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ship_manifestoTitle: “Over the Hills and Far Away”
Author: Elspethdixon
Spoilers: Small ones for most of the Sharpe books, especially Sharpe’s Rifles, Sharpe’s Eagle, and Sharpe’s Company, and large ones for Sharpe’s Sword.
Email: Elowry@hollins.edu
Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper are the heroes of a number of historical books by Bernard Cornwell (and a BBC miniseries based on them). The series revolve around the Sharpe’s adventures as a British officer during the Napoleonic wars, and consists of nearly twenty books, the best of which are (in chronological order):
Sharpe’s Rifles
Sharpe’s Eagle
Sharpe’s Gold
Sharpe’s Company
Sharpe’s Sword
Sharpe’s Enemy
Sharpe’s Honour
Sharpe’s Regiment
Sharpe’s Siege
Sharpe’s Revenge
Sharpe’s Waterloo
Sharpe’s Devil
Lo these many years ago, when I was a mere lass of eleven, I pulled Sharpe's Rifles, by Bernard Cornwell, off a shelf in the St. Mary's County library and fell in love (and lust) with Sharpe and Harper. (And Teresa--mustn't forget her). Then, a couple years later, I turned on the history channel and caught about two thirds of the BBC version of Sharpe's Company, and instantly fell in ravening lust with Sean Bean (whom I'd never seen before), partly because of the voice and the smile, but largely because he was playing Richard Sharpe. And then, with the fine specimens of manhood that are Sean Bean and Daragh O'Malley permanently imprinted in my brain as Sharpe and Harper, I picked up Sharpe’s Sword and began reading, and when I came to the wonderfully slashy scene where Harper finds Sharpe near death in a field hospital, a little light went on in my brain. “Sharpe and Harper aren’t just friends,” I realised. “They love each other. A lot. I wonder if… Oooh!”
In the years since then, I've read almost every book in the series and listened to most of them on booktape as well, and this fall I finally got to see more of the BBC series (namely Sharpe’s Rifles through Sharpe’s Enemy), which ought to be subtitled: “Sean Bean sulks, bleeds, and is slashy." (And a loverly job he does of it, too). And I have come to the conclusion that if there is one thing that stands out about both version of the Sharpe series (other than the massive amounts of military history one can pick up from reading the books, or how good Sean Bean looks in that green uniform), it’s the relationship between Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper.
Up From the Ranks
Richard Sharpe, the series’ title character, is a career soldier with a desperately lower-class background, a head full of superstitions and repressed romanticism, a back full of old flogging scars, and a chip on his shoulder the size of the entire Iberian Peninsula. In the books, he’s described as a tall, lean man with dark hair and a scar on one cheek, handsome in a slightly dangerous-looking way. Most fans, however, tend to picture him as he’s portrayed in the films, as a tall, lean blond with a scar on one cheek, handsome in a rugged, shaggy-haired, oddly-endearing sort of way, with a smile that can light up a room (too bad he prefers sulking).
Sharpe is the illegitimate son of a whore (and, in a kind of reverse class-snobism, takes a perverse sort of pride in this fact), who grew up as a thief in St. Giles rookery, a London slum. At the age of sixteen, he was faced with a choice between joining the British Army and going to jail, and wisely chose soldiering over imprisonment. He turned out to be bloody good at it, especially at the parts that involve killing things.
Sharpe spent the beginning of his army career as an enlisted man—and something of a troublemaker, at that—and likely would have ended his days as a sergeant had he not had the luck (whether good or bad is up for debate) to save the life of Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Lord Wellington, at the Battle of Assaye. For this “act of conspicuous bravery,” he received an engraved field telescope and a promotion to ensign—making the almost unheard-of jump from enlisted man to officer.
When the series opens (Sharpe’s Tiger and the other books dealing with his time in India are prequels written later), Lieutenant Sharpe is the much-despised Quartermaster of the second battalion of the 95th Rifles, an elite regiment of sharpshooters. He is an outsider among the officers, thanks to his lower-class background, and the men resent him for being “nothing but a jumped-up sergeant.” And then, during the British army’s retreat to Portugal in 1808, the majority of the 95th—including all of the other officers—are wiped out by a French attack, leaving Sharpe to try and lead the survivors through the Pyrenees to Corunna by himself. Along the way, he and his rifles help the Spanish recapture the town of Santiagio from the French, and he manages to win them all over with sheer force of personality (not to mention impress them with his almost-berserker-like fighting ability), and the handful of riflemen become his devoted followers, the family he never had.
