oh professor we're really in it now

"After its first resounding scream, the ship surprised me by leaning into her, and whispering, beyond my hearing. At first, they exchanged whispers, every so often directing a glance my way."

Happy @springfest-rote! It's my first RotE fest. How lucky I was, to be paired with @willowjh, who has written something so achingly beautiful, so full of yearning. I have not felt inspired like this in a while.

First and foremost, my Beloved design includes bangs.

For the Assassin’s Apprentice I chose to draw the Fool from the scene where he gives Fitz his first riddle! The dandelion fluff I so dearly love and I really love the description of his pale eyes having a drop of blue!

The Fool in Royal Assassin in my headcanon has a longer hair than in the previous book and it still floats around his face. The description I used for his hair was from the chapter where Fitz wakes up in King Shrewd’s body via the Skill. To quote it: “His fine pale hair floated from the confines of his cap like a drowned man’s hair in seawater […].

Assassin’s Quest: first Fool that you see is from chapter 20: Jhaampe, the first changing has happened off-screen. Now the Fool has ivory skin, yellow eyes and flour like hair that no longer floats and is kept into a braid. The hair has grown a bit.

The second change happens on screen and the eyes and the skin darken a bit. I keep the hair the same shade as before because in my headcanon the hair changes much slower. Eventually it will catch up with the skin complexion.

My dear Amber now! This era is the one where I headcanon Beloved with the longest hair! Ship of Magic Amber is described as all the same colour: golden maple, golden woman, golden eyes. I chose something based on the golden maple wood colour to match her ^^ The Mad Ship Amber: I drew her in her disguise as a slave and she remained the same appearance wise because no big change has happened yet. She has a tattoo, wind-reddened cheeks, a crusty sore encompassing half her upper lip and her left nostril. Her hair is dirty and held in a scruffy braid that is coming undone. She uses a ragged scarf to hide her earrings.

Ship of Destiny Amber has had her first change: Now she gets a tanned skin and she is glowing and Althea describes her hair as both light brown and tawny. I did not go with light brown because I had to match the Tawny Man’s trilogy descriptions of Beloved more. Sometimes stuff is contradicting itself even in the books XD She gets burnt by serpent spit badly. I decided to draw that scene.

Possibly the reason why I started this project! This was the hardest to design out of them all. I had to find some logic for everything and I found it in “tawny”. There are so many shades. After trial and error I ended up with the designs above.

Fool’s Errand Beloved is sun-kissed skin wise and hair wise, amber eyes, airy hair. So we are back to floaty hair design for this era! The Golden Fool: My Lord Golden persona has the following hairstyles: waves, curls, ringlets and lastly straight but only in Fool’s Fate. Same complexion as in the previous book mainly because he is hiding the first change later on.

Fool’s Fate Beloved is the one I struggled the most with. I love him dearly and I always wanted to do him justice. I have been working on his Fool’s Fate design possibly for months and I hope this time I am done XD First change is visible in Fool’s Fate more and described in many adjectives and so different from each other: regarding the hair, Fitz mostly uses tawny hair and gold and sleek (so straight in my mind) but regarding the skin we have: bronzed, rich brown, golden brown, unhealthy duskiness to the gold of his skin (when facing the Pale Woman). For the first design that you see in Fool’s Fate I kept the headcanon that the hair takes longer to shift so it is still lighter gold but darkening while the skin is a golden brownish, I tried to find a common shade between everything we have. It’s one of the tawny ones from the pallete of this colour, too. So a lot of research for me XD

After the revival we have a second change which is faster. This one is even more vague in general in the text: we have these descriptors: polished wood, brown-skinned and according to Chade when he sees the Fool late at night, appleseed. Fitz describes the hair as golden still. I chose to go with the descriptor of a brown-skinned person but maintaining the tawniness. The hair is darkening slower than the skin again. Post Tawny Man, it will become a light golden brown or something of the sort according to my headcanon.

Beloved has hazel eyes at the end of this trilogy!

This last trilogy made me cry sooo much! Fool’s Assassin was the hardest to draw. Beloved is gray but there is starvation, mud, hair loss, cold, a lot of bad things and ofc torture to take in consideration. The Fool’s hair is matted and it breaks off on the pillow. He is blind so gray eyes. Many scars which are not that visible because of the mud. I also gave him chapped lips.

In Fool’s Quest, the first look we have is that of cleaner Fool whose hair is described as “short and crisp as straw” and I chose to colour his hair white. We don’t have a descriptor for the colour until later when it already shifts to “wheat ready for the harvest” and “dandelion fluff”, and “pale”. For Amber I drew her in Kelsingra: her hair is curly here, light gold and her lips and cheeks are painted with red, there is a black eyeliner, too. She is changed because of the dragon blood and has scales on her face and dragon eyes that Fitz describes as molten gold or light gold (so often). Both Fool and Amber have white hairs to denote their old age in their design. Fitz often mentions it.

For Assassin’s Fate I focused mainly on how Beloved looks at the end of the book. The mourning stage. After Fitz heals him, my headcanon is that the scales remain (we don’t know in the text, it is never specified). The skin has changed due to the dragon blood, the skin is described once as looking like the moon so I went with that and taking in consideration how much time had passed (a few months). The hair remains a light blonde and I increased the white hairs because of grief.