me:

Bushy

Headcanon A:  realistic

Bushy quickly realises that a not insignificant amount of times that Richard says he wants sex, what he actually means is that he wants to be hugged or held or have his back  stroked for a bit and encourages Richard to ask for hugs when he needs them, rather than sneaking them through post-coital snuggling. Not that the sex isn’t fun because it is, but there’s no shame in just needing to be held.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious.

Loves to sing. Cannot do it. At all. He sounds like a tone deaf cat. 

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Bushy so wanted to die bravely, for Richard’s sake, but he was so scared and he wanted to live and he couldn’t stop crying. His last thought was a genuine belief that there was still time, his King could come back and save him any mo-

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own

He eventually retires to a lovely country manor with Green, who he would totally have married if that was a thing two guys could do in the 1400s. They have bees. And orchards. And a semi-permanent house guest in the form of Bagot, who shows up to for a chat/good time/ temporary bolt hole from his latest scrape/flirtation.

Bagot

Headcanon A:  realistic

Has a small collection of pornographic books, will lend them to anyone who’s interested/ who he thinks might need them *slides the medieval equivalent of gay sex for dummies under Aumerle’s door*

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Does uncanny impressions of people, likes to imitate John of Gaunt whenever he walks in on one of his friends canoodling the King. (they way Richard jumps when he thinks his uncle’ s caught him in bed is hilarious)

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Afterwards, Bagot approached King Henry IV and asked if he could have Bushy’s and Green’s remains in order to bury them properly. He saw to all the arrangements, and visited their graves once a year. He wanted to go to King’s Langley and Richard’s, too, but he could never quite summon up the courage to approach Aumerle and ask for permission to do so, and by the time Richard’s remains were reinterred at Westminster he had convinced himself that it was better off leaving the past in the past.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

Stood up in front of the Court when he summoned to give evidence about Gloucester’s murder, cheerfully told everyone that it had come as a complete shock to everyone, the King cried when he heard the news because he’d been considering how to approach a reconciliation and now it was too late, knew for a fact that Tom Mowbray had told Richard that it was Henry who murdered Gloucester in an attempt to frame the King so that the could use it as an excuse to seize the crown- the whole exile/disinheriting thing was just Richard’s way of bringing about justice without bringing grief and scandal down on his beloved late Uncle of Lancaster.

Green

Headcanon A:  realistic

The mother hen of the minions, tries to take care of everyone and do some forward thinking. 

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

He doesn’t know what Bushy and Bagot’s first names are and at this point it’s too late to ask. They were supposed to be his colleagues, not his boyfriends!

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Green had advanced warning of Bolingbroke’s intended to return. He didn’t have spies, as such, just friends of friends who liked to pass on gossip, but he knew before Richard left for Ireland. He was going to tell the king, but second guessed himself- after all, it was just a rumour, and if Richard lost his temper and tried to get at Bolingbroke somehow, on top of confiscating his inheritance! it would have been a P.R disaster– whereas a nice victory in Ireland would bolster the King’s support. 

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

Kate Hurster (far left in the background) as Bagot - re-gendered

Richard II, directed by Bill Rauch (2016)

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

@skeleton-richard 

“Thank-you for the puppy, Monsieur le Bushy, she is very....”  the little girls’ face twists with concentration before she tugs on Richard’s sleeve. The King obediently kneels down so that she can whisper rapid French in to his ear, and he whispers back. Her face clears, and she turns back to Bushy with a smile. “Thank-you for the puppy, Monsieur le Bushy, she is very sweet and good for petting and I love her a lot.” 

Bushy smiles, and sketches a bow. “I’m very pleased, your highness. What have you named her?” 

Queen Isabelle pauses, whispers something to Richard again, who smiles and nods, and murmurs ‘Oui, tres bien,” before Isabelle says happily:

“Her name is Frog.” 

Bushy starts . “That’s nice,” he says, staring at Richard, who shrugs and says:

“Blame Edward.” Isabelle, who had sat down on the floor so as to better fuss over Frog, looks up excitedly. 

