i came here to see a friend.

I mean, when you look at the Rattay map, his house is the only house that's behind the inner palisades. Like there’s other buildings, but they're either storage or what looks like stables?

Like Radzig made sure he would live in a place where it'd be easy for him to get to the castle if Skalitz was attacked. And when Skalitz was attacked, we saw that Martin and Henry would have been one of the first people to get there because they were so close by. It was a stroke of bad luck that Henry’s mother was in the middle of the village when the raid occurred.

I think Radzig didn't specifically pick a blacksmith because they're not ”simple peasants” (so a status thing), but also because it’d make it easy for him to justify having Martin and his family live in a strategic (meaning defendable) place like that. I mean, even in Rattay, the blacksmith is located very close to the upper castle, so I’m assuming it was a common thing to do, to keep blacksmiths near the castle? It does make sense, since you’d probably want to keep the guy who forges your weapons close by.

I terrorized a whole village, had the villagers think it was haunted by a revenant for a snake oil potion.

That made me wonder how they would approach Henry's ”reset” for the beginning of KCD3. They could of course put him in a similar situation to the cliff fall, some sort of near lethal injury. But maybe it would feel a little bit old.

So I was thinking about how they might want to take a different approach. During the KCD2 epilogue, Radzig tells Henry to enjoy the newfound peace because it's not going to last forever. So if KCD3 starts when the peace ends, and if Henry hasn't been fighting (or not as much) in the mean time, it would make sense that he would be rusty and have lower stats.

So KCD combines two specific tropes that i’m a sucker for, which is best friends to lovers and bodyguards/commanders/men in uniforms.

So I’m interested to know if anyone has similar ships they can recommend. I’ll start with my own.

Obviously, there's Merlin and Arthur, and they're the main ship i saw people comparing Hansry to (still hoping for some sort of sequel, she said with her clown makeup on 🤡)

Now for the possibly lesser known ones (and maybe not as similar, but it's still there):

1. Reinhard and Kircheis, Legends of the galactic heroes

2. Nino and Jean, Acca: 13 Territory Inspection Dept

3. Worick and Nicolas, Gangsta

But when you start KCD1, which, again, happened that same year, you have big baby Henry, who would whine to his Ma about being hungry, who also would run to his Ma when he had a booboo because some drunk beat him up, and who gets pocket money from his Pa to go woo his girl at the tavern.

And it breaks my heart to think about how fast Henry had to grow up after losing everything in Skalitz. He was so unprepared for everything that was thrown at him. The only things he had going for him to face his new reality were a braveness that verges on madness and maybe a certain way with people – Because he was Skalitz’s beloved boy. Beloved by his parents, obviously, but also by most of the villagers who all seemed fond of him. But then, after the raid, he didn't even have the support of those people anymore, because they were either dead or had lost everything.

After Skalitz, the remaining villagers needed him to find them jobs to survive. And the people at Rattay did eventually warm up to him, but it was a slow process. And for that to happen, he had to chase and kill bandits for them, or to steal things for them and join them in their shady business. Such a stark contrast to the favors people would ask from him back in Skalitz, like throwing dung at people's houses for shittalking the king.

But among everyone else who needed him for vital or grim reasons, there was Hans and his silly requests. Hans, who needed him to fetch wine and flowers, and to be his wingman to woo a girl. Hans, who wanted him to take part in a tourney and pretend to be his page to get his uncle off his back. Hans, who despite their rocky start and class divide, was one of the people who warmed up to him the quickest, and who essentially reminded Henry that the days when his actions didn't have to have life or death stakes and could be just mischievous fun weren't gone completely.

"A bad day is just a bad day and it doesn't mean that your whole life is fucked" That piece of wisdom from Hans in KCD2, it’s Hans who makes Henry realize that in KCD1, during the earliest and darkest days of his grief.

Fast forward to KCD2, it's now Hans who has to grow up too fast, when he's first brutally stripped of the privileges of his status, and then is thrown into a losing battle against Sigismund and his allies.

If KCD1 is Henry's coming of age story, KCD2 is Hans's. He goes from making Henry do his share of his work, to wishing he could be the one to save Henry for once(*). He also goes from thinking that hauling sacks is beneath him to volunteering to dig graves. And he learns to accept responsibility for what happened at the pond.

Up until KCD2, Hanush was always nearby to handle serious matters for Hans as his guardian. Delivering that message to Von Bergow is Hans's first time in a leading position.

He thinks he's ready, but almost immediately, he makes a mistake that gets his men killed, and puts him in a situation where people won't recognize his status because he doesn't look the part. That mistake almost gets him hanged, one of the lowliest deaths, even for a peasant. It reminds him of the precariousness of his status, which he has been taking for granted.

Then, when his status is acknowledged again, he realizes it makes him a bargaining chip more than anything. And he is a bargaining chip both to his enemies, who will capture him for a ransom, but also to his allies who, will marry him off without his input to reinforce their political standing.

And through all of this, the one person who stayed loyal to him was Henry. Henry did everything in his power to save him when no one else was on his side because they took him for a mere poacher. Then he found that while his allies mostly care about what they can gain or lose from him, Henry only cares about keeping him safe, and it's not because it's his duty, but because he cares about him, plain and simple.

In KCD1, Henry, who was used to a carefree life, suddenly has to take on responsibilities that are too heavy for him (or anybody, really). But Hans reminds him that his carefree days aren't completely gone.

In KCD2, Hans thinks that inheriting Rattay will open a smooth path to glory for him, but the following events quickly disillusion him about that. But he also finds that there is someone he can always rely on, and it's Henry, and it's not because he's a noble but because of his person.

