ettersberg | (no subject)

Canon: Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London
Canon Point: after The Hanging Tree

Age: No specific birthday is given for Nightingale, but he’s born roughly around 1900, making him about 115 years old. He looks to be in his early 40s, though.
Appearance: He's described like this. I use Nathan Page as a PB.

History: wikia.
Personality:

Nightingale is, first and foremost, a reserved and very controlled man. He appears very much in control and certain of who he is and what he is doing. To some extent, that image is accurate, but it doesn’t cover nearly the entirety of who Nightingale is. Nightingale has a strongly developed sense of duty, he’s loyal and he’s tired, but still (and again) moving forward.

DUTY & LOYALTY
Nightingale’s sense of duty is strongly developed. After the war, when almost all British wizards had been either killed, injured too grievously to carry on or had broken their staves because of the horrors they’d witnessed (breaking a staff essentially means renouncing wizardhood), Nightingale carried on. In a short piece published by the author on his website from Nightingale’s perspective, Nightingale himself indicates that the reason he carries on is his sense of duty, and a stubborn streak he’s inherited from his mother. After the war, magic had seemed in decline and Nightingale knew that someone would have to carry on until all magic was gone: that someone was him, because there was no one else left. So he did: he carried on, not out of any true sense of believing in what he was doing, but out of a sense of duty. Much like the others, he’d essentially given up — but he couldn’t let himself actually give up, because then who would man the Folly? In a similar vein, he learned woodworking after the war (the nurses at the hospital encouraged him to pick up a hobby) and carved the names of all fallen wizards of the United Kingdom into the wall of the stairwell at their old school, not because he thought it would help him feel better or cope with the loss, but because he felt that “someone ought to do it”. Again, that someone was him.

Another reason why Nightingale couldn’t just up and quit after the war was his loyalty to Molly, a servant of fae origin who refuses to leave the building of the Folly for unknown reasons. If he quit, what would become of the Folly and of Molly? Nothing good, and so he couldn’t quit.

RESIGNED AND OLD
On top of the trauma of the war, Nightingale grew old over the years. In many ways, Nightingale actually gave up after the war, as so many others did, but due to his sense of duty and his loyalty (and that stubborn streak), he continued going through the motions — for decades. By the time magic started coming back into the world, Nightingale was somewhere between 80 and 90 years old and expecting to just die peacefully in his sleep. Instead, he started growing younger again, ageing in reverse (which is why he now looks to be in his early 40s). The reverse ageing did not come with a renewed sense of enthusiasm for his work; he was still going through the motions, carrying on because no one else would or could.

And then, Nightingale met Peter Grant.

FORWARD-MOVING
Peter Grant changed Thomas Nightingale in some fundamental ways and is still in the process of changing him and the characteristic best expressing that change is perhaps that Nightingale, despite having essentially given up, still has the capacity to learn, to move forward, to improve and to care. Peter makes Nightingale a better cop by making him aware of the privilege with which he and his fellow (white!) wizards have lived their lives, he argues for the human rights of non-human beings that Nightingale would have just killed or detained indefinitely, and while Nightingale is in a position of power over Peter and could shut that down in a heartbeat, he doesn’t. He lets Peter argue and more often than not agrees with him. When Peter, who is mixed-race and visibly so, argues that calling ethically challenged uses of magic “black magic” is hurtful and that language matters and they should call it ethically challenged instead, Nightingale listens. He lets Peter drag him back into the world that he’s watched from the sidelines and he learns and improves.

(This may not seem like much of a characteristic, but I feel that given the strong focus of the books on dealing with systemic racism, it’s an important one to note - and it does say something about Nightingale as a man that when pushed, he is willing to change his world view. But note: when pushed. He isn’t the kind of man to go out and do it himself just because it’s the right thing to do.)

HUMOUR
Despite the initial impression of someone reserved, Nightingale shows flashes of very dry humour. Much of it is sarcasm, and some of it is delivered with so bland a face that people can’t tell if he’s joking or not. Buried underneath the trauma of the war, the weight of being the only wizard left, the mystery of ageing backwards and everything, Nightingale carries some capacity for mischief and being cheeky. When his apprentice (Peter) asks to be shown a higher-order spell, for example, Nightingale shows him a spell that essentially makes a small rain cloud follow Peter around, raining on him. Indoors. Because that’s a thing that happens in this canon.

CONTRADICTIONS
The narrator of the books describes him in ways that are quintessentially British upper class: he wears bespoke suits and handmade leather shoes, his accent is posh, he speaks several languages and drives a Jaguar, he’s lived a life of privilege despite the hardships he’s faced. All of these things are true, but at the same time, Nightingale is coded as quite possibly gay and in many ways decidedly working class: he likes watching rugby while having a pint, for example, and he doesn’t have a single academic bone in his body. If things work, they work; he doesn’t need to know why or how they work.

Nightingale was once considered the strongest wizard in Europe and odds are that he still is. He could easily be the protagonist and hero of the books; he’s got it all, after all: strength, the tragic backstory thanks to the war, etc. He isn’t the protagonist, though, and he’d make a terrible one, because he misses one important quality that great heroes (should) have, namely the drive to improve the world. He has the capacity, when pushed, as Peter’s influence on him proves, but time and again, there are indications that without Peter’s pushing, Nightingale would just as soon accept the status quo. He isn’t interested in understanding how things work so long as they work, and given his position of privilege and power, he might not always realise that while they work for him, that isn’t necessarily true for everyone.

To sum up, Nightingale is calm, controlled and reserved, he’s slowly coming out of a period of stagnation, resignation and carrying on only out of a sense of duty, he has a sense of humour underneath all his professionalism and sadness, and he doesn’t have much of a vision for how the world should be. On his own, he’s complacent in the status quo.

Powers and Abilities:

THE LAST WIZARD (MAGIC)
— trained in Newtonian magic
— capable of casting spells of up to twenty orders (the higher, the stronger or more intricate; twenty is by far the strongest we see anyone cast in the novels)
— very adept at combat magic (once destroyed a tiger tank with a well-placed fireball)
— knows how to make a wizard’s staff (pretty much a lost art)
— was regarded as Europe’s strongest wizard in the 60s, probably still is

NOT AN ACADEMIC (NON-MAGICAL)
— speaks English, German, Latin, Greek, Danish, an unidentified old language (possibly something Gaelic) and probably Arabic as well
— can handle guns
— expert driver (of old cars)
— trained soldier
— worked for the Foreign Office, so probably has (very outdated) diplomatic training as well
— looks good in bespoke suits

Inventory: — what appears to be a silver-topped cane, but is in truth his wizard’s staff