Mallory (or 'Hamlet') lore page:

Golden Guard OC (the Owl House)

Story

Early days: He's a fairly late Grimwalker, made about 50 years prior to the events of the show, very very early days as Belos as Emperor, by this time Belos has almost perfected grimwalker creation, every time they become a closer and closer copy. This time he took a risk, using one of the more valuable of Caleb’s bones, his Jaw, to attempt to make a much closer copy. However, something went wrong during the creation process maybe the timing was off, maybe the ingredients where out of balance, whatever it was the outcome was an imperfect Grimwalker. About half his left-side wasnt able to form properly, unable to maintain its shape. Belos made the quick design to use his palisman eating magic(/curse) to pretty much hold him together and stop him from falling apart entirely. He wasnt meant to last very long, Belos doubted he would even survive a week, but he did and as time went on his body became more stable, but an imperfect Grimwalker wouldn't do and Belos was determined to try again as soon as he could. But the Grimwalker creation process was long, gruelling and complicated. So, he assumed the role of Golden Guard in the meantime. He wasn't given a name, not at first, for he wasn't going to be in the role long enough to need one.

In the first few weeks of his life, he is sent on a solo mission outside of the castle to gather supplies, on this first mission, he discovered a small pile of strange items that slipped though from the human realm amongst these items was a very battered copy of Willam Shakespeare's' Hamlet'. He already was beginning to gain a fondness for reading so decided to take the book with him. Once back at the castle, curiosity got the better of him, and by nightfall he had read the entire thing. This quickly became a routine for him, during daytime he would do his duties as the Golden Guard and by night he would read the book, keeping it hidden on his person, tucked into his belt under his armour. He swiftly got very VERY obsessed with the story. He decided to adopt "Hamlet" as a name for himself, although never announcing it properly, it gave him identity.

Hamlet's idea of Events: Hamlet, was created at age 19 thus has no earlier memories, but he is unaware that he is a grimwalker. Belos told him this; that Mallory is his nephew and was in Belos's care after the death of his parents,he was training to become golden gaurd when he decided to start playing around with wild magic, which resulted in him getting into a very nasty accident with it leading to the loss of his arm and giving him his "Curse". This accident also made him lose any prior memeories of his life before this. This story gave him a few major beliefs; firstly that wild magic is very dangourous and secondly that alot of the porblems he faces in life are his doing. He is also desperate to find out more about his life prior but belos refuses to tell him any more then the bare minimum. Winslow: About Six Months go past and his "curse" is getting worse, however things start t change for him when he comes across a small cottage in the woods, home to a wild-witch called Winslow and her Magpie Palisman, Pyewacket

Winslow's a pretty bright young witch, but ran-away from home after being unable to deal with the stress from her family and school, she's now living by her self in an attempt to fix her mental health after some intital running aorund and arguing the two come to a deal, that Mallory isn't going to rat her out for the time being if Winslow helps him find a cure for his curse (Under Mallory's logic of Winlows a wild witch so probarbly know everything about wildmagic (she doesn't). Now Winslow knows nothing about breaking curses but shes pretty resorseful and she isn't really given much of a choice so agrees. From here on out whenever Hamlet has any chance too, he slips away to visit Winslow and work towards breaking his 'curse', but sevral months

The two slowly search thought the maze trying to find the memory, the further back they go the more the maze seems to be in disrepair, untill they find a lockeed door, which Mallory belives leads ot his earlier memories, unable to open the door the two contuinie, untill coming across Hamlets mindself, who apears as a ghostly apprishon, who after seeming unable to properly communicate hands them a key to the locked door.

Slightly in shock he run away from the door and into another memroy (winslow follows), this being the very memory they were looking for, the orgin of the 'curse', which instead was his creation. Witnessing that they learnt he truth and exit the mindscape, both pretty shaken up. Unsure what to do, the two spend some time discussing, coming to the conclusen that what they've seen is bad but they're missing alot of information, so after even more discussion they agree that the best course of action is for Winslow, disguised as a member of the emperors coven, and try and uncover more of the truth. Ahtough not on board with the idea and wanting to also go back to the castle, winslow eventually convinces him that it's really not safe for him to do so, since he's been go so long without an excuse

Belos takes Hamlet to the his grimwalker creation lab, which Hamlet immedetly recongises from viewing his memories in his mindscape, and starts to get a really bad feel adn tried to leave, which he is unable too, rips off his jaw (the bone of Calebs used to make him) leaving him bleeding out of the floor untill he dies, his last moments alive he watches belos use the jaw bone which he just took to start the creation of a new grimwalker. Winslow was found out to not be a real coven member without a couple hours and shes arrested and taken to the conformitiorium, where she stays for the next half a decade. Overall pretty bad ending for both of them.

After Death: Hamlet's story doesn't quite end here, with Mallory's (and Calebs) Bone being use in the creation of a new grimwalker, Ezekiel (who will soon (hopefully) have his own page) Hamlet become almost spiritually tied to this new grimwalker and his own Golden gaurd replacement. Throughout Ezekiels life, Hamlet appears as a ghost to him, orginally he very faint and not really conscious but as time goes on he becomes more awake and more able to communicate. Mallory evenutally really starts to get attacked to ezkeil and being to try ad look out for him as best as he can (which is hard when your a ghost). Hamlet tires very hard to make sure Ezekiel doesn't met the same fate as him. I have alot more to say about this but It'll go on my Ezekiel Page

Loads of Lore

Inferiority issues:

A lot of Hamlets issues regarding his relationships with people, stems from him having some pretty major inferiority issues. When he first meets anyone he straight off sees them as competition, his whole life Belos has been comparing him to other people, claiming they are better than him, he feels like every person he meets is a threat to his importance to Belos, he has to show them up, prove he’s better and that he’s still worth something. It means his first impressions of people is often negative but he can pretty easily move past once he becomes aware that he’s doing it.

This is also why he’s so quickly friends with Winslow because she is by no means a threat to him, she a wild witch (who’s not the greatest at magic) and is one of the only people hamlet has met that he thinks Belos would dislike more than him. So, he doesn’t have this with her. However, this does come a lot into effect when he first meets Ezekiel, Ezekiel is in every way hamlet can see (and considers worthwhile) better then him, and worst of all belos also thinks this and is very vocal about this to Ezekiel (which Hamlet witnesses in ghost from). Hamlet has to get over a pretty big mental barrier to actually want to help Ezekiel and see the bigger picture that he is in the same shitty situation he was in.

Another issue with hamlet is that he never really processed that Belos was bad, he knows a lot but that hasn’t set in for him yet, he didn’t have the time to really process what that meant or how it changes what his whole life meant. He can easily pretend to unknow that, so he has to also properly process that which is really hard for him to do especially alone (And in my Owl House Ghost Lore, being a ghost means you remain how you die, this is mentally as well, although you can change and develop mentally as a ghost it’s so much harder as ghosts are contently in that state when they died emotionally)

Emotional Maturity

Mallory is physically 19 and he’s, most part, mentally 19 but he has only alive for about a year, and one way this really shows with him is in his emotally matuiuty and his abilty to properly emotionally regulate, being able to properly handle ones emotions is a skill and it needs years of practice (typically done while growing up) to acutally have a handle on it, but Mallory didn’t have that time, he hasn’t been around long enough to really get a grasp on how to feel or act about anything. He just doesