Personality: The majority of Hakon’s personality is based on societal views on war, which is just as well, because he is essentially the personification of war. The strangeness is that he is not so inhuman as he may seem.
Basically, at first glance, Håkon is what you see: the rich son of a billionaire. Eccentric and brilliant, he is in the habit of driving people up the wall, undermining authority at every possible given step, and basically playing up a cultured yet utterly insufferable personality. He is loud and boastful, he makes deadpan cracks, he is a total nut about Lego and history and other really nerdy things, and he spends money like water. As a person, he has an incredibly off-beat sense of humour that manifests itself as the most inappropriate of times, he loves to prank others, and he is horribly untactful at times because he prefers bluntly speaking his mind—as is proper, for he is the son of a billionaire, and he’s always been surrounded by people who listened to him. He has expensive hobbies, expensive ways of driving people nuts, and hates sitting still— crazy active enough to run across furniture, jump on tables and generally cause a scene wherever he goes. And people have to get used to this, because, well, he’s rich, and he’s eccentric, and he’s allowed to be eccentric because he’s rich. Funnily enough, just two lifetimes ago, he was a worker at an assembly plant, and a lifetime before that, he worked in the coal mines. What Håkon’s strength is his ability to adapt to the lifetimes that he is reincarnated into. There are several things that help him along the way: the fact that he doesn’t completely regain his memories until he’s around ten to thirteen, which allows him to absorb and be shaped by the environment his present self is growing up in, and his need to blend in with society. This illustrates his first true personality point: Håkon is viciously adaptable, and is an amazing actor. Underneath his insufferability, or not-so-underneath, as he doesn’t bother to hide it, just that different situations bring out different aspects of him—is an insatiable appetite for wealth, and an extremely calculating personality. He is the sort of person who will laugh you to your grave, all hands on deck, because blackmail is sweet.
In truth, the name ‘Håkon Wium Lie’ is a name that he inherited from his present lifetime. Over the course of the years, he’s been called many names—each family names their child something special, after all, and he’s been recorded in the annals of history in many, many different ways. Håkon makes it a policy to be referred to by whatever name his current lifetime has bestowed upon him. In this lifetime, he is ‘Håkon’. Basically, it’s the easiest and simplest way to go about doing things. This illustrates Håkon’s second personality point: that he doesn’t put the same stock into certain societal traditions that regular people would. Names hold no power over him. Similarly, society’s views on gender and norms also don’t hold any real power over him. He calls himself ‘male’, but to be honest, he doesn’t identify as any of the available genders on the spectrum of gender identity. He doesn’t particularly identify with the society that he has grown up in, and the cultures that the people around him ascribe to.
Essentially, then, his character is made up of a synthesis of all the environments that he grew up in, and a distillation of what it means to him.
Håkon, as a character, is a character embroiled in bitter conflict. Håkon is the aspect of War. This is as much as what he calls himself as it is what he is. At the core of his being, he is an individual who is contradictory in subtle ways. For example, he is a highly pragmatic individual who puts stock into logical decision-making, but of the four horsemen he is the most emotional, and he is extremely prone to adrenaline-junkie behaviour. Surprisingly, these traits co-exist within him naturally. He is logical and strategic, but believes that you must your emotions into account when making decisions, or else the decisions that you make will never be the morally acceptable one. As a character, he doesn’t believe that logic will necessarily lead you to the best decision. The way he puts it ‘Why are you making a decision? Because you’re trying to satisfy a need. Why do you want that need satisfied? Because there’s emotional attachment to the need. So in the end, the end result from decision-making will bring about an emotional reaction. So then, why, during the decision-making process, do you not use your emotions? You have the world’s strongest decision-making tool in your chest right this very minute. So why aren’t you using it?’ This gives you a good idea of his character—blunt, pragmatic and logical, but who is someone who places great stock in human emotion, and who believes morality is impossible without emotions. In Håkon’s mind, just because two concepts are opposites in the dictionary does not mean these two aspects cannot coexist.
