#jake blount | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bluedalahorse · 2 years ago

Text

Unsolicited August backstory headcanons (plus a bonus tangent about Blue’s undergraduate initiation)

Ahahaha well, I left my work laptop at work by accident. I guess that’s my subconscious is telling me to take a break and post the August headcanons I’ve been drafting on the bus each morning so…

There are a few posts floating around my dash right now that ask questions about what August would have done in certain hypothetical situations. The discussion has all been worthwhile to watch, but I’ve refrained from jumping in as of yet, in part because work has been busy and in part because of personal headcanon reasons. The thing with personal headcanons is that they just kind of live in my head and influence the way I write fic. They’re not really the kind of thing I can prove or argue for, they’re just… vibes? But vibes are still worth talking about in one’s fandom spaces so I may as well ramble.

One thing I believe as someone who spends too much time writing from this garbage boy’s POV is that August did not show up to his first year of Hillerska as exactly the person we see onscreen in 1.1. He was a full two years younger, which is significant for a teenager, and he would have been more recently impacted by the loss of his father. Moreover he would have been entering as a first year and would not have been immediately afforded all the at-school privileges the third year boys enjoy. Now, this does not mean he was a morally perfect angel—far from it, given that being landed gentry with generational wealth can still do a number on one’s psyche. However, if I assume that August came to Hillerska as the very same Full Titled Asswipe he is as a third year, I don’t get to explore systems of privilege and how they radicalize young men into toxic and harmful behavior. Which is something I’m interested in as a writer, both in my fanfic and my original fiction.

With that in mind, here are some of my personal headcanons for August’s pre-Hillerska and pre-season 1 life, with some Horn family headcanons mixed in…

August’s relationship to the royal family—or not—was a big source of conflict between his parents. Carl Johan wanted him hanging out with the royal family and getting to know his second cousins while Louise did not. For the most part, Louise won this argument when August was a child. In August’s early childhood, Carl Johan would frequently go off to visit the palace on his own, and came back with fun stories and various presents and the like. I base this on the fact that August doesn’t seem to have hung out with Wille or Erik as a child, and seems to have some seemingly “insider” knowledge of the royal family, but with like, weird gaps about things. He also tends to idealize royal life in a way Wilhelm doesn’t, given that Wilhelm has lived royal life. I feel like this is consistent with a backstory where August was mostly told about the royal life from his dad’s perspective. Like he’s got a lot of details but he doesn’t have all of them and he’s still got rose-colored glasses.

August before the age of twelve or so was one of those kids who was pretty bad at interacting with kids his own age, but was “better” at interacting with adults. He’s an only child, so he wouldn’t have grown up around siblings, and would have probably had to play alone a lot. I don’t know if I believe school or his local area would have been an easy place for him to make friends given what @sflow-er was saying about children of the nobility and what it’s like for them when they go to their local schools. I wouldn’t go so far as to say August was bullied. (I mean, maybe he was, I don’t know. From my experience of working with young people, it’s not uncommon for kids who are bullied at one school to become bullies at other schools they transfer to. On the other hand, I think we’ve seen enough of August’s personality to know he could potentially be prickly and arrogant and push other kids away. Regarding that question, I think I’d go with whatever the fic needs. Anyway!) I also feel like, with the growing tensions in his parents’ marriage, he potentially would have coped by trying to put up a mature facade at a young age, which would mean lots of convincing adults he can handle everything. By the time he gets to Hillerska that all comes crashing down on him.

Because I’m such a gothic lit weirdo I insist that there were rumors Årnäs was haunted. Young August probably got asked about that a lot.

Maternal backstory headcanons: Louise’s parents were diplomats or in international business or something similar, so she spent periods of her youth away from Sweden, and sometimes away from her parents, often in international schools or international boarding schools. I have nothing to go on here canon-wise, except there’s that line where August says Louise is off traveling when the Headmistress can’t reach her. It’s very much an excuse, of course, but I like to imagine a grain of truth to it. Louise’s youth abroad gave her a yearning for international travel, and it’s her favorite way to escape the pressures of life when they get too great.

Paternal backstory headcanons: perhaps one of my more… spicy? controversial? … whatever… headcanons is that Carl Johan and Kristina were one another’s Unfortunate Romances in their youth. But Blue, you say. They are cousins! Ew! Which, yes, but they are also royals, and that sort of thing isn’t completely unprecedented I guess. There’s also a neat little chiasmus in my head where Wilhelm’s “unfortunate romance” shakes up the royal court because they feel like he’s trying to pull the monarchy into the future too fast, whereas in Kristina’s day she was that the monarchy needed to modernize, and that sort of thing was less frowned upon centuries ago but these days it Isn’t Done. ANYWAY Carl Johan’s feelings for Kristina remained sort of unresolved for most of his life, and this was something he ruminated on as his addiction got worse. Louise and Carl Johan never spoke about this piece of his backstory, but it was sort of always hanging awkwardly in the air between them. This also fueled Louise’s desire to keep August away from the palace and the royal family stuff, and the fights between her and Carl John about that. None of the kids’ generation knows about the Unfortunate Romance. Well, maybe Erik did, but he’s dead.

