for my own true love {lost at sea}

The main issue with the Will and Elizabeth ending is, that it turns Elizabeth into Penelope after a story that largely had her in the role of Odysseus, which creates narrative dysjunction.

This isn't a question or complaint over whether or not "the rules" of the film should be treated as immutable laws and/or whether people are allowed to play with them in fan spaces. Elvy produces fanworks that reinterpret canon literally all the time--I'd say he does it MORE than he writes or draws within the absolute bounds of canon--so I think it's safe to say he fully gets that. He is also not arguing that Elizabeth and Will are absolutely stuck. The point of frustration has more to do with how many people fundamentally misunderstand those rules before they decide whether or not they fuck with them--and how that affects the way fans engage with the text itself as they watch the movies and produce criticism and analysis, which also has additional ripple effects of creating pockets of stagnation in the characters' fics and tags.

To address Elvy's original point, let's use the curse of the first movie to create a hypothetical comparison. How that curse in that movie works is if a person removes a coin from the Aztec chest, the taker is directly cursed by that act. To break that curse, the coin-taker must return the coin to the chest with their blood--and if multiple people have taken coins, they ALL must do this as a collective before any one of them can be freed from the curse. In theory, simple. However, it is not explained in one single lore drop, but broken up into several sources of information that the viewer must piece together gradually. So when it came out--and even today with new viewers who don't pay attention--there is a point of confusion where people think that the medallion curses ANYONE who EVER touches it, and somehow that means that when Jack is revealed to be a skeleton the revelation is that he too was somehow cursed the entire movie. That isn't what the movie establishes at all, but some people still come to that conclusion, not fully grasping the rules and backstory sprinkled throughout the film's canon.

And I want to emphasize: correcting people about how this curse works does not bar them from toying with different ideas for how the curse could be different, it just helps them understand what is actually going on in the movie.

Anyway, even though people do misunderstand this, it isn't a common enough misunderstand ingto make much of an impact on the fandom. But for our sake, let's imagine if it did. If people were constantly in the tags asking why didn't Jack turn into a skeleton sooner if he was one the entire time, claiming Jack's entire fight Will makes no sense since he was just immortal anyway, complaining how it ruins Jack's character for them because of how inconsistent it is, lamenting over how sad it is Jack lived out 10 years as a skeleton, filling his AO3 tags with fix-it fics going "AU: Jack gets to be a mortal human like he always should have been!" And all of this at volumes that create feedback loops pushing other efforts at unique or in-depth engagements with the work out of view. Individually, it wouldn't be exactly "WRONG" if people were posting things with their facts mixed up, but collective consequence of consistently approaching the source material from such a misguided angle would be the establishment of weird fanon that accidentally big chunks of the community from many from interesting, more informed and intentional explorations of the character like "WHAT IF Jack WAS a skeleton the entire time?" or "WHAT IF the curse turned everyone into skeletons, and Will and Elizabeth and Jack all got cursed?" or even more canon-aware takes that just explore "How did it feel to turn into a skeleton on the trust that Will would understand what had to follow?" etc.

That is what's going on here with AWE's ending for Elizabeth and Will. Fans keep reaching two extremely opposite misinterpretations of the source material that either trap Elizabeth in a miscast role of a landlocked housewife or erase their tragedy entirely by assuming there is no meaningful separation for them at all. Both are factually wrong, and that has ripple effects in how the fandom engages with their characters.

You're actually right about that last point that she isn't Penelope--which is why it's nonsense to insist that AWE's text turns her into that trope. It doesn't. And neither does Elvy, for that matter. (And as a tangent, there's a reason the fifth movie is treated by old fans as apocryphal bullshit: it has different writers and retcons multiple things in P1-3, not the least of which Elizabeth and Will's open-ended AWE ending and doesn't justify their drastic shifts in personality and behavior to total resignation.)

These are the canon rules of the Dutchman's contract, establishing how to free Will and prevent triggering his "trap" curse:

Will has to do the job for 10 years IN THE UNDERWORLD.