“Is Edouard coming?” she asks, then, carefully. “Ed-wood. See, I say him properly now.” she pauses. “Or English, anyway.” Richard smiles. It is, Bushy thinks, the first real smile he can recall seeing on the King, it lights up his whole face and it reminds Bushy somewhat of a proud parent which....could complicate things, in the future. But that’s a long way off and for now, Bushy’s just pleased that the King seems happy, and so does the little girl who's been taken away from her home and her family to live amongst strangers and call one of them ‘husband’. And also, he’s going to call Rutland Ed-wood now  for as long as he can get away with.

“You did, well done,” Richard says, and there’s no condescension- he mean it. He stroke Isabelle’s hair. “Edward is busy today,” he continues, and Bushy thinks that’s a nice way of explaining that Rutland’s off on a cousinly bonding trip with the Earl of Derby to harass some poor defenceless animal with their horses and hounds. “Would you like to meet some of my other friends instead?”

Isabelle considers. “Can we go outside and play throw the stick with Frog? Monsieur Bushy can come, maybe.”

Richard smiles.

So that’s how Bushy ends up spending a morning in the gardens with the King, watching the Queen play fetch with a small but ceaselessly energetic puppy. Frog is an almost exact copy of her mother- Bushy’s own dog, Woof- which is what you get when you let your two year old nephew name animals- but Frog?

“She overheard some servants referring to her and her family as such,” Richard says, and his gaze turns icy cold. Bushy shivers, and tries not to imagine the same servants’ bodies being found in the moat. It’s not that he thinks the King actually goes around killing people who upset him, but...”She wasn’t sure what it meant, so she asked Edward, and Edward explained-” the way he says it suggests that Words have passed between Edward and the King about that, “-things. Fortunately, Isabelle seemed to find it amusing, particularly when Edward actually went and caught a frog to show her what they were on about because he couldn't’ t remember the French for it. She thinks they’re cute.” Richard shudders delicately, “And decided that was what she was going to call the puppy Frog because then it would be like a part of her family.”  he shakes his head. “Children,” he says, eyes following Isabelle as she darts to and thro’. “It’s remarkable, really...”

“Yes,” Bushy agrees, deciding then and there that this little girl who’s become their Queen is really something quite special, that he’ll lay down his life to protect her, if needs be (and that’s not a decision he makes easily- he’s not entirely sure he’d die for Richard, if it came to it, he’s afraid he’s something of a coward, but little Isabelle....) “Quite remarkable.”

Isabelle runs up to them, out of breath, and gives Richard a hug. “There’s a frog,” she says excitedly. “Frog found him. Come and see.”

Richard blanches, “Why don’t you show Bushy,” he suggests, and Isabelle immediately slips her tiny hand in to Bushy’s to tug at him. Bushy lets himself be led off, and as they go summons up his unconfident grasp of French to say conspiratorially: “The King’s scared of frogs.”

Bagot’s introduction to Queen Isabelle doesn’t go anywhere near as smoothly. There’s no good time to for a wife to catch someone else in her husband’s bed, but the girl is seven, and the look of polite confusion on her face as she takes in the sight of a stranger lying on top of her husband and jamming his tongue down his throat is quite...something. Richard gently pushes Bagot off him and sits up, running his fingers through his hair to neaten it out. “Sweetheart, hello.” he says, swinging off the bed as though this is all perfectly normal  “What can I do for you?” 

Isabelle looks uncertainly between them and says “I had a letter from my Uncle of Orleans, I was- how do you say?” she hugs the letter to her chest. 

“Homesick?” Richard suggests, and Isabelle nods her head. 

“This is my friend Bagot,” Richard says, kneeling down, “Bagot has goats at home, don’t you Bagot?”

Bagot smiles tightly. The goats were all Bushy’s fault- the man can’t keep his mouth shut to save his life and of course he’d gone and blabbed a semi-joke to the King as a serious comment and landed him with a whole bunch of livestock he had no real idea what to do with. But the Queen is looking at him with interest, now, peering around Richard to stare at him  with wide eyes. 

“What kind of goats?” she asks.

“Errrrrrr.....”

“The Bagot kind of goats,” says Richard cheerfully, “We’ll have to go and visit them, won’t we?”

