istvan in henry's place my lord? 👀 please share your new kcd diseases with us.......
this disease is what I like to call the um. sympathetic view of istvan. there isn't much to it since it's ofc just guesswork but here's the general idea...
let's start from the end of that post: "'you just won't give up will you? .. I actually like that about you .. it reminds me of someone'... makes me wonder about the stronger dogs he's confronted exactly like this and reduced them to nothing but a bloodstain on the floor."
istvan didn't come out of the womb evil, no one does, but we know what triggered this mental break - the turks killing his parents. it didn't happen overnight; this spiral was gradual. his life was stripped away from him and he's been acting out of self preservation ever since, desperately trying to regain control in his life.
i wonder about the time before he met erik and before he became nobility. istvan wasn't handed anything on a platter. he was not born w a silver spoon in his mouth like all his other nobleman colleagues, he had to earn that shit through blood. he doesn't fight for sigismund's cause, he is a mercenary with a bandit lover who fights for themselves only, which means sticking with the stronger dogs no matter what - because frankly, he is not.
istvan is a hypocrite; his whole life is about revenge. it didn't stop with killing turks, or the turks, his wrath extends to any that threaten his existence. then he finds erik and he feels for him. he takes erik in because he sees himself in his eyes, as I've mentioned before on my isterik post. istvan telling henry revenge is childish nonsense isn't him scolding henry, he's speaking from his own experience of living for nothing but revenge and never being sated. and maybe, just maybe, he's grown weary of the fight. but stopping is no longer a choice.
I'm going to throw in something i said to you before but it's pretty relevant now:
"[...]I really struggle to believe the evil mastermind narrative, bc taking out a man like istvan is completely insignificant compared to taking out a man like von bergow ... no one really respected him and I'm sure he knew, I mean they thought he was So weird and that He Killed Himself at trosky, not that he was significant enough to be hated and assassinated."
i feel like istvan's significance is played up. he was given a warden's job with little defense and three men who wanted to tear him limb from limb. he knew something bad was going to happen at trosky. his death is no big loss to anyone (except erik), because a spy can easily be replaced. that's all he ever was. istvan isn't important and neither is henry. istvan is doing bandit work and getting his hands dirty while his allies remain cozy in their castles - henry does the exact same field work for his lords. difference is, henry still has faith in people and the world, and of course his people care about him. istvan only has erik.
istvan is not stupid, he knows his allies are using him just as much as he's using them. then he tries to convey this reality to henry about his own allies with little success. during the torture scene he tells henry this isn't his war, almost pleading. very little torture actually takes place, and he chooses psychological tricks instead of physical pressure (e.g. saying zizka already told him what he needs to know when he didn't, letting henry say stupid things to him with little consequence, godwin always breaks if henry doesn't talk, maybe istvan knew and dragged it out to see just how much these people care about henry). he feels for henry in his own way, else he had many chances to just kill him and be done with it.
I draw lines to henry because he is also not fighting for wenceslas' cause, he is fighting for himself and the people he loves first who happen to align themselves with wenceslas. but henry is on a revenge streak first and foremost. he brutalized runt and istvan over a sword and treated the man who killed his parents w more dignity. he is just as capable of taking the low road as istvan, and for the moment he enjoys it too.
so when henry stares istvan down, istvan sees his younger self who revelled in his newfound control through brutality... but now he's aware of his place in the world and was trying to make sure erik didn't follow the same path, and by extension henry. he's much older than them. he's seen a lot of horrible shit; seen people succumb to the same cycle - including himself. erik represents the hope of breaking this cycle, and perhaps he saw that same hope within henry too.. but that doesn't matter anymore.
I can't stop thinking about istvan confronting the men who killed his parents the way henry confronted him. maybe they were important, maybe they were just soldiers. but there was no chance of a fair fight, maybe a knife in the dark, even poison. maybe he gave them the runt special, who knows. but for sure there are countless men he's graced with a visit in the night, just as he did with talmberg and hans' company. the stronger dogs have one fatal flaw of underestimating the weak, so he wouldn't make the same stupid mistake with henry... but it's a shock when he stabs him with the dagger so easily because he had more faith in henry keeping his honour. then he uses his final breath to not chide or congratulate henry for "finally learning", but warning him once again of the path he's carving. if he truly hated henry, this would not have been so easy.
so... i guess my overarching point is, "henry is like istvan" is correct in some ways, but i feel more that henry is a reflection of who istvan used to be and istvan is a reflection of who henry could become.
