PLAYER INFO. ✖ Handle: Court ✖ Contact:demonology / that damn showy @ AIM ✖ Are You Over 16: Y ✖ Other Characters Played in Consignment: N/A
CHARACTER INFO. ✖ Character Name: Unwin, Eggsy (Gary) ✖ Canon: Kingsman: The Secret Service; end of the movie ✖ Character Appearance:1, 2 ✖ Character Age: 22 ✖ Pick A Number: 213, 589
✖ Canon Setting: For the most part, the world of Kingsman is the same as our own modern day Earth, circa 2014. It includes celebrities (Iggy Azalea), political figures (the prime minister and princess of Sweden; Margaret Thatcher), and so forth.
History also appears to be more or less in line with real life history, except for one thing: the creation of the Kingsman organization. As a result of WWI, a lot of rich men lost their heirs and were therefore left with large amounts of money and not much to do with it. Together, they all decided to invest in the creation of a secret spy organization that would work to keep the peace worldwide, as discreetly as possible. Thus, the birth of Kingsman: The Secret Service.
That secret part is no joke, either. Eggsy had no idea the organization existed until the plot of the movie, and even the main villain, who's a billionaire with tons of resources and his fingers in every pie, had no clue what Kingsman was until spurred to dig into it over the course of the film.
So what is Kingsman? Well, it's more or less what it says on the tin. The whole concept is very much inspired by James Bond (and Bond is something that canonically exists in the Kingsman world), which means that the spies are outfitted with all kinds of cool gadgets and out-of-this-world attire. Bulletproof suits, glasses that are able to record whatever is viewed through them as well as display holograms and information, shoes with a knife embedded into the sole, etc. There are also specialized weapons: an umbrella made of bulletproof material that can shoot non-lethal and lethal rounds, a hand grenade made to look like a lighter, and so on.
Another slight difference from the real world is that the world of Kingsman is a little more zany. For instance, there's a character who walks around with blades for legs, sometimes in public, and no one seems to notice. Also, there's an announcement that a SIM card will be released that allows all cell phones and internet access to be absolutely free and people line up for them, not considering how suspicious that is. Part of this is for the tongue-in-cheek feel of the movie, but it's worth noting that there's a higher threshold for accepting the weird in this universe.
The villain's evil plot involves transmitting a signal (through the aforementioned SIM cards) that lowers a person's inhibitions and heightens their aggression levels -- in other words, compels them to attack whoever's around them and kill them if possible. There are also chips embedded into people's necks that can make their heads explode. So there is some technology that obviously couldn't exist in the real world (or we hope not, at least) and therefore sets this fictional world apart from ours.
✖ Character Personality: Much of Eggsy's personality is tied up with his past and his upbringing, but the plot of the movie also revolves around him overcoming those aspects of his background that held him back. The other important thing to keep in mind about Eggsy is that even though the movie is about his transformation from a street kid into a polished gentleman spy, in the end there's not much about him as a person that changes.
Eggsy at the beginning of the movie is lost, plain and simple. Losing his father at a young age, Eggsy was instead raised by his mother and eventually his stepfather, the latter who turned out to be abusive to both Eggsy and his mom. It's being raised in this kind of environment that altered Eggsy from a promising child into a young man who'd been beaten down and left with nowhere to turn. He'd been excelling in gymnastics as a child, to the point that he might have gone to the Olympics, only to then be forced to quit because Dean (his stepdad) didn't approve. Later on in life he decided to join the marines and was doing amazingly in his training, but then his mother flipped out, worried that she would lose him the same way she lost his father, and so he felt forced to quit.
With no other recourse and no easy way to get a job, Eggsy turned to petty crime, drugs, and all of those other nasty things that a young person could get involved in that would throw them off track. In spite of this, there are core aspects of Eggsy's personality that exist even at the start of the movie. The most important of these is that when it comes right down to it, Eggsy is kindhearted.
He didn't have an easy childhood and that could have made him cruel, but it's established multiple times over the course of the film that Eggsy's driven by his need to keep people safe, particularly his mother. When only five years old, the man who is to become his mentor figure told Eggsy to watch over his mother, and it appears he took that to heart. Never once does Eggsy blame his mother for being stuck in an abusive relationship. He puts all of the blame where it should be -- on the abuser -- and also holds himself accountable when he has to leave home for a long period of time and returns to find his mother's face bruised. He has a younger sister, a half-sister, but he doesn't hold it against her that she's the daughter of his abusive stepdad. No, he absolutely adores her. Also, when he's only just met Harry (his mentor figure) and they're threatened by some guys that Eggsy pissed off at a bar, Eggsy warns Harry to leave before it gets physical, not wanting Harry to get caught up in his problems even though that means he'll be facing the thugs all on his own.
