fool’s fate is such an immensely long and wild ride, it’s no wonder reviews are like “this is some of the most gutwrenching-doomed-by-the-narrative shit you’ll ever experience.” i feel like i’ve aged like five years since i first picked up fool’s errand. i mean so much happened, like, too much happened? how does one even go back to seeing fitz and the fool as friends? friends seems like a reductive word for the sheer intensity of what they’ve been through together, for one another. i won’t make assumptions about what i think hobb’s intent was (the intent of the creator of a piece of media is rarely as important as the audience’s interpretation of it). HAVING SAID THAT, i for one think it’s very telling (for a queer narrative) that fitz has always “compartmentalised” the fool as someone separate from everyone else that’s important to him. his dearest friend and yet the extent of his relationship with him is a secret kept close to his chest throughout the books, with chade probably being the only one with even half a true inkling about their connection, almost like he’s subconsciously protecting it. he leaves all the ‘intimate details’ out when reporting to the coterie, but this isn’t the first time he’s avoided speaking of things they have expressed to one another in confidence. he’s different around the fool, and holds little back from him save for his avoidance of the depth of his own feelings. i mean, you don’t risk your own death to breathe life back into someone’s broken & bleeding & decaying body because you’re okay with the idea of them no longer being a part of your life. this is doubly tragic because the fool loves and respects fitz’s boundaries so much that he would rather withdraw than risk ‘making a mistake’, (and it’s obvious he’s trying so hard not to be selfish, trying so hard not to be heartbroken that fitz didn’t come back, especially after fitz astounds him by asking to follow him) but i am truly convinced that if the fool had chosen differently, fitz would’ve slowly started to come to terms instead of reverting to dismissal and avoidance. but he more or less acknowledges it in the parting words of his epilogue, that he traded everything he had with the fool for the life he sought with molly as a boy because ‘a horse can’t wear two saddles.’ and the most important woman in his life will go years without knowing about the depth of fitz and the fool’s friendship, but her children will play with the toys he carved for them, and a prized horse named malta will graze in their stables, and her son will wear an earring the fool had in his safekeeping for years and only parted with in order to keep a promise to a boy they both loved from forever ago. and so fitz goes from being adamant that he’d find a way to change the fool’s mind to letting him go just like that, because he finally has his life back, after so many years of deprivation. it’s only it’s own kind of tragedy that while he is content and surrounded by the people he loves, he’s still avoiding the deeper issues at the core of his being; still in many ways a tool for the throne, and giving his daughter up to the same fate. meanwhile, the fool, who was instrumental in buckkeep achieving peace and the reversal of fitz’s partial forging, is just hanging on by the bare thread of knowing that fitz is finally ‘free’ of him, and living well
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