They were each other's beacon in their darkest times. The way they complete each other, it's really no surprise that they fell in love along the way.

Istvan said that Henry was like him. So how interesting is it that we’ve got traits where Hans is like Erik.

Henry, trying to do his job: Well I’m sure there's plenty of cooler places you could go, my Lord.

Hans, the most romantic man in Bohemia, and a poet: It’s just that I can't wait to play with that sword once you're done 😇

Henry, renowned blacksmith, a master of his craft: Actually, I think I am done.

Hans: I expected no less from my favorite swordsmith ⚔️

Meanwhile, the ”completed” sword that Hanush commissioned :

It’s not because of your heart that the sea doesn't look beautiful. It's the afternoon clouds. The sea looks best when the clouds are gone.

Today I realized that last year was Barakamon’s 10 year release anniversary. There was a time when I felt that I’d give anything for a sequel. Now I realize that I just wish I could experience it for the first time again. I mean it when I say that nothing could come close to Barakamon’s opening scene.

But the best thing about Barakamon, though, is that it’s got so much rewatch value. The first episode has me going from laughing to tears, to just downright tears.

Henry was just lucky enough to get released/rescued before Hans. They allowed him to get out so he can work off his sentence in For whom the bell tolls. And after they get captured at Nebakov, it's Katherine who rescues Henry.

So it's not like Hans is so helpless that he just gets captured left and right all the time. He gets captured in situations that even Henry couldn't get himself out of on his own.

Admittedly, during the hunt in KCD1, Hans does get kidnapped all on his own. But in his defense, it was an ambush. He was busy chasing after that boar, so he was taken by surprise. And I know my Henry definitely wasn't capable of taking on two Cumans at that point of the game -- I had to stealth kill them to rescue Hans (meaning my Henry at least would have gotten his ass kicked in an ambush)

This shows that Hans definitely isn't as helpless as people like to say (though I know it's mostly jokingly) There's even plenty of evidence that he's got excellent skills in marksmanship and hunting. Even in combat, there's plenty of scenes where he is shown to hold his own, like during the tavern and wedding brawls, or right before he gets down during Zizka’s ambush.

I mean, he does get hit, but man. You can't tell me he hasn't got moves. If I were Henry, and if I hadn’t already been thirsting for my brat Lord by that point, I would have started right then.

What I’m trying to say is, we do have to save him a lot, which would make him a poor little meow meow. But he is a competent poor little meow meow, who just gets thrown into impossible situations far too often.

That the freckles in our eyes

Are mirror images

And when we kiss

They're perfectly aligned

–Such Great Heights, The Postal Service

I was thinking about how this song is such a Hansry song. Because if you think about it, it might not be the freckles in their eyes, but Henry’s arrow wound and Hans's (the one he got from Suchdol) are on opposite sides.

So when they kiss, the scars would be aligned.

This started with me getting dopamine hits whenever I heard Henry call Hans just "Hans" because it reminded me of how in KCD1 someone (was it Divish?) clocked that Erik was someone special to Istvan because he called him "Istvan" and not "Sir Istvan". So of course I had to investigate how Henry calls Hans in KCD2.

This is definitely not an exhaustive list of all the times Henry has talked to/about Hans in the game. I mostly got the data from the cut-scenes and main quest moments where Hans was there. This is probably missing a ton of dialogue with Henry talking about Hans during side quests and/or outside of cut-scenes.

With that in mind, here's the data:

First graphic: What name Henry used to address Hans, either while talking directly to Hans ("Hans"), to a friend or an ally ("Friend"), or to someone else -- a stranger or an enemy ("Other")

Second graphic: Same thing, but differentiates between when they were just the two of them ("private") or with other other people ("public")

Third graphic: What name Henry called Hans, depending on what the context was. This is specifically for the times Henry was addressing Hans directly. I made a distinction between him teasing Hans ("teasing") and him just talking to him while he was just in a good mood (positive). Also made a distinction between him being mad at Hans ("upset") and worried for his safety ("worried)

So I have a few comments:

Henry mostly calls Hans "Sir Hans", which is to be expected, but interestingly enough, he still does call him “Hans” a lot.

Actually, when it’s just the two of them, he calls him just “Hans” more often. And I noticed that he calls him just “Hans” more and more often as the game (and their relationship) progresses.

The times he calls him “Hans” in public, it’s almost exclusively with allies. So he is careful about how he calls Hans.

In fact, the majority of the times he calls him Hans “with” in front of an audience is with Bozhena, who didn’t really believe that Hans was a noble until later in the conversation. Like it would have sounded weirder for Bozhena to hear him call him “Sir Hans” than just “Hans”.

Most of the time he calls him “Hans”, it’s when he’s worried about his safety. As if he slips when he’s desperate and betrays the fact that his Lord is just “Hans” in the privacy of Henry’s head. Like he's his best friend first.

The other time he calls him just “Hans” with an audience is with Brabant, when he takes Hans’s side when they talk about war after the escape. Which is also interesting because there were times when I had the impression that Henry was lowkey jealous of Brabant. A little like with Hans with Samuel, but less intense, obviously lol.

He doesn’t call him "Hans" when he’s teasing him or when he’s upset with him. Like he knows that a squire has no business teasing, and let alone reprimanding his Lord. He also has no business calling his Lord by his first name. The line between their positions and their friendship is blurred enough as is, so combining the two feels like crossing the line completely, irreparably. Like calling him "Hans" when he’s flirting with teasing him is too provocative. And when he’s reprimanding him, maybe using his Lord's first name feels like overstepping too much? Like it would feel like abusing their closeness to completely dismiss Hans' status with the objective of hurting him, which Henry would never do imo, because ultimately, he does respect Hans as a noble.