like a raging sun

von aulitz says "war is a nasty business" because istvan clearly circulated that as a corporate slogan and made everyone learn it, and then continues "i only did what i had to do. just like zizka." just like a few other people on our side, "just like you."

henry vehemently says "i'm not like you!" exactly like he did with istvan. cinematic parallels!

at this rate kcd3 will feature sigismund himself saying "you know henry, my dad is also dead. we aren't so different, you and i."

VA: sigismund maybe went a bit too far. but all he was trying to do was bring some order into the mess that idle drunkard wenceslas made. henry: bring order? by slaughtering innocent people? VA: and are you sure YOU didn't kill someone's father? or mother? me and henry:

that was my first reaction, and my second reaction was "you're right, i DID kill erik's daddy"

"every day, when we pray, we say to god: 'thy kingdom come.' and now i stand at his kingdom's gate at last. at a time like that, you do not feel fear." another instance of (almost) saying the title of the game!

henry says that von aulitz is going straight to hell but VA is like "nah i told god i repent of my sins and therefore i'm completely a good person now and will go to heaven" and says that his only regret is leaving his family behind, but he's consoled that he did what's best for them and sigismund will take care of them once he's king. henry asks about his family and he says he has "a beautiful wife and two daughters" whom he clearly loves very much. i would not have expected von aulitz to be a girldad! love that for him. the only girldad in the whole game (kunzlin ruthard is the dad of a girl, but is not a girldad)

VA: you know, lad, under all the armor and finery, you will only ever find a man. i am like everyone else. it is just you who sees me as the devil. henry: you're talking about family, but you murdered mine. VA: and for that i apologize to you, and to god.

damn! this is a really good scene. seeing von aulitz physically weak and humbled and helpless yet still having more power and aura than henry because he's so firm in his internal honor and dignity, explaining why he did what he did but acknowledging that his actions have hurt people like henry and apologizing but still refusing to regret those actions or admit that he acted wrongly - it's all much more impactful than a standard Final Boss Duel would've been. and the angle of "all this time henry's wanted to kill this guy but in the end someone else killed him and all henry can do is finish the job if he wants to" also feels more impactful - and more realistic - than henry getting a full-on triumph in a duel against him or something of the sort.

it was similar with istvan. henry was able to kill both of his archnemeses just by catching them in a vulnerable moment where they went "ok go ahead and kill me, there's no way i can get out of it so i accept it and invite you to do it". in terms of realism it lets humble peasant boy henry kill antagonists who should vastly outclass him in combat ability (VA for sure, at least; idk if istvan's much of a warrior or more of an ideas guy), and in terms of narrative it's a hollow, bittersweet victory. vengeance gotten, but not truly earned. which is why this game Hits for me in a way many other violence-oriented games wouldn't, i think! of course it glorifies war by the very nature of being a videogame where you have to kill people all the time, but the actual narrative keeps telling you over and over that war and violence and revenge are never worth the cost. the victories henry achieves through those means are always hollow. it's tasty!

(so of course, thematically speaking, the erik-henry duel HAD to end unfinished and inconclusive. one of them killing the other in a proper honorable 1v1 duel and neatly tying off that particular vengeance thread would be contrary to the central narrative that revenge is never that clean-cut and easy and satisfying!)

we get a quick update on von bergow's whereabouts: it seems he didn't go back to trosky but, at least in von aulitz's belief, went to join sigismund in hungary. sadly, no updates on erik, so he is still Whereabouts Unknown as of the end of the game. more freedom for me to imagine different scenarios, then!

von aulitz also casts aspersions about jobst. he says that he thinks henry is willing to die for what he believes in, but jobst is a snake who would never do the same. "today he is your ally, but only yesterday he sided with sigismund against wenceslas. he even betrayed his own brother! and tomorrow he will betray you for greater influence, more money, more power...mark my words." well, that definitely isn't foreshadowing of troubles that could occur in a potential kcd3, i'm sure!

now i'm faced with the choice of what to do with von aulitz:

for sure i'm killing him because i don't trust that he actually would die overnight if left to his injuries (i mean, i as the player know that he would, but i as henry don't trust that he truly would die if i just left now). i have to make sure the job is done properly! but how to do it? what would feel narratively correct for my henry at this moment?

after deliberating for one million hours while he stared into my soul, i finally decided to kill him like a dog, because as much as i the player enjoyed this final scene with him and thought it was very well-written, henry watched this guy personally murder his parents right in front of his eyes, so i don't think he would be moved enough by a few eloquent words to give him an honorable death. you killed our parents like dogs, we kill you like a dog!

(haha going in reverse order kcd2 -> kcd1 is going to hit like crazy re: ending kcd2 by hearing von aulitz talk about how everything he's ever done has been for the greater good of bohemia and then starting kcd1 by immediately seeing him brutally murder our random civilian parents. it will bring the hypocrisy into incredibly sharp relief!)

i feel like the Most Classic character arc for henry is to kill istvan dishonorably, then kill von aulitz honorably, as if he's grown and learned a lesson by the end of the game. but instead, i did the opposite, and i kinda dig that! my henry has gotten worse!

von aulitz had asked that henry let him stand up so he could die on his feet and presumably was also envisioning being run through the chest with a sword, and so killing him like a dog entails pinning him to the chair, covering his mouth to keep him quiet, and stabbing him in the throat with a dagger. his body crumples out of the chair and we end the cutscene on a shot of him lying face-down on the floor, blood starting to pool out around him.

all right, that's done and dusted. now, WHERE is my fucking BROTHER!!!! samuel when i catch you i am putting you on a toddler leash, you CANNOT be running off like this and making me get killed 100 times scouring an enemy camp for you!

ooh, first we can poke around in von aulitz's room, grab some sick armor (not that i need it since i'm almost done with the game), and read important papers, including a letter from his wife that's all "our beloved daughters and i are so worried to hear about your injury, we're praying in the church every day for your recovery, i love you soooo much" to make me feel bad. there's also an official letter from sigismund authorizing von aulitz to retrieve the silver, dated in june. good to know a hard timestamp: the Great Silver Heist and beginning of the siege happened in june! i think we've been in vaguely endless summer for the entire game lmao

finally, there's a personal letter from sigismund, saying "i heard about your injury and i'm writing to you now as your friend rather than as your king, please get the fuck out of suchdol and come back to me because i need you by my side my dear bestie, i pray for your swift recovery and our early reunion" more medieval yaoi??? is every villain in this series a gay king-lionheart duo to foil henry and hans?? next we're gonna find out that von bergow has a homoerotically devoted knight by his side. no, never mind, i can't picture anything less. i can picture von bergow spelunking out a window on bedsheets and swimming across a moat much more easily than i can picture him being involved in homoeroticism.

after SO MUCH MORE trial and error that makes my prior struggles look like a walk in the park (imagine about 100 repeats of the "ah shit here we go again" meme of me looking at von aulitz's door about to step outside), i FINALLY found sam! actually, finding him wasn't the problem; it was pretty quickly after leaving VA's building that i heard that fucker brabant's voice coming from another nearby building, with dialogue talking to a prisoner whom i figured must be sam. the problem was figuring out how the fuck i can get into that building when tons of paths/doors/gates are inaccessible and there's guards everywhere.

i made countless attempts at more roundabout routes because i thought there was no way i could make it down the most direct route with all its guard traffic. all failed. then, in a fit of desperation and madness, i changed out of my armor into my stealth outfit and simply crouch-walked right down the middle of Guard Main Street, and somehow, i was not seen by any of the million guys who were 1 foot away from me in every direction. it's always the "this is really stupid but i'm at my wits' end so i'm just gonna TRY it, what's the worst that can happen" solutions that end up working. before, i'd naively figured that now that i'm so high in stealth, my outfits surely wouldn't make that much of a difference anymore so i might as well keep my armor on in order to not immediately die from 2 hits, but now i know: never underestimate the power of wearing the appropriate outfit for a situation! never underestimate the power of the Stealth Fit! you can crouch-walk right under people's noses and they will not see you!

sam was caught and is being tortured by brabant, whom we have to fight. the first time he killed me in 2 hits and i went "my god, he's a master swordsman!" then reloaded and realized i'd accidentally changed henry into his Rizz Fit instead of his armor before jumping down to start the fight, so no wonder my boy got immediately toasted in his fancy silk coat and zero protection. never underestimate the power of wearing the appropriate outfit for a situation!

once dressed appropriately, i have no trouble winning the duel, because brabant is in fact not a master swordsman and is instead lame as hell.

brabant: your parents would be proud me: KEEP THEIR NAMES OUT OF-- henry: keep my parents out of your filthy mouth! me: exactly!

having been defeated, brabant turns into a sniveling coward who tries to make a deal with henry that since he'll be in charge when von aulitz dies (henry informs him he's already taken care of that), he promises to give the orders to end the siege if only henry won't kill him right now and will give him half the silver.

