a demon!

Saw this on my timeline and immediately thought of Hans

But Henry is a really kind and Empathetic person

Don't get me wrong, he can be impulsive and definitely has an angry revengefull streak in there. But he is also just a very kind and nice lad.

And I just noticed it when doing the miller's quest.

Spoiler for everybody who doesn't know:

In this quest, Henry has to deal with a captured Cuman. And in the end of the quest you have to choose whether to hand the cuman over to the law, kill him, or set him free.

Now, when I was doing the quest, I thought that Henry would be very angry and bloodthirsty with the cuman, since the game seems to make the Cumans the "Bad guys". That he probably wanted to kill the Cuman. I expected him to make a angry comment about how the Cuman "deserved death for what he did at Skalitz".

But to my surprise, he seemed very calm and apologetic about it. Almost regretfull. Stating that he "couldn't let the cuman live."

Even in his journal after the quest, he says something like "I think we both knew I wasn't gonna let him live. But a drowning man will grasp at anything he can find. Atleast I saved him from the torture and hanging that the bailif would give him."

Henry repeatedly in both games mentions he sees himself as a murderer, that he sees the enemy as people he can respect and treat with humanity and empathy like anyone else. This is something Zizka calls out during the ambush to get the Finger of God. Henry mentions feeling bad about killing Sigismund’s soldiers he befriended while spying and Zizka tells him to stop thinking of them as people and think of them as the enemy stating "you'll sleep better this way".

But Henry doesn't see it that way because he is kind and tries to understand and sees people as people. I don't know where you are in KCD1 but the options to show mercy for some of the people involved on the attack at Neuhoff are the more compelling choices and the ones Henry seems naturally disposed to. There is a quest in KCD1 to help a family of heretics escape execution. In both games Henry is very open and helpful to prostitutes, knickers, executioners, and grave diggers — undesirables of society — which is another side of Henry's kindness and how he tends to see people as people.

Henry also repeatedly (in KCD2 more than in KCD1) mentions how he thinks he is going to hell already — the implication being due to the sin of killing people as that's the context its brought up in. Like, he tells Voyta he doesn't mind killing the bandit because if Henry ends up in hell "it won't be because of your Berkhart". He sees the blood on his hands as necessary and justified, but he still thinks its a sin, even if for a good cause since they were still people.

(He has a funny line about this to the priest in the woods near Skalitz in KCD1 where the priest is like "but did they deserve to die for it?" It being holding the priest at knife point. And Henry replies "apperently," because he already killed them and he is defending his decision to do so. Arguably because he does feel guilty (once I get home I'll check the quest log for this))

The fact that in KCD2 you talk to both Istvan and Von Aulitz before killing them because Hebry sees them as people and he wants to understand them. He drinks with the Cumans near Trosky, he is angry about Skalitz, but he doesn't kill these Cumans that he feels he can spare (sure, you can kill them but this isn't what the game wants you to do).

And Henry getting to finally live his most authentic life as a rapscallion little sibling, telling everyone his big brother is stinky and has cooties, while Sam is right there but can't talk back because he's on timeout.

Dark, edgy, lacking any whimsy.

Here's my silly animation based on this marvellous tale written in an unhinged round of frantic fantic✨️