bymyheelies | (Reply)

From:

"You miss how easy the young man who fatally wounded you was to beat?" Claudius leans against one of the workshop's many long tables, looking Mercutio over. From the sound of it -- and from Mercutio's earlier, idle brag that he had Tybalt well in hand before Romeo came between them -- that fatal wounding may've been a miscalculation on both sides, with tragic consequences unfolding from it. But Tybalt's relative skill isn't the precise contention, so Claudius waves the question away without answer. "That must have been the exception rather than the rule, I suppose. And a certain righteous impulse to establish who should've won could explain why you so want to see him again ... but you don't seem to take much comfort in knowing you were avenged. You didn't squabble so often because you truly wanted each other dead, did you? He was easy to needle. You could get his attention. And there's an almost erotic tension to attentions expressed through crossed swords."