Please give us all your Baldwin thoughts (historical or movie) really love your Vizzy T posts

haha thank youuu <3 these arent all my thoughts about baldwin but right now i cant stop thinking about the line

“when i was 16 i won a great victory. i felt in that moment i would live to be 100. now i know i shall not see 30.”

baldwin says he was diagnosed with leprosy as a boy*, so its not like at this moment he just didnt know about his disease. he knew he was sick and what his fate was. but that victory, that feeling of success, overpowered the more logical parts of his brain. and he just… forgot about the reality of his situation. at least for a little while.

and sure a 16 year old boy having an “im invincible! im gonna live forever!” moment isnt anything new. but baldwin having a moment like that after getting diagnosed with a chronic degenerative (terminal? for his time period?) disease… theres something very bittersweet to me about it. makes me wonder how long that feeling of invincibility lasted. what was it that Reminded him. brought him back down.

(*irl baldwin, while suspected of having leprosy as a child, wasnt formally diagnosed until after he became king. wether they told him about these suspicions or not he wouldve still Known there was Something Wrong.)