was raised as a knight and taught to uphold honor and chivalry or whatever. His parents were also nobility and David was friends with both Arald and Duncan so there was definitely some pressure there.

As a consequence of this I feel like Gilan would have to be a very good liar and that was how he learned the basics of sneaking around. I feel like that makes sense with the fact that Gilan is one of the best unseen movers in the corp.

The really fun part of this though is him being a good liar, I like to think that this particular skill of his gave Gilan a somewhat big head so once he figured out that he couldn't sneak out without Halt noticing he was very keen to try out lying. Now because Halt is 'fae kissed' (read autistic) he already had some trouble distinguishing what people mean when they are telling the truth so it was pretty much impossible for him to tell when Gilan was lying.

It probably started out with just small white lies like eating leftover food not feigning obliviousness when he over heard something he shouldn't have. Now obviously Halt isn't an idiot so he knew something was up but because he thought that Gilan was more respectful than that he never really caught him out.

Then one day wen Crowley comes over for a visit, Gilan says he's going out to get food for dinner from the market or something but while he's there he actually meets up with some friends and when he returns and Halt ass what took him so long he makes up a lie about not being able to find potatoes or smth Crowley sees straight though him.

So he catches Gilan out and he's obviously a little put out and in plenty of trouble ad Crowley is just like "kid, I am the oldest of like seven siblings. I know when someone is lying".

As with most things I strongly believe that this becomes a popular gathering campfire story.

I'll probably add more to this later but could talk about Gilan for hours so no surprises there.

[haleingstorm]

More ra headcanons? Because yours are very good:D

Sure :)

Listen there's no why Cassandra and Will did not have some sort of codependency going on after Skandia. Like absolute 0. There's no way that after they went back to their respective places in the world they didn't wake up panicking because they couldn't find each other. Cassandra and Will are a tragedy of loneliness.(not romantically. But platonically as friends, family, bonded by trauma and pain and then living at least a week from each other). No one else will ever understand what happened to them.

Horace knows most of the Ranger signals by this point. Will/Halt has taught them to him or he's picked them up from Will and Halt interacting. But... But he doesn't show he does very often. Rangers don't like a strange knight knowing too much

On the flip side knights don't like a strange knight who seems like he just wanted to be a ranger. It's a lonely life that Horace lives sometimes, one foot in both worlds and belongs to neither

Halt will never admit it to anyone, but he nearly cried when Crowley took away his ranger leaf. Crowley wouldn't ever tell anyone but as soon as Halt left his sight he collapsed in a heap and cried. It wasn't professional. But every day he prayed to gods that he didn't even believe in that Halt would survive and find Will (because those two things went hand in hand)

Will made Horace promise to look after Halt if anything ever happened to him. It's one of the reasons that Horace followed Halt to Skandia. Because Will had never asked him for anything before.

[rangertessadarling]

Guys, guysss, the beginning of Book 8 is so underrated, seriously Flanagan FEDD us in the span of 15 chapters.

we've got Halt being a badass on the west coast kicking outsider ass, we've got cute gathering moments, we've got Will training apprentices and subconsciously acting exactly like Halt in the meantime.

not to mention cute Uncle Crowley moments with Will and the Special Task Group reveal, and the fact that a large part of the reason Will was so excited to move back to Redmont was because Alyss lived there and he'd get to see her more. And Crowley literally calls him outtt for this because Will was smiling so big at the thought of seeing his girlfriend more often.

NOT TO MENTION the small moment where the 5th year apprentices have their graduation ceremony and Will has that moment of regret for missing out on having a "happy proud family" to wish him well at his own graduation, and as quickly as that thought enters his mind, he's casting it aside because "he had Halt. and Halt was enough family for anyone." AHHHHHH

and then Will sings with Berrigan at the gathering, Will plays a bit, and then very respectfully says, "You've also taught me not to overstay my welcome." PLEASE he's so babygirl. So respectful of Berrigan's time.

THEN we get the Will and Alyss reunion and they're so cute he's holding her hand the entire time they're together ahjgksjdb

THEN we get the SQUADDD AT DINNER TOGETHER???

PAULINE, CROWLEY, ALYSS, WILL, ANDDDD HALT??

and you best believe Halt, diva that he is, showed up late, and Will proceeds to knock over his chair in excitement because he's so excited to see his dad he's like a little puppy dear god.

then of course we get them bear-hugging and we get Halt's annual "I love this kid sm" moment

then they sit down to eat lamb and talk shit, and you best believe they talked shit the entire dinner before they discussed business because that actually happened. Halt said no business till I know whats happening with Rodney and Margaret.

