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[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Why did [Shakespeare's] Richard III want to be king anyway? What it to fulfil some inner need, or just because everyone like power and so he wanted what everyone else wanted?

Do we believe him when he says (in 3HVI) that it's just because he can't get a shag? Why would someone see murdering one's way to the throne as an alternative to lots of hot nookie? What's wrong with masturbation, hiring a prostitute, or making friends with Jane Shore* just like everyone else?

Sorry, angevin2 for messing up your lovely community with my strange and obscene speculations. Anyone who suggests 'inner needs' that have nothing to do with sex will be adored and admired.



* I made Richard/Jane fanfiction once. I bet you wanted to know that. And come to think of it, why didn't he just accumulate some fangirls? But I don't want to go down the well-worn, 'look at the Lady Anne thing - actually he clearly didn't have any trouble with women at all path'... Actually I've made fanfiction that explains that one too. But that's all beside the point. 'Inner needs'. If you want to know why I want to know, I waffle about it here.

Comments

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Well, as a dedicated Mistress Shore fan, I'm not sure she would have him. At least, Thomas Heywood's Jane wouldn't, since she's a very moral person apart from a spot of adultery, and the much-shallower Mistress Shore of the Elizabethan popular ballads would have insisted on a king who was pretty. I don't know which mental image of her Shakespeare was working with, but I'd assume it was one or the other of the above.

I think it's about the power and the challenge, more than anything. With a hefty dose of "they crowned Daddy Dearest with paper and stuck his severed head up on Micklegate Bar, and I'm going to make sure that NEVER HAPPENS TO ME." And, of course, in Henry VI-world the only reliable way to make sure it wouldn't happen to you was to do it to everybody else first.