By a combination of stubbornness, bloodthirsty fighting skills, and sheer luck, Sharpe continues his rise through the ranks, making Captain after he leads a forlorn hope (so-called because they’re the first men through a breach and almost certain to die) into the breach at Badajoz, and eventually ending up the commander of the South Essex Light Company, a redcoat battalion that soon becomes almost as devoted to him as his remaining riflemen. He gets married twice, first to a Spanish guerrilla fighter named Teresa, and then, after she is killed, to an upper-class English woman named Jane Gibbons (frequently referred to by fans as “that bitch Jane”), makes a constant stream of enemies with his abrasive attitude and complete lack of anything resembling tact, sleeps with a lot of random women, and kills dozens and dozens of Frenchmen, all of it with Patrick Harper firmly by his side. What he never does is become accepted by his fellow officers.
Sharpe’s Sergeant
Sergeant Patrick Augustine Harper, Sharpe’s nearest and dearest friend, was born in Donegal, Ireland some seven or so years after Sharpe. Movie!Harper, as played by Daragh O’Malley, is a tall, stocky man with a head full of black curls and a wide grin, who looks decidedly intimidating with a weapon in his hand. Harper is Irish to the core, a staunch Catholic (though most priests would disapprove of his fondness for fighting, drinking, women, plunder, and Sharpe), and, much like Sharpe, a natural leader. He is cheerful and friendly where Sharpe is sullen and temperamental, dark where Sharpe is fair (or vice versa—in the books he is described as “sandy-haired,” not a brunette, but since book!Sharpe is dark-haired they still have the blond/brunette deal going on), and one of the only men around who is even taller than Sharpe is. He also loves to watch birds, an activity he’s turned into a sort of spare-time hobby (probably a much healthier one than Sharpe’s hobby of sleeping with any woman who flirts with him).
Harper, one of a huge and poverty-stricken family, joins the army as a teenager after deciding that even fighting for the British is preferable to starvation. When the 95th Rifles are cut off and left to find their way back to the rest of the army on their own in Sharpe’s Rifles, he is the de facto leader of the enlisted men, and Sharpe makes him a sergeant, a rank he at first refuses and then (after experiencing the joy that is being allowed to order people around) settles into with enthusiasm. He will stay a sergeant, and Sharpe’s second-in-command, for the entire rest of the Napoleonic war.
Like Sharpe, Harper eventually marries, to a Spanish woman named Ramona in the movies and Isabella in the books, but his friendship with Sharpe and military duties always seem to come first in his list of priorities. Fortunately, Ramona/Isabella doesn’t seem to mind.
”Thank you for last night, Sergeant.”
Fine, you say, Sharpe and Harper are friends. But why, in the face of army regulations and canonical relationships with women, do you insist that they’re also lovers?
Well, for one thing, they’re just so bloody devoted to one another. Harper sees it as his job to “look after” Sharpe—to fight by his side, guard his back from enemies, enforce his authority over the light company, and in general see to it that he doesn’t make too much of a fool of himself over a woman or drown in his own sullen moodiness when things aren’t going well. Sharpe is “his officer” (the phrase is used over and over in the books), and woe betide the man who tries to harm him. Sharpe, in return, considers Harper his closest friend, despite the difference in their ranks, and would rather have Harper at his side in battle than any other man on earth. He relies on Harper unthinkingly, automatically, trusting him with his company, his secrets, and his life—and Sharpe is a man who doesn’t trust easily.
Sharpe sleeps with a lot of women, yes, but most of them are merely transitory, company for a few nights until he goes out into another battle—or she finds someone with more money and a higher rank. Teresa and Jane are more long-term, but even they are rarely around, one always off in the hills fighting the Spanish and the other always behind the lines where it’s safe. And Harper, for one, recognises most of these relationships as the brief infatuations they are, and even seems amused by them.
“He'll fall in love with anything in a petticoat. I've seen his type before. Got the sense of a half-witted sheep when it comes to women.' Harper spat. 'It's a good thing he's got me to look after him now.'”--Sharpe’s Rifles
Sharpe has definite attachment and abandonment issues, latching onto those few people he chooses to confer his affections on extremely quickly, and then becoming very protective of them—however, no woman ever manages to prompt quite the same intense loyalty that Patrick Harper does. When he is dying alone in a hospital ward in Sharpe’s Sword (remember, the really slashy book I mentioned in the intro), he asks not for Teresa, his wife, or for any of the other women he has known, but for Harper, wishing repeatedly that he were there, as if somehow Harper’s presence would magically make everything all right.
Harper is always happiest when with Sharpe, and Sharpe almost never relaxes totally unless he is with Harper—even when Harper is not supposed to be there, as in Sharpe’s Siege, when he pretty much goes AWOL (with the tacit permission of every other officer in the South Essex, not to mention both his and Sharpe’s wives) in order to stow away on a British naval vessel and accompany Sharpe on a secret mission. Sharpe, upon discovering him there, is angry for all of fifteen minutes before he’s grinning at him and calling him “Pat” again.