This kindness also extends to animals. Early on in the movie, Eggsy is in a car chase with the police and he spots a fox in the road. He swerves to avoid hitting it and crashes the car as a result, ruining every possibility that he had to get away with his crimes. (The car had been stolen, and he drove it backward through traffic.) Later on in the movie, one of the tests he has to undergo to become a Kingsman agent requires shooting his pet dog. Even though it means failing out as a Kingsman, Eggsy can't bring himself to pull the trigger.
Another key aspect of Eggsy's personality is his loyalty. He will never turn his back on someone he considers a friend, or sell them out. During the car crash mentioned earlier, he orders his friends to get out of the car and run away before he confronts the police because he doesn't want them to get involved, and when he's questioned later at the police station, he refuses to give the officers their names. When Harry reveals to him that he's a Kingsman agent, he's about to erase Eggsy's memories when Eggsy insists that he won't tell anyone about him, and that proves to be true even when his stepdad tries to beat the information out of him. This is also tested later on during the Kingsman trials when there's a mock situation (though Eggsy thinks it's very real at the time) where he's tied to train tracks and told that he'll only be released if he gives up secrets about Kingsman. He doesn't give up the intel and therefore passes the test.
So, rough around the edges as Eggsy might be at the start of the movie, Harry sees the potential in him, that those edges can be polished and that he has the makings of a Kingsman agent. And Eggsy does well in every test but the aforementioned shoot-your-dog one. Despite the fact that he sometimes comes across as dumb (not knowing the difference between a pug and a bulldog, for instance), he's actually both sharp and perceptive. For instance, he's the one who realizes that Arthur, the head of Kingsman, is actually in cahoots with the villain, as he notices a scar on his neck that gives him away. Also, during a high stress situation where it looks like all is lost and he is most certainly dead, he uses some information he'd been given earlier and figures out a way to get out of that bind, showing that he can think on his feet.
Speaking of which, Eggsy is very much a thrill seeker. He's all too excited when one of the Kingsman tests involves sky-diving, and he's practically like a kid in a candy store when he's shown the various different Kingsman gadgets he'll have access to. He takes a kind of childish glee in anything that's cool and appears to be more in his element in the middle of a firefight with explosions all around him than trying to keep up a cover. To be fair, this is probably because he doesn't have that much experience with the latter, and it's something he'll be working on.
A big hurdle that Eggsy had to get over was the chip on his shoulder he had in regards to his class status versus the posh people he had to interact with for the sake of Kingsman. This isn't entirely unwarranted, given how some of the other Kingsman candidates treated him, making fun at his expense and essentially belittling him for his low upbringing. However, there are a few people who see past that and treat him like they would anyone else, and those people he takes a shining to over the course of the movie.
First and foremost is Harry, who is Eggsy's mentor figure in the movie and the one who allows him the opportunity to change his life. He's the first person who looks at Eggsy and sees more than some rundown kid with no future. Eggsy therefore gets attached to him in a short amount of time, especially since Harry in some ways also serves as a father figure, the one that Eggsy never had. Harry imparts wisdom on Eggsy about the true meaning of being a gentleman and supports him all the way through the Kingsman trials. Eggsy therefore cares a lot about what Harry thinks of him and is eager to make him proud. When Eggsy fails at the dog test, Harry is furious that Eggsy would throw everything away, especially since the gun had been loaded with blanks. They have a nasty argument and that's the last time that Eggsy sees Harry before he's murdered, so he's carrying that guilt with him. Even so, Eggsy manages to pick himself up and put his grief aside to go on and save the world. That doesn't mean he's forgotten Harry -- if anything, Eggsy is now doing everything he can to fill Harry's shoes and emulate him.
Then there's Roxy, who was in competition for the same Kingsman slot as Eggsy and in fact succeeded where he failed. Despite the fact that they should have been rivals, Roxy was the one person among the group of candidates who didn't mock him, who treated him like any other person, and so they became fast friends as they went through a series of harrowing trials together. Eggsy always cheered her on and even helped her through one of the trials that almost got the best of her (they had to skydive and Roxy's scared of heights), even though that made it all the more likely that he'd lose to her in the end.
