Then, on his arrival in Constantinople, after much counsel with himself, considering that he was already unequal to the amount of pressing business and believing that there was no room for delay, on the twenty-eighth of March he brought the aforesaid Valens into one of the suburbs and with the consent of all (for no one ventured to oppose) proclaimed him Augustus. Then he adorned him with the imperial insignia and put a diadem on his head, and brought him back in his own carriage, thus having indeed a lawful partner in his power, but, as the further course of our narrative will show, one who was as compliant as a subordinate.
No sooner were these arrangements perfected without disturbance than both emperors were seized with violent and lingering fevers--
AM 26.4.3-4
this was one of those illustrations that was originally supposed to be a 5 page comic until I realized I don't know anything about later roman empire architecture or visuals or art or anything, so we'll revisit that later. maybe
for right now though, these two are fascinating. we have two brothers acting as one body, even becoming ill in tandem with each other, it's giving This Throne Is Cursed. like, the last time I read about emperors coming down with life threatening illnesses, it was Caligula, and that moment in his biography marked a very specific tone shift. I spent the rest of the (first) time reading about Valens and Valentinian waiting for something comparable to Caligula's reign to happen lmao (Dio 59. 8. 1-2)
and since Caligula was already on the mind, I started thinking about Tiberius: I think he would've loved these two since he had a whole thing about twin-ification and brothers and etc etc etc. ofc, Rome is both a Mouth and a Tomb, so it's going to go badly for someone/everyone eventually, but honestly I think that Valentinian and Valens were the best we could've hoped for. like it could've been so much worse
Tiberius and the Heavenly Twins, Edward Champlin
Failure of Empire: Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century A.D, Noel Lenski
⭐ I have a tip jar (ko-fi)!
⭐ and other places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app
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i dont have any trigun mutuals so i'm just gonna ramble my thoughts into the infinite void of tumblr. and im sure others have touched on this same topic but
it almost seems like vash is getting softer with every new installment of trigun? like incredibly consistently and incredibly specifically.
let me explain.
i'll start with tristamp and work backwards; the tristamp vash we all know and love there is incredibly adverse to violence.
more often than not he ACTIVELY refuses to fight and just WON'T draw his gun. this post loosely counted the amount of bullets that he shot throughout all of season 1, and almost ALL of them (like to an insane degree) were dished out against knives, who vash knew was strong enough to take the hit.
the few times vash does draw his gun against a human in tristamp, it's as a blunt force weapon (against the badlads gang and livio, for example) or to disarm others/save someone with ricochet (like shooting the punisher before wolfwood can kill livio).
he just doesn't shoot people. at ALL.
then if we look at 98 trigun, things change drastically.
here, vash isn't afraid to hurt people a little if it means more will be saved in the end. of course he never kills, but he actually shoots people here. not only that...
he holds a casual, sarcastic conversation while pointing his weapon at people.
he constantly shoots at limbs to immobilize people, fires warning shots extremely close to peoples' vitals, and performs several very insane trick shots throughout the show to wound those with armor.
tristamp vash wouldn't even draw, but 98 struts around firing warning shots into the sky and singing about bloodshed for intimidation! i'm not sure there's a single episode where he doesn't shoot someone at least once.
...so what about trimax, then?
(PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD)
he is so. shockingly. violent.
of course he never kills. of course he's still trying to save people, but there's this anger in him that i was completely taken off-guard by reading for the first time.
tristamp vash is so soft he's painful to watch. 98 vash makes a heartbreaking effort to be as silly and nonthreatening as possible, constantly making himself out to be the fool. but trimax?
he's... literally grief-stricken and out for revenge. explicit revenge. he's angry and he's hurt and he lays his intentions out so clearly. he's making THREATS.
seriously:
hunting legato. HUNTING him.
it's not even a matter of drawing his weapon anymore. he does it constantly, and fires just as much. never to kill, but he doesn't joke around the way 98 vash does. the most he'll offer is a sunny smile to reassure others and nothing more.
i'm not that far into the manga, either. i'm sure there's countless more (and probably better) panels to convey this side of trimax vash, but i suppose it also says something that i've found so many panels depicting this so early on.
but the progression of vash's personality is fascinating regardless.
from a tortured, angry loner desperately trying to cling to his morals for rem's sake
to an equally devastated man who devotes himself so completely to acting the role of the fool
and finally to the sad, chronically depressed shell of a person in tristamp who refuses to so much as draw his weapon.
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