The two of them also have a strong physical connection to one another, and each is constantly aware of the other from the moment they first meet. Even in the early part of Sharpe’s Rifles, when their relationship is more one of antagonism and resentment than anything else, they seem unable to keep their eyes off of one another, constantly watching at each other when the think themselves unobserved (at one point in the film Rifles, Harper is clearly staring with great intensity at Sharpe's ass. Truly. I’ve watched the scene twice, and there’s nothing else with his direct line of sight). When their rivalry over which of them is really in charge of the riflemen comes to a head, they settle it in classic slashfic manner—byhaving rough, violent sex beating the bloody hell out of each other to settle which one of them gets to be on top is in command (it’s never really settled, as the fight is interrupted, but Sharpe gains Harper’s respect anyway). Oddly enough, after they’ve rolled around on the ground together, they get along much better.
The two of them are completely comfortable with one another’s bodies. They wrestle with each other (I think my favourite instance of this in canon is the point in the film Sharpe’s Enemy wherein Sharpe’s new commanding officer finds him playing football/rugby with the riflemen—lying on the ground with Patrick Harper sitting on his back, pushing his face into the dirt and saying something along the lines of “Give me the ball, you god-damned English bastard,” while both of the grin like fools), strip naked and go swimming in rivers together (Sharpe’s Eagle, the book version), tend each others wounds, fight as a team on the battlefield, and always know where the other one is during a fight. Harper even uses this almost psychic link to track a missing and badly wounded Sharpe down in Sharpe’s Sword, in what is probably the slashiest scene in canon. Insisting that Sharpe can’t possibly be dead, he searches through the entire field hospital, ending up in the cellar where the hopeless cases have been taken to die, and then, when told that there is no one named Sharpe in the ward (Sharpe, delirious, is assumed to be named Patrick because he keeps saying Harper’s name over and over), simply walks across the room and straight over to Sharpe, despite the fact that he’s completely hidden from view by a blanket. He bends over Sharpe, strokes the scar on his face with one finger, and says “You silly bugger, what are you doing here?”—and then proceeds to carry him out of there, tends his wound, and keep him alive through sheer force of will.
Everyone else around them recognises that the two of them come as a unit. Major Hogan, one of Sharpe’s commanding officers, decides at one point that Sharpe can’t have been killed (as is rumoured) during a battle because Harper is still alive and walking around, and everyone knows that you can’t have Patrick Harper without Richard Sharpe. When Obadiah Hakeswill, Sharpe’s bitter enemy ever since his days as a private in India (and there’s another topic for a slash essay, what with the way Hakeswill is completely obsessed with Sharpe, tries to kill or steal his lovers, and calls him by a creepy little pet name), tries to hurt Sharpe in Shape’s Company by attacking those closest to him, he focuses not only on Sharpe’s wife Teresa (whom he tries to rape), but on Harper, whom he has flogged on false charges.
All Right, They’re in Love, But Why Should I Care?
Because they’re just so much fun to read about. Granted, part of the fun is the sheer swashbuckling thrill of watching the South Essex’s light company triumph over yet another massive number of Frenchmen, always led by someone appropriately evil and sadistic, but a lot of it is just the pleasure of watching Sharpe and Harper have conversations like this one:
"Tents!" Sharpe spat the word out. "God-damned, bloody tents!"
"For sleeping in, sir." Sergeant Patrick Harper kept a rigidly straight face. The watching men of the South Essex grinned.
"Bloody tents."
"Clean tents, sir. Nice and white, sir. We could make flower gardens round them in case the lads get homesick."
Sharpe kicked one of the enormous canvas bundles. "Who needs god-damned tents?"
"Soldiers, sir, in case they get cold and wet at night." Harper's thick Ulster accent was rich with amusement. "I expect they'll give is beds next, sir, with clean sheets and little girls to tuck us up at night. And chamberpots, sir, with God save the King written on their rims."
Sharpe kicked the heap of tents again. "I'll order the Quartermaster to burn them."
"He can't do that, sir."
"Of course he can!"
"Signed for, sir. Any loss will be deducted from pay, sir."
Sharpe prowled round the great heap of obscene bundles. Of all the ridiculous unnecessary, stupid things, the Horse Guards had sent tents! Soldiers had always slept in the open! Sharpe had woken in the morning with his hair frozen to the ground, had woken with his clothes sopping wet, but he had never wanted a tent! He was an infantryman. An infantryman had to march and march fast, and tents would slow them down. "How are we supposed to carry the bloody things?"
"Mules, sir, tent mules. One to two companies. To be issued tomorrow, sir, and signed for."
