the only sins without pardons are our own ( thomas headcanons )

So we have taken a look at the Hamiltons from a people perspective, now its time to talk about the animals because frankly speaking Thomas adores animals and being a lord he had every excuse available to own a fair few, though his primary ones were hunting and convenience.

Thomas owned three to five horses at any given time, though when he knew James McGraw he had three on his main estate and two on another. The mares were Persinna and Chariclea, the geldings Theagenes and Hydaspes and the stallion being Calasiris.

The significance of these names lies in the fact that they are all characters in the same Hellenistic romance novel where one of the primary obstacles between the main protagonists included pirates. Interestingly, the male protagonist and the father of the heroine have been set as geldings, whilst the man who aided both protagonist and heroine is set as the stallion – Thomas’ very quiet and personal way of telling a complicated political joke that ultimately amounts to doing what you believe in is the only true way to keep your big dick energy.

Though Thomas had many cats to manage rats and mice on the estate and they all had names because he’s just like that, there were only two that were considered more like pets than working animals. They were decorated with beautiful collars and spoiled rotten. Pure white and almost identical in sheer volume of fur, Andromeda and Perseus were gifts from Thomas’ mother and both have their own romance story, while also being briefly featured throughout the one that names his horses, because Thomas is nothing if not dedicated to being Very Extra.

His prize hunting hounds were Orpheus and Eurydice, though he had three others, those were the only two that James was likely to interact with. He also had a goshawk named Hamlet, whom he would often hold while reciting nonsense because in a fit of absolute boredom, he trained the bird to respond to certain lines for dramatic effect, solely to be That Guy.

Mun Note: Although I have written some allusions toward the scandals that run rampant throughout the Hamilton family, it occurs to me I should actually put down some specifics so people have a full overview of the General Bullshit that Thomas deals with even before his own scandal tore him down because let’s face it, that family is cursed. ~~It’s probably the wigs.~~

This post will go into why on occasion Thomas will snap at people unprovoked or crawl into their laps like an Irish Wolfhound that has not realized it’s fully grown ass is too big for this seat, simply by introducing the general cast / explaining a bit about Whomst The Fuck the Hamiltons even are.

Thomas is the oldest of three children born to Lord Alfred Hamilton – one of the Lord Proprietors of the Bahamas – and his wife, Helena Hamilton
née Stanhope.

Helena had three older brothers – Christopher, the eldest of the Stanhopes, inherited the family estate and was both a landowner and lawyer. Benjamin, the second eldest, maintained a valuable career in the Navy and was post-captain by the time she died. His career largely tended to benefit the overall reputation of the Stanhopes and consequently, the good nature of their estate.

Andrew however, was the one who made bank as it were. With oversights in the EITC until ultimately gaining a post as governor in the Carolinas, he made a ridiculous amount of money which he poured back to Christopher, who in turn used it to enrich the estate and buy back ancestral lands that had been sold under their father’s tenure.

These three men hate Alfred Hamilton with an extreme prejudice to which Thomas is not in the least bit unaware, and each one of them had some small part to play in keeping Thomas from suffering an even worse fate than what he did when his own scandal came into light.
After Thomas was his brother, William Daniel Hamilton ( who preferred to go by Daniel, and is referred to by Thomas as Daniel, as Publicly Speaking “William Hamilton” is a traitor to England, whereas Daniel Hamilton is simply – and shall always be – Thomas’ little brother ) who by 1715 was known better as Henry Davis, a notorious pirate harassing trade routes in the Bahamas.
Following Daniel is Anna Teresa. Following the scandal surrounding William, Alfred had Anna married off to Lord Cuthbert Langley. Her abrupt suicide followed within a year of the wedding and with it, Thomas was inducted to understanding the role Lord Langley played in Daniel’s exile.
In short: Langley heads those whose conspiracy Daniel uncovered. Alfred, in attempt to appease Langley and ascertain the family Hamilton would not be summarily destroyed by the much older and influential Langley peerage used Anna as collateral and bribery to remain in good graces. Due to Anna’s death, Alfred was forced to trade Thomas – or rather, Thomas’ influence over new age radicals and the more progressive voices in parliament.

It eventually becomes common for Thomas to receive letters from his brother-in-law encouraging him to enforce or support certain causes and ideologies, always under the emphasis that family ought to support one another. Needless to say, the very crest of the Langley family eventually becomes a rage trigger for Thomas, who sees all dealings with them to be ruinous and irresponsible.
Tabitha – a woman whose surname is unknown to Thomas and would likely be as false as the given one she had offered – was his solitary contact with Daniel, and how he managed to keep abreast of piratical affairs in the Bahamas better and more accurately than was often portrayed by publicists. She was killed on the day of his arrest, in consequence for attempting to afford him a window of escape. For this reason, much like James and Miranda, Daniel eventually comes to believe that Thomas committed suicide in Bedlam.