THEN WE GET THE BROTHER REVEAL UGH

and this is only like the first 9 chapters yall this book is underrated, i'm telling you

[forgedroyalseal]

Modern Ranger’s Apprentice Headcanons:

Halt has an ever growing collection of fuzzy, novelty socks because Will is constantly gifting him pairs

Will lives in oversized flannels

Halt is constantly arguing with Alexa and Siri

Will always leaves all the windows open and every night Alyss has to go around the house and close them

Horace has gotten into the habit of carrying around fidget toys for Will, who desperately needs them but can never remember them

Alyss and George are in a book club with a group of elderly women and refuse to let the others join

Horace and Will are part of a D&D group where they play a Barbarian and a Bard

Will spent so much time at his local coffee shop that they just gave him an apron and a name tag. He gets paid in coffee

Halt’s top listened to song is “The Archer” by Taylor Swift

[eccevenitvulpes]

Some RA headcanons that absolutely nobody asked for

Gilan can juggle

Jenny likes birds and likes to leave out crumbs for them, but not too close to her kitchen windows

She also has a secret hat collection. She just does

Something something Oak Pancake

Every single person ever to breed Ranger horses is called "Bob". It's a title. Usually there are only two, Old Bob and Young Bob. Like Sith lords

[eccevenitvulpes]

Halt is afraid of pigeons and has been since the age of 7

i genuinely hate going onto the rangersapprentice tag. no shade to anyone but ninety percent of the posts right now are completely empty of any creativity whatsoever. you have people posting the most godawful out-of-character headcanons, writing these looong essays on something that was incredibly obvious in the first place and didn't need an entire post dedicated to it or some mixture of the two. its so annoying. i get younger fans joined this year but some of these read like they were written by middle schoolers, come on.

this fandom used to be full of artists but most of them migrated away since their high effort posts would get the same amount of attention as someone saying some crap like "Headcanon: Halt is a total softie :) He likes pigeons" i dare people to go onto the profiles of well known RA artists and ask their opinions and you will see that i'm right.

x

[that-one-enby-ranger]

One of my headcanons is that part of the reason why Halt cuts his hair himself is because he hates it with a burning passion whenever someone else touches his hair, even if he knows them, and he cant handle a complete stranger doing that.

If a stranger touches his hair for some fucking reason, his first instinct, half from reflexes and half from "don't fucking touch me I'll fucking kill you" is to just punch them.

If a friend does it he'll probably just grab their wrist super fucking hard or something (think when he grabbed Will in book 1. Harder than that) and shove them back

If someone close to him like Crowley does it could go either way. On the one hand, he's besties with him, but on the other hand, if Crowley does it on purpose and knows he doesn't like it he's getting decked. It would depend on the situation.

And if someone he hates does it they're dead.

[just-your-local-rafan]

I personally love the fact that Halt’s training methods were unusually ruthless when they had ZERO right to be. Like it’s cannon that no other rangers dismiss their housemaids and make their apprentices do the chore but Halt did. He made Gilan and Will suffer for sooooo many years bc of it. LIke, Halt was a crown prince, he grew up in a castle, he had servants do literally everything for him and probably had no understanding of hard work whatsoever and yet he still made his apprentices do all the hard work. 

And thus, it is with great pleasure that I announce to you all my new favourite headcanon. 

When Pritchard first started training Halt he got really Annoyed that he refused to do any form of hard work (with the exception of training, but he found that fun so it doesn't count) so he took him to the middle of the forest and left him alone there for several days. This , of course, made Halt learn the hard lesson that yes, housework is necessary (as sad as that is TwT). When Halt found his way back Halt was very indignant and yelled at Prichard for a bit but he just found it really funny. He kept on doing that same test every time Halt complained about housework until he learnt that he just had to do it.

Flash forward several years and Halt is talking to Crowley about it. Crowley is all confused, like, “what do you mean he made you do the housework?” and Halt is just learning that Pritchard did that to make fun of him. At that moment Pritchard reveals himself from the shadows and starts openly guffawing at him.

This is what led Halt to make Gilan and Will suffer through five years of unending housework. All just to get back at Crowley and Pritchard. (And also so that Gilan and Will could have the same experience that he had with Cowley when he first found out because, let's be real here, he 100% would).