"Jesus wept!"
"Probably because he didn't have a tent, sir."
--Sharpe’s Company
And then there’s the bit in Sharpe’s Eagle when they’re bowing to each other and saluting after having captured a French standard, pretending that they’re back in England being congratulated, but I don’t have a copy of that book around to transcribe it right now. Or the bit in Sharpe’s Siege where Harper presents Sharpe with his patently false excuse for sneaking along against orders to follow him—and Sharpe decides to punish him for breaking the rules by extracting his bad tooth with a pair of pliers (and then can’t go through with it). Or the conversation in Sharpe’s Company where Harper demands to be allowed to accompany Sharpe in the forlorn hope—a suicide mission—and Sharpe is forced to agree even though he wants Harper to stay safe, because he also can’t face the idea of going into a fight without him. Or the bit in Sharpe’s Sword where Harper makes Sharpe a new sword to replace his broken one, customising a regulation heavy cavalry sabre by hand in hopes that it will magically cure Sharpe’s pretty-much mortal wounds—and it does.
There’s the scene in the film version of Sharpe’s Eagle where Harper is “helping” a wounded Sharpe shave by holding his face in one hand and applying soap with the other, or the bit in the same movie where he helps Sharpe put his boots one, an activity that seems to require an awful lot of physical contact involving more than just Sharpe’s feet. The moment in Sharpe’s Enemy where Harper comforts Sharpe after Teresa’s death, standing between him and the rest of the soldier like a shield while he cries. The scene in Sharpe’s Rifles where Sharpe nearly panics with worry because he loses track of Harper during a fight… I could go on for pages. Sharpe and Harper don’t have the sort of simmering UST common in many slash pairings (except in the beginning of Sharpe’s Rifles, before they get together), but like many classic “buddy” pairings, they’re brimming with resolved sexual tension, constantly giving off a sort of “married” vibe that is in itself the strongest argument for slashing them: these guys couldn’t possibly be more important to each other even if they were having sex on a regular basis, so why not just make them have sex? After much serious thought, I’ve decided that Harper would probably be on top, despite Sharpe being nominally in charge the rest of the time, because no. 1: height rule, no. 2: he's the one who's always getting shot/stabbed/beat up in classic uke style, no. 3: he's got the requisite angsty childhood, no. 4: everyone knows the series slut always doubles as the uke, and no. 5: I can so see him topping from below.
The two of them alike in so many ways. Both have been flogged (unjustly), and at the instigation of the same man. Both fight with a kind of berserker fury that both horrifies and impresses those who watch them. Both bear weapons that were gifts given to them by the other—Sharpe’s sword and Harper’s massive seven-barrelled gun (as far as I know, they are the only slash couple to give each other weapons as love tokens). Both consider the British Army home, despite a healthy intolerance for the petty regulations and incompetent commanders they are all too often forced to deal with. Both are stubborn as mules. But they also serve as balances for the other. Sharpe, though he can never fit in or be at home in the officers’ mess, understands the politics of army command, something Harper pays little or no attention to, and has the sheer bloody-minded ruthlessness to get the job done no matter what (even if it involves blowing up an entire city). Harper could care less about politics or tactics, as long as he has Frenchmen to fight and the South Essex to serve in, but he is the one who cheers Sharpe up when he’s depressed, stops him from taking his bad mood out on the company when he’s being a bastard about something, and shamelessly encourages him in whatever mayhem he’s dreamed up this time (You want to blow up Almeida, sir? Wonderful idea! When do we start!).
Ah, Sharpe and Harper, you were my first ever slash pairing, and I love you still.
Give me that Rifleman Crack!
The Sharpe series has a very small fandom, and is fairly centralised—most of what’s out there can be found on one of a tiny handful of internet sites.
The main site, your source for any and all things Sharpe-related, is The Sharpetorium, which has pretty much all of the information one could wish for on both the books and the BBC miniseries, including timelines, picture galleries, newspaper clippings (I mean that literally; someone cut them out and scanned them in) and an archive of fanfiction (both het and slash, with several good Sharper stories). They’ve also got more links to sites with information about 19th century history than you can shake a French eagle at.
The Sharpetorium’s adult fic page has a mirror site, The Sharpe Smut Page.
There’s also the Sharpe Appreciation Society, the officially approved Sharpe fan club.
The BBC series is hard to get ahold of (it has been released on DVD, and can be ordered through amazon.com.uk, but it’s bloody expensive), but most of the book series should be available at your local library.
And once you’ve finished those, for shippy Sharper goodness, I suggest reading Kate Fisher’s Over the Hills and Far Away, Laidy Jaida’s Maggots and Maladies, and Derry’s A Proper Officer.