At the specific sunset ending those 10 years Elizabeth has to meet Will ashore somewhere in the MORTAL WORLD.

That's it.

Yes, technically Elizabeth must "wait for him" because years must pass. But waiting does not require passivity or stasis from her. There is nothing in the third movie's text at all that says she has to suddenly fix herself to land he left her as a part of her "waiting"--the original writers have even said this more than once. Will did not ask her to sign her life away to him, only to keep her husband's fate and love in mind while she lives it however she chooses. She is a pirate and the Pirate King, not only Will's wife. Her home is a gorgeous ship and it can sail wherever she has the will and means to sail. His heart is in a box that can be hidden, carried, defended in more places and means than one. Needing to meet him somewhere specific in 10 years does not mean she has to live at that point for those 10 years--the horizon conveniently is always there no matter where she goes, and "keeping a weather eye" is something sailors can do while they go about their business. She even is shown in her final shot standing next to a boat, with Shipwreck Cove in rowing distance, accessible to one of the biggest pirate harbors in their world after having declared war on the English's economic powers. She's got shit to do, and she CAN do it. And having a baby thrown into the mix doesn't mean she is suddenly on post-partum maternity leave for all 10 years either. Children grow up and are also portable, and people did sail with them--just because she would need to sail a little differently and avoid battles for his sake doesn't mean she suddenly could forever go nowhere or do nothing for herself.

All of this is true, as defined by the text of the third movie--that ending is not taking any of that away from her. Their tragedy is written an open door fans to explore how she or he could pursue change. And the writers of the original trilogy encouraged that line of thinking--it was part of the intent of the ending that their fates are open and ambiguous. If she was willing to go the lengths she did to resurrect Jack, it is obvious she go to similar lengths for her soulmate, that even with their separation and restrictions, she absolutely could do something about it.

But there are still SOME limits. Even if she has all that freedom, the canon ending is still meant to be at least somewhat tragic, however permanent or temporary is the part that's originally undefined. There are thematic and narrative things the story is trying to say by making them have that tragic separation, with equal measures of doubt and hope that they can pull through it. Him giving her his heart the way he does means what it does BECAUSE of that separation. And it is also specific and explicit to their separation that she cannot easily go on the Dutchman in the condition that the movie leaves them both.

The Dutchman is a ship of the dead, sailing the seas of the dead--Will is in a literally separate world. That world is only accessible for normal ships via a long, magically obscured journey that would shatter her ship to pieces at its end (shown by the journey of the Hai Peng). That world also has no food or drink for mortals to survive (shown when they almost die of thirst before the Up is Down sequence), so even if she makes it over there, there are physical limits to staying there without dying. That world also cannot be escaped without another vessel she can ride the green flash on at the exact point of sunset. Will could take her back, but then that would break the terms of the contract and curse him--which further dooms their hope of him coming back to her as a free man and partner. She could choose to simply stay with him, but then she would be dead. And if she dies, he cannot be freed from his contract with the Dutchman. And honestly, even if they just stayed dead together, what sort of existence or joy would that even it be? He isn't even wandering normal parts of the afterlife, he is working the passages of a state of limbo.

For ten years, she cannot access him easily. He cannot access her easily. That tragic fact is a KEY part of their canon ending. It sucks. It sucks for a reason.

BUT again: just because canon says she cannot stay with him aboard the Dutchman or simply go out and flag him down does not mean that canon says she cannot go on quests of her own to find new loopholes or magical solutions to their problems at all. Their separation is not anything like Penelope waiting for Odysseus unless you choose to make it so. Her canon-compliant story from that point is able to be far more like Orpheus and Demeter seeking Will's Eurydice and Persephone, if you understand what she can and cannot do.

One of the latter "forgotten" type was Elliott's explanation on his and Rossio's thought process regarding deleted moment where Elizabeth tells Norrington she would have accepted his proposal even if he refused to save Will. And he talks about this notion that, at that point, Barbossa (who in addition to everything he did and threatened to do to her personally would be responsible for killing Will) and Jack (who, at the time, is a disappointing liar who lies and apparently doesn't bother with heroics at all) have so thoroughly disillusioned her for the moment, that she's in a mindset that the Romantic idealized vision of a pirate she's always held onto does not exist, and she needs to learn to "accept [her] societal constraints [and] find a way to be happy within them."

