Sybil is something in the archives now. But here, have some past-midnight, incoherent O’Brien things:
1. For all her adherence to the rules, her regard and, as far as Sarah sees it, worship for them, Sarah knows Elsie Hughes is capable of a certain slyness of her own. She knows this because Sarah O’Brien has noted the way the housekeeper has positioned that small chest over the grating (and the indicators she uses to know when someone has moved it). She knows this because she knows the way Elsie Hughes can walk without making a sound, despite the keys at her hip, the way she lingers in doorways. Sarah O’Brien knows this because she taught Elsie Hughes all of this.
2. Whether she should or not, she respects Carson. She likes to mask it as pity, claim she thinks of him as nothing more than an old fool, but that would be a lie. Perhaps it’s because he’s her superior for the entire year, while Mrs. Hughes has no say over her during the season. Or maybe she’s just a different person in London. (All truths be told, she does prefer Elsie Hughes to the London housekeeper.) The truth of the matter is the smallest bit of her envies the butler. The butler who never refuses nor questions nor condemns the unfairness of class and servitude, the butler who just lets himself love the family and be loved by it in return, the butler who is accepted by every single Crawley, who is a member of that family in some strange, perplexing way. She doesn’t care for the Earl’s affections, nor for any of the daughter’s, but she wishes desperately and dearly Cora truly does see her in much the same light they all see old Carson. Before the soap incident, she hated herself for wanting this. After it, she merely hates herself because she knows she’ll never be like Carson; a part of her will always hate.
3. Her brother, her favourite brother, was the one who gave her her first cigarette. He was the one who looked at her from across the table, grinned with no teeth and taught her what a secret was. (He used to whisper gossip and stories into her ear - and that’s when she learned what power was, at least for those of her class.) Her brother was the one who drew her up into his lap and told her, very seriously, that you could never trust anyone, that life was safer when you kept your distance (for all she tried and pretended, she could never do that, not fully). Her brother was her favourite and she was his. Since leaving him and their too-small house (she traded it for a dinner table equally crowded), Sarah O’Brien has had a handful of favourites. But she has never been someone else’s favourite, not in the same way. (For all her hopes and dreams about the Countess, a part of her knows they will never be equal and so it will never be the same.) She loathes herself for thinking about something as silly and juvenile as favourites as often as she does; she loathes herself for, at the end of the day, being unable to keep her distance.
1. She was friends with Anna best, but friends with William first. They were lost in the same ways. Farm children who had bettered themselves enough to be seconds, but not quite good enough to be firsts. They had tripped over the same step, confused the same instructions. When their first ball had rolled around, they had both stood awkwardly on the side until Gwen had asked him to dance. They had stepped on each others feet and made a clumsy mess of themselves. Thomas had waltzed by them with the smuggest of grins, but Gwen hadn’t cared one bit and urged William to feel the same.
2. uhh more gwen/william friendship feelings. Gwen brought her typewriter down one evening because William was fascinated and horrified by it and really just wanted another look. He had pressed the keys nervously and declared that it was the oddest thing. Gwen assured him it was just like playing piano. Somehow, this led to Gwen giving William the odd typing lesson and him giving her the odd piano lesson. William can type out phrases incredibly slowly and Gwen only knows the shortest tune off by heart, but, all in all, it was a good bargain.
3. On her way to Ireland, Sybil stops by and sees Gwen for the first time in years. She gives Gwen a few old dresses she really can’t take with her. (Gwen says they’re too nice for her, but Sybil is insistent. “Sell them, at least, if you won’t wear them.”) “Isn’t this wonderful?” Sybil gushes, unable to restrain her grin (and Gwen remembers why she always thought Sybil was the prettiest of the Crawley sisters, all energy and warmth), “you found your escape and I found mine.”
Gwen later attends Sybil’s wedding.
I feel like these headcanons are taking too much space, so I’ll just compile the other ones I get into bigger posts. In this one, my upper(middle)class headcanons for Violet, Matthew, and Matthew’s father.