And then you can hit![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sharpeshooters, the Sharper lj community, for more.
Author: Elspethdixon
Spoilers: Small ones for most of the Sharpe books, especially Sharpe’s Rifles, Sharpe’s Eagle, and Sharpe’s Company, and large ones for Sharpe’s Sword.
Email: Elowry@hollins.edu
Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper are the heroes of a number of historical books by Bernard Cornwell (and a BBC miniseries based on them). The series revolve around the Sharpe’s adventures as a British officer during the Napoleonic wars, and consists of nearly twenty books, the best of which are (in chronological order):
Sharpe’s Rifles
Sharpe’s Eagle
Sharpe’s Gold
Sharpe’s Company
Sharpe’s Sword
Sharpe’s Enemy
Sharpe’s Honour
Sharpe’s Regiment
Sharpe’s Siege
Sharpe’s Revenge
Sharpe’s Waterloo
Sharpe’s Devil
Lo these many years ago, when I was a mere lass of eleven, I pulled Sharpe's Rifles, by Bernard Cornwell, off a shelf in the St. Mary's County library and fell in love (and lust) with Sharpe and Harper. (And Teresa--mustn't forget her). Then, a couple years later, I turned on the history channel and caught about two thirds of the BBC version of Sharpe's Company, and instantly fell in ravening lust with Sean Bean (whom I'd never seen before), partly because of the voice and the smile, but largely because he was playing Richard Sharpe. And then, with the fine specimens of manhood that are Sean Bean and Daragh O'Malley permanently imprinted in my brain as Sharpe and Harper, I picked up Sharpe’s Sword and began reading, and when I came to the wonderfully slashy scene where Harper finds Sharpe near death in a field hospital, a little light went on in my brain. “Sharpe and Harper aren’t just friends,” I realised. “They love each other. A lot. I wonder if… Oooh!”
In the years since then, I've read almost every book in the series and listened to most of them on booktape as well, and this fall I finally got to see more of the BBC series (namely Sharpe’s Rifles through Sharpe’s Enemy), which ought to be subtitled: “Sean Bean sulks, bleeds, and is slashy." (And a loverly job he does of it, too). And I have come to the conclusion that if there is one thing that stands out about both version of the Sharpe series (other than the massive amounts of military history one can pick up from reading the books, or how good Sean Bean looks in that green uniform), it’s the relationship between Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper.
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Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper |
Up From the Ranks
Richard Sharpe, the series’ title character, is a career soldier with a desperately lower-class background, a head full of superstitions and repressed romanticism, a back full of old flogging scars, and a chip on his shoulder the size of the entire Iberian Peninsula. In the books, he’s described as a tall, lean man with dark hair and a scar on one cheek, handsome in a slightly dangerous-looking way. Most fans, however, tend to picture him as he’s portrayed in the films, as a tall, lean blond with a scar on one cheek, handsome in a rugged, shaggy-haired, oddly-endearing sort of way, with a smile that can light up a room (too bad he prefers sulking).
Sharpe is the illegitimate son of a whore (and, in a kind of reverse class-snobism, takes a perverse sort of pride in this fact), who grew up as a thief in St. Giles rookery, a London slum. At the age of sixteen, he was faced with a choice between joining the British Army and going to jail, and wisely chose soldiering over imprisonment. He turned out to be bloody good at it, especially at the parts that involve killing things.
Sharpe spent the beginning of his army career as an enlisted man—and something of a troublemaker, at that—and likely would have ended his days as a sergeant had he not had the luck (whether good or bad is up for debate) to save the life of Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Lord Wellington, at the Battle of Assaye. For this “act of conspicuous bravery,” he received an engraved field telescope and a promotion to ensign—making the almost unheard-of jump from enlisted man to officer.
When the series opens (Sharpe’s Tiger and the other books dealing with his time in India are prequels written later), Lieutenant Sharpe is the much-despised Quartermaster of the second battalion of the 95th Rifles, an elite regiment of sharpshooters. He is an outsider among the officers, thanks to his lower-class background, and the men resent him for being “nothing but a jumped-up sergeant.” And then, during the British army’s retreat to Portugal in 1808, the majority of the 95th—including all of the other officers—are wiped out by a French attack, leaving Sharpe to try and lead the survivors through the Pyrenees to Corunna by himself. Along the way, he and his rifles help the Spanish recapture the town of Santiagio from the French, and he manages to win them all over with sheer force of personality (not to mention impress them with his almost-berserker-like fighting ability), and the handful of riflemen become his devoted followers, the family he never had.