You may be asking, if Louise was opposed to August going to the palace and hanging out with his second cousins, then why did she send him to Hillerska? That, my friends, was an act of resignation, and of her not knowing what to do. I imagine puberty was already making August pretty irritable and difficult to deal with. And, with things growing worse and worse between his parents and his father’s addiction growing more problematic, August was probably just… not in a good place. No one in the family was a good place. I don’t see his parents as fully divorced in the year or so leading up to his father’s death, but I do think they were separated—maybe in an obvious way, or maybe they were pretending not to be. So, when Carl Johan took his own life, I imagine August’s anger and grief got even more explosive, and was often directed at his mother. Louise was not in a place where she knew how to deal with the situation, and sent him off to the school her husband had been pushing her to send August to. Sort of like she threw up her hands and went, “you know what? Fine. If this is his final wish, so be it.” And so August was sent away.

August showed up to his first year just sort of… quieter at first, with a lot of anger and grief simmering underneath. I mean why talk about feelings? He was also desperately, desperately in need of something that gave him a feeling of purpose. And then Erik found him. I think this was in part orchestrated a bit by Kristina behind the scenes; I imagine there was a call or text message where she nudged Erik to check up on her cousin’s kid, because even as complicated as the past was, Carl Johan was at one point Kristina’s favorite cousin. So what Erik did was appoint August as his first year lackey who takes care of everything for him—the one who knocks on his door in the morning, the one who pours the drinks at the party, and so on. Basically, August was in the Alexander role for Erik, and ended up taking it very seriously. This was the purpose he had been looking for, the sense of meaning.

I think August’s initiation would have played a role in helping him to feel a sense of purpose and community, too. Wait, what the fuck, Blue? That’s probably what you’re saying right now. Well… a lot of people talk about what the initiation sequence was or wasn’t for Wille, and how Wille’s initiation would have been worse than that of other students. And people usually only talk about that in terms of what Wille experienced. As someone who has attended a school with initiations (and who has even been initiated myself, albeit in a milder way because it was at a women’s college with traditions that differ from Hillerska’s) I actually don’t know if I think that’s true. I also think August’s initiation was probably a more… well, probably something he thought of as positive? Exciting? Seemingly helpful? (I mean, not helpful, but you know.)

EXTREME BONUS TANGENT: I can say that as someone who has been initiated myself, it’s certainly not a fun experience for everyone. That said, it was fun for me at the time, and remains important to me in a way. Speaking from the perspective of someone who enjoyed my initiation experience, it’s… well, it’s kind of weird. You’re in this strange state of torture for a while, like intense mental and physical discomfort, and everyone around you seems to be determined to contribute to that, and you feel very constrained and stretched to your limit. But then once you pass your initiation and you’re welcomed into your new community, it’s like this sudden switch over to an intense euphoria and a whole flood of endorphins. Like, I’m here, and they’re cheering me on, and I belong here, and these people are my family and I love them now. NOW, THAT SAID: initiations are not a good practice generally, because they are generally done en masse and there is a lot of potential for peer pressure and institutionalized abuse. I view my college’s initiation traditions differently now than I do when I was eighteen. That said, my college had also at least put some infrastructure in place as far as consent and contracts, to keep things from going wrong. You could opt out of any task at any time. Still—it’s not a perfect system, and Hillerska is far from perfect, so. You know. Personal memories I have complex feelings about.

Back to Hillerska… August seems to be someone who responds to extreme sensations, so I think he probably was someone who would have felt that intense endorphin rush from his initiation. (We frequently see him chasing other highs in the show, too.) And he would have gone through this at a time when he’d just lost his father and was Achilles-level angry at his mother, when he desperately wanted to feel like he was part of something and belonged somewhere. He probably came out of the ordeal worshipping Erik and ready to die for him, and I imagine Erik responded to that loyalty in kind. I expect that they grew close, but it was also definitely a relationship where Erik called the shorts and August followed his lead. This is, in part, why I struggle to buy into fanfics where August betrays or harms Erik, and why I can’t really sign onto the idea that August would have released a video of Erik. Or at least—he wouldn’t get there without multiple steps leading up to it, and multiple perceived trusts being broken, the way things were with Wilhelm. One of the steps, too, in August betraying Wilhelm, is Erik’s death putting August into a state of volatile grief. So there’s that. Like I cannot stress enough how much I don’t think he’d randomly turn on Erik like a mustache-twirling villain.

One more innocuous headcanon: Erik taught August how to dress, because August showed up to school with no damn idea, his first year. To be fair, so few sixteen-year-old boys know how to dress themselves, even when they can afford nice wardrobes. Some of August’s clothes are his father’s old clothes. I mean, definitely the outfit he went shooting in feels like something that could have belonged to his dad.

One less innocuous headcanon: August kept some pretty serious secrets for Erik. I still kind of think this is true in canon and that we could get a big secret revealed in season 3.

That’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed reading if you got this far. I don’t expect too much engagement but I am making an effort to be more real and honest about my YR enthusiasms in these posts.

#young royals #yr headcanons #august young royals #august horn of årnäs #formatted this whole post while listening to the fun home soundtrack #which despite being quite Midcentury Butch Lesbian is also simultaneously very August vibes at times #the same way Sara vibes are Into the Woods and my Felice writing soundtrack is all Jake Blount’s folk music

30 notes · View notes