Learning James’ Truth

There were no words spoken in their reunion. To see James McGraw again was so many ways a dream that there was no hesitation in Thomas to reach for him – to hold on to this piece of sunlight in his past that had somehow found its way into his present and cradle it as the precious treasure it was. Time fell away in that moment, leaving only warmth and welcome for something thought long lost.

This honeymoon period was not built to last – with nearly a decade passed between them, Thomas and James had a great many things to discuss. While I have crafted various verses for what comes next, the immediate responses have been rather deliberately bypassed in each and every one of them for one very simple reason:

I fucking hate writing confrontation, and Thomas is a fucking hurricane that has just been provoked in the most dramatic and dangerous of fashions. No matter how good a man may be, to learn the things that Thomas did with the simple introduction to the fact that James McGraw and Captain Flint are in fact the same person does not result in good choices.

Thomas will reach the point where he understands what James did, and he understands that James did not know the truth of what had happened to him, in the heat of that moment there are three terrible truths to confront:

The sensation of having been abandoned by James.
The knowledge that James possessed the power to save him.
The realization that James murdered his parents.

Thomas’ response to this was not rational. It was not right. But it was perfectly valid in consideration to all that he was feeling.

He struck James. Of this I do not doubt. And how that fight escalated and ended is verse dependent but if you think for one second Thomas wouldn’t lash out at the man responsible for his mother’s death I really don’t know what to tell you.

While he does regret the action, he has a right to that anger. He has a right to the hurt that he felt that day and he has a right to continue to have days where these things hurt him. These are issues that Thomas and James need to work through and depending on verse they may be alright, they may be buried or they may be healed, but they are a factor between them and to ignore that is a disservice to Thomas – and in its own way, to James as well. To ignore it denies them any chance at real recovery, and that is not something I am okay with.

Concerning Captain Flint

On the plantation, news was something that came rather rarely and was often treated as a bit of an event. Things were organized so that handlers oversaw specific groups, which they directed through the day and disciplined as needed. Once a month, representatives from each group would get to go to a meeting at the main house, and hear the news which they would then bring to their group and share.

These gatherings were generally quite festive, and for that reason it was a different representative every month, so that everyone had an opportunity to enjoy them. It was a shockingly fair system, but then that was the purpose of the place – to build itself up as a humane method of slavery, but that is a whole other discussion.

In any case, often times these meetings contained stories of piracy, for they were exciting and easy entertainment for otherwise dull and focused lives. Tales of Flint, by the time they reached Savannah, were broader and more sensationalized than the truth could ever hope to be.

At no point did Thomas ever consider that the notorious Captain Flint might in fact be his dear James McGraw. Not so much because he believed the lieutenant incapable of cruelty – he was a Naval Officer that capacity came with the territory and Thomas never once doubted in it. Rather, the idea that James McGraw could become a man so fantastical and not do something about Thomas’ predicament was too impossible to believe.

Even when he learned Flint killed his parents in a targeted attack he did not suspect – his father had many enemies. His own uncles might well have paid for the assassination and it had gone too far, for all he knew. So to learn that Flint and McGraw were one in the same – it was a shock. Though again, that is it’s own tale.

The Murder Of The Hamiltons

Thomas heard of his parents deaths through a handler. By that point, he had been on the plantation for some time, and had formed a sort of comfortable society for himself. While it was hardly home, his complicated sense of gratitude for being there made it easy for him to adjust and eventually come to forge relationships with his fellow castaways and even those who held control over his liberty.

The news, when it first struck, was – difficult. The loss of his mother destroyed him. Knowing how much she had done and how hard she had fought on his behalf, in many ways seeing her as his only champion in the whole of the world, the idea that she was so cruelly taken from it ravaged him in ways that felt insurmountable.

There were times when he felt like he could not breathe – days when he was so bitterly furious with his inability to protect her, with the way in which they parted, with the unfinished business between them that he had to find means of distracting himself.

His emotions were so focused on his mother that his father was often an afterthought in his pain. There was so much unresolved, so many reasons for hate and dismissal, that Thomas was more frustrated when he found himself mourning the man when he ought to have been glad he was gone.

Much of Thomas’ worst and most tumultuous periods of grief for his parents took place on the plantation, and he found ways to a tentative healing before learning the truth of Captain Flint and thus, the reasons behind their deaths – though that, of course, is it’s own issue.