Lastly is Merlin, who was the proctor for the Kingsman trials and essentially made Eggsy's life hell for a few months. There was some tension between them at first, particularly with the skydiving test, where the real challenge was that supposedly one of the people falling didn't have a parachute. Eggsy was led to believe that he was that person, and after he'd safely landed with Roxy he confronted Merlin, demanding to know why he was the expendable one, the gimp. Merlin told him to get that chip off his shoulder and activated his parachute, which had been there all along. Later on, when Eggsy goes to Merlin with the information about Arthur being a traitor, Merlin doesn't hesitate to enlist Eggsy in the coming fight, even though Eggsy had already failed out of the Kingsman trials by then. They turn out to be a good team and Merlin appears to have taken a liking to Eggsy by the end of the film.
With these three people accepting him for who he was despite his upbringing, Eggsy slowly has managed to get that chip off his shoulder. He's at a point where he could rise above any snide comments. Now that he's become a Kingsman (he ends up taking Harry's spot, allowed in even though he failed the trials because he kind of saved the world), he's much more comfortable in his own skin, and a lot less bitter and angry about his lot in life. He's come into his own, and while that doesn't mean that he'll start talking with a posh accent and wearing suits even when he's not on the job, he knows who he is and what he's meant to do.
As a final note: Eggsy may have a kind heart and want to keep the people he loves safe, but that doesn't mean he can't be ruthless and do what's necessary for the job. He killed plenty of people for the express purpose of saving the world. The way he sees it, killing is sometimes a necessary evil, and he won't hesitate to pull the trigger if it's for what he considers the right reason.
ADDITION FOR REVISIONS: While Eggsy's abuse at the hands of Dean is something that's shown explicitly on screen, it isn't something that the film itself dwells on too much, and that's largely because in many ways the story is portrayed through Eggsy's eyes. This may sound contradictory, as there's no denying that Eggsy is a victim of abuse, but he downplays that as much as possible. When he speaks about getting rid of Dean and running an abuser out of his life, it's always in the context of getting him away from his mother. Of course, that would also result in getting Dean away from Eggsy, but he never focuses on his own abuse and he never speaks of it to anyone in explicit terms. There's a line where he says to Harry that with a stepfather like his, you pick up new habits pretty quick, but that's the closest he ever gets to acknowledging it verbally. Harry only finds out about it because he puts a tracker/bug on Eggsy and overhears an encounter with him and Dean.
Still, there's no denying that Dean's abuse has taken a toll on Eggsy, and that it played a large part in Eggsy's behavior and trajectory as he moved into adult life. Eggsy always had someone in his life who was putting him down and mocking him for his interests rather than encouraging him. Dean's voice drowned out anything his mother would have had to say about his skills in gymnastics, for instance. He didn't have any kind of father figure to support him and to push him to try his hardest, and so the easier thing to do was to run away from anything that was too hard and fall into being a hooligan. Since Eggsy also didn't really have anyone policing him, it makes sense that he was able to get away with so much criminal activity in his rougher stages.
Then Harry came along. Harry, who fell into that father role instantly. Even if he was acting from the guilt of being responsible for Eggsy's father's death, he was also able to look at Eggsy and see someone who had great potential. Granted, he still called Eggsy out on his behavior, remarking that it was "always someone else's fault" when Eggsy tried to make excuses for the decision to drop out of the military and give up his passions. Granted, at this point Harry wasn't aware of the abuse, but he still made the point that Eggsy needed to take responsibility for his own choices instead of pushing the blame onto other people.
Even though Eggsy does cite his mother as the reason that he left the military, he never seems to hold that against her or to blame her for it. It all goes back to Dean, and it's no mistake that the very end of the movie, the very last scene, is Eggsy going back to the pub where Harry had wiped the floor with some thugs and doing the same thing to Dean and his lackeys. This is the true sign to the viewer that Eggsy has become a new person and transitioned into a new part of his life. He was able to overcome his abuser, protect his family, and he emulated Harry all at the same time.
