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Critical First Kiss: Lieve'tel and Bertrand Bell 💕

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i think when lieve’tel communes with the Raven Queen she asks to say hi to her boytoy (bertrand)

Critical Role Ship Moodboards: Lieve’tel Toluse/Bertrand Bell

Mondays are the absolute worst! Can I get some lieve’bell maybe??

From this Ask Game. I rolled my favorite black die and it gave me a 1. This dice set absolutely hates me.

What was just a night of entertainment for Lieve'tel ended up being much more than that. After they left Vox Machina, she and Bertrand found each other in Vasselheim, where they spent a few more nights together before she finally convinced Bertrand to not retire from his adventuring days.

I would like to say that this is probably the first time I've been asked to write anything about Lieve'bell, and I have no idea why I never thought about them before. I need to re-watch the one-shots because the idea of Liam flirting with Travis is fantastic.

I'm so glad I'm not alone in the Monday-hating club. Thank you so much for the ask! :D

lieve'bell died so cherym could live.

Y’know, I find it really moving how Matt and Travis gave genuine dignity to Bertrand’s death.

It’s an odd thing to say about Bertrand Bell, a throwaway joke character with more bravado than braincells who ended up getting unceremoniously shanked in an alleyway. But I felt that the joke suddenly stopped in a way that reminded everyone - actually, he’s a person, he’s dying, and that’s important.

There’s the way Bertrand stopped being a joke at the moment he drew his rapier. Travis could have chosen to play it for laughs, to have Bertrand try to run and get cut down. One last useless screw-up. But instead Bertrand holds his ground, draws his sword. I think that’s close enough. I have you at a disadvantage. Having bravadoed his way through seventy-plus years, he’s not going to stop now. It’s useless, because he’s old and he’s drunk and he’s been through one fight already today, but he chooses not to run or to go quietly. He makes his stand, because... well, for the same reason he went to find the Windowed Wall in the first place. Sometimes you just have to hold up your head.

And that was the moment when I remembered - yes, this man was an eighteenth-level fighter once. Whatever he might have pretended to do, he really did go through Pandemonium to retrieve Grog’s soul, he really did battle a corrupted Empyrean, he really did fight a horde of bugbears single-handed to get Percy’s arm. Bertrand lived a life, and it wasn’t the life he pretended it was, but he did things, and he could have done more.

Except he couldn’t, because Travis always planned for him to die here, before he could be the hero he pretended to be. Idk, to me that sudden realisation of the fact that he could never have fought with this party, gained back all those fighter levels, bragged about things he’d actually done... that suddenly felt like a goddamn tragedy.

There’s the narrative framing of it, with Matt bookending the scene with Imogen’s dream. At the moment Bertrand dies, Imogen’s dream turns cataclysmic. Like her powers sensed the death of the man who only a few hours ago was making ridiculous attempts at subterfuge with her. Like the universe responded to that loss. And the last thing that a member of the party sees of Bertrand Bell isn’t him drunkenly stumbling into the night, it’s him walking, dignified, into the storm.

And that final ‘Lieve’tel’? Yes, it’s Travis being a troll, twisting the knife and making Liam’s day, but it’s also a reminder: there were people who mattered to Bertrand. Whatever shape his and Lieve’tel’s relationship took after Pandemonium, she meant so much to him that her name was on his lips as he died. He was a person, he had a life, he had at least one person he cared for deeply. And he died, and that matters.

Tl;dr: Matt and Travis played Bertrand’s death in a way that acknowledged that, out of universe, he was always totally disposable... and that in-universe, he was never disposable at all.

when that ass was so good he remembers it 30 years later

things i headcanon: 

1) bertrand and lieve'tel stayed together for while after the pandemonium quest 

2) lieve'tel felt bertrand call out to her as he died 

3) it was all very tragic in the raven queen’s domain

Ah yes, the critical role brainrot

Bertrand Bell x Lieve'tel Toluse

Once again, Liam is three for three with a lifespan angst romance, but from the other side.

We all keep assuming Vax came to get Bertrand and (since Vax and Lieve'tel look a lot alike) that's why Bertrand's last words were Lieve'tel's name, but here's a different scenario.

What if Lieve'tel died first? Bertrand told Fearne he had been single a while, and he looked almost sad when he said it.

So what if Lieve'tel had an untimely death a few years back so when Bertrand died, it really was Lieve'tel he was seeing coming to take him to the other side?

And if I put Lieve'bell in my top 5 CR ships of all time. What would you say then.

Bittersweet goodbyes

I cried, so much at this part. Not going to lie.

It is my utter belief that Bertrand and Lieve’tel are not married. 

Oh they are happily together. Lieve’tel loves Bertrand and does fuss over him. She made sure that he’d get him a good walking stick for when he gets older. She worries every time that he tries to prove himself to young adventurers. 

Also they had kids as a kinda accident? Bertrand hadn’t expected to be a dad and honestly, Lieve didn’t expect to be a mother but they were happy to have their kids together. 

(I’m sticking with the twins idea)

They love their children very much and when they both hit about their 20s, Bertrand decides to Adventure again, after Lieve’tel is fussing over his packing for the trip. 

They didn’t know each other long and it’s been decades since she last saw him but Pandemonium has this way of crystallizing relationships so that they last forever. She remembers his laugh and his smile. His stories and his tales. His bravado and his flair. She remembers the beautiful man who loved her for a time. When one lives so long, one can love so many but she remembers him as something special even now. For all his tall tales, he fought with her in a place no man should ever hope to see. He survived the unthinkable and the unexplainable and she remembers the rush of relief and adrenaline that colored their escape from that place and brought them together. And she remembers the tenderness of the man. The moments when he let the facade fall and bared himself to her and only her. So she mourns him as a friend and as a lover and as the hero he was.