Richard Armitage 30 day challenge
17.) Q: your favorite romantic pairing
A: Guy and Meg
Guy and Meg weren’t technically in a relationship and their time together proved to be short, but I found this pairing very romantic.
Meg was a young woman who vocally despised all men, yet she was able to find something good in Guy.
And when worse came to worse, they didn’t abandon each other.
Guy was so tender with Meg in her last moments, granting her request for a kiss.
Meg was the one who was able to break through all of Guy’s defenses. Tragic, but romantic!
Nowhere in Particular RA 
ohhhhhhhh,
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It was the first time in all 3 series when I was close to tears…. I refuse to remember the second occasion.
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I was close to tears quite a lot! but I cry at commercials, so it’s no surprise that tortured guy brought forth the waterworks
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LOL! yes 😀 sometimes comercials are so stupid….I just want to cry.
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I watched it for only the second time the other day. (This was not by choice). Although the progress from antagonists to star-crossed lovers is made in record time the scenes with them at the execution site are still really emotionally affecting.
This episode was one of those which the lines which made fans ready to forgive Guy (or at least feel sympathy for him). This was the line about already being in hell. (For me, the other lines were the occasion where he tells Marion that he stays with the sherriff because he has no one else, and also right before his almost-wedding to her, when he humbly tells her he’s never been to a wedding before).
If only he could have brought himself to apologize to his sister, or at least recognize that he had done her wrong. Damn his stubbornness! But he doesn’t and he stays partly unredeemed even by Meg’s death.
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for it’s setting & time period, I don’t think Guy should have been expected to apologize. they were struggling, two orphans, and as the older brother it would have been up to him to find her a husband. he thought he found a good match for her, he was rich, that’s what mattered; sad but true. should he have kept in contact with her? yes, he shouldn’t have just wiped his hands clean of her 😦 but considering the circumstances of their parents deaths, and how Guy felt it was his fault, he probably didn’t want to be reminded of where he came from.
once she came back, and made his life a living hell, why would you even consider apologizing to her?! Guy was no angel, and I wanted him to be redeemed, but that does not mean he needed to be a chump to do so.
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*sighs* Nice one. The only problem I had with the pairing was that I kept seeing in Meg the little “sister” of Carol’s from ‘Sparkhouse’. The characters were lovely with and for each other though.
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I saw Robin Hood before I saw Sparkhouse, so it didn’t initially bother me. now though, it does pop into my mind now and then, but mostly as a reminder how much older Guy was than her.
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Or how much older RA was than Holiday Grainger (?) – *eeek*
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But he had his chance to apologize to her when she first showed up in Nottingham and he wouldn’t take it then, or even admit privately that he was wrong.
I always found something “off” in his relationship with his sister. Her interactions with Meg and Marion showed that he was capable of tenderness, and there were interactions he had with other women such as the fake nun that were respectful and considerate.
Of course, all these women were ostensibly chaste.
He even managed a facsimile of kindness with the mother of his child. For a while.
Maybe there was something in the past that affected his relationship with his sister, and caused him to treat her as he did.
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I don’t think he believed he was wrong in what he did. he may have found it regrettable that her husband turned out to be such an emotionally abusive (& probably physically too) jerk but that was just an unfortunate outcome, not his fault. she was the younger sister, seen as a burden to an orphaned teenage boy, and seen as property to all males. remember, Guy locked up his heart a long time ago; it was going to take more than a long-lost vindictive sister to find the key.
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He doesn’t show any signs of regret that her husband is a monster, but let’s be charitable and assume he feels some guilt and that’s why he won’t apologize.
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Oh yeah, that’s Lucretia Borgia. Did you see that series? She still looked really young in the first season.
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Hi Cill – not quite sure if your comment was directed at me? Did she play Lucrezia Borgia? Oooh, what a role. But yeah, I was reminded of Sparkhouse where she was literally a girl, just 14, and RA was 31 and played something like a daddy/big brother , I suppose. Move on seven years and she’s 21 and suddenly she’s his lover *lol*. Although I can easily see how that was no hardship for her and possibly more of a headf*ck for him… 😉
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I have such difficulties with the reply prompts. The “He had his chance” reply was to kelbel, and the Lucrezia reply was to you.
