Fandom Promotion

[longficmod]

Many of us are already planning which fandoms to offer and request! Nominations open in about a week, which may give some of us enough time to pick up a new canon before signups begin.

Use this post to promote your canon or to coordinate nominations with other fans.

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Richard II

[reine_des_corbeaux]

Richard II is one of Shakespeare's history plays, and, in a nutshell, it's about the deposition of King Richard II of England by the future King Henry IV (with tons of fun questioning about what it means to be the rightful king, or a good king, or a responsible ruler).

Selling Points:
-It's a play! If you're good with Early Modern English/reading Shakespeare, or you have a couple of hours to kill by watching a filmed version, you can consume the whole canon in like a day.
-The language is absolutely fucking stunning, and if you are at all inclined towards "one tiny thing is different" AUs, a lot of the recurrent metaphors make it ridiculously easy to AU in a "just add magic/daemons/dragons/weird ceremonies constructed entirely for the id" kind of way. Also, it just makes the whole thing an absolute joy to read, or to listen to.
-Characters you can read in many, many different and valid ways. Both of the main characters (Richard and Henry Bolingbroke) can easily be interpreted in more or less charitable fashions depending on how you feel about them and upon the staged/filmed version of the play you've seen.
-So much medieval political drama. Lots of backstabbing and land-grabbing and tower-imprisoning.
-Also, tons and tons of whump potential.
-If you like to fall into research rabbit-holes, the historical events upon which it is based are fascinating.
-So much slashy tension between multiple different combinations of characters, especially pronounced in certain versions. Depending on the production, it's quite possible to get a "bitter exes" vibe off Henry and Richard, and at least one production (RSC 2014) has given Richard a romance with the Duke of Aumerle. Then there are Bushy, Bagot, and Green, who can be easily shipped with Richard or each other.
-If you, like me, are shallow and mainly watch period dramas for the pretty clothes, there are quite a few versions with lovely costuming, Hollow Crown's rendition in particular.

Versions:
Since this is a four hundred (give or take a few decades) year old play, there are a whole lot of ways to consume it. Reading is a good bet, and the full text of the play can be found in a bunch of different places online (MIT has a very basic full text here, Folger Digital Texts has a rather more eye-pleasing version here, and Open Source Shakespeare is right over here) if you can't access it in a physical edition/don't want to. As for filmed productions, you'll probably have the best time finding either the Hollow Crown version (part of a BBC project producing films of all the histories save King John and Henry VIII) starring Ben Whishaw as Richard and Rory Kinnear as Henry Bolingbroke. Patrick Stewart is in that one too, as is The Guy Who Played Albert in Victoria. This tends to be my favorite of the popular variants, just because both Richard and Henry feel very human in it. But many other people are equally if not more fond of the 2014 filmed RSC production with David Tennant as Richard. This one's definitely more overtly gay, if that's a plus for you, but it's also for lack of a better word, a nastier, darker production in many ways. There are quite a few other filmed variants floating around out there, most of which are varying levels of old, which could be a plus or a minus for you depending on your tolerance for what are essentially made-for-TV movies from the fifties, sixties, and seventies.

What I'm Probably Requesting:
I love Henry/Richard. A lot. In all variants, both consensual and not-so-much. They're kind of my forever OTP and again, there are quite a few different ways to interpret them, so that's fun. It is also highly probable that I wind up requesting Richard/Duke of Aumerle, because they have a pretty slashy relationship that's catnip if you're into loyalty tropes or betrayal or whatnot (note: a lot of productions slot Aumerle into an ending role he does not fulfill in the actual text. I can only assume this is for maximum angst points, but it is also very much Canon to These Productions Only).

Anyhow, these are my Thoughts On Richard II. Sorry for this absurd ramble of a promo, but please do consider this wonderful play!