geeking out on shakespeare's histories

I am so, so happy you enjoyed this! When I saw the prompt, I absolutely couldn't resist it -- there's far too little fic out there about Warwick and Oxford and these other characters caught between York and Lancaster without really belonging to either. And Warwick really is fascinating; he, to me, is the true Machiavellian character in these plays, rather than Richard of Gloucester. Because there is a certain emotional component to Richard even if he is layers upon layers of performativity. Warwick doesn't even interact with the audience, really. All of his perfomativity is directed towards the other characters, and he's got maybe one or two short addresses to the audience that I can think of.

My real challenge in this fic was trying to marry the historical and play-timelines, because Shakespeare's Earl of Oxford is a conflation of several different historical people, and his turning from York to Lancaster actually happened at the same time as Warwick's. ;) Which is really rather the opposite of the way Shakespeare tells it. So I'm absolutely thrilled that it all worked for you, and that the characters' motivations made sense. My original idea had been heavier on the slashy aspects, but the story I found myself wanting to tell didn't really lend itself to more than subtext.