gentlemen, hoist the colours

my face when I was told it wasn’t about him and I’d been getting it wrong all this time

okay so it is clearly pathetic that james norrington has resigned his commission/role in the royal navy (an act that would require him to write at least one, possibly two, letters and post them by ship) AND he's still wearing the wig and uniform but i do think as silly as it looks, it's serving a purpose and it's telling us something about james + his relationship with the navy, which is really that James never stops being a Navy man at heart, and doesn't see any of the situation as a way that the navy has failed him even though it absolutely did. (caveat this is a take on his headspace, because i personally think the british royal navy in those years was Fucked Up, and i often ignore realism for playing with my blorbo.) norrington resigns not because of fear the admiralty will execute him or fear they won't. he resigns bc he's already lost his honor by failing, but he was set up to fail! he can't SEE it that way, but he was. chasing jack into a hurricane wasn't inherently pride or foolish ambition, it was literally choosing his probable death with honor over his certain death without it. that's the fucked up thing about the navy! it's, per a friend's words, "a society that would never show him mercy!" when the dauntless goes down, it's because he was in a position where abandoning the chase of jack (esp after already letting him go once) is a crime punishable by death, and then losing the ship and failing to capture jack are also crimes punishable by death. because that's how the navy got men to do insane suicidal things in hopes they'd occasionally be successful-- by indoctrinating them with rules enforced by death. because men are disposable to them!! in his mind, either way, he's already dead. james has heard those regulations read *on a regular basis* over and over for years! he's internalized them! i think this is where killing jack becomes more than just chasing a pirate bc it's his job, like it was at the end of COTBP. after he lets him go, though, it's not a matter of personal vengeance-- it's just that if he doesn't pursue Jack with everything he has, he's definitely in trouble for letting him go, regardless of personal feeling. but what he's ACTUALLY trying to kill jack for AFTER the sinking of the Dauntless is vengeance on behalf of the ship and lost crew. the moment he loses the dauntless and any lives on it, killing Jack in a form representing the navy (wig and uniform!) is the last honorable thing he can do: finish the job, and make those deaths MEAN something. and bc the story isn't about him it minimizes this a good bit for who it IS about, which is fine, but it does mean that when he stops trying to kill jack and goes with elizabeth, he is essentially choosing elizabeth over duty another time even when he's not actually navy anymore!

hello! put together a quick masterpost for my james/elizabeth fics, because it's getting. um. a little out of hand ! listed by category in descending word count, and colored by rating