By a combination of stubbornness, bloodthirsty fighting skills, and sheer luck, Sharpe continues his rise through the ranks, making Captain after he leads a forlorn hope (so-called because they’re the first men through a breach and almost certain to die) into the breach at Badajoz, and eventually ending up the commander of the South Essex Light Company, a redcoat battalion that soon becomes almost as devoted to him as his remaining riflemen. He gets married twice, first to a Spanish guerrilla fighter named Teresa, and then, after she is killed, to an upper-class English woman named Jane Gibbons (frequently referred to by fans as “that bitch Jane”), makes a constant stream of enemies with his abrasive attitude and complete lack of anything resembling tact, sleeps with a lot of random women, and kills dozens and dozens of Frenchmen, all of it with Patrick Harper firmly by his side. What he never does is become accepted by his fellow officers.
Sharpe’s Sergeant
Sergeant Patrick Augustine Harper, Sharpe’s nearest and dearest friend, was born in Donegal, Ireland some seven or so years after Sharpe. Movie!Harper, as played by Daragh O’Malley, is a tall, stocky man with a head full of black curls and a wide grin, who looks decidedly intimidating with a weapon in his hand. Harper is Irish to the core, a staunch Catholic (though most priests would disapprove of his fondness for fighting, drinking, women, plunder, and Sharpe), and, much like Sharpe, a natural leader. He is cheerful and friendly where Sharpe is sullen and temperamental, dark where Sharpe is fair (or vice versa—in the books he is described as “sandy-haired,” not a brunette, but since book!Sharpe is dark-haired they still have the blond/brunette deal going on), and one of the only men around who is even taller than Sharpe is. He also loves to watch birds, an activity he’s turned into a sort of spare-time hobby (probably a much healthier one than Sharpe’s hobby of sleeping with any woman who flirts with him).
Harper, one of a huge and poverty-stricken family, joins the army as a teenager after deciding that even fighting for the British is preferable to starvation. When the 95th Rifles are cut off and left to find their way back to the rest of the army on their own in Sharpe’s Rifles, he is the de facto leader of the enlisted men, and Sharpe makes him a sergeant, a rank he at first refuses and then (after experiencing the joy that is being allowed to order people around) settles into with enthusiasm. He will stay a sergeant, and Sharpe’s second-in-command, for the entire rest of the Napoleonic war.
Like Sharpe, Harper eventually marries, to a Spanish woman named Ramona in the movies and Isabella in the books, but his friendship with Sharpe and military duties always seem to come first in his list of priorities. Fortunately, Ramona/Isabella doesn’t seem to mind.
”Thank you for last night, Sergeant.”
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Men in Uniform Awe, aren't they cute together? |
Fine, you say, Sharpe and Harper are friends. But why, in the face of army regulations and canonical relationships with women, do you insist that they’re also lovers?
Well, for one thing, they’re just so bloody devoted to one another. Harper sees it as his job to “look after” Sharpe—to fight by his side, guard his back from enemies, enforce his authority over the light company, and in general see to it that he doesn’t make too much of a fool of himself over a woman or drown in his own sullen moodiness when things aren’t going well. Sharpe is “his officer” (the phrase is used over and over in the books), and woe betide the man who tries to harm him. Sharpe, in return, considers Harper his closest friend, despite the difference in their ranks, and would rather have Harper at his side in battle than any other man on earth. He relies on Harper unthinkingly, automatically, trusting him with his company, his secrets, and his life—and Sharpe is a man who doesn’t trust easily.
Sharpe sleeps with a lot of women, yes, but most of them are merely transitory, company for a few nights until he goes out into another battle—or she finds someone with more money and a higher rank. Teresa and Jane are more long-term, but even they are rarely around, one always off in the hills fighting the Spanish and the other always behind the lines where it’s safe. And Harper, for one, recognises most of these relationships as the brief infatuations they are, and even seems amused by them.
“He'll fall in love with anything in a petticoat. I've seen his type before. Got the sense of a half-witted sheep when it comes to women.' Harper spat. 'It's a good thing he's got me to look after him now.'”--Sharpe’s Rifles
Sharpe has definite attachment and abandonment issues, latching onto those few people he chooses to confer his affections on extremely quickly, and then becoming very protective of them—however, no woman ever manages to prompt quite the same intense loyalty that Patrick Harper does. When he is dying alone in a hospital ward in Sharpe’s Sword (remember, the really slashy book I mentioned in the intro), he asks not for Teresa, his wife, or for any of the other women he has known, but for Harper, wishing repeatedly that he were there, as if somehow Harper’s presence would magically make everything all right.
Harper is always happiest when with Sharpe, and Sharpe almost never relaxes totally unless he is with Harper—even when Harper is not supposed to be there, as in Sharpe’s Siege, when he pretty much goes AWOL (with the tacit permission of every other officer in the South Essex, not to mention both his and Sharpe’s wives) in order to stow away on a British naval vessel and accompany Sharpe on a secret mission. Sharpe, upon discovering him there, is angry for all of fifteen minutes before he’s grinning at him and calling him “Pat” again.
The two of them also have a strong physical connection to one another, and each is constantly aware of the other from the moment they first meet. Even in the early part of Sharpe’s Rifles, when their relationship is more one of antagonism and resentment than anything else, they seem unable to keep their eyes off of one another, constantly watching at each other when the think themselves unobserved (at one point in the film Rifles, Harper is clearly staring with great intensity at Sharpe's ass. Truly. I’ve watched the scene twice, and there’s nothing else with his direct line of sight). When their rivalry over which of them is really in charge of the riflemen comes to a head, they settle it in classic slashfic manner—by
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Hold Still, Pat Sharpe just can't keep his hands off Harper. |
The two of them are completely comfortable with one another’s bodies. They wrestle with each other (I think my favourite instance of this in canon is the point in the film Sharpe’s Enemy wherein Sharpe’s new commanding officer finds him playing football/rugby with the riflemen—lying on the ground with Patrick Harper sitting on his back, pushing his face into the dirt and saying something along the lines of “Give me the ball, you god-damned English bastard,” while both of the grin like fools), strip naked and go swimming in rivers together (Sharpe’s Eagle, the book version), tend each others wounds, fight as a team on the battlefield, and always know where the other one is during a fight. Harper even uses this almost psychic link to track a missing and badly wounded Sharpe down in Sharpe’s Sword, in what is probably the slashiest scene in canon. Insisting that Sharpe can’t possibly be dead, he searches through the entire field hospital, ending up in the cellar where the hopeless cases have been taken to die, and then, when told that there is no one named Sharpe in the ward (Sharpe, delirious, is assumed to be named Patrick because he keeps saying Harper’s name over and over), simply walks across the room and straight over to Sharpe, despite the fact that he’s completely hidden from view by a blanket. He bends over Sharpe, strokes the scar on his face with one finger, and says “You silly bugger, what are you doing here?”—and then proceeds to carry him out of there, tends his wound, and keep him alive through sheer force of will.
Everyone else around them recognises that the two of them come as a unit. Major Hogan, one of Sharpe’s commanding officers, decides at one point that Sharpe can’t have been killed (as is rumoured) during a battle because Harper is still alive and walking around, and everyone knows that you can’t have Patrick Harper without Richard Sharpe. When Obadiah Hakeswill, Sharpe’s bitter enemy ever since his days as a private in India (and there’s another topic for a slash essay, what with the way Hakeswill is completely obsessed with Sharpe, tries to kill or steal his lovers, and calls him by a creepy little pet name), tries to hurt Sharpe in Shape’s Company by attacking those closest to him, he focuses not only on Sharpe’s wife Teresa (whom he tries to rape), but on Harper, whom he has flogged on false charges.
All Right, They’re in Love, But Why Should I Care?
Because they’re just so much fun to read about. Granted, part of the fun is the sheer swashbuckling thrill of watching the South Essex’s light company triumph over yet another massive number of Frenchmen, always led by someone appropriately evil and sadistic, but a lot of it is just the pleasure of watching Sharpe and Harper have conversations like this one:
"Tents!" Sharpe spat the word out. "God-damned, bloody tents!"
"For sleeping in, sir." Sergeant Patrick Harper kept a rigidly straight face. The watching men of the South Essex grinned.
"Bloody tents."
"Clean tents, sir. Nice and white, sir. We could make flower gardens round them in case the lads get homesick."
Sharpe kicked one of the enormous canvas bundles. "Who needs god-damned tents?"
"Soldiers, sir, in case they get cold and wet at night." Harper's thick Ulster accent was rich with amusement. "I expect they'll give is beds next, sir, with clean sheets and little girls to tuck us up at night. And chamberpots, sir, with God save the King written on their rims."
Sharpe kicked the heap of tents again. "I'll order the Quartermaster to burn them."
"He can't do that, sir."
"Of course he can!"
"Signed for, sir. Any loss will be deducted from pay, sir."
Sharpe prowled round the great heap of obscene bundles. Of all the ridiculous unnecessary, stupid things, the Horse Guards had sent tents! Soldiers had always slept in the open! Sharpe had woken in the morning with his hair frozen to the ground, had woken with his clothes sopping wet, but he had never wanted a tent! He was an infantryman. An infantryman had to march and march fast, and tents would slow them down. "How are we supposed to carry the bloody things?"
"Mules, sir, tent mules. One to two companies. To be issued tomorrow, sir, and signed for."
"Jesus wept!"
"Probably because he didn't have a tent, sir."