And while I think that scene ultimately cannot be factored into her character arc (because it was in fact deleted), it still is kind of fascinating concept to me, especially with the added weight it piles onto that "Belly of the Whale" moment for the leads. It comes through in her sad performance, where she fakes being happy about it, and while it already broke my heart for her to begin with, this idea somehow makes it sting on her behalf even worse. Because her relationship with piracy is never just about the face value of whether or not they're all criminals--it's about her relationship with those societal constraints. That choice to settle with the outcome she "should" be happy in is her choosing to go back to a world that leaves her unable to breathe, nearly drowning, because her heart's desires cannot be truly listened to. And it's lowkey temporarily tragic that she reaches that point of believing that's her only option left in that moment---not just because of the immediate circumstances, but because her dreams and worldview have been so thoroughly wrecked.

But it also underscores what Ted says of the closing scene, when Will appears in that funky get up and commits an act of piracy for the good of another human. The finale of CotBP isn't the moment when Elizabeth finally either falls in love or realizes how much she's fallen in love with Will, like might happen in some other stories. She's loved him the entire time by that point and it never changes, is never a question at any point in the story.

Instead, it's the moment when he helps her fall back in love with piracy again. His actions help her regain hope for the world around her, that there is still Romance with a Capital R to believe in, it isn't childish, there's a way to upset the norms that suffocate her, there are choices they really are still free to risk making even if the consequences are not what they wanted.

"I love you," he tells her--and then he immediately turns around and shows her what that means. For both them, it's not just "we were bonded as children." It's not just "I think you're a fine (wo)man." It's not even just "I would die so you can stay alive." Although it is all that. As the final weight that tips it all to critical mass, it's, "I would die to make the world the sort of place you can believe is worth living in."

Her happily ever after isn't about getting a decent guy. It's getting a future, a life, that is worth being excited to live. It just so happens that the partner she ultimately chooses demonstrates a commitment to making that happen.

gov swann commissions norrington’s sword for his promotion ceremony, and it’s clear he wanted it to be something special. both swanns knew he was gunning for the promotion, and both were delighted to see him receive it. i certainly like to read into the three (3) lines of dialogue that reference this way too much, but it establishes very early on that there is fondness there.

after jack saves elizabeth and the royal navy finally catches up to them, governor swann is pretty insistent that jack be arrested on the spot. norrington takes his time assessing the threat and explains to both swanns his reasoning rather than slapping the irons on jack immediately. you only see glimpses of their professional relationship, but there’s clearly a huge amount of trust between the two: when elizabeth goes missing, swann trusts him to find her even if he isn’t setting sail immediately. he trusts that norrington knows what he’s doing when he lets jack lead them to isla de muerta, even when he wanted to head straight back to port royal to get out of danger.

then, of course, there’s the big moment on the precipice: elizabeth stands between norrington’s state-mandated justice and will and jack’s freedom. governor swann could order norrington to stand down, let jack go, and grant will clemency (…again). but instead he gives norrington a gentle reminder that maybe life isn’t just following the law. and norrington trusts governor swann enough to see his reasoning and come up with a compromise of his own. as poorly as it ends in the sequel, it really warms my heart that they trust each other on something so major. it gives you the smallest peak into how port royal is run, between loving, emotional governor swann and prim, rigid commodore norrington.

and then yeah norrington loses everything for that clemency but then beckett makes him an admiral and he just had to use all his wits to become the very thing he hates to get there. but hey! he’s an ADMIRAL! he should be the authority on the sea! but the first time you see him in his new rank, he is being summoned to show up to beckett’s cabin. he is not an equal. beckett gives him his sword back, the sword that should have been his the whole time, and it is not a gesture of kindness or fondness, as it was originally. it is a reminder that everything norrington has now, it was given to him by beckett. and he will serve.

and yet — AND YET – in that same scene, he and swann interact for the only time in the film. and they exchange no words, but a single glance, one that reads spells out all the fear and apprehension they are both sharing as prisoners aboard beckett’s ship. neither want to be complicit in the EITC’s actions upon the sea, but both their power belongs to beckett. both are trapped. my eternal kudos to davenport and pryce for making whole meals out of these scraps of character development.

norrington and beckett don’t exchange any words the rest of the movie, yeah yeah, but the one time you do see them interact, beckett is gesturing him around like he’s a dog to be commanded. he is taking orders quietly; he is not making decisions. he is not even given the chance to get a word in edgewise. and then beckett further breaks his trust by telling him, off-screen, that governor swann went back to england and all is well. when he was in fact murdered and everything sucks.

it is no wonder that norrington’s first instinct, upon finding out that elizabeth is alive, is to express the relief her father will feel. they’re his last friends on earth, the only people he can trust!! and he has inadvertently betrayed elizabeth’s trust by returning to her father’s side, only for it to have gotten him killed. like, of course norrington immediately defects to help elizabeth. if he doesn’t have her trust, if her father is gone, then what is there left for him as an admiral?

and this, gamers and ghouls, is one of many reasons why they shouldn’t have cut that fucking scene where governor swann is told elizabeth is dead and tries to stab jones’ heart himself. norrington restrains him instantly, and they struggle — gov swann could overpower norrington if he truly wanted, but instead he begs, pleads, to let him do this, to avenge his daughter. and then davy jones enters to torment them, and norrington is holding swann’s blade steady even as he points a gun at jones. he is literally holding gov swann’s death in one hand and protecting his life with the other.

and then beckett comes in to be cruel to him, to thank him for averting disaster — and norrington can only laugh, because it’s not like he had a choice. beckett trusts norrington here, but only in that he trusts he can be controlled — or at least predicted.

a little something ☺️

i’m only gonna talk a little bit about sailing inaccuracies - they’re all p much Plot Lampshade things that sum up to “it is impossible to sail a ship of any size with a crew of two”

this is most painfully obvious in the whole sequence with jack & will commandeer the dauntless & then the interceptor. there are literally just two of them. that’s nowhere CLOSE to enough people to weigh anchor on the dauntless (heavy bower anchors weigh AT LEAST 1500 lbs, probably more on a first-rate ship, and you don’t get THAT much mechanical advantage on a capstan or windlass). typically weighing anchor is a whole crew activity because in addition to anchors being so fucking heavy, there’s also a whole bunch of side jobs besides manning the windlass/capstan that are all crucial to the anchor coming up successfully. i suppose they could’ve cut loose the anchor since the dauntless was only a steppingstone to their true goal, the interceptor, but even so, even shaking out the sails (going aloft and untying them) would be impossible with just jack and will (the greenest hand it is possible to be)

once they get onto the interceptor, jack of course says “now me? i can let you die! but i can’t take this ship in to tortuga all by me onesies.” he’s right about that, but having will there wouldn’t help. remember will has literally no sailing experience. he doesn’t know a halyard from a sheet. all he can do is stand there and look pretty. even if he were a seasoned tar, a ship the size of the interceptor cannot be crewed by less than eight people. i know this because i’ve actually sailed on that ship. when you rebrace the sails (change their angle), you need to brace all the yards on one mast simultaneously (their rigging is intertwined in such a way that you can’t do them one at a time). that means: two people hauling and one person slacking on the course (lowest sail), one person hauling and one person slacking on the top (second sail up), one person hauling and one person slacking on the t’gallant (third sail up), and one person at the helm. this is the BARE MINIMUM you need to turn the ship at all, even if only one of those sails is set. so they’re fucked.

nb: even with the bare minimum they could do some REALLY impressive stuff!! the original lady washington (the ship on which the modern lady washington, which played the interceptor, was based) became the first american ship to round cape horn in south america, and it did it with only 8 crew members!

