Grand Unifying Bolaire-Thjazi Theory
before we start, because I am tagging this, just want to start out with I like both of these characters and think them being good people trying to do good things and doing also horrific things is great and fun and juicy stuff, I am the sickos meme. it's cool if you don't like this stuff, but like- maybe this isn't the post for you, okay? okay.
We know that when Bolaire is worn voluntarily, he can sort of meld with the person wearing him. Tyranny was more or less in control, but Bolaire could speak through her and probably cast through her. They were sharing, in other words.
It was assumed that the warrior during the Falconer's War, Castep, volunteered, but he clearly did not have anything like this level of autonomy. Nothing even close.
Now, that brings up two possibilities- the first is that his fellow soldiers forced him to wear the mask. That seems unlikely, as they were talking about taking it off for a while- if he wasn't a volunteer, then they would be reluctant for that reason, that they might have to fight him to get it back on. But their concerns were about potentially having fairies around that were watching, not that Castep would fight them.
The more likely answer, and the more interesting answer (to me, anyway) is that Bolaire simply wasn't capable of allowing that kind of autonomy to another person until he became self aware.
However, what happened with Tyranny wasn't a surprise to him, he seemed familiar and comfortable with how sharing worked. It wasn't his first rodeo.
I think that at some point between Bolaire gaining self-awareness while being worn by Castep, and Tyranny putting him on, he did have a body that he had some sort of comfortable relationship with. It might have been Castep, it might have been someone he met later. But there's some evidence for that having happened at some point. If that makes sense.
It seems that there was a point at which Bolaire was ready and willing to tell Hal about himself, too. And I think it would be pretty easy to talk to a guy about how you're a mask if the body that wears you can take you off and go 'yeah it's fine, we share, he lets me handle some stuff because he doesn't like the grody parts of having a physical body but he's real smart and has a job that earns us a good living and I get to see cool stuff even if I don't understand and he tells me fun stories and we've got a desk job that I can just tune out entirely while we rewatch your last play' or whatever. Like, that would just make that moment go a lot more smoothly, and would make sense for Bolaire to come out to Hal under those circumstances, whereas it kind of makes a lot less sense for him to come out under the 'I steal bodies' one. That seems more like a 'take it to your grave' kind of thing, but he was fairly insistent he was going to tell Hal.
I think that one of the things Bolaire did for Thjazi was hit jobs. If you want to make a person disappear and not have it associated with Thjazi, Bolaire's a great path to take- a lot of people had zero idea Bolaire worked with Thjazi.
If you remember back to when Bolaire took over Aubrus Drime, he did something interesting with the other body, which was he burned everything but the head and the hands. And he also shaved special markings into the head- he said it was like two little mohawks. And then he kept them. And a lot of us, me included, thought it was some kind serial killer collection- but we've been all the places he'd keep something like that. His secret hidey hole in the museum, his apartment, he doesn't have some wall with mounted skulls anywhere.
So, why keep the head and hands? Well, same reason Tyranny wanted Kattigan's finger, as proof of the kill. I think the specific shaved markings might have been either a previously defining feature or an agreed upon marking. Anyway, remember how upset he was that Thimble was gone?
I honestly think that was partly upset that she couldn't help him with the Hal conversation, but also partly because he was essentially transferred to her ownership, as far as he's concerned (still true, as of last episode), and he wanted to show her the proof and get new orders, because as much as he hated Thjazi, he's a weapon, and he's doing what he was made to do.
(Aubrus Drime, btw, was described as someone Bolaire had been talking to for a while who had been moving up in the world of fenced goods, and I could go 'this was a previously arranged hit' and I could go 'this was someone Thjazi was trying to sponsor into position that Bolaire killed to spite the dead' and I could go 'this was a guy who was horning in on his turf that he'd been wanting to kill for a while'. I suspect a previously arranged hit because the timing would be close on the other two, but he could have had a previously and conveniently arranged sale that he turned into a hit.)
Back to the pin we dropped, to draw a line between the two points: I think Thjazi found out what Bolaire is and killed his body who was also a friend, and ended up using Bolaire as a murder machine.
I think that while he did use Bolaire's position at the museum to his advantage- of course he did- that Thjazi did not get a god killing weapon in his hand and use it to move paints alone. Thjazi ran a criminal operation, and was going to need people bumped off every once in a while and Bolaire could make it fucking invisible, what an incredible resource. Bolaire can capture, interrogate, and kill people and Thjazi's hands stay entirely clean. They just disappear, into a hole, neat and tidy.
Now: I do think it's possible that Thjazi did not on purpose kill the guy in order to get Bolaire, he was possibly trying to free the guy from the influence of the mask and the guy proceeded to try to kill him to get the mask back, potentially. (I'm also not saying he's beyond killing a guy to get the mask- stealing a powerful magical artifact by any means is quite feasible, I will say. He tried to murder his wife's shithead cousin/nephew after he was dead even though Julien was trying to find his nephew, he's not some angelic paragon of virtue, here, and a powerful magic weapon is a powerful magic weapon.)
Bolaire wouldn't know what happened after he got whipped off his friend's face, and I think it's fair to say that he would naturally assume the worst possible interpretation of what happened.
But I think being ripped off a guy who's your friend and shoved onto an unwilling stranger with no idea where your friend is, or his body being right there, would be kind of fucking horrible in and of itself, and while I'm not sure about the hit thing, I think this part of the scenario is a lot more likely.
Anyway I try not to get sucked too much into speculation because once you think something will be a way, it's sometimes hard to accept when things aren't that way, but I had this thought earlier today and I feel like it would connect a LOT of dots without knocking the fun, spiky bits off either character.