As an individual who has lived a long, long time, through many lifetimes and many, many different circumstances, Håkon has a very particular view of the world. He no longer sees the world in black and white—no matter where he looks, he sees things in shades of gray. Because he’s experienced so much, he is confidently—almost assuredly so. He is confident in his decisions, he is confident in his approach to the world, and by god, he is stubborn. Because he’s seen so much and experienced so much, he doesn’t believe that he is likely to be in the wrong. In fact, statistics would show that, of all the decisions that he’s made over the course of those two millennia, he has had more practice at making a wider variety of decisions and opinions than most people alive. Therefore, he has the right and confidence to speak his mind, and he has the right to believe that he is right. This is his way of thinking, and in a way, it’s tantamount to arrogance. His in-canon nickname is ego-mountain. This isn’t an exaggeration. Whether it’s his role or not, Håkon is vastly confident in his own abilities, and while he’s always tried to take into account the opinions of other people, he sometimes loses sight of what is important.
Håkon is reactive, not active. As much as he’d rather act than react—if you think about what war is like, it’s almost a truly reactive behaviour towards bigger problems. If war is breaking out, it’s because all other avenues have already been explored and discarded, and the problem couldn’t have been resolved without needing violence and bloodshed. Håkon is highly reactive. While he’s a busybody who likes getting up in people’s business, almost loudly social and annoying attentive to others, he almost never acts unless someone else has already placed the first chesspiece on the board. As a chess grandmaster in canon, he understands the value of waiting until your opponent has shown their hand. This also extends into how he interacts with people on a daily basis. His reactive state of mind allows him to gauge other people’s reactions, and then strike back as needed. Pragmatic, thoughtful, he is dangerous. He can be mean. And he has an incredible sense of jealousy and preservation—both for himself, and for those around him, almost borderline extremely clingy, ruthless and annoying.
håkon wium lie ❧ original character // not reserved
The majority of Hakon’s personality is based on societal views on war, which is just as well, because he is essentially the personification of war. The strangeness is that he is not so inhuman as he may seem.
Basically, at first glance, Håkon is what you see: the rich son of a billionaire. Eccentric and brilliant, he is in the habit of driving people up the wall, undermining authority at every possible given step, and basically playing up a cultured yet utterly insufferable personality. He is loud and boastful, he makes deadpan cracks, he is a total nut about Lego and history and other really nerdy things, and he spends money like water. As a person, he has an incredibly off-beat sense of humour that manifests itself as the most inappropriate of times, he loves to prank others, and he is horribly untactful at times because he prefers bluntly speaking his mind—as is proper, for he is the son of a billionaire, and he’s always been surrounded by people who listened to him. He has expensive hobbies, expensive ways of driving people nuts, and hates sitting still— crazy active enough to run across furniture, jump on tables and generally cause a scene wherever he goes. And people have to get used to this, because, well, he’s rich, and he’s eccentric, and he’s allowed to be eccentric because he’s rich. Funnily enough, just two lifetimes ago, he was a worker at an assembly plant, and a lifetime before that, he worked in the coal mines. What Håkon’s strength is his ability to adapt to the lifetimes that he is reincarnated into. There are several things that help him along the way: the fact that he doesn’t completely regain his memories until he’s around ten to thirteen, which allows him to absorb and be shaped by the environment his present self is growing up in, and his need to blend in with society. This illustrates his first true personality point: Håkon is viciously adaptable, and is an amazing actor. Underneath his insufferability, or not-so-underneath, as he doesn’t bother to hide it, just that different situations bring out different aspects of him—is an insatiable appetite for wealth, and an extremely calculating personality. He is the sort of person who will laugh you to your grave, all hands on deck, because blackmail is sweet.
