The Fool

"[...] As he was leaving the gardens he happened to look back and saw another youngster sitting on top of the wall, looking down on him. «Pale as an egg, and as fragile-looking.» The boy sat cross-legged, his elbows on his knees and his cheeks in his long-fingered hands as he stared at my father. My father had felt with great certainty that the boy longed to leap down and follow them. He suspected that if he had so much as smiled or tossed his head, the boy would have joined him. But he did not. He was still the New Boy in the gaggle of town children that he ran with, and barely sure of his acceptance there. To bring another stranger with him, especially one so pale and odd, dressed in the motley of a jester, would risk all he had gained. He feared then that he either would have been excluded along with the pale fellow or, worse, would have had to choose between defending him from a beating and joining in with fists and feet to prove he was one with his new friends. And so he had turned his back and hurried on with his dog and left the pale boy perched there."



The Fool is perhaps one of my most favourite characters from the Farseer series. And the quoted part of the story really inspired me and made me want to attempt to draw him. At one point I was almost ready to accept that perhaps I had dreamed reading that part, because I couldn't find it again in the book. But luckily it worked out in the end.

A close-up of the Fool will be added later on.