anyways skip ahead to the chase scene. this is Full Of Yikes. i’m just gonna ignore the Magical Shredded Ghost Sails bc ~magic~ (but remember that in particularly heated chases, crews would pump water aloft and wet the sails so they would catch every single hint of wind, so having big holes is a serious issue). also i’m gonna ignore that elizabeth swann (who is admittedly a pirate groupie but has never sailed a day in her life) is the only one who comes up with ideas on how to outrun the pearl, because it is true that book learning can teach you a lot!

first off, i’m going to talk about the major problems with their overall strategies to accomplish their end goals.

barbossa’s end goal is to

reclaim the medallion

and capture will turner

they KNOW that both of those are on the interceptor. they also know that if will turner dies, they lose all hope of breaking their curse forever (presumably, judging by their reactions later). so, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should they allow him to come to any harm. that means no cannon fire, no small-arms fire, nothing (since they don’t know which one is will). they can outrun the interceptor, so all they have to do is catch up, pull alongside, snag her with grappling hooks, and board her. the pirates cannot be killed. they have no reason not to just stroll aboard the interceptor, ignore everyone shooting at them, and grab will & the medallion. what they ACTUALLY do in the movie is: kill people willy-nilly & blow everything up. the only reason they don’t lose both will and the medallion is sheer dumb luck (and the skill of jack-the-monkey).

if the pirates had been thinking even a little bit they would have tried to capture the interceptor!! “the makings of your very own fleet,” as jack says to barbossa later. imagine: the two fastest ships in the caribbean, united under one pirate banner. barbossa wants to take the dauntless? poorly thought out. the dauntless is a first-rate ship of the line. it’s HUGE, it’s ungainly, it’s extremely slow. it throws an impressive broadside weight of metal, but literally every other ship in the caribbean could sail circles around it. much better to snag a small, fast, maneuverable ship like the interceptor

our heroes’ end goal is to

escape the black pearl

that’s it

they have no other goal

they do not need to confront the pearl!!

they SHOULD NOT confront the pearl

THE PEARL IS FULL OF ANGRY IMMORTAL PIRATES WHO WANT TO KILL YOU WILLIAM

avoid it at all costs

so!! we’re avoiding the pearl. how do we do that?

we chuck everything overboard. this is a very real and commonly used tactic from the age of sail! if you’re being chased by an enemy who massively outguns you and outmans you, you abandon all hope of actually fighting them and run like hell. losing weight overboard makes you ride higher in the water, which reduces hull drag bc less hull is in the water.

first thing you throw is the cannons and shot - not gonna need them if you’re not fighting! cannons are INCREDIBLY heavy - i want to say a good nine-pounder (which i think would be typical for a smaller ship like the interceptor) would be around 1200 lbs (or twelve hundredweight, as they like to say). and that’s weight that’s FAR above the waterline, bogging your ship down and making it heel more into the wind. if you get rid of cannons, your ship’s gonna be like 5 tons lighter and will ride much stiffer and straighter too (which is a good thing, because of hydrodynamic reasons i don’t fully understand)

then you throw your water and supplies - yes they’re important, but once you escape you can stop at any nearby island and resupply. food and water don’t do you any good if you’re dead.

then you THROW THE GODDAMN MEDALLION OVERBOARD, WHY DO YOU STILL EVEN HAVE THAT. barbossa’s gonna stop and fish it out because of course he is jesus christ, which gives you so much time to get away!! fuck!!! maybe bottle up a vial of will’s blood and lash it to the medallion so barbossa finds both of them and leaves you alone from now on.

yes, you make for the shoals, like elizabeth suggests. no, you do not clubhaul - that loses you valuable time which you could be using to get the fuck out of there

i said we were gonna throw all the cannons overboard. i lied. sorry. we’re going to keep two stern chasers - smaller cannons that point straight backwards. we’re going to aim them high and try to damage something important in the black pearl’s rigging. if she loses even her jib (one of the small triangular sails wayy out in front), she’s going to slow down a lot.

↳ tom hollander as lord cutler beckett, pirates of the caribbean (2006–2007)

At world end bloopers

Love that guy.