“Of course,” Bagot says, “I would be honoured.” and because he feels a little guilty about snogging her husband, even if she is only seven and not at all interested in kissing Richard yet, he says, “You can feed them apples, if you like. Though they might try and get your sleeves as well. Especially Dickon, he’s worked out that people are more likely to give in to his incessant need for attention if he makes a nuisance of himself.” He remembers a little too late that he named that particular goat after the King for that exact reason and that he’d meant to tell said King the goat’s name was Spot, and now Richard is looking at him with the raised eyebrow of can’t-decide-if-I’m-amused-or-going-to-kill-you. Fortunately for his continued existence, the Queen gasps with excitement. “Can we?” she says, looking up at Richard, “Can we go and feed the goats?” Her happiness appears to be contagious, because the eyebrow goes down and the King’s face splits in to a smile. 

“Of course we can sweeting, we’ll make arrangements.”

Yes, Bagot thinks, practically flooding with relief, arrangements- when Queen Isabelle is under his roof, he’s going to spoil her absolutely rotten.

The King falls from his horse. 

There’s a slight possibility it's an assassination attempt- the saddle is new, the buckles shouldn’t have snapped the way they did. Richard goes crashing to the ground.  Nothing breaks, but  it takes him three tries at getting back to his own feet before he’s forced to admit that letting Bolingbroke pick him up - whilst mortifying for him- is the only way he’s going to get off the ground. His ankle’s badly sprained, and he hit his head; the physicians fears mild concussion and orders quiet and still, which means “Bed, my lord, and my Lord of Lancaster or York to sit with you- no, don’t argue, I know your majesty- if you’re not minded you’ll be up to all sorts.”  Richard is notoriously bad at rest- it bored him, but  Gaunt and Langley take him off Bolingbroke’s hands and it says something about how shaken the King is that he doesn’t make (that much of) a fuss about it. 

The problem is, he promised to take Isabelle to see the hawks when they came back from hunting, and he refuses to let her down. It’s only been three weeks since they married.  With his uncles babysitting him, and Rutland and Bolingbroke trying to figure out exactly what went wrong with saddle, and Bagot and Bushy...Green didn’t know what Bagot and Bushy had vanished to do (although he could make an educated guess.)

“But she doesn't know me,” Green protests. Richard glares. 

“Look at our ankle.” he says. Green looks. It’s an ugly shade of black and purple. “You can go and show your Queen the birds, or you can stay here and kiss it better.“  Green looks at Richard, then from York (who’s staring studiously at the ceiling) and Lancaster. (Who raises his eyebrow as if daring Green to stay, and actually....with both the King’s Uncles still in the room...) He can’t get out of there quick enough.

He’s not much used to children. She wants to know where Richard is, and he decides to tell her the truth. He probably should have stuck with “Richard fell off his horse” and not mentioned the fact it might have been a deliberate attempt on his life, because suddenly Isabelle doesn’t care about the birds. She wants to know that Richard’s alright, and every explanation Green gives seems to make matters worse, until he says, “They tried to kick him off the throne before, and he survived that.” 

Isabelle wipes her eyes and looks at him curiously. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Well...” with careful editing- no need to mention Robert de Vere, he thinks- he fills the Queen of England in on the history of her husband’s reign. By the time he’s finished they’re best of friends, and she’s not too impressed with the Duke of Gloucester. 

lmaooooo actually no, that would be funny if Richard’s II Boggart wasn’t probably something like everyone abandoning him…

Okay, so, what is a Bagot? Bagot is the surname of one of Richard II’s boyfriends. We’re  going off Shakespeare’s play here, btw,  not history history, but same difference- so yeah, Bagot is one of Richard’s three main boyfriends/friends with benefits/ whatever you want to call them (the other two are called Bushy and Green. Aumerle is Richard’s crush? Husband? Something?? and Richard’s Queen is Lisolotte levels of chill with her husband’s extra-maritial activities, because she’s awesome like that) So anyway, Richard ends up loosing the throne, and Bagot turns around and accuses him (Richard) and also Aumerle of getting up to all sorts of shady shenanigans like murdering the King’s Uncle, and basically denouncing Richard and it HURTS SO MUCH OH MY GOD LIKE…RICHARD JUST NEEDS HUGS AND FRIENDS OKAY???????