Tear Jerker / The Northman

• Aurvandil, who is already injured to near-death in his last raid, being set upon by his brother and his cronies, (all of them mounted and armoured) like the dishonourable cravens they are. First shooting him with three arrows, then harrying him like a dying beast and spearing him multiple times to render him completely helpless.
  "Come for your carcass, you mongrels!"
• The aftermath of the onslaught on the Kievan Rus village. With the young women and surviving men being chained as chattel, while the elderly and children are mocked, jeered at, man-handled and eventually burnt to death for convenience. All while Amleth washes the gore off himself and watches the atrocities numbly as a matter of course. Life was cheap back then.
• Overlapping with high-octane nightmare fuel is the entirety of Gudrun's confession to her firstborn.
  Gudrún: I never mourned him.
  Amleth: You were his queen.
  Gudrún: (sighing exasperatedly) Your father, endured me because I bore him a son.
  Amleth: No.
  Gudrún: His affections were only for silver and rutting his whores. I know not if he had heart enough to love you.
  Amleth: S-Silence!
  Gudrún: He was a coward feigning to be a king. He was nothing. He was just another - proud, lust-stained slaver.
  Amleth: Hold your tongue! You spit in the face of your dead husband.
  Gudrún: Yet his brother... (gasps) His fine brother... A bastard has no shame of himself nor his trade. Your uncle loved me, though he knew well my past. Amleth... Even now, you believe the fairy tale I told you is true? "A noble bride hailing from the land of Brittany"? I never began as his bride. (reveals her slave brand scar) How easily we all become princesses again when the beasts take us for their wives. Yes. You were forced upon your mother. Gunnar was received freely with love.
  Amleth: No...
  Gudrún: And know you this, it was I who begged on my knees for Fjölnir to kill King Aurvandil. I pressed my lips upon his strong, sweet hand. I kissed it and I begged. And so this day would never come, Fjölnir ordered your death, along with your own mother's blessing.
  Amleth: (trembling, desolate) But I saw it... I saw Fjölnir carrying you away... Screaming.
  Gudrún: Screaming? I was laughing!
• "I have never felt close to another person. Not since I was a child..."
• "I have kinsmen in Orkney. We could find... We could find safe passage there. Together."
  • "Yet I cannot truly believe that you have extinguished your fire for vengeance."
    • "Hate is all I have ever known. But I wish I could be free of it."
• The beautiful but tragic reversal of Ophelia's fate in Hamlet for Olga. The couple have overcome the odds and escaped from the edge of the known world, but when Amleth senses his progeny taking root in her womb he realises that Fjölnir and even Gunnar will seek vengeance for Thorir just as he did so for Aurvandill and that his vow to avenge his father's murder, which was fractured by his mother's revelations will now become the ultimate Declaration of Protection.
  Amleth Aurvandilson: My family's blood. My own blood is inside you. You are the well our dynasty will spring from.
  Olga of the Birch Forest: I did not wish you to know until I could trust that our child would be safe.
  Amleth: While Fjölnir lives, our children will never be safe. If he but knew of this, he would hunt you with all the fire of the gods. It cannot wait.
  Olga: Stop this. There is now a living thread that binds us.
  Amleth: I was... a fool. I wished to flee with you from my fate... My vision shows me you will have two. And my sword will save them.
  Olga: (beginning to weep) But you must come with us. You must!
  Amleth: It was prophesied that I must choose, between kindness for my kin, and hate for my enemies.
  Olga: And see what hope we have before us.
  Amleth: I choose both. Take her to Orkney. In return for this ring, my kinsmen will give you ninefold its worth.
  Olga: No! NO! AMLETH! (sobbing)
  Amleth: You will be mother to a king! We cannot escape our fate.
  • What makes the scene even more sob-worthy is all the undertones of obligation, prophecy and guilt that Amleth is suffering from. He can't break from the one thing that has sustained him and connected him to his father's memory for all these years. He must die in battle. He has lived by the sword and knows he will die by it. Not in a warm keep in bed with Olga at a ripe old age. He probably doesn't even think he will be a good father; this is all he can do for both his wife and children.
• "In the heart... Thank you."
• "Slain by iron, we shall all meet again in the stronghold of the All-Father."
• Sandwiched between the unfathomable awesomeness of the duel at Hekla, is when Amleth has his tendons severed by his uncle and a reprising crescendo of Stike, Brother begins to play. What's truly gut-wrenching though, is that while Amleth is hyperventilating in desperation he's also quite clearly whispering "oh no... oh no..." at failing his father's ghost and his line.
• "The thread that binds us can never break. We are safe. Now make your passage."

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