THIS.  Not only is Barbossa far more of a Proper (Cinematic) Pirate than Jack (with the outgrown Errol Flynn hair to prove it!), but he absolutely plays the role of Hades in Curse of the Black Pearl.

While Elizabeth first boards the Black Pearl (here functioning as both Hades’ chariot and Charon’s ferry) more or less voluntarily, Barbossa/Hades does indeed kidnap her and take her to the “land of the dead”—the Isla de Muerta.  The Black Pearl also serves as a kind of limbo, holding men halfway between death and life.  Much like Pluto of old, CotBP!Barbossa is strongly associated with both wealth and death, even more so than the other pirates.  When they get to the “Underworld”, we see that the cursed crew members require a blood sacrifice to regain (permanent) corporeality, paralleling the shades Odysseus encounters who require blood to regain the ability to speak (Odyssey 11.24-50).

By the time At World’s End rolls around, Elizabeth has begun to catch up to Barbossa in terms of piracy and command.  She visits another, more literal Underworld at Barbossa’s side; he knows the way, and she has more than learned from her previous experiences.  It was Elizabeth thinking more piratically—thinking like Barbossa—that made the trip to the Locker necessary, after all.

In the end, she eclipses Barbossa in power and is crowned King, with her own beloved ferrying souls between worlds as she sails the seven seas.  Like Persephone, Elizabeth straddles worlds and holds power in both, and it was Barbossa/Hades who first helped her get there.

I’ll blame a lot of factors for why people don’t really seem to understand the dynamics of these four characters. First of all, Jack is not the protagonist (the failing of OST is, in my opinion, that they forgot this little detail). Will and Elizabeth are the protagonists. Jack and Barbossa are secondary supporting characters, whose purpose in the plot is to drive the development of those two. Their influences on Will and Elizabeth are very specific. And when you analyze the relationships, you definitely see a very distinct pairing up. Will and Jack, Elizabeth and Barbossa.

Will needed Jack, because Will needed to learn how to put himself first sometimes, needed to learn to see things from more than one angle and that things aren’t as black and white as they seem. Will needed to see someone strange and confident and dangerous who could inexplicably do good things, who had a good heart (and, originally, Jack absolutely did; the fourth and fifth movies absolutely decimated this aspect of his character, and I will die mad about it) but was still able to be a little selfish. Because Will? Will had no concept of selfishness. Will was perfectly ready to sit and pine over Elizabeth for the rest of his life, to let a lazy, sloppy drunk take credit for all his hard work, to fade into the background and let life happen around him. That was how things were supposed to be. That was how the world worked. Black and white. Right and wrong. At least once more, Miss Swann, as always. I practice three hours a day so that when I meet a pirate, I can kill it. My father was a good man. Will is a good man, but he needs to learn to be a bit of a pirate. A bit selfish. A bit dangerous. And in the end, Will is cursed to captain the Dutchman, a twisted take on the immortality Jack has sought. His companions are dead men, his ship is a ghost. He is a legend. So, in a way, he surpasses Jack.

Elizabeth, though? Elizabeth had no need for lessons on shades of grey. Elizabeth likes pirate stories. Elizabeth loves the blacksmith’s apprentice, and flirts openly with him in front of her own father. Elizabeth is constrained, not by her desires, but by her station, by expectations. By love for her father, because it’s obvious in the film that her desire to please him is out of love, not obligation. What Elizabeth needs is to be shown how to take what you want. How to choose the rules you wish to follow, and hang the rest. She’s a natural leader, born into a world where no one would ever let her lead. Jack is a lot of things, but a leader, he is not. He inspires no loyalty, except in the form of debts to be paid. He keeps secrets from his crew, tells them nothing, trusts no one, and in return no one trusts him. Barbossa, meanwhile, was able to win over all but one member of Jack’s own crew and get them to turn on him. Barbossa had these men follow him for ten years, trusting that in the end, he would save them. Barbossa inspires confidence. He’s honest with his men, and honestly no crueler than is necessary to keep pirates in line. This is why Elizabeth is the King, because she respected Barbossa, watched him, learned from him. And, yes, surpassed him.