I cannot recall if I made a headcanon post about this or just went on about it with @intolerablexsacrifice but the long and short of it is, Thomas utilizes a form of classical conditioning with people who are in his sphere that he sees are in need of particular cues to respond to. The two most common cues he uses are a click of his tongue ( indicating disapproval ) or a low hum ( to indicate approval )

While these tricks are not something that Miranda responds to ( she saw through his game early ) the both of them utilize these against one another in a more playful manner. There is nothing subconscious about their reactions – Thomas knows when Miranda is giving him a straight up dressing down in public with a simple click of her tongue, just as Miranda knows when she has gone too far or is being teased by her idiot, constantly social experimenting husband.

They don’t bother with humming so much – as they are married, they much prefer to use physical touch as a method of reward because it is something they both crave and are more than permitted to exchange socially.

The difference between Thomas and Miranda clicking at one another, and Thomas clicking at James, or Peter Ashe, or even his own father, because yes he is daring enough to try that shit on Alfred Hamilton, is that with anyone other than Miranda, Thomas is training these people. It becomes subconscious to them, and it is notable especially with James and Peter, because they are receptive to it.

Though they may not register it for what it is, Thomas is conditioning them to seek his favor – to prefer a hum over a click, to seek to avoid the sound of disappointment. Depending on the verse with James, this can be something that shifts into the same realm it held with Miranda – a means of communicating without words, without letting the world see what is really happening – a way of teasing and playing.

Alternatively, it can remain a method of control, which shifts the power balance and keeps things from being wholly healthy between them – alternatively, it may be used as a means to communicate when PTSD is ravaging one or the other, in which case it is used as a means of helping one another navigate troubled waters and is more of a healing tool than a manipulative one.

Mun Note: This will be uncomfortable and triggering for people who have experienced institutionalization, a forceful loss of agency or suicidal ideologies as a symptomatic response to the trauma of either event. Abuse of power and medication is mentioned. Please do not read this if you are uncomfortable with descriptions of abuse in medical facilities. Also warnings for homophobia.

Thomas doesn’t talk about Bedlam. He will speak freely of his time in the plantation – both the good memories and the terrible – and may at times have moments where he considers the plantation to be a trial he was meant to face and one he believes held a positive influence on his ability to empathize, compartmentalize and socialize with people of all classes, colors and creeds.

In these times, he will speak almost glibly of his experiences – mingling memory both monstrous and humorous into consumable moments of recollection. He will humanize his experience there because it is important for him to acknowledge that portion of his life as something he survived and overcame – but also as something that saved him from a fate that was infinitely more terrible.

The plantation comes easily, because Thomas is so deeply and agonizingly grateful for his transfer there that words cannot frame it into a reality anyone else would understand. It is a reality he is still learning to come to grips with and there are elements of it that will cripple his trust in medical practitioners and places where physicians gather until the day that he dies.

Thomas had not believed his father would see him subjected to the horrors Bedlam was capable of – in truth, when Miranda came to visit he was still blissfully under the impression that this was all performance. His easy assurances had come from a terrible, misguided faith in his father’s desire to maintain appearances with minimal personal scandal – and completely underestimated how genuinely appalled by homosexualism his father actually was.

After James and Miranda had disappeared without making a fuss – aided by Thomas himself, as orchestrated by his own father ( who had him granted unusual freedoms in the hopes he would fall under the exact illusions he fell into and thus, ensure that neither the wife nor the lover would stir up a scandal ) the honeymoon period at Bedlam came to an abrupt and terrifying halt.

Ambushed by orderlies in the garden where he sat reading, Thomas was dragged off for the beginning of his therapies. He underwent many experimental procedures, and was victim to the same cocktail of sedatives that rendered other patients calm and malleable – if not openly suggestable.

The worst aspect of this for Thomas was the way his mind seemed to grow numb – he could not remember things he had memorized, and when presented with the simplest of problems it could be sheer agony summoning forth an answer that would have once come so quickly. The awareness of the answer was there, he had it in his mind, but held no ability to communicate it while under the influence of his medications.

Eventually, Thomas began to grow disruptive – violent in his efforts to fight off his medication, to clear the fog of his mind enough to think, to formulate a means of escape – and these outbursts were punished in severe fashions – generally involving an increase of sedative to the point it would knock him out. He would wake up in cells, or tied down to beds and chairs with no recollection of getting there. He would find himself in rooms he did not recognize, and there could at times be alarming apparitions as a result of his medical overdose.

Thomas did not fare well against the visions and the voices these medications summoned and eventually began to attack himself in a desperate attempt to escape the horrors he was being subjected to. It was in the wake of one of these attempts and another overdose that Thomas’ mother came calling unexpectedly – and in an absolute fury at what she discovered, immediately reached out to her brothers before confronting her husband.

It was Thomas’ uncles that ultimately blackmailed his father into setting Thomas off to the plantation, and his mother who held the man accountable for the lengths he went to in the first place. Shortly upon Thomas’ secretion from Bedlam to Savannah, one of his uncles ( Andrew ) observed his state and took matters a step further, quietly forcing the retirement of Alfred Hamilton to his properties in the Bahamas, where he too would live in exile under the jurisdiction of his wife.

