FitzChivalry Farseer’s appearance in the Assassin’s Apprentice book Part 1
Note: Fitz is brown according to Robin Hobb. His father, Chivalry, is a Buck man and his biological mother is from the Mountain Kingdom.
✤ "My memories reach back to when I was six years old."
✤ "I recall that slush had soaked through my clothes, so my feet and legs were wet and cold."
✤ "I remember quite clearly how he went down on one knee to tug my shirt straight and smooth my hair with a rough pat or two, but whether this was from some kindhearted impulse that I make a good impression, or merely a concern that his package look well tended, I will never know."
✤ "My feet and leggings had been warmed by the kitchen’s fire, but not quite dried, so the cold seized on them."
(Chapter 1)
✤ Fitz is now a boy of nine or ten: "But no matter how tolerant men may be of a boy of nine or ten, there is precious little in common."
✤ “Then one morning, when I was still a bit shy of my tenth year […]”
✤ Description of the pin: “He drew a pin from the folds of silk at his throat and solemnly pushed it through the simple wool of my shirt.”
✤ “I glanced down at the red stone that winked in a nest of silver.”
✤ "Despite the King’s promises, I stuffed my jerkin front with sweet cakes."
✤ "Burrich had me up at dawn, and I was tubbed and scrubbed, the hair cut back from my eyes and the rest bound down my back in a tail such as I had seen on the older men of the keep. He told me to dress in the best clothing I had, then clicked his tongue over how small it had become on me."
✤ "I pulled the nightshirt over my head and nudged my clothes to the foot of the bed."
(Chapter 3)
✤ She disparaged my clothes to the young women, remarked very calmly that I quite reminded her of young Chivalry, and that my measurements and coloring were much the same as his had been when he was my age. She then demanded their opinions as she held up bolts of different goods against me.
“That one,” said one of the loom women. “That blue quite flatters his darkness. It would have looked well on his father. Quite a mercy that Patience never has to see the boy. Chivalry’s stamp is much too plain on his face to leave her any pride at all.”
And as I stood there, draped in wool goods, I heard for the first time what every other person in Buckkeep knew full well.
✤ "In due time I found not one, or even two, but three entire sets of clothing, including stockings, set out one afternoon on my bed. Two were of fairly ordinary stuff, in a familiar brown that most of the children my age seemed to wear, but one was of thin blue cloth, and on the breast was a buck’s head, done in silver thread. Burrich and the other men-at-arms wore a leaping buck as their emblem. I had only seen the buck’s head on the jerkins of Regal and Verity. So I looked at it and wondered, but wondered, too, at the slash of red stitching that cut it diagonally, marching right over the design."
(Chapter 4)
✤ Several years had passed
✤ "I had my best shirt on, my trousers had been washed only a few days ago, and I wore boots as fine as any man-at-arms, despite Burrich’s objections about how rapidly I outgrew them."
(Chapter 6)
✤ "Burrich cut my hair for mourning. He left it only a finger’s width long."
✤ "I kept myself to my chores, and slowly my hair grew, and by the beginning of real summer all seemed to have returned to normal."
✤ "By my count, I was thirteen years old."
(Chapter 7)
✤ Fitz wears fancier clothes:
✤ "Charim insisted on straightening the seams on my jerkin and seeing the oversized sleeves on my new best shirt hung to their fullest and most annoying length. My hair had regrown long enough to have snarls in it and these he tugged quickly and painfully out. To a boy accustomed to dressing himself, the primping and inspection seemed endless."
✤ "All were decked in their most elaborate finery to maximize this chance to be seen and envied outside of Buckkeep. The fullness of my sleeves was quite reasonable compared with what some were sporting. At least my shoes were not hung with tiny chiming bells or gently rattling amber beads."
(Chapter 8)
✤ Mention of a cloak for Fitz:
✤ "Now, I suggest that if you have to swim the horses, you put your shirt and cloak into an oilskin bag and give it to me in the dory."
(Chapter 10)
✤ Fitz is fourteen:
✤ "She was sixteen, and I about fourteen, and those two years loomed between us like an insurmountable wall."
✤ Fitz mentions he keeps growing:
✤ "Mistress Hasty had recently declared that if I didn’t stop growing so rapidly, I should have to wrap myself in barkcloth like a wild man, for she had no idea how to keep me looking as if my clothes fit."
(Chapter 11)
✤ "I washed myself at the stables and decided the tunic I had worn for the last three days needed to be replaced. I was doubly conscious of its condition when in the corridor outside my room the lady accosted me. She looked me up and down, and before I could speak, she addressed me. “Change your shirt,” she told me. And then added, “Those leggings make you look like a stork. Tell Mistress Hasty they need replacing.”
✤ “After a moment I went into my room, changed my shirt, and put on the longest pair of leggings I owned."
(Chapter 12)
✤ “He had cuddled into the crook of my arm and was casually chewing the edge of my jerkin.”
✤ Fitz has a copper bracelet: "Other than my clothes and the copper bracelet that Chade had given me, I had few possessions."
(Chapter 13)
✤ Galen’s training context:
✤ "It bit unexpectedly sharp through my thin shirt."
✤ “We were not to wear shoes, socks, cloaks, nor any woolen garment. Heads were to be uncovered. The body must be scrupulously clean.”
(Chapter 14)
✤ About the injuries Fitz has after Galen beats him up:
✤ "I opened my eyes to night. I knew not which one. Burrich sat next to me still, undozing, not even slumped in his chair. I felt the strictures of bandaging on my ribs. I lifted a hand to touch it, but was baffled by two splinted fingers.
✤ “They were swollen with more than cold. Too swollen for me to tell if they were breaks, or just sprains. I splinted them in case. I suspect they’re just sprained."
✤ […] He leaned closer, gently prodded just below my temple. A blast of pain rocked my consciousness. “That’s how near you were to losing an eye to this ‘teaching.’ ”
✤ "He checked me over, casually prying open my eyes and then running competent hands down my ribs and over my other bruises."
✤ About Chivalry and Fitz said by Burrich: “You look at me sometimes with my lord’s eyes,”
(Chapter 15)
✤ "[…] as did the bandages I still wore on my temple."
✤ "My bound ribs didn’t permit me the full flexibility of motion that Galen had formerly commanded from us."
(Chapter 16)