I’m pretty cynical about guys being able to adjust to these changes. I just looked her up and she was born in 1988. I hadn’t realized that she was that old (and I don;t mean that in a derogatory way).
When I watched The Borgias she was playing someone much younger very convincingly. Lucrezia was married off for the first time at age 13 and the show kind of hinted at how young she was.
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I’d have enjoyed this pairing much more if Holliday didn’t look perpetually 10 years old. And if I hadn’t seen Sparkhouse first. I wonder if there was a lot of awkward shuffling and and staring at the floor that week on set.
They both gave lovely performances, though. I hope the producers of that show thanked their lucky stars for him every episode.
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I always felt that Guy had a big brother vibe going on here. Meg clearly had fallen for him, but I think he was just trying to fathom how anyone could care for him. I wonder if RA played it that way on purpose, or if real life was seeping in? 🙂
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I’ve always assumed that it was because Guy’s heart was buried with Marian (so to speak). He dies with her name on his lips.
(Ah crap. Tearing up. That scene really kills me.).
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and yet he admits that she was never his, that her heart was with Robin; that makes it so much sadder!
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Yeah. The fact that she never really returned his affection is what kills me. Good or bad, he had no one and died knowing that the one person he wanted to love him would never do so. (And she tears up *again*!)
When I wrote a few weeks ago in this challenge about the most touching moments I forgot this one. Too traumatic probablly.
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that’s why I like that fanvid “pieces” so much, because it tweaks the ending to make it seem like Marian is coming for Guy instead of Robin 😉
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Girl had no taste.
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Marian fell in love with Robin when they were still kids, essentially. I think she just fell back on that because he was safe, and he seemed to have the same values as her. Guy was a man, someone who was vastly different from her and probably made her question her stance on things; the unknown can be frightening, especially when it tells you things about yourself that you never knew/don’t like
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I think she did fall in love with him before he went away, since in the first episodes she seems to remember their “understanding” more clearly than he does. They definitely had the same values, although their methods were slightly different.
Guy’s intensity and single-mindedness (not to mention his normal ruthlessness) would have been off-putting for someone like her. On the other hand there’s sex and even love. She couldn’t help noticing that he was at his best with her, and his single-minded attention would have slightly flattering and maybe an attraction in itself. Guy’s obvious desire for her would have been completely off-putting if it wasn’t in some degree reciprocated, and it’s pretty obvious from the famous ‘armour’ scene that it is. (Ah Guy, if you knew anything about women, you wouldn’t have stopped her from touching you in that impatient way. Taking her hand and kissing it might have had unexpectedly successful results).
Although the series certainly is no documentary, my recollection of history of sex and gender is that women in the 12th century weren’t thought of as sexless dolls. In fact they were thought of as especially lustful, and chivalry was a brand-new thing more or less introduced by Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughters. Guy’s relationship with Marian (as Richard Armitage himself said in an interview) is partly based on unsatisfied desire and unrequited love, so in a way he’s more chivalrous than the run of men at the time.
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I think Guy was one of those “bad boys” that were just keeping up appearances. not that he had a heart of gold or anything, but I think he was bad on purpose. if it wasn’t a family show we might have seen a slightly different Guy, trying to keep that image going by bedding all the serving wenches or something. but I think who we see with Marian, is the real Guy, the one who has manners and is actually respectful.
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Of course, we may be delusional but I share your opinion that he is bad deliberately because it brings him status and power and (he hopes) acceptance from the sheriff.
He’s described in the blurbs for the series as “sadistic”, but if you notice throughout the series, unlike the sheriff he may have people tortured but he tends not to stick around for it. He may show up later an offer them a deal, but he tends to be out of the room. When Meg was being dunked, he sort of had his head turned away.
On the other hand, he does things which are pretty unforgiveable from time to time, so yeah no heart of gold.
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that’s not to say that people like Guy are any less dangerous, sometimes they’re more so. Being ruled by their emotions, while trying to uphold a certain image or attain a certain level of power, makes them very unpredictable; what happened to Marion is a prime example.
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I hadn’t put it that way to myself, but yes Guy is a creature of emotion. (Well, I knew it wasn’t logic :-D). He’s also not the brightest bulb in the sign either poor baby 🙂 so he never quite gets things until they’ve reached a point where he can’t do anything about them.
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