(no subject)

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Bahorel was volubly gleeful at the prospect of learning swordfighting from a genuine medieval English knight who lived and made war with his longsword, and equally gleeful at the prospect of teaching him canne de combat. Enjolras isn't surprised at all by this; it's why he felt comfortable making the offer to Harry Percy in the first place.

This would probably be true even without Bahorel's current level of boredom. As it is, he'd probably leap at the chance to teach canne de combat to a dressmaker's dummy.

(A poor analogy. He's probably already done that, too.)

At any rate, the idea being mutually agreeable and their schedules being largely free, Enjolras and Bahorel and Harry have made their way together to the practice room upstairs.

Comments

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Someone from another cultural context might have more qualified feelings about patriotism. Enjolras emphatically does not. He smiles at the statement, small and glowingly real.

"Yes."

All right, so Harry Percy's country is not France; that's not the point. France and England have no great love for each other, and that's not the point either. His country is his own. That's as it should be.

"Though," he does add, "the more voice they have in their country, the dearer they'll feel both love of their homeland and desire to defend her."

Harry Percy's country is his own, but it's also his own in the 1400s, when a lord does raise the men of his own land, for his own purposes, good or ill, without asking much of their thoughts on the matter.

[harryhotspur]

"Well," Harry says with a shrug. "That is for the king to say, is't not? Who he will hear, or will not."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Enjolras, eyebrows up, says with the mildness of deep understatement, "Often. Which is the problem, isn't it?"

Has Harry heard the words of his own sentence yet?

[harryhotspur]

"It is indeed," Harry agrees readily. "But still it is so."

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel would love to comment on the obvious gap in Harry's philosophy--really, he would, there is so much to say-- but coughing and choking on Weird Death Peppers has turned into laughing has turned into laughing and choking on Weird Death Peppers. So he settles for getting up and heading to the fridge, thumping Harry on the shoulder in friendly amusement and Enjolras in passing as he goes. All yours, Enjolras! At least until Bahorel can find a beer or something to counteract the Murder Food.

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Where to even begin?

Well -- it's Harry Percy. Percy, who looks faintly taken aback every time he's listened to.

"What wouldst thou call a better way?"

[harryhotspur]

"Thou hast asked as much before, in other fashions," Harry says. "And Feuilly has said the ways you do seek to build in France would suit not in my time. And so-- and so I know not, save that we seek the only way we know: a king who will trust his nobles' word, who lives not ever fearing that his crimes past will come to call, but rules in quiet."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

There is so much to address within that.

Some of it they've already talked over, though. So that's a start.

"One trouble with that," Enjolras opts for, "is how to ensure that the common people are heard as well, and not only the nobles."

He says it as a prompt, half a question: laying the matter before Harry, equal to equal, and trusting that he'll share the basic premise that the common people are worth hearing.

They may not reach any more consensus than they started with, in the course of this discussion, and Harry may not change his views on anything significantly, not even once Bahorel rejoins the debate. But agreement's not the point, and never has been.