In truth, the name ‘Håkon Wium Lie’ is a name that he inherited from his present lifetime. Over the course of the years, he’s been called many names—each family names their child something special, after all, and he’s been recorded in the annals of history in many, many different ways. Håkon makes it a policy to be referred to by whatever name his current lifetime has bestowed upon him. In this lifetime, he is ‘Håkon’. Basically, it’s the easiest and simplest way to go about doing things. This illustrates Håkon’s second personality point: that he doesn’t put the same stock into certain societal traditions that regular people would. Names hold no power over him. Similarly, society’s views on gender and norms also don’t hold any real power over him. He calls himself ‘male’, but to be honest, he doesn’t identify as any of the available genders on the spectrum of gender identity. He doesn’t particularly identify with the society that he has grown up in, and the cultures that the people around him ascribe to.
Essentially, then, his character is made up of a synthesis of all the environments that he grew up in, and a distillation of what it means to him.
Håkon, as a character, is a character embroiled in bitter conflict. Håkon is the aspect of War. This is as much as what he calls himself as it is what he is. At the core of his being, he is an individual who is contradictory in subtle ways. For example, he is a highly pragmatic individual who puts stock into logical decision-making, but of the four horsemen he is the most emotional, and he is extremely prone to adrenaline-junkie behaviour. Surprisingly, these traits co-exist within him naturally. He is logical and strategic, but believes that you must your emotions into account when making decisions, or else the decisions that you make will never be the morally acceptable one. As a character, he doesn’t believe that logic will necessarily lead you to the best decision. The way he puts it ‘Why are you making a decision? Because you’re trying to satisfy a need. Why do you want that need satisfied? Because there’s emotional attachment to the need. So in the end, the end result from decision-making will bring about an emotional reaction. So then, why, during the decision-making process, do you not use your emotions? You have the world’s strongest decision-making tool in your chest right this very minute. So why aren’t you using it?’ This gives you a good idea of his character—blunt, pragmatic and logical, but who is someone who places great stock in human emotion, and who believes morality is impossible without emotions. In Håkon’s mind, just because two concepts are opposites in the dictionary does not mean these two aspects cannot coexist.
As an individual who has lived a long, long time, through many lifetimes and many, many different circumstances, Håkon has a very particular view of the world. He no longer sees the world in black and white—no matter where he looks, he sees things in shades of gray. Because he’s experienced so much, he is confidently—almost assuredly so. He is confident in his decisions, he is confident in his approach to the world, and by god, he is stubborn. Because he’s seen so much and experienced so much, he doesn’t believe that he is likely to be in the wrong. In fact, statistics would show that, of all the decisions that he’s made over the course of those two millennia, he has had more practice at making a wider variety of decisions and opinions than most people alive. Therefore, he has the right and confidence to speak his mind, and he has the right to believe that he is right. This is his way of thinking, and in a way, it’s tantamount to arrogance. His in-canon nickname is ego-mountain. This isn’t an exaggeration. Whether it’s his role or not, Håkon is vastly confident in his own abilities, and while he’s always tried to take into account the opinions of other people, he sometimes loses sight of what is important.
Håkon is reactive, not active. As much as he’d rather act than react—if you think about what war is like, it’s almost a truly reactive behaviour towards bigger problems. If war is breaking out, it’s because all other avenues have already been explored and discarded, and the problem couldn’t have been resolved without needing violence and bloodshed. Håkon is highly reactive. While he’s a busybody who likes getting up in people’s business, almost loudly social and annoying attentive to others, he almost never acts unless someone else has already placed the first chesspiece on the board. As a chess grandmaster in canon, he understands the value of waiting until your opponent has shown their hand. This also extends into how he interacts with people on a daily basis. His reactive state of mind allows him to gauge other people’s reactions, and then strike back as needed. Pragmatic, thoughtful, he is dangerous. He can be mean. And he has an incredible sense of jealousy and preservation—both for himself, and for those around him, almost borderline extremely clingy, ruthless and annoying.