Because as much as Harry is a father figure who pushes Eggsy along and gives him the opportunities that he needs to grow, he's also a role model, someone who Eggsy does everything in his power to emulate. This is magnified by the fact that Eggsy's final conversation with Harry involved Harry being extremely disappointed in him. They had a full blown argument and exchanged some nasty words and the last thing that Harry said to Eggsy was something about how he'd clean up his mess once he came back from some Kingsman business -- business that ultimately got him killed.
So Eggsy received no real closure with Harry, which means that he's constantly working to try to hold himself up to Harry's standard without any real way of knowing for sure if he's doing him proud. Merlin does tell Eggsy after he saves the world that Harry was right and that he would be proud of him, but it's not the same as getting that confirmation from Harry himself, as Eggsy's true mentor figure. Harry tried to impress on Eggsy that he needed to take responsibility for his own actions and also to better himself, so he would have those things in mind as he carried on his life within CDC.
While Eggsy has abandoned some parts of his old life, it's more about cutting out the toxic parts (Dean) and fixing his own behavior (no more petty crime simply for the sake of acting out). He has no intention of abandoning his mother or his sister, and a lot of what he does as a Kingsman is in many ways for them as much as it's for himself. Eggsy will never forget his roots no matter how far he climbs in the world, and part of what makes him such a good Kingsman agent is that he wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
As far as how he relates to others, Eggsy has being built up a lot by the acceptance of Harry and the Kingsman organization as a whole, which means that he's past the point of putting up with people who treat him like garbage. He proved himself better than all of those Kingsman tryouts save for Roxy, and Roxy is someone that he respects and that he truly believes deserved the spot more than him. At this point, Eggsy is surrounded like people who see him for who he really is -- not some hooligan kid, but a young man with the skills and smarts to get the job done. Within the CDC, he probably won't have much patience for anyone who doesn't take him seriously, but he also has the confidence and the skills to know how to present himself now, and to not approach every person like they're going to call him out as some impostor. He's not nearly as defensive anymore because he's no longer restrained under the thumb of his abuser -- he's overcome that and that's filled him with the strength he needs to move forward.
✖ Character Powers & Skills: As far as powers go, Eggsy doesn't have any. He's a completely normal human, just a well-trained one.
His skillsets are as follows:
- Eggsy took gymnastics lessons from a young age and was really good, to the point that he was in the running to go to the Olympics. While he stopped practicing at some point (an exact age isn't given), some of his skills with it are still present. He's practiced in parkour and is agile/flexible in a fight as a result of these skills (for example, jumping up and off of walls to get around enemies, jumping from balconies).
- Eggsy also went through the majority of marines training before he dropped out, and had been doing well in that area too. So he has some military training, which was added onto through his Kingsman training -- the bottom line being that he knows how to fire guns and use other weapons. There's a comment made about his weapon scores being excellent and he's shown within the movie taking down a lot of different enemies with handguns and machine guns.
- Since Eggsy does have a history of petty crime, he's got some of the skills that would be associated with it, most notably sleight of hand. This makes him able to pickpocket, and also switch his drink with another drink without the person he's speaking to noticing. It can be assumed that he can do things like pick locks too, but that's not concretely stated in the film.
- He's trained to be a spy, and that means having the skills to go undercover and act is if he's someone else, changing his accent and demeanor as is required. Eggsy is still pretty new to this kind of work, though.
- Other notable things Eggsy has done: held his breath for an impressive amount of time (1.5 mins or so), gone skydiving under very stressful circumstances and survived, thrown a blade-leg like a javelin through a window a story above him.
✖ Third Person POV: Finally chasing Dean out of his mum's life might be the sweetest moment in Eggsy's life thus far. And given how much better pretty much everything has gotten for him over the past months, that's saying a lot. This might even top saving the world.
The fact that he can return with his mum and Daisy to their new home and sleep in his new bed with JB curled up against his stomach and wake up in the morning knowing that he's doing something worthwhile with his life, that his family will never struggle to pay the bills again, it's more than he could have ever asked for.
If only Harry could see me now, is that thought that keeps running through his head. Then again, if Harry had made it through, everything would have just been too perfect, and the world can't have that, can it? Eggsy doesn't care if he'd have to give up his position as Galahad as a result of Harry being alive; he'd do it in a heartbeat.
As much as the world might be a stranger place than he'd ever realized, though, people coming back from the dead is pushing it. He has to move on, and he'll have the rigorous pace of his new job to help with that. In fact, when he wakes up the following morning he has a message on his work phone, saying that he's urgently required at HQ.