but i have a better deal in mind:

we get the choice of what to do with brabant, and i smash that Kill Him option so fast. i see no reason whatsoever why i should feel tempted to keep him alive! istvan is the type of villain you love to hate, von aulitz is the type of villain you grudgingly respect, erik is the type of villain whose brain you want to study under a microscope, and brabant is the type of villain you dismissively squash like a mosquito because he has no pizzazz, no gravitas, no character depth or complexity, nothing to recommend him whatsoever.

so, we've had increasing influence over the fate of our villains. with istvan, the outcome either way is that henry kills him, but we chose whether to do it honorably or dishonorably. with von aulitz, the outcome either way is that he dies, but we chose whether we kill him personally (and if so, how) or whether we leave him to die from his injuries. then with brabant, we can straight up choose whether he lives or dies. perhaps a path leading towards us having the most influence of all over erik's fate, and choosing whether we kill him or whether we recruit him? food for thought.

me anytime anything happens ever: this is clearly setup of an Erik Enemy-To-Reluctant-Ally-To-Weird-Friend KCD3 Arc

sam explains that the reason he went rogue and charged off without henry is because he wanted to find von bergow to get revenge (he thought he might still be here in the camp, even though we KNEW from that interrogated prisoner that he'd left, but i'll be charitable and say maybe that intel never reached sam), and he thought henry would stop him. henry denies this and says that if sam had just told him in advance, he would've helped him. speak for yourself henry, if sam had told me this plan in advance i would've knocked him unconscious and brought him back inside suchdol to keep him from causing me all this trouble! DO YOU KNOW how long i have spent trying to get to you, samuel????

sam is badly injured and can't walk, so he insists that henry leave him behind and escape by himself to deliver the message to jobst. no way in hell!!!!! i will channel my inner sam from another franchise and carry you on my back however far i must!!

haha i the player am having SUCH a Sibling Moment with sam here: complaining endlessly about what a stupid thing he did, but in the same breath fiercely declaring i will die rather than leave him behind.

but carrying sam to safety is much easier said than done. it's impossible to reach the horses without going past guards, but i can neither crouch nor run while carrying sam, so i have no choice but to walk slowly and obviously right past them, and that causes them to mob me, and i do not have the combat skills to take down this entire camp singlehandedly. what's a girl to do?

i was so determined not to cheat at all on this quest, but i finally caved and looked up tips for how to rescue sam without needing to take down the entire camp singlehandedly because i thought there surely had to be SOME other solution but just could not see what it might be. indeed, there is another solution: if you acquire a praguer waffenrock and wear it as a disguise, the guards will let you pass unhindered. which is very funny because way earlier during all my trials and tribulations i literally thought "logically i should be able to take their armor and put it on and then go on my way in disguise without being attacked, but i'm sure there's no mechanic for that and they'd still instantly clock me as an enemy regardless of what i'm wearing" i shouldn't have doubted the level of attention to detail they would've implemented! think of how much trouble i would've saved myself if i'd just given it a try!

but when i tried this disguise method now, they still instantly registered me as an enemy and attacked me. further research seems to suggest that the disguise method will only work if you haven't killed a single guard for the ENTIRE mission thus far. sure enough, the dialogue when they spot me is something like "hey, i bet that guy is the one responsible for the murder that just happened!" which tracks with the theory that not even a disguise can save you from suspicion if you've already left a trail of corpses through the camp.

it's at this point i realize i'm completely and utterly fucked: i CANNOT save sam..............unless i load wayyyy back to the start of this whole mission to do it all again disguised from the getgo and not kill anyone, and render the entire 4 hours i've played tonight a complete waste of time.

well.

here i am, rappelling down the ramparts of suchdol once more! ahahahahahhaha [screams, cries, throws up]

hey, you know? i can think of no better cap on my kcd2 experience than to spend 4 hours on infinite tries of a mission, finally get close to the end after much blood sweat and tears, realize i messed up 1 thing at the very start, and have to go all the way back. it feels right.

the good news is, if i have a disguise from the getgo and can just walk around the camp and do whatever i want, i should have a MUCH easier time!! but i'm emotionally drained from realizing i have to do all this again, so that's enough for tonight lmao

me: i kinda like it when i don't realize i've messed something up until much further down the line, it forces me to let my actions have consequences since i obviously won't reload THAT far back to redo it all also me: i would rather reload all 150 hours of the game than let sam die

plus, it's a good thing that this turn of events ended up bringing out the reveal that the entire post up until now has taken me four (4) hours, because i really think that context is required. briefly stating that i got stuck in a lot of groundhog day loops doesn't truly convey just how much of an ordeal all of this sneaking was for me, but if you read through the post up to here, see that i did only 2 things (encounters with VA + brabant & sam), and try to imagine how it could possibly have taken 4 hours to accomplish so little, then you will better understand the depths of my furious exasperation with sam by the time i got to him djkjfgh not even hans has ever put me through so much! sam's little brother henry was fine seeing as he doesn't know about the dozens of alternate timelines and thinks it only took him 20 minutes to find him, but his big sister emily was bursting into that barn frazzled and exhausted and ready to knock his punk ass into next week for pulling such a stunt. but still stubbornly determined to save him even if it took another 4 hours, because THAT is the true love of a sister!

okay, it's a new day, and i'm emotionally prepared to redo the whole mission. now, i THINK i might have kept my praguer waffenrock from my undercover soldier mission and stored it in my chest, so i'm going to load an extra save back to where i'm still inside suchdol in order to check my chest. if i can already have a praguer waffenrock on hand and not have to knock out even one guard in order to steal one, oh baby, it'll be smooth sailing!

checked my chest: hell yeah! praguer waffenrock, obtained and equipped! hoarding tons of clothes as sentimental keepsakes of past quests has paid off!

me doing the hansry scene for an unplanned third time: yeah yeah hans there's a tale about two knights, i know, i know

with my waffenrock, everyone's like "hey man how's it going" and leaves me alone. since i can get closer to guards now, i overhear 2 ambient conversations right away: the first tells you the password to enter the camp, and the second tells you exactly where to find some spare waffenrocks. they really did put down very obvious clues to direct you to the disguise path that i completely missed, huh?

this time, getting to von aulitz takes me only 3 tries: the first try, i stupidly waltzed right into his area thinking that the waffenrock would protect me even from the Straight-Up Hard Trespassing zone (it did not), and the second try, i accidentally walked past the gate guard without stopping to give him the password and he got mad and attacked me.

third time's the charm! i gave the password, but there's a tense moment as the guard recognizes henry from maleshov. turns out, the guard is a maleshov farmer who's joined the army out of necessity, and so, henry hits him back with "you're from maleshov? then you should be fucking thanking me!" and explains how he prevented the villagers from being massacred. this results in the guard agreeing to let us go in! i'm delighted! at last, my good deed is rewarded! always gotta go for the good deeds, you never know which ones could be surprise tools to help you later. i wonder what would happen in this encounter if you'd massacred maleshov; maybe you could still pass an Evil Speech Check to scare the guard into letting you in?

von aulitz take 2! i'm happy to listen to this beautiful cutscene soundtrack again. aww, if i'd known the first time that i was going to replay this scene, i would've done the honorable death to see what it was like. but i want the dishonorable death to be in the final timeline, so i chose it again this time.

finding sam and escaping with him: success on the very first attempt. the very first.

camp ordeal take 1: 4 hours camp ordeal take 2: 45 minutes

both instances are inflated by the von aulitz scene which is pretty lengthy, as well as the scene with brabant and sam. take 2 truly took me SO little time in terms of active gameplay haha

still, i'm glad it shook out this way! doing the disguise route right away would've been boring and too easy. those 4 hours of stealth trials and tribulations will always stick in my mind as one of my most memorable incidents of the whole game!

at long last, we advance the story. now we're playing as godwin back in suchdol. hans comes up on the ramparts shortly after henry and sam have left and worries about their safety. i wonder if henry woke up first and snuck out without waking hans and then hans woke up shortly afterwards and followed, or if hans saw henry off from his room and strategically waited a few minutes so they wouldn't be obvious by showing up at the ramparts together in the middle of the night haha

godwin and hans get drunk and partake in a few shenanigans, including hollering off the ramparts at the enemy camp. later hans is drunkenly talking to a horse and godwin says "i see you've finally found someone who loves you!" meaning the horse, and hans replies "what?! who told you that?" LMAO he's worried that henry spread some gossip before heading off to his possible death

godwin wakes up hungover and finds the fortress getting attacked by trebuchets. i knew i remembered those trebuchets!

AHA now we're in the opening flashforward scene!!! i've been hoping they would plop that whole sequence back down exactly the same as it was originally so that i could see the full scene again now in context, and they did! the gameplay sequence is the same too. such a satisfying full-circle moment! shoutout to First-Time Me hearing hans call godwin "father" in this scene and getting confused because i didn't know godwin was a priest and thought maybe this is hans's actual dad but why would his dad be alive if his uncle is his guardian? i also had a vague memory of Some Guy shouting orders at godwin, and now i discover that guy was dry devil. i know so much more now!

we get hans's "we were only supposed to deliver a message to trosky" line, but this time the scene continues. godwin agrees and says he should be back home drinking and giving sermons right now, then pulls the arrow out of hans's shoulder and helps him back up. more attackers are coming, but the boys are ready to face them:

but things are bad, and now they've lost every part of the fortress except the main tower, where everyone is holed up together scared and listening to the praguers slowly but surely break down the last door that's protecting them.

but lo and behold, we have our two towers moment of a huge army of reinforcements appearing on the horizon just in the nick of time to save everyone!

the lead rider had a helmet on and i was like "who's that? it can't be henry, my henry is not dripped out that well" but it was! they also got rid of his lil beard again, so it must be another cutscene where there's just one default henry instead of your customized one.

he's accompanied by radzig, who gives the troops a rousing speech, as well as hanush and jobst. they charge to join the battle, and it's all very exciting! i'm hyped!

i kinda wish we'd followed henry to see the scene of him meeting up with jobst et al and explaining to them what's happened, but cutting straight to the army showing up at the direst hour of need is more cinematically dramatic, so i can't fault that choice.

back in gameplay, and henry now just fully has the dripped out armor they gave him in the cutscene. sweet! thanks! oh, checking my inventory i see it's mostly the same but worse quality as the pieces i took from von aulitz, so let me do a quick switcheroo to put those ones on.

swift success in the final siege stage and i died 0 times, seeing as the enemy is now horrendously outnumbered thanks to our army. then, henry has happy reunions with his loved ones:

debrief chat with all our main players, with zizka and hanush congratulating everyone, especially henry, for a job well done in the face of great adversity. it's also mentioned that the praguers took back all the silver while they briefly had control of the fortress. so, we essentially accomplished nothing with this whole ordeal. nice.

hanush says he needs to talk to henry in a minute, but first he wants a private chat with hans. he tells henry not to eavesdrop, so naturally, i immediately change into my Stealth Fit to follow them and eavesdrop.

but their conversation is more or less exactly what i would've expected: hanush saying that it still isn't the right time to hand over lordship of rattay to hans and hans being upset about that, then hanush talking about the upcoming wedding and hans being upset about that as well.

as much as i love hans, a) i think hanush is kinda right that hans is still not mature or wise enough for large-scale leadership and 2) i think hanush is kinda right that marriage is politics and hans ought to understand that. so it's a neat little character conflict: hanush's position is the one that's logically correct (imo), while hans's is the one that's emotionally sympathetic. as far as i can tell, hanush is a pretty good guy who's not trying to be cruel to hans, he just truly is trying to do what's best for rattay as a whole even if it's not what makes hans personally happy, which makes it a much more nuanced dynamic than your classic Evil Uncle And Put-Upon Nephew. but i think the first game has a lot more of hanush, so i'll be interested to see if i have more thoughts on him there! and radzig too, he really has barely been in this game so i'm excited to probably see more of him in kcd1.

now they're ready for henry to join the conversation, so i jogged back a ways and then made a show of walking up to them the way that somebody who definitely hadn't been eavesdropping would. hanush tells henry that hans is upset about having to get married, and i chose to have henry say "i reckon i can see why" which resulted in him and hans exchanging a long, silent, meaningful look. delicious!!

next hanush says that when the time comes, it will be henry's job to make sure the wedding actually takes place. "if our young lord refuses, you have my permission to drag him kicking and screaming to the altar if need be!" sir, this is SO not my circus. i don't remember "dragging hans to his own wedding against his will" being part of my job description, but i will check when i play the first game and actually witness henry's initial job offer. jokes aside, henry now having a DUTY to make sure his beloved gets married to someone else is sooooo tasty! i need a kcd3 to see this heart vs. duty angst come to fruition!

"after all, who else should take care of him other than the young lord's squire, eh?" everybody really wants henry to take care of hans, and he sure will. i had henry respond "yes you're right" but he did it sassily and was like "i'll do it but i'm not happy about it!" and lost reputation with hanush djkjfg

at last, we get a one-on-one convo with hans! henry opens with "thank you for.......the encouragement before my journey" is that what we're calling it henry

henry has the option to ask hans what he and hanush talked about in private, and i took it even though i already know. hans has the audacity to say "various things. you don't need to know everything, henry." hans capon i am your BOYFRIEND! AND your bodyguard/squire/page/companion/babysitter/designated friend and minder. henry can do a Good Speech Check of "you can tell me" and an Evil Speech Check of "don't tell me, then!" i went for the route of gentle coaxing, of course, but i think it would be way funnier to go the bitchy boyfriend route of "ok FINE, i don't even WANT to know anyway!" also, i think it would be very justified of henry to be bitchy when he hooked up with hans mere days ago and now hans is hitting him with a "none of your business" during their very first private convo afterwards. also also, henry already knowing exactly what they talked about from eavesdropping but still being bitchy to hans for not wanting to tell him what they talked about would be a top-tier henry of gaslitz moment.

but the good option is very sweet: "you know you've always been able to rely on me. maybe we've had the odd quarrel, but that's water under the bridge now. your secret's safe with me."

so hans tells him about the convo, and we talk about the upcoming wedding. hans says "i'm not sure what to do...after what happened, you know? i mean...me and you...i suppose we'll just have to wait and see how things turn out."

this is the only real followup we get about their romance scene (plus that Meaningful Look earlier). definitely a shame there isn't a full conversation with them properly addressing "sooooo we slept together" and what that means, but oh well, them's the breaks. we've had SO many good conversations with hans throughout the game that i can't be too disappointed! and in-world it does make sense that they are just too drained and exhausted to have The What-Are-We Talk right now, even if narratively it's a missed opportunity. but a hypothetical kcd3 had better have pretty significant dialogue differences and extra stuff for a romanced hans re: him getting married etc, or else that would really be dropping the ball.

henry tries to cheer hans up and says maybe he'll get along with jitka. hans says "she's bound to be ugly! she'd have been married off ages ago otherwise." hans if you keep making me set my Days Since Last Hans Misogyny Incident counter back to zero, i WILL choose rosa as my endgame if i can only pick one.

hans: i've been thinking, though. if i get married and have a son, i'll name him after you! me: i-- 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

i'm speechless! i'm on the floor! i see that hans's irl son was named hynce, so i'm guessing that's a variant of henry or could be considered derived from the same name root (i know the actual czech equivalent of henry is jindrich since that's his name in the czech version of the game), and that's why they decided to set up the idea that that's intentional and not just coincidence. my heart!!!!

after a bit of banter, henry says "i'm pleased! honestly! i hope he turns out to be a great man" and hans replies "of course he will! he'll take after me!" they are so married. hans also says he's sure his hypothetical future son will perform great deeds. yep, seeing as irl you're pretty much only known for being the dad of this way more famous guy, hans, i think you're right!

henry: [describing how he killed brabant] hans: i hope adder enjoyed looking down on that me: i mean adder is probably in hell to be quite honest with you, so. looking up.

another brief nod to hansry when they're discussing the plan for right now (stay in the area until it's time to go to the wedding) and hans says they can stay at the devil's den "or we'll find something...more private". also, throughout the convo henry seems fully intending to aid and abet hans in avoiding his wedding despite his assigned duty to the contrary, so in a hypothetical kcd3, i wonder if henry would be forced by gameplay to escort hans to the wedding or whether he could refuse and hanush would have to send godwin or someone to go retrieve the both of them from their hotel room sex marathon.

on that note, i think it would be neat if a hypothetical kcd3 allowed you to tell other NPCs about dating hans, though only a select few where it would be in character for them to not be homophobic about it. for example, godwin would be #1 Ally as our resident renegade priest who's always talking about how church doctrine sucks and misses the spirit of christ's teachings of peace and love. zizka would be like "as long as it doesn't affect your ability to do The Task, i couldn't give less of a shit what you do in your personal life". dry devil would make fun of them absolutely brutally in an "area man not sure if he's male-bonding or being bullied" way but you know he means it in good fun so it's fine. it would put a little smile on katherine's face to know that something nice has come out of all these horrors. and rosa would be all in favor because she loves hot knight yaoi. i know this to be true about her.

anyway, that is our last interaction with hans in the whole game! farewell hans, i will see you again sooner or later in kcd1!

next we talk to zizka, who gives henry a job offer as his right-hand man. i had henry politely decline on the grounds that he won't leave his current position as hans's right-hand man, and zizka says he understands but the offer is always open should circumstances change in future. then he says "it's not over yet. the king and prokop of luxembourg are still prisoners, and it's hard to say whether sigismund will want to release them. maybe we'll have more work to do." yet another signpost that a kcd3 is intended, and that it would be most likely to pick up shortly after the events of kcd2 in order to cover getting wenceslas out of prison (i don't subscribe to theories that a kcd3 would jump 20 years ahead and be about the hussite wars. it'd make way more sense to finish out the wenceslas-sigismund civil war thread, then later do a separate series of games about the hussite wars if they want.)

finally, we get to have a sweet and heartfelt moment with katherine despite not romancing her! i'm thrilled!

henry: i wanted to tell you that you're one of the bravest women i've ever met! [katherine protests] no, it's true! after all you've been through. never complained. and everything you've done for us. we couldn't have done it without you. i wouldn't be able to do it. thank you. and i hope you'll get to know peace now. you deserve it. katherine: i...i...what's come over you? nobody's ever said anything like that to me. henry: they should have, though. katherine: thank you.

my heart! <33 i love you so much, katherine! henry's right that everybody should be telling you how great you are at all times!

it ends with "what did you mean, ONE of the bravest?! who else did you have in mind?" "someone from back home. i think you'd like her. i'll tell you about her one day." i can't wait to meet theresa!!! and if there is a kcd3, i'll scream if they don't include all 3 of our main ladies and let them interact with each other! idc if it's not realistic for theresa to be in this part of the country when she lives back in rattay and is a peasant woman who wouldn't usually travel away from home, you find a way to make her be there! that's what it means to be a writer!

katherine says her only future plan for now is to stay with zizka. "he's all i've got. i'll go where he goes." awww <3 again, can't decide if i prefer the vibe of katherine saying this as his romantic partner or as his platonic soulmate. both are good!

me on this fresh new day walking through the village where the camp was that i came to know intimately in the darkness from wandering around for 4 real hours in the middle of the night:

henry's next task is to go find radzig, but before i got there, it triggered a cutscene where henry falls asleep and dreams about his parents coming to talk to him <3

they debrief on all that has transpired. henry says "war is a dirty business. no one has the power to change that. i didn't understand that before, but i do now." well now, what's the narrative saying by having henry repeat istvan & von aulitz's favorite catchphrase? our boy truly has lost his idealism by now.

discussion on revenge and morality. martin says istvan had it coming, but henry might've gone too far with von aulitz and brabant. von aulitz is the one who put a sword through you, martin! i can't wait to play kcd1 and see what exactly istvan did to rankle everyone so much besides steal a sword and be kind of annoying djkfjgh because everyone hates his fucking guts way more than von aulitz, it seems like.

although i should note, since dream magic is not real in this universe, this is not actual martin's thoughts, but rather a reflection of henry's conscience. and i can definitely buy that he feels more uncertainty over how he dealt with VA than over how he dealt with istvan, since iirc istvan showed no remorse at all while VA acknowledged the harm he'd done henry and apologized (and i also wonder whether the honorable vs. dishonorable kill would affect what martin says about istvan and/or VA here). and with brabant, every single alive person we told about it was like "fuck yeah, killing him was an awesome and correct decision on your part" (even our moral compass katherine said it was the right call) so it clearly was the objectively smartest choice, and i can easily imagine this just being henry's conscience tormenting him a bit over killing a guy who was begging him for mercy.

martin does approve of henry for being a good boy and sparing the civilians of semine and maleshov. then ma says "you avenged an evil act, but you behaved like a bandit, plundering and robbing the poor. oh, my son." i'm sorry ma, i came down with a permanent case of kleptomania about 15 hours into the game, it's not my fault!

(haha i'm catching up on d20 city council of darkness and just got to the scene where zaeth keeps randomly stealing absolutely useless shit he has no need for while exploring, such as papers from the back office of a small-town diner, food from the same diner, and a mop, and i was like "this is actual real footage of me playing kcd")

our performance review from our parents is over, and on the whole they're happy with henry. i heard it's possible for them to be really upset and turn their backs on him in this scene if you're bad enough. that would break my heart, so i'm glad it didn't happen to me!

"it seems this chapter of your life is over. you're a grown man now." i'm crying. they ask henry what he wants to do next. i'd already decided i was going to replay all this because i mistakenly thought that this scene happening before radzig was a bug and that i missed my chance to talk to radzig, and good thing for that, since i was indecisive in these questions and got to do two paths!

for what henry wants to do next, the options are settle down and start a family, settle down in the city and start a business, life a live of adventure, or be a warrior. the latter two are not my style, so i chose start a family as my first and non-final-timeline answer. henry says he wants to wash his hands of all this and go back to skalitz and rebuild it and then start a family, so i'm glad this is my non-final answer because a return to humble village life in skalitz is not what i want for him. he's ready to let go of skalitz and leave it in the past, i say! and i think he's seen too much of the world now to be content going back to humble village life forevermore (though can definitely imagine that for other players/other henrys, that would feel like a good full-circle ending).

ma says "and do you want to live...........alone?" and i have the option to say "with rosa" or "with capon" and i am SWEATING. the other options are "please, ma" and "we'll see" and in my heart those are my answers because i cannot choose, but i definitely want to pick both my beloveds so i can see the dialogue for them.

i did rosa first, and henry says he wants to try to win her hand. ma teases him for having high aspirations and says "she's a remarkable girl. i hope it works out for you." <333

i didn't finish out the scene and restarted at this point. in the final timeline, i chose that henry wants to be a small business owner in kuttenberg because you KNOW how badly i've been wanting that for him. "i've made a lot of money. i'll buy a house here in the city. i've had enough of war. and if kuttenberg isn't big enough for me, i'll go to prague!" my city boy!! <3

next henry says he will live with hans. martin goes "[shocked] what?!" and ma says "[scolding] martin!" and henry says "i suppose it's not what you expected" and the conversation moves on without further ado, maybe because henry's subconscious doesn't want to imagine more detailed/more realistic reactions from his parents over him being in love with hans. but at least in his dream, ma says gay rights! and martin would be onboard once he gets over the surprise, probably.

martin: watch out for that erik. i don't think he's going to forget you anytime soon. henry: don't worry. i won't forget him either. me: say less, martin! advising me to keep erik in my mind is the LAST thing you need to do! he's already renting a full mansion in there!

it's time to say goodbye, and i will put a bunch of screenshots because words can't do it justice! i was so emotional!

then henry lets go of ma's hands to let her and martin walk away, arm in arm. my HEART!!

i'm weeping!!! LOVED this whole scene! it was so beautiful! <3 and such a good conclusion of henry's two-game arc of avenging his parents. with that task done and istvan and VA dead, he's ready to let them rest in peace.

in that regard, i do see why some people say that henry's story seems complete and they don't think there will be a kcd3 or that henry will be the protagonist if there is one, but given that there are SO many other places where characters practically turn to the camera and tell you "hey, there's still more work for henry to do" i'm still holding firm in my belief of a third game with henry as the PC eventually. i think tying out his arc of avenging his parents and saying that he's all grown up now can still work with a kcd3 following him now in a slightly different phase of life, more mature, focusing on other issues than his parents and skalitz (different phase of life emotionally, not timeline-wise, since as i mentioned i think it would still take place in 1403ish rather than doing any kind of time jump).

all right, NOW we get to talk to radzig after waking up. he says "your mother and martin would surely be proud of you" hooray, i remember he said that to godwin earlier and i was upset that he didn't say it to henry's face!

at long last, henry gives radzig the Dad Sword back. radzig says henry should keep it, but henry holds firm, so radzig keeps it. interesting! i've heard that it is possible for henry to keep it, but there was no choice for it in this moment. maybe choosing either settle down or small business future with the parents returns the sword to radzig, while choosing adventurer or warrior would have henry keep it. fine by me; i'm a shortsword girlie through and through, so i have no need for it. and it's only right that the Dad Sword remain with the last surviving member of the parent polycule. radzig needs something to remember martin and ma by too! imagine how henry would feel if hans and rosa both died!

wait actually, we still have one more surviving member of the parent polycule, sam's mom sara. kcd3 sidequest where henry and sam can set up their parents? haha

"enjoy [the peace and quiet] while you can. i can assure you nothing lasts forever. and if you're missing the excitement now, which i'm sure you are, you can be certain that it'll find us itself someday. i believe that there are still interesting times ahead of us." again, radzig is looking at the camera and telling us henry's story isn't over quite yet.

as they walk away together, radzig asks what the deal is between henry and katherine, but henry says there's nothing there and that "she's old enough to be my mother!" radzig replies "well you could do with some mothering" LMAO radzig says henry needs a dommy mommy in his life. i mean, i don't disagree, radzig! but i think rosa can do that job even if she isn't literally mommy age.

wait, i just remembered that when we chatted with katherine, she said that she's met radzig before and maybe he might remember her. did you fuck my dad, katherine???? haha i don't think so, it would be too weird of them to have a possible love interest for henry also have a past with his dad, but i am intrigued as to how she met him before and why they slipped that in as a tantalizing tidbit right at the end of the game.

and this conversation about henry needing mothering is the last dialogue of the whole game jdkjfgkhj incredible!

wait! there are 2 post-credit scenes! so radzig saying henry needs a mommy is NOT the very last dialogue haha phew.

first, revelry back at suchdol. zizka (drunk off his ass) says that dry devil (also drunk off his ass) should shoot an apple off his head to show just how incredible a marksman he is even when drunk. this results in zizka's eye getting shot; i learned he was known irl for having only one eye (and i think he lost his second eye eventually too), so henry stabbing his eye in their duel way back was a fun fake-out of that. will this also be a fake-out and his eye will recover again, or will this be the real deal? who's to say!

henry and radzig have a nice father-son bonding moment over being judgy as hell about all this:

the second post-credit scene is a flashback to sigismund first finding out that the silver was stolen AND his throne in hungary is being usurped AND jobst betrayed him and is gathering an army. this news is delivered to him in the middle of the night and we learn that he sleeps in his crown and pink underwear, incredible stuff, 10/10 fashion icon. naturally, he loses his shit at all this bad news, and then the messenger is crying out in the hallway being comforted by a fellow guard while we hear sigismund screaming and throwing things in his room. von aulitz arrives on the scene and siggy steps out now dressed for business and Totally Calm, and he tells von aulitz to stay and get the silver back while he heads off to hungary. i don't see a strong narrative need to include this scene since we already learned all this info during earlier moments, but it was delightful, so i'm glad they did! one of the very rare scenes that neither henry nor godwin is present for (i'm actually not sure if there were any others in the whole game)

i'm put back at the devil's den, adrift and bereft. i have no sidequests left, so the last item on my agenda is to go back to the first map and see istvan's grave.

a beautiful ride to trosky castle, just like old times. i'm so nostalgic!

the grave is just a humble wooden cross underneath the tower we threw him out of. henry says "so this is where istvan landed. i hope it hurt, you bastard!" and "a long way up. that arsehole flew for a long time." thinking again about that excellent art of him in posing with istvan's grave a la that one meme; it's exactly the energy here haha

istvan's iconic hat is at the grave free for the taking. i picked it up to see its item description ("a black chaperon whose owner i sent straight to hell") but then dropped it back where it was. i'll leave that for erik to swing by and pick up as a keepsake; it's the least i can do. i THINK i heard there's special dialogue if you wear istvan's hat to the duel with erik djkfjg that would be such an unhinged thing to do and i fully one hundred percent believe henry would do it. not my henry, though, because he is not a strong enough warrior to be able to wear a fancy boy hat to a duel instead of a safety helmet.

i decide to end where we began: at bozhena's hut <3

and that's all! i can't believe it's over!!!!

now for the stats roundup:

124 hours played in final playline

156 hours played altogether, which must mean i spent 32 hours dying/messing up/redoing things. that feels so correct.

2953 hours passed in-world, which is 123 days, yet it remained summer the whole time haha i wonder if this includes the 25 siege days or only the hours passed while actually doing active gameplay. also, henry spent 440 of these hours sleeping.

main level: 28

level 30 skills: houndmaster, survival

25-29: agility, vitality, speech, craftsmanship, horsemanship, stealth, thievery

20-24: strength, alchemy, scholarship, warfare, swords

15-19: unarmed, marksmanship

10-14: drinking

9 or lower: heavy weapons, polearms

other stats of note:

61k groschen acquired total, with 21k the most money owned at once

time spent poisoned: 0 minutes. i learned my lesson about eating spoiled food on day 1 of playing and never forgot it!

damage dealt 50k, damage taken 6k. if the stats included all the non-final timelines then my damage taken would be 1 million.

combat stats: 257 enemies killed but 266 people killed, 54 animals killed (unclear how many were hares that i killed accidentally by stepping on them), 5 enemies killed by dropping a rock on them hell yeah my specialty, 56 masterstrikes performed, 131 combos performed (i never once in my life did a combo intentionally), 60 knockouts, 28 stealth kills

the combination of "arrows fired: 216" and "enemies killed with bow: 8" is SENDING me. saying i had a 10% success rate of hitting enemies with arrows was way too generous, it turns out (though a good chunk of those 216 arrows must be from the bajillion archery contests i did to try and grind that skill)

72k groschen's worth of items stolen, 753 items stolen, 192 locks picked. sounds about right.

civilians killed: 54. when did i kill so many civilians???? i suppose there must be situations when people who attack me technically count as civilians, because i definitely did not just go around and murder 54 townsfolk unprompted!

144 quests completed, 2 quests failed (the semine cart quest + the working in the vineyard quest)

124 persuasion successes, and much smaller numbers for the other 5 types of speech check

lots of skill checks say 0, but i KNOW that's not true, so those stats must be bugged

253 potions brewed, 31 blacksmithing items crafted, 798 herbs collected (83kg)

27 dice games won, 16 lost

in the coming weeks, i may or may not make a Final Lookback post awarding superlatives for my favorite quests, favorite NPCs, etc. we'll see if i feel like it!

despite this brief moment of disappointment, zizka wants henry to be one of the commanders during the siege! "it's about time, isn't it? you're a good fellow and i know you'll take care of your men." bursting with pride at having won my dad's approval!!! i will be in charge of 6 guys, including samuel and kubyenka. i won't let you down dad!

we go to chat with musa and katherine in the infirmary, and we get a chance to thank musa for saving our ass back at the italian court. he says katherine's been helping heal him from those battle injuries and compliments her skills: "katherine has mastered this art! many learned men could envy her skills!" he’s drinking his respecting women juice! gonna go out on a limb and say that henry, musa, and somewhat zizka are the only men in the game who drink their respecting women juice lmao (hans most decidedly NOT included in that list, i'm sorry to say)

i do feel like they quickly ran out of ideas for how to involve katherine in the story, though. like, she's initially presented as this spy and rogue and it's super cool, but aside from her brief stint in sigismund's camp and her murder mystery sidequest, her entire role in the second act of the game has just been to complain about how dumb all the men are, fret about them taking risks and getting themselves killed, and act as the default healer and mender of clothes and moral compass and general mom of the group Because Woman, while her spy skillset was largely forgotten about. i think they could've done a lot more with her (and with rosa, for that matter) and it's a real shame! i think i saw someone say that the game had an all-male writers' room, and if that's true, i'm not surprised. they just..........do not know how to think creatively enough to prominently involve female characters in a narrative about medieval war. i know medieval war is a typically male-only setting, but i promise you, there are PLENTY of ways you could incorporate women into the main story in a larger capacity without needing to stick them in armor and put them on the battlefield! (or you could ALSO do that. it would not break my immersion whatsoever to see rosa take part in combat with her crossbow, because that fits her established character!)

i think overall my feeling is: i genuinely love just about all the content for the ladies that IS in the game, and i find them both to be well-written and compelling characters. i just think there could and should have been more! more content for our main two ladies, and more ladies than just the two. i'm SO excited to meet theresa in kcd1 and get to play as her for that dlc! and then i will probably get retroactively mad that they didn't try very hard to come up with a way to work her into kcd2.

henry asks janosh how the supplies are looking, and he says thanks to everything i had stocked up, it's not bad at all. yeah i know, my inventory is like 70 pounds lighter than it was before all my food was forcibly confiscated! like did they literally just rifle through my belongings and take stuff while i was asleep? i don't care if we're under siege, that's foul behavior!

henry has the option to say "i don't like that you took my food" LMAO instant click! i love when henry has the option to say exactly what i'm already thinking. we have a real kinship sometimes <3

janosh is like "so you want to hoard your food and let us go hungry? some christian you are, henry" yep that was exactly my plan, yes.

now henry is recruiting a couple of guys from skalitz who are like "ayyyyy it's henry!" and i who did not play kcd1 (yet) am like

LMAO there's an option to say "uhhh who are you?" but that would be so mean after they were just saying how glad they are to see me again, so i said i was glad to see them too. "if there's anyone who can get us through this, it's henry. that boy's survived his own death at least once!" try 100000 times. also, nice to see that henry finally has two fans/groupies, he deserves it!

another recruit is stressed and says he doesn't have the stomach for killing people and looking at their guts that he just tore out with a halberd. you'll be fine my guy, i remember when i first started watching jillyeon play this game and saw my first bloodied corpse i went "urgh! this is so violent and gross, i can barely even look. i could never play this game myself!" and within another hour i was completely and utterly desensitized. alarming how fast that happened lmao

"you want me to take up arms against trained killers? fuck that! we must be absolutely fucked if MY help is needed to save us!" i feel you buddy, i've been saying the same thing about myself this whole time.

this lady is so upset that she's floating in midair:

look at my squad! hell yeah boys let's fuck em up!

henry gives them an inspirational speech that concludes with "remember one thing! he who fights for money will never last as long as he who fights for a good cause!" 10/10 very inspirational, good job henry

i was wandering around all over the place looking for hans because i wanted to see if it would let me chat with him before i went to bed, finally gave up, and went up to my room only to find hans sitting right outside my door waiting for me haha glad we're of like minds <3

hans was also assigned as a commander, so we chat about our new squads. "you're quite experienced when it comes to giving orders, right?" henry says, with no kinky intentions at all, i'm sure. (but jokes aside, there is zero doubt in my mind that henry would be the one ~giving orders~ behind closed doors. hans has Bratty Sub written all over him.)

hans denies this on the grounds that ordering people to fetch him wine is much different than commanding people in battle, and he and henry commiserate about how they now have to be battle commanders when they're more accustomed to following orders than giving them. they need rosa here to be their dom, she would not be having these problems. (rosa=dom maaaaybe occasionally switch if she wants to engage in some Getting Saved By Big Strong Knight roleplay, henry=switch, hans=sub, that's my final answer)

the fortress is invaded by a couple guys in the night, but we take them out. timeskip to Day 11 of the siege, and zizka has a plan to cause a diversion with some guys, then send other guys to burn down the army's camp. hans and henry both have to choose some of their men to send on the diversion, and hans is like "but it's a suicide mission! so we have to choose which men to send to their deaths???" easy, i'm choosing the ones who've had the least screentime. next question.

off to meet with dry devil to get intel out of a prisoner. he plans to torture him and says "but if you're gonna shit yourself like you did at maleshov then you'd better stay here and let me do it" dw i'm battle-hardened now, i'm ready to torture a guy. oh actually never mind, turns out i can get full intel with no torture because these speech checks are easy as hell for a man of my vast charisma!

me: i'm so battle-hardened, i'm going to make the unsavory and more narratively interesting choice that i feel fits in the best with henry's character arc of being in a terrible and desperate situation me 1 second later: no forget that, i feel bad

we learn that von bergow has fucked off, likely back to trosky castle, and von aulitz is badly injured and has been laid up in his tent since the devil shot him, and therefore brabant is currently acting as the commander of the whole force. that fucker!

wow, you know shit's getting real when i instinctively refer to dr. phil as von aulitz for the literal first time in my entire liveblog series slash my entire life! we'll see if that continues.

i'm so bad at being battle-hardened that after this scene i'm like "man that prisoner was so helpful and i really appreciate it, i wish i could let him go free in thanks" djkfjgh

now it's time to choose 3 of my guys to send to their almost certain deaths, and despite my earlier flippancy, it is a tough choice! but i'm sorry, two guys from skalitz plus old man huntsman, i simply don't know you, so off you go. plus, i've heard vaguely that it's possible samuel can die, and i don't want to find out if this is the scenario it would happen in. i've only had my brother for a month and a half but if anything happened to him i'd kill everyone in bohemia and then myself.

our role in the battle is to stay on the ramparts and shoot, and hans carries the team seeing as i have about a 10% success rate with hitting targets with my bow and arrow. but the battle goes well, and i don't specifically hear anything about any of my guys dying, so maybe they all made it out! that's what i'll tell myself.

dry devil mentions that he ran into a guy he used to fight with and quite liked who's now part of the praguers' army. "when he saw me, he hesitated, just long enough for me to stab him in the throat. if i hadn't, he would've done the same to me." damn, heavy!

hans says "i'm fed up with this! i don't want to send any more people to their deaths! but maybe it'll be me who dies, then i won't care anymore." calm down edgelord it's only been 11 days

oh neat, quick little random detour into Hans Parental Issues! "i lost my parents too, you know? i hardly knew them, but still." "you've barely ever talked about your parents." "aye, i don't know much about them. they died when i was little. my uncle hanush raised me, but sometimes i think about what my life would have been like with them." excellent tidbit of additional hans lore! i'm pretty sure this is the first time there has EVER been a reference to his mom lmao he's only talked about his dad being dead before, i truly didn't know whether his mom was also dead or not (though figured she probably was or else she'd be around and part of the story. or maybe not given their inability to incorporate female characters into the narrative. they would have you believe that every family unit in medieval bohemia was A Guy And His Single Dad/Uncle And Maybe A Brother. zero mothers or sisters or aunts anywhere.)

zizka on von bergow: that bastard was deceiving us the whole time! he wanted us to think he was playing along with us. me, who tried to tell 5 different people including zizka that very same thing not too long ago and was not listened to:

zizka's theory for how VB escaped is that he stole some wire when no one was looking, made himself a lockpick, lockpicked his door open, went to the room across the hall, spelunked out the window using bedsheets, and swam across the moat. (henry "he swam across???" zizka "believe it or not, there are people who can swim!") if that's true (henry had the option to doubt it, but i said i believed it because i so badly want this to be what happened) it is CRIMINAL we didn’t get a cutscene of that jdkjfg 70-year-old nobleman pulling crazier moves than anyone else in the game, i mean go off king, i have to respect it!

since we probably won't see VB again for the rest of the game, i'll take a quick moment to discuss him. i think he's a great choice of villain to leave hanging into a potential kcd3! as a high-ranking and very influential nobleman, he feels like an appropriate step up in threat level from istvan and dr. phil (who essentially are just lackeys, though ones in pretty high positions within team sigismund), while still being more accessible to henry than Literal Sigismund (who does a good job with his own function of haunting the narrative and only appearing onscreen once to great effect). plus, VB strikes me as more intelligent, more calculating, and more of a 4D chess player than dr. phil (who is just a military guy) or even istvan (who is schemey in a fun campy mustache-twirly way but arguably isn't REALLY that effective in his schemes). VB is calm and cold and levelheaded and always a few steps ahead and seems to have zero weaknesses/vulnerabilities as far as we know right now, and i can't forget how thoroughly he ran me in circles and caused me to accidentally become party to the destruction of semine earlier in the game because he genuinely outsmarted me. i doubt i'd fall for his tricks a second time (hopefully!) but still, the fact that he truly and utterly DID get me once tells me he has the makings of a great Big Bad!

zizka: as long as they don't bring in catapults from prague, we'll be fine. but if they do, we're fucked! me: [overcome with a vague and uneasy sense that i saw catapults in action during the opening flashforward]

Siege Day 25!

hans: i'm soooooo hungry hans and henry: [look at mutt] me: NO!!!!!!!!

the actual option comes up later with dry devil, who proposes eating mutt, and i had henry say "just try and touch my dog and i'll break your arms!" so mutt is officially marked safe from being eaten during the siege, PHEW

instead, we make soup out of shoes, and it's a mark of how dire things are that hans "threw a hissy fit over being asked to carry 1 sack of flour 10 feet" capon eats it with relatively little complaint. i'm also not that concerned because i have about one thousand potions and those also count as (small amounts of) nourishment, so *i* am good to last a long time. idk about the rest of you and that's not my problem. i will not be sharing my potions.

..........i think this whole food-hoarding thread is showing how i would behave in a lord of the flies situation, and i don't like what i'm seeing jkdjkfg

godwin is trying to raise morale and says "our lord spent 40 days fasting in the desert, and i don't recall him whining!" oh really? were you there godwin? probably i guess, because you're old as shit [ba dum tss]

random mini-task of henry soothing a spooked horse who hasn't let anyone ride her since her owner was killed earlier in the siege. but Horse Girl Henry manages to calm her down and get her out for a lil ride in the courtyard to stretch her legs <3 the stablemaster is glad because he was afraid she was going to become so useless that they'd have to eat her, which he didn't want. "as my pa used to say, you know you're at the bottom when you start eating horses" was your pa ever besieged in a fortress containing a stable of horses, by any chance? because that's an incredibly specific saying for him to have in his back pocket.

lovely cutscene of godwin saying a prayer for people they've had to bury in unconsecrated ground. he's like "do you think god can only hear prayers made in latin? do you think he can only hear you if you talk to him through a priest? of course not!" and i was nodding along emphatically, and then he detoured into a quick rant about how the church is corrupt and priests are simonists who constantly demand money from you and "you can't even set foot in a church without opening your purse!" i appreciate the anti-establishment energy godwin but we are in the middle of a funeral

me not religious at all and still feeling very moved by his speech haha

we get attacked again and fend them off again, but the situation is worsening.

zizka: we've lost the outer bailey me: fuck!!! not the outer bailey!

we meet up for strategy, and zizka says we won't last much longer without the outer bailey. things are getting real bad and lord peter again proposes that we negotiate, but everyone else refuses.

and katherine goes the fuck off! she berates everyone for being selfish and foolhardy and putting all these good people (the suchdol inhabitants & outlying villagers) in danger, etc. "and all for some silver that'll be used to pay for more war?" you tell em!! and then she storms off, clearly very upset. it doesn't change the men's minds What So Ever, but it's nice to see her given a chance to express her opinion in a big group meeting.

zizka's next plan is for SOMEONE to sneak out of the fortress, try to get through the enemy camp without getting killed, and deliver a message to jobst to ask where the fuck he is with the army he's supposed to be bringing. i'm thinking obviously this someone is going to be henry, but to my surprise, samuel speaks up first and says he wants to go! and then after that henry says he'll go with him, and codependent hans is like "well then i'm going too!" but zizka vetoes that because they can't risk hans getting taken hostage and used to blackmail hanush et al.

so it will just be henry and samuel going, for some nice brotherly bonding time. but it will be very dangerous and practically a suicide mission, so now is henry's Potential Last Night On Earth and he'd better spend it wisely. the hour of hansry is upon us!!!

shit!!!! we finally learn katherine's tragic backstory, but from zizka rather than her: sigismund's army razed her village and her husband fought bravely to defend the family but was killed, and katherine was presumably raped by the soldiers afterwards, and zizka found her shortly afterwards on the road "still holding a dead baby in her arms". god!!!!!!!! horrific, and also horrific that we're having this conversation with ZIZKA rather than with katherine herself lmao the in-game stated reasoning is that katherine doesn't like to talk about it ("she doesn't want anyone else to know, to ask her questions about it, to feel sorry for her") but zizka thinks henry ought to know at this stage since he and katherine are clearly close and he wants henry to understand why katherine reacted so strongly a moment ago. but still, it would've been WAY more appropriate for this to be a private conversation that henry and katherine have. she did not consent to zizka traumadumping to henry on her behalf!! and it would've had a huge impact on her and henry's relationship (in a positive way) if this was a conversation they had with each other. so for the life of me i cannot understand why they had this info revealed to us by zizka reciting it somewhat matter-of-factly (though he's clearly emotionally affected by it too as someone who's also close with katherine) rather than by writing an emotional and impactful scene between katherine and henry where she finally feels safe enough to choose to open up to him about her trauma. crazy.

which brings me back to the earlier point about the possible all-male writers' room; iirc the context i saw that mentioned in was a comment about how, in that particular person's opinion, henry has a more emotionally intimate relationship with hans than with any of his female love interests because of the phenomenon of male writers not being able to imagine that women have as deep or as interesting inner lives as men do, and hence m/m friendships usually have more depth than m/f romances, and it's only that in this instance henry & hans's m/m friendship can also be a romance.

and that's why i don't really enjoy seeing hansry shippers gloat about how hansry is So Much Better-Written (in their opinion) than any of the m/f romances, because it feels kind of in poor taste lmao like guys, i'm afraid the reason for that is nothing good and instead starts with m and ends with isogyny. hans has more screentime than rosa or katherine or theresa? that's because of misogyny. hans is a more fleshed-out character than them? misogyny. hans has more emotional depth and a more dynamic character development arc? hans is more centrally involved in the main narrative of the story? hans is a character we get to spend more time with and interact with more often? hans is the only romanceable character who appears in both games and has a sustained long-term arc? the henry-hans dynamic is a backbone of the story regardless of whether you choose to make it romantic, whereas developing emotionally significant relationships with women is more optional and sidequest-y? you guessed it, it's misogyny all the way down! so, i adore that hansry gets to be a well-written m/m romance in a medium/setting that usually does NOT allow that to exist (medieval historical fiction warfare simulator video game aimed largely at straight men) and agree that it's incredibly valuable and important, but it just does not feel like a flex to brag about hans getting better writing treatment than the female love interests.

also! i think it's partially a Fan Problem in addition to a Writer Problem. speaking specifically on rosa since she's the female LI i know the best, she absolutely DOES have character depth; it's just that, as is often the case in m/m shipping communities, some people simply are not willing to engage as deeply with female characters as male ones, but try to brush it off as solely the writers' fault so that they don't have to examine their own internal biases. even in my brief forays into the kcd fandom, i cannot tell you how many times i've seen hansry shippers emotionally flattening rosa and ignoring the character depth she does actually have and saying "well it's not MY fault that they wrote hans way better, of course I'M not misogynistic, i would love female characters IF they were interesting but rosa simply isn't". of course rosa has way less screentime than hans (esp if the first game is factored in), of course she isn't as fleshed out as him, but it's not like she's just some sexy lamp! she genuinely is a compelling character with a good amount of depth to her that you're choosing not to engage with! (i honestly think i find her more intriguing than hans, though that could partially be because we know less about her so i have more to be curious about.) so it's kind of a split on "the writers didn't care to engage deeply with female characters" vs. "the fandom doesn't care to engage deeply with female characters", with both being issues.

(also, don't get me started on people who dislike rosa on the grounds of her being spoiled/entitled/classist/bossy/annoying/etc while adoring hans who is all of those things but 10x worse. hans-rosa is a pair like mat-elayne where i think you legally should not be allowed to hate her if you love him, because most likely the same traits you criticize in her are traits you look past or even enjoy in him.)

okay! had to get that off my chest because it's been bugging me haha but i am now dragging myself back onto the rails.

on the general point of character depth: i keep thinking that most kcd characters have simultaneously so much and so little character depth. like, there are characters i have So Many Thoughts About and yet their actual screentime and amount of revealing dialogue is fairly limited (case in point: how insane i went about erik last time based off of a 1-minute conversation scene). i'd say the reason for this is that we're so thoroughly locked into henry's specific POV. so for most characters, we see only the tips of the icebergs, and it's clear that there's a LOT going on underneath the water, but we don't quite have access to it. ex: radzig was in love with a peasant woman, knocked her up, wasn't allowed to marry her due to class, watched her marry a fellow peasant who seems to also be a friend of his and who raised his son as his own, continued to live nearby as the lord of their area but may not have ever interacted with any of them again, never married anyone himself, recently learned that his old love and her-husband-his-maybe-friend were brutally murdered, and met his son for the first time. does radzig have a lot going on internally? you fucking bet he must! do we have access to any of it? nope!

this isn't really a complaint, just an observation! and a comment that even aside from anything misogyny-related, hans truly is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to NPC character depth, because he is the full-on deuteragonist of the game and thus vastly outclasses even other male NPCs in terms of how much of his inner life we can access (which is why it IS noteworthy that he was their choice for the main male LI, when they could have just brought in a new, less important, more sideline-able character). i think it makes sense for a first-person RPG that we're so locked into henry's head and have that layer of distance with other characters, and it is kinda fun to only see the tip of the iceberg and have a lot of room to be curious and imagine things for myself. but i would also kill for a TV show adaptation to make it a more ensemble story and go deeper on our supporting characters!

circling back on katherine, her writing feels a little inconsistent because in the first act of the game she's this hardened, cynical, and borderline ruthless spy who's feeding intel to the rebels knowing it'll result in many people getting killed and who comes down to the jail and stabs a bunch of guards to free our gang and who advocates for vigilante justice via murdering murderers, but then in the second act she's constantly going on about how war is terrible and she hates how trigger-happy all the men are with doing violence and taking stupid risks. so which is she? is she the hardened cynical ruthless spy or is she the anti-war moral compass of the group? she can contain multitudes and be both, of course; with her traumatic backstory as a victim of war, it makes equal sense that she would be cynical and willing to do anything necessary against sigismund and that she would be sick of war and wish all the violence would just stop. but it feels like they never really did the work of reconciling those two sides of katherine with each other, so it's left feeling like her attitude fluctuates randomly depending on the situation and/or like they changed their minds about who she was partway through the game.

NOW i'm dragging myself back onto the rails.

zizka ends this conversation by saying "she's never let a man close to her since then except you, maybe she likes you" i love katherine dearly but i think a situationship with henry is the last thing she needs right now, so my confidence in not pursuing her romance is doubled. i think having a good and kind platonic friend is what's best for her at the moment, when she has horrendously brutal trauma and grief that's clearly still very very fresh! she needs the support of a solid, uncomplicated friendship!

earlier in the convo zizka had mentioned that he too has been widowed, which was an interesting loredrop on him. i know a lot of people ship zizka and katherine (not least because katherine is the name of his irl wife i think, so there are even theories that she was originally meant to be zizka's love interest but was hastily changed to be henry's later on; some say that katherine's romance is the worst-written and most inconsistent/odd-feeling of the 3, but i'm sure that's highly subjective and i can't weigh in myself since i haven't done it) but it's something i'm entirely neutral on, i'd say. i like the idea of katherine and zizka as a couple and think it's quite sweet and they have good chemistry and would be a good match, and i also like the idea of them as very close platonic friends who've bonded over both losing their spouses but have no interest in pursuing romance with each other. so it works either way for me! if there's ever a kcd3, it would be kinda fun if you could matchmake some of the non-chosen LIs with other characters.

i can go say goodbye to katherine without triggering the romance scene, thankfully, but i can barely comfort her at all if i don't choose the romance option! and we don't say anything about what we just learned from zizka, which is probably for the best since i feel bad that he told us and katherine knowing that we know might make her feel worse, but at the same time, i wish i could talk to her about it and let her know i love her very much and am here for her. but alas, no such option. she's all upset about henry going on the suicide mission (because she's terrified to lose yet another person she cares about, as we now know) and he essentially just goes "i'll make it back and bring help, i promise. bye!" and fucks off. please let me platonically comfort my bestie!!!

again, the lack of interest in women's inner lives; i guarantee if this was hans, there WOULD be a third option to engage with him emotionally without being romantic about it. i guarantee it would give you the chance to talk to him about his traumatic backstory that you just learned even if you're not romancing him. but with women it's like "oh you don't want to romance her? then there's no point in forming an emotional connection with her, so your only other choice is to just leave her to cry alone." iirc it was similar with rosa, where she's upset about her house and your only options are to either kiss her or leave.

