Silver’s mistake with billy wasn’t just having him beaten, it was his assumption that it would have the same effect on him as it it did on Dobbs. This was possibly the only time that silver completely overestimated his power, and it backfired horribly.

With dobbs, silver knew that a combination of fear and the need for silver to like him would keep him firmly on his side. And it worked like a charm. So he thought the same would work with billy, to the point that he (quite honestly) tells billy they are still friends, while billy is literally lying bleeding on the floor. But this does not work at all. Billy has never been charmed by silver in the same way as most of the other men - he has operated on either a roughly equal (even critical) level, or has actively tried to take control and mould silver into ‘Long John Silver’. Because of this, he does not feel the need to beg silver’s forgiveness, earn his approval, or accept his explanation. He wants revenge, not forgiveness.

I think silver also assumes that billy will forgive this treatment in the same way he has overlooked so many of flint’s misdeeds. But billy was only able to move past flint’s behaviour because he could see the bigger picture. By this point, his views on the war do not align with silver or flint. They are on completely different pages - again, silver is unable to manipulate billy’s thinking the same way he can with everyone else. Therefore while billy might be able to forgive violence for the sake of a common cause, this is something they no longer share.

But silver does not seem to understand the extent of any of this. Maybe he’s too preoccupied with, y'know, a war, to focus too heavily on billy, or maybe he’s just so used to the influence he wields that he’s forgotten how immune billy is to it. Either way, this is the point where silver’s uncanny ability to tap into people’s minds fails him, and instead of resolving a situation, only exacerbates it.

Billy Bones headcanon time?

-  Not a cat person. Now, Billy doesn’t exactly hate cats, he’s just too busy to sit down, and not move for an hour because the damn feline insists on sleeping in his lap. Randall being Randall, obviously doesn’t take this very well, which is something he had to find out the hard way. The first time he tried to move Betsy off of his lap, Randall let out the loudest, angriest screech he had ever heard (which resulted in him jumping up in shock, bumping his head against the ceiling, and everyone laughing at him) and then proceeded to come after Billy with one of his soup spoons. It took Randall two weeks to stop spitting in his bowl.

- Like every person, Billy has made a few mistakes in his life. One of those mistakes was saying the words “I don’t believe in mermaids” in front of the wrong people. He spent the rest of the evening listening to rather questionable stories of mermaids doing the most absurd things imaginable (one man claimed that a mermaid temporarily turned him into a goldfish once. Billy didn’t have the heart to tell him goldfish didn’t live in the sea.) He wasn’t sure if those men were just incredibly drunk, or if they genuinely believed in mermaids, but he promised himself to never even mention the word “mermaid” again. Nor would he ever admit to anyone how he’d sometimes stare out into the ocean, searching the waters for a sign of them.

- Has a little brother, but never tells anyone about him. Every now and then, he writes a letter to the kid, telling stories about fearsome, but loyal pirates, and the odd things that happen in Nassau. He never sends any of the letters, too afraid of what his brother, or even the rest of his family would think, but it helps him feel a bit better whenever he’s homesick.

- Doesn’t get drunk a lot, but when he does, he turns into an idiot. He, for some reason, always ends up talking to the goats and chickens that are on board, begging them for forgiveness because “you… you’re my brothers too… and I’m going to eat you.” He gets incredibly reckless when he’s drunk as well, resulting in the crew daring him to do the most stupid, ridiculous things they can think of, and him happily going along with it. This one time, they dared him to poke the Captain’s nose, and well… “Who’s Billy?”

A Billy Bones Playlist

x - Kill Our Way To Heaven / Michl

x - Grave Digger / Matt Maeson

x - Bottom Of The Deep Blue Sea / MISSIO

x - Believer / Imagine Dragons

x - Mutiny / Think Up Anger

x - Paint It, Black / Hidden Citizens

x -The Angry River / The Hat

x - Everywhere Ghosts Hide / Erin McCarley

x - Anthem For The Broken / MISSIO

x - Way Down We Go / Kaleo (stripped)