--Sharpe’s Company
And then there’s the bit in Sharpe’s Eagle when they’re bowing to each other and saluting after having captured a French standard, pretending that they’re back in England being congratulated, but I don’t have a copy of that book around to transcribe it right now. Or the bit in Sharpe’s Siege where Harper presents Sharpe with his patently false excuse for sneaking along against orders to follow him—and Sharpe decides to punish him for breaking the rules by extracting his bad tooth with a pair of pliers (and then can’t go through with it). Or the conversation in Sharpe’s Company where Harper demands to be allowed to accompany Sharpe in the forlorn hope—a suicide mission—and Sharpe is forced to agree even though he wants Harper to stay safe, because he also can’t face the idea of going into a fight without him. Or the bit in Sharpe’s Sword where Harper makes Sharpe a new sword to replace his broken one, customising a regulation heavy cavalry sabre by hand in hopes that it will magically cure Sharpe’s pretty-much mortal wounds—and it does.
There’s the scene in the film version of Sharpe’s Eagle where Harper is “helping” a wounded Sharpe shave by holding his face in one hand and applying soap with the other, or the bit in the same movie where he helps Sharpe put his boots one, an activity that seems to require an awful lot of physical contact involving more than just Sharpe’s feet. The moment in Sharpe’s Enemy where Harper comforts Sharpe after Teresa’s death, standing between him and the rest of the soldier like a shield while he cries. The scene in Sharpe’s Rifles where Sharpe nearly panics with worry because he loses track of Harper during a fight… I could go on for pages. Sharpe and Harper don’t have the sort of simmering UST common in many slash pairings (except in the beginning of Sharpe’s Rifles, before they get together), but like many classic “buddy” pairings, they’re brimming with resolved sexual tension, constantly giving off a sort of “married” vibe that is in itself the strongest argument for slashing them: these guys couldn’t possibly be more important to each other even if they were having sex on a regular basis, so why not just make them have sex? After much serious thought, I’ve decided that Harper would probably be on top, despite Sharpe being nominally in charge the rest of the time, because no. 1: height rule, no. 2: he's the one who's always getting shot/stabbed/beat up in classic uke style, no. 3: he's got the requisite angsty childhood, no. 4: everyone knows the series slut always doubles as the uke, and no. 5: I can so see him topping from below.
The two of them alike in so many ways. Both have been flogged (unjustly), and at the instigation of the same man. Both fight with a kind of berserker fury that both horrifies and impresses those who watch them. Both bear weapons that were gifts given to them by the other—Sharpe’s sword and Harper’s massive seven-barrelled gun (as far as I know, they are the only slash couple to give each other weapons as love tokens). Both consider the British Army home, despite a healthy intolerance for the petty regulations and incompetent commanders they are all too often forced to deal with. Both are stubborn as mules. But they also serve as balances for the other. Sharpe, though he can never fit in or be at home in the officers’ mess, understands the politics of army command, something Harper pays little or no attention to, and has the sheer bloody-minded ruthlessness to get the job done no matter what (even if it involves blowing up an entire city). Harper could care less about politics or tactics, as long as he has Frenchmen to fight and the South Essex to serve in, but he is the one who cheers Sharpe up when he’s depressed, stops him from taking his bad mood out on the company when he’s being a bastard about something, and shamelessly encourages him in whatever mayhem he’s dreamed up this time (You want to blow up Almeida, sir? Wonderful idea! When do we start!).
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Awe, look, he's smiling. Just being with Harper is enough to make Sharpe happy. |
Ah, Sharpe and Harper, you were my first ever slash pairing, and I love you still.
Give me that Rifleman Crack!
The Sharpe series has a very small fandom, and is fairly centralised—most of what’s out there can be found on one of a tiny handful of internet sites.
The main site, your source for any and all things Sharpe-related, is The Sharpetorium, which has pretty much all of the information one could wish for on both the books and the BBC miniseries, including timelines, picture galleries, newspaper clippings (I mean that literally; someone cut them out and scanned them in) and an archive of fanfiction (both het and slash, with several good Sharper stories). They’ve also got more links to sites with information about 19th century history than you can shake a French eagle at.
The Sharpetorium’s adult fic page has a mirror site, The Sharpe Smut Page.
There’s also the Sharpe Appreciation Society, the officially approved Sharpe fan club.
The BBC series is hard to get ahold of (it has been released on DVD, and can be ordered through amazon.com.uk, but it’s bloody expensive), but most of the book series should be available at your local library.
And once you’ve finished those, for shippy Sharper goodness, I suggest reading Kate Fisher’s Over the Hills and Far Away, Laidy Jaida’s Maggots and Maladies, and Derry’s A Proper Officer.
And then you can hit
sharpeshooters, the Sharper lj community, for more.
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