(update from the future: yep! when hans is upset and worried about henry during their convo, there ARE three options - reassure him romantically, reassure him platonically, or be dismissive.)

now i'm not even in the mood to go do the hans romance scene because i'm feeling too sad about poor katherine, i feel so heartless being like "hey sorry about your trauma, i'm gonna go get dicked down now goodnight!" djkjfg but after 150 hours, it's finally time for the moment i originally started playing this game for, so let's go!! (man, it's crazy how many other Reasons To Love KCD i ended up discovering as i played along. came for hansry, stayed for a whole bunch of other stuff!)

henry goes to talk to hans alone in his room. hans opens with "i've been thinking a lot about the two of us" <3 and then he embarks on a tale about two knights (later mentioned to be lancelot and galehaut) which is clearly going to be a metaphor for him and henry, but it starts with the knights meeting on the battlefield as enemies and my first thought was "hans i'm sorry but this kinda sounds more like a metaphor for henry/erik" jdkjfjg no no no, i'm not going there, i am NOT going to keep going "haha wouldn't henry/erik be such a funny and bizarre ship idea" and then accidentally get into it. not happening. definitely has not already happened after i joked about it in the previous post.

hansry my beloveds i am so sorry that i keep derailing your big moment to talk about other shit haha we're staying on the rails for the rest of the scene starting now!

the thought of hans gearing up to tell his big gay metaphor story and you just cutting him off with "i'm sorry, i'm in a hurry" is SO funny to me djkjfg the cruelty! he's probably been practicing this speech in his head for the past 25 siege days!

good alignment: romancing hans on purpose evil alignment: being homophobic about the fact that hans is romanceable neutral alignment: accidentally romancing hans because the possibility of gay didn't occur to you and you assumed the heart options were just to signify bonding with your homie, but getting to this scene and finally realizing and deciding to go with it because you didn't have the heart to turn him down

(i've seen quite a few people say that happened to them and it really cracks me up, but i honestly can't totally blame them because the dialogue of past heart options IS so subtle that you wouldn't clock it as romance if you somehow misinterpreted the meaning of the heart symbol. and stories of people saying "i didn't mean to romance hans, but after realizing i'd done it by accident, i figured i might as well keep going, and it was beautiful" warm my heart haha)

the story and The Metaphor continue. i love this shot with this line of dialogue <3 from then on, they only fought side by side!!!

"when on campaign, they slept in the same tent. they even seduced court ladies together." oh really? hans if you want to seduce court ladies together, specifically rosa, i am one thousand percent down.

henry asks how the story ends and hans says that lancelot was captured and believed to be dead. "[galehaut] was distraught. he felt life was meaningless all of a sudden. in the end, he dies too. of grief and sorrow."

(also? this is erik-coded as well. this is literally exactly what erik is going through at the moment! the narrative foiling of our Good and Evil Gays continues!! moral of the story: there's a fine line between romance and toxic codependence when it comes to gay knights.)

hans immediately follows this up with: "henry, if anything happens to you, then...then...[sounding on the verge of tears] why the hell can't i save you once for a change?!" MY HEART!!!!! all those times i've joked about how often we've had to save hans's ass, and he's acutely aware of it too! he hates that henry has to keep risking his life over and over while he himself is never allowed to protect him in return! if henry dies, he will feel that life is meaningless and will die of grief and sorrow! the romance of it all!!

this is where the option to kiss him comes up, so we go into a beautiful cutscene! henry promises hans he'll make it back safe and tenderly touches his hand:

(just have to note that i'm patting myself on the back for my outfit choice; i really deliberated what i should wear for The Big Scene, but keeping henry in his battered bloody armor is just chef's kiss for the lord/knight energy of it all.)

henry gets up to leave, but hans gets up too and grabs his hand to stop him and goes in for the kiss!!

beautiful bit of tension and uncertainty afterwards where henry pulls away, clearly shocked/confused/having something awakened in him, and hans is all angsty and embarrassed and vulnerable and he turns away and apologizes while henry is taking a moment to bluescreen and process

henry continues on his way to the door, but hesitates once there. then, instead of opening it to leave, he locks it and strides back across the room to grab hans and kiss him again! delicious!!! this is cinema, baby!!

and we end the scene on a further-out shot of them on the bed with many fewer clothes on, and a hilariously on-the-nose pan over to their swords crossed leaning against the chair on the other side of the room djkfjg there could be no better culmination of all the sword innuendo throughout the game!

after this, we immediately cut over to henry on the ramparts with sam and godwin, about to leave on their mission, which is rude and hurtful. zero aftercare, just straight into the plot again. they better let me have at least a brief conversation with hans about Us later, like we did with rosa!

speaking of rosa, i can't say which romance scene i liked better! they are wildly different tonally since the contexts are completely different, and i really love that because i get to have Two Cakes. with rosenry, they're sneaking in a bit of fun while home alone, so we get the playful and adorable and lighthearted cake with them, and with hansry, we get the angsty and emotional cake since their scene happens in the middle of a siege when they think henry might die in the morning. and i thoroughly enjoy both types of cake!

(i will also note that the same melody played during the hans scene that was in the rosa scene; it's probably just The Romance Theme, or something even more general since i think it was already familiar to me when i heard it in the rosa scene, but the cinematic parallel made me happy <3)

anyway, this tonal difference is probably why people say the rosenry scene feels less serious/weighty than the hansry scene. it IS less serious! because the context is so different! but that doesn't mean rosenry has zero emotional depth and is only a one-time fling; there is clearly a strong initial connection and lots of mutual affection and care and trust there, they just haven't yet had the time to grow that into a more serious bond, but i don't doubt that they could, nor do i doubt that they want to. takes that rosa only wanted a one-night stand and doesn't want anything long-term with henry are so off-base. rosa says that's all they CAN have because as a (noble)woman she is painfully realistic about what is and isn't possible for her, but nowhere does she give off the vibe that she doesn't WANT to have more. she just won't let herself dream of impossible things; it's a self-protective measure.

which is a really interesting compare-contrast with hans. they're in pretty similar positions: nobles with a ton of obligations and pressure placed upon them, who will have to arrange-marry someone not of their own choice (still a hypothetical for rosa, while an impending reality for hans). but the key difference is that hans is a man and rosa is a woman. so hans is more vocal when things he doesn't want are pushed on him. he complains about them, and usually doesn't succeed in overturning them, but as a man he DOES have SOME say over his own life, so it's always worth complaining and trying to change it, even if it doesn't succeed. but rosa? she's probably LONG since learned that she has zero control over what happens to her, so she doesn't even bother complaining most of the time because she knows there's no point.

so looking specifically at the arranged marriage example, we know hans isn't happy about his because they show him visibly upset at the first news, and then he says later that he didn't want to get married so soon and that they could've at least asked him before arranging it. whereas with rosa, in her morning-after conversation with henry, she never outright complains about the prospect of having to get arrange-married someday, and her tone and expression remain matter-of-fact throughout, so people who are unwilling to engage deeply with female characters might misread this as her being Completely Fine with it. but when she says "and if i'm REALLY lucky it'll be some old man who'll drop dead before we've even left the church" THAT makes it very clear that she's just as unhappy at the prospect of an arranged marriage as hans is; she just knows that none of the men around her give a shit about her thoughts on the matter so she's not going to waste her breath objecting. she's just going to grit her teeth and get on with whatever duty is assigned to her, and she's going to be painfully realistic with henry about their future prospects because that would hurt less than letting either of them delude themselves with false hope.

and that makes me hope even more for some kind of hansry debrief later on! i would love to see what hans has to say about his own future marriage and how that may or may not affect his relationship with henry, and see how it compares to rosa's attitude.

when you're in a Bring Up Rosa And/Or Erik The Most Times During A Stretch Of Gameplay That Has Nothing To Do With Them competition and your opponent is me

back to the ramparts. godwin has come to bless henry and sam in their endeavors since everyone thinks they'll definitely die, and then the two of them rappel down the wall on a rope, no doubt less gracefully than von bergow. but sam goes first and is gone by the time henry makes it down, so henry exasperatedly realizes he's probably run off into the enemy camp to seek revenge, and henry will have to chase after him. now i'm guessing THIS whole situation might be the one in which samuel can die, so i will tread very carefully!

that was where i stopped for the night, so when i fired it back up, i decided to do the hansry scene a second time and choose a couple different dialogues. but there was no noteworthy difference, other than when henry asked "why are you telling me this story Right Now?" and hans said "wait, i'm getting there. in this story there's something...something i don't have my own words for." <33