Although this action ultimately lead to the death of Alfred and Thomas’ mother, his uncles never sought vengeance for either nor took any action to return Thomas to society, deciding to leave the secrets of their family buried. This did not sit well with Andrew, but he was unwilling to task his elder brothers on the matter and so he made frequent trips to Savannah to monitor Thomas’ progress, and bring him small treasures in the form of books and spices.

It was on the plantation that Thomas suffered his withdrawals ( which nearly killed him ) and there that his demons were exorcised by priests, fellow slaves and even one of the overseers through assurance and discussion that eventually came to an end. After three years on the plantation, he suffered no more thoughts of death, and sought nothing more than to live peacefully. Though life could be strict, and it was more taxing than ever before, he believed the plantation to be his salvation in many regards.

Yet he craved freedom from it. He craved freedom for himself and every other castaway society had deemed unwelcome and unworthy. He craved for better things – and in some cases he acted on those cravings, while in others, he cleaved to his gratitude, and simply bowed his head to fate.

Thomas was not a man bred for manual labor. Though he certainly appreciated muscles in other men – especially when he was able to show that appreciation in a physical sense – Thomas himself had never once held the need to acquire his own. His was a clerical and political lifestyle – he had no designs toward military or nautical pursuits and was truly quite content with his life among the gentry.

His lofty goals for others aside, he benefited from his own privilege and though he recognized that and was willing to seek ways to close the gap, he never saw reason to make overt physical demands on himself. Which was why, upon being sequestered away on the plantation, the changes that his body underwent over time were exceptionally notable and fascinating to him.

Finding ways to occupy his mind is something that Thomas has always needed to do. His is a mind that is constantly at work, and his need to occupy it is often a driving force behind his actions and routines. This was no different on the plantation and, as his body adjusted over time he began to think more clearly past the pain and notice things.

The most notable was when his biceps began hardening and developing to what they will eventually become when he reunites with James McGraw. Having never before worked so hard and so long to cause muscle to form, the hard, aching discovery alarmed him. He reported it as an illness, and was not completely mocked for it – for he was not the first to make the mistake.

From then on Thomas began to focus beyond the blisters and the sweat, from the pain and the aches to the locations of those pains and aches and began exercising what little fundamentals he understood about anatomy to begin focusing the changes and hopefully, aiding their progression so that the pain could, in time, ease away.

He never really lost his fascination with his own physical transformation and the habits he built to make the changes more uniform became ingrained in all that he did. It has resulted in a healthy balance of muscle and a strange sense of body positivity despite how he was forced to acquire it, because he feels he had a say in how it transformed. Any small sense of control over his fate is one Thomas holds on to tightly, and one that defines greatly how he feels about things.

By contrast, his hair – which he never cared about before – was forcibly sheered on regular intervals. As a result of this, upon obtaining his freedom, he grows it long and is generally very adverse to people touching it without his express permission. While by contrast, touching his arms or his stomach, even his legs, is generally quite welcome and positive.

I do not know what the debate on the street is, nor do I particularly care, but in the interest of getting ahead of the debates I wish to make my stances clear. I write Thomas as gay – unequivocally so.

I see his marriage to Miranda as one that was likely of political convenience for their fathers and not likely much choice on either of their parts, leading to the ease in which Miranda’s name is so commonly degraded by others. She likely had a choice – a man not quite as influential as Thomas himself – and due to this their marriage from the start was seen as one that would not be faithful.

However. I also believe he did his duties by her and that, in his own way, Thomas came to love her dearly. While he was never sexually attracted to her, they found ways to make it work and Miranda, being a woman with a healthy control over her body, as well as her own desires and sexuality, was able to maneuver them both into something that was both endearing and comfortable for them to share.

Thomas loved Miranda as deeply as he did James – simply because that love was not sexually motivated does not by any means declare that love meant less to him. To insinuate as such would be an insult to both of them. Considering the times and the pressures they were under to build a legacy through children, the relationship they forged held its own power. Miranda had her freedoms as did Thomas, but there was no lies between them that there were certain things they could not give one another, or any shame in the idea that they could have those needs met by others.

This is a permanent starter call for Thomas Hamilton, of Starz’ Black Sailsexplicitly.

These calls give me a heads up on who is open to interacting with whom (which is handy for those who have exclusives among my crew! ) and gives me an excuse to kick you starters whenever something crosses the mind, or blow up your inbox knowing who would be most wanted.

These calls also serve as a final tag dump – when this call is posted it indicates a character has been fully moved into the blog and is ready for action!

For other starter calls, check the tag HERE.