Ed Teach & Love
Do I think Ed’s ever felt an intense connection before Stede? Everything about his characterisation suggests that he has. Ed’s a man of deep feeling. He has most likely experienced liking, lust, longing, and limerence, and even thought he has loved. We know his friends understand enough about his preferences to suggest he has a ‘type’. Whatever their connection, Ed is still troubled thirty years later in the Gravy Basket by the terrible loss of Felix.
There’s one thing feeling though, and another in being able to nurture that feeling, and nothing in Ed’s life before Stede suggests he existed within an environment which allowed for that.
Life as a pirate is transient. People come and go. Folk are there one minute, dead the next. How many crushes did Ed have to see perish before he decided no longer to feel ? How safe was it to let those feelings be known even in the first place? According to Ed and Jack, they were treated ‘worse than dogs’ in their younger days. Stede himself suggests that most pirates had the constant mental pressure of wondering how they would next eat. I should imagine pirates live very much in the lizard part of their brain - fighting, fleeing, food, fornication. It’s not really conducive to romance.
Coupled with the idea that Ed likely has some form of c-ptsd, which can make forming relationships difficult, nothing about Ed’s past suggests an environment in which he could fall in love. And once he became Blackbeard, it would not have been safe for him to give away emotional control in that way.
There are several things about the situation with Stede which allows Ed to fall in love. One is the setting of the Revenge, if we ignore Izzy, being a safe space allowing that exact thing. We have Lucius and Pete, and Jim and Oluwande. There are friendships which flourish too, such as Frenchie and Wee John. Stede is paying his crew a wage meaning the next meal is guaranteed. Ed enters a world that isn’t living minute to minute. There’s time and leisure, pursuit of the arts, and a community built not just on survival.
Ed also feels safe to share his trauma. It’s confirmed in the Gravy Basket that Stede is the only person Ed ever told about the murder of his father. When Ed shares and Stede doesn’t recoil, instead offering friendship, it allows some of Ed’s walls to start to come down, and only then can he begin to move towards intimacy. Love cannot flourish without trust.
This leads to the third thing, which is that Stede sees Ed immediately. It was said at one of the cons that ‘vulnerability recognises vulnerability’, and the first time Stede meets Ed properly, there appears some truth in that. Stede intuits they are kindred spirits in ways he isn’t yet conscious. Ed now also wants to be seen, not caring to uphold the image of Blackbeard in quite the same way. Ed’s being seen, and then further seen, despite revealing what he views as his darkest parts, is what enables him to lay the groundwork to fall, properly, for the first time.
However, I do think for much of season one, Ed is in a state of limerence. He very much puts Stede on a pedestal, and has wild plans about running away. It’s as if he’s in love with being in love. In season two, now he knows Stede’s not necessarily got it ‘all figured out’, yet understands he returns his feelings, I think we see Ed truly falling in love. It might be partly why he’s so hesitant during the second ywftw. He’s been hurt, but this is also uncharted waters, and he knows this goes well beyond heady feelings. He wants a long-term relationship and a stable future, tenderness, nurture, and companionship, which is what they get in the finale.
The question of whether Ed has ever fallen in love before is complicated by a number of factors, but I think it’s safe to say he has never felt a love like he has for Stede. That doesn’t make it ‘pure’ or better than other ways of loving, it just makes it theirs - it’s their particular love story. It’s not a static thing either. It’s going to change and grow into something Ed, Stede too, never thought possible, and they’re going to marvel at what they create together. And I’m going to think about it, forever.