1. When Cora told her daughters stories of America, which she did frequently when they were young (in part because they were entertaining and in part because she was homesick), Sybil was the only one who really listened. Mary quickly grew tired of it all, Edith had a million questions, but Sybil always sat with a wide-eyed fascination. The idea that there were other places, different and strange but equally wonderful, always stuck with her. It didn’t terrorize her or make her feel insignificant, rather it made her feel a part of something grander - in a different way - than all her frocks and curtsies.
2. After learning that Mr. Carson had been on stage in the past, Sybil spent the next month conducting offhand investigation on the other servants. All she really discovered was Ms. O’Brien has several different ways to glare at you and all of them are equally menacing.
3. On their way to Ireland, the Bransons encounter car problems. Before he can even look into the issue, Sybil tells him exactly what she thinks the source of their trouble is - and she’s right. Years of hanging around that garage have given her a working knowledge of the automobile, more than she usually lets on.
1. Cora is not quite a romantic. However naive she seems, she knows love be bought and is bought constantly. She bought Robert’s affection through her money and then won his heart through embracing his country’s mannerims, for altering herself time and time again. (And Robert bought her love on lies that only became truths a year later.) Love is an ugly thing she craves very dearly, something she can’t quite give out properly, something that cannot be owned though it can be sold.
2. Cora struggles through her initial years in England. She laughs too loud at jokes, is ridiculed for her pronounciations, is given the odd snide comments for her mannerisms (which were correct in America, but couldn’t be more wrong across the ocean). O’Brien (who might not be a lady’s maid at this point, I’m not sure) is the one who first truly begins to iron out the behaviour Violet has deemed ‘destructive’ and Rosamund ‘an embarrassment’. And O’Brien is the only one who does it kindly - or kinder than anyone else, anyway. She doesn’t make it into a riddle, a puzzle that Cora must decipher on her own. She doesn’t raise these rules up to some glorified standard either. Rather, she’s snide about the restrictions (and maybe caught somewhere between envy for a life that’s greatest concern is these frivolous rules and contempt for the people who live by them) and speaks plainly and bluntly. Cora appreciates this more than she can ever articulate.
3. Wait do I get to talk about my Cora/Hughes crackship. I have a lot of feels about this ship, most of them are incoherent rambles in Jas’ inbox, but, you know. It occurs in the first year Elsie Hughes is made housekeeper, elapses over the span of garden party planning, and is the coming together of two matriarchs who are not quite sure how to be/if they want to be mothers. It’s a relationship where they think they want everything the other has, but in the end they’re happier with what they are. It just really beautiful (read: painful) in my mind. Which is where it should say because it’s a bizarre, bizarre crackship.
But you should really read this Cora headcanon instead because it’s better than any of this.
1. Carson isn’t really joking when he says he’d rather be put to death than run a tea shop. He doesn’t like to think about himself in an introspective way, and he’s become more of a caricature of a butler than an actual human, because he has such a strong sense of loathing for the Cheerful Charlie he was. If he thinks too much about himself, he just feels like a fraud. He compensates for this by throwing himself into his work even further, but, deep down, he feels as though being a butler is just another stage act.
2. He doesn’t like to acknowledge many aspects of his relationship with Mrs. Hughes. Whatever he does feel for her is not to be inspected either. Feelings only distract him from his duties. Charles is afraid of intimacy and feelings almost as much as (further) change. He doesn’t want a single detail altered. His love for Mary, however, he chooses to rationalize as just another facet of his duty to the Crawleys (of course it’s more than that, he’d just never admit to it). Because the family is put on such a pedestal, he ends up taking people like Mrs. Hughes for granted. He just doesn’t have an excuse or rationale for potentially falling in love with the housekeeper - and that would be most improper, wouldn’t it? (But emotions don’t always have solid reasoning behind them, and that’s part of why they make him so uneasy. It’s too much of a grey area; he prefers black and white, right and wrong.) Basically, in his unwillingness to inspect what he is, he also doesn’t realize what he might have.
3. When Thomas first manifested himself within Downton, Carson alternated between resenting and sympathizing with him. Not for his nasty behaviour, but because they both had, er, “sketchier” origins. He recognized that Thomas was like him, that he needed this opportunity (which was, in part, why Thomas was hired), but also loathed him for being a reminder that, once upon a time, he wasn’t exactly honourable.
What would I do without you?
(Talk to myself, probably.)
1. She was born to an abusive father who drank too much and a mother who never said enough. The elder of two girls, Elsie was responsible for caring for her sister when her mother could not. It set up the rest of her life - always the matriarch, but never the mother. (It also fostered her respect and need for rules. Following the rules kept her safe.)
2. She didn’t drink before she knew Charles Carson. Her father’s fondness for alcohol made her wary of it. Over the decades, she’s certainly become more comfortable with it, but drinking is a very social thing for her. She hardly touches the stuff when Carson is away in London. (The exceptions being that time Branson definitely coaxed her into going to a pub, and maybe the rare occasion where she felt absolutely miserable.)
3. Sarah O’Brien is the first friend she makes at Downton. She’s also the first friend Elsie loses. (My actual O’Brien/Hughes headcanon is way too long and tedious to be posted her, but I assure you it’s a super tragic relationship.)
Ugh and then there’s all the Cora/Hughes feels however bizarre and the AU where William is a Carson/Hughes love child and I just have a lot of housekeeper feelings.
1. Mary spends much of her childhood emulating Violet. She sees very clearly who is truly respected in her household. Not her mother with her strange American mannerisms and the voice that doesn’t quite fit in; not her aunt, who, defiant as she is, clearly craves her grandmother’s approval; even her father and grandfather all bow to Violet Crawley under pressure. She wants, more than anything, to be seen as an equal, to be respected and mature. So, even as Violet looks down at her, ever quietly disappointed that she was not born a boy, she copies her grandmother’s mannerisms and habits, longing for approval.
2. Mary decides she won’t marry Patrick on his birthday, sometime in their childhood. Her father makes twice the fuss over Patrick he ever made on any of her birthdays. The party is grander, the gifts more spectacular, the attention longer. She wonders if her father is trying to buy Patrick’s love and decides, at the very least, she will not be reduced to buying her father’s love through him. She’ll earn it herself - somehow.
3. Carson’s timeline is so messed up, but let’s pretend this works if it doesn’t. Mary vanishes right before she’s set to appear at her debutante ball. Of course, all the servants are sent up and down every hallway looking for her, but it’s Carson, who always paid her more attention than anyone else anyway, who finds her. Feeling all sorts of emotions - fear she won’t be liked, won’t perform well enough, that she won’t like them, excitement, and other nerves - Mary confides that she is not quite up for a party at that moment. And Carson sits down on the chair opposite hers, assures her that, then, everyone will just have to wait until she is. (“Oh no, Carson, I’m not worth the trouble.” “Of course you are, M’lady.”)
1. Isobel desperately wanted to be just like her father, ever since she was a girl. He wouldn’t take her to work with him, though, so Isobel sought to prove herself. The next time she cut herself (which she did far more often than her mother liked), she attempted to stitch it up herself. Never mind the fact that it didn’t need stitches to begin with and she only had her embroidery thread and needles. Her father spent the evening fixing her hand, but he let her come to the hospital whenever she wanted after that. (Isobel gave up embroidery for the longest time following that event.)
2. After Reginald died, Isobel immediately threw herself back into her work. She did so relentlessly and only stopped once she became too dizzy to see the patients and after she had thrown up what little she was eating. When Matthew found her, looking very much like the corpse his father was, he had taken her hand and asked her (quietly, because Matthew was like his father in that way; they both scarcely yelled) if she was trying to kill herself. (And when she had taken too long to answer, she realized that maybe she was.) It was at that point she also realized she had to be there for Matthew - always. (Well, as soon as she felt better. Until then, Matthew insisted on taking care of her - which he couldn’t quite do because of his young age - and Isobel had squeezed his hand, “We might make a doctor out of you yet.”)
3. Isobel Crawley has never really had friends, much less the kind that talk about flower arrangements and hats all day; she’s not suited for the way upper class ladies are expected the play with each other - the ulterior motives, snide comments, and lies. She’s only ever been close to men. Not because she particularly wanted to be, but because that’s just how it all worked out. First she had her father, and then she had Reginald, and then she Matthew. Isobel’s entire life has been her family. (And, sometimes, when she compares how Violet looks at her son with how the Dowager looks at her, or after she’s had a particularly nasty argument with one of them, she worries she’s lost that too.)