Eggsy shows up in his suit and with his glasses on, as would be expected of any Kingsman agent, and he's led into the office that used to belong to Arthur. There's a sense of uncertainty as he steps into the office as the memory of how he'd made Arthur choke on his own poison comes back in sharp detail. There'll be a new Arthur hired up soon, they've got a few spots in the organization to replace, but for now there's a vital mission that apparently only Eggsy can help with.
(It seems odd. There are plenty of more experienced Knights for them to choose from. Then again, he did kind of save the world and that's not forgotten so easily.)
Which is the first thing that the man seated in the office brings up, once Eggsy's had a seat in a chair so plush it feels as if he might sink into it.
"You've saved the world once already, Eggsy," the man says, his tone as cool and composed as Eggsy would expect from anyone involved in this organization. "Are you ready to do it again?"
It figures that the world isn't fixed. Eggsy may have stopped the mass genocide, but that doesn't mean that Earth is suddenly perfect. There's a lot of work to be done, with so many heads of state having lost their heads -- and all of the damage that'd been done for the short time that Valentine's signal had been active. Eggsy frowns and leans forward in his seat, sensing the importance of the situation. "Of course I am. I didn't become a Kingsman for the gadgets." Well, fine, they may have played a part in his decision, but...
"Your actions will keep your family and everyone else on this planet safe. Are you ready?"
Eggsy smiles and straightens in his chair, finally remembering his posture. "When do we start?"
CHARACTER ITEMS. ✖ Pick a Team:Red: Despite how fancy the job might sound at first, being a Kingsman is essentially being an assassin. Each agent is expected to be able to track and terminate a mark, and Eggsy has already proved within the movie that he's able to get his hands dirty. Infiltration and elimination of threats is his job, and as far as picking out internal issues, Eggsy did this within his own canon by learning that the head of the Kingsman organization was actually a traitor (and then killing him). High-risk, infiltration, and deep cover missions are all vital parts of being a Kingsman field agent. Also, the whole concept of always being on the job would be good for him, as he does better when he's kept focused.
Orange: Eggsy is first and foremost a field agent, so reconnaissance would serve him well. He's been trained in how to be discreet and given that he's part of a spy organization, oftentimes the point is to make it in and out of an area without sounding any alarms or triggering a firefight, so the infiltration aspects of this team would suit him. Another part of being a Kingsman is learning everything there is to know about your mark, and so information gathering should come naturally to him. Unconventional warfare is also a term that fits him, given the unorthodox way in which he fights and the gadget-like weapons that he makes use of. ✖ Reason for Joining the CDC: Despite Eggsy's occupation, he does in fact have a soft side, a desire to keep people safe that drives a lot of what he does. The way Kingsman works is that they never support the idea of taking a life unless it's to save another, and that's something that Eggsy himself strongly believes in. So he won't be given all of the details of the mission at first. His recruitment comes to him as another mission within his own organization, something that will yet again be about saving the world -- and that's all true, he just has no clue what he's getting into until he's already there. He won't approve at all of this destroying planets business, but he'll feel that his hands are tied because if he doesn't cooperate, his family and friends and everyone else on Earth will be dead because of him. There's no way he would allow that to happen, and so he'll cooperate, though it'll be begrudging. In the TDM he's already been told by other characters what the consequences will be if he doesn't comply to the CDC's rules. He may search for ways to get around some of their commands, but when push meets shove, he'll fall into line because of his planet being held hostage. Expect a lot of guilt and hand-wringing. ✖ Mission Freebie: The necklace/pendant given to him by Harry Hart when he was a boy, as pictured here. ✖ Personal Item or Weapon: His Kingsman-issue umbrella, which is made of a bulletproof material and also can shoot both lethal and non-lethal rounds.
✖ Character Inventory:
- Kingsman issue glasses. Normally these would record everything that Eggsy viewed to a Kingsman server, along with output information about the environment around him. I assume these functions would be disabled by CDC. - Kingsman issue suit. Bespoke, made from bulletproof material. If this needs to replace either the personal effect or freebie to be viable, let me know! - Kingsman issue shoes. There's a knife in the sole of the shoe that is coated with a potent neurotoxin. (Confiscated.) - A hand grenade designed to look like a lighter. (Confiscated.) - A handgun. (Confiscated.) - A pen armed with poison. (Confiscated.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
consignment.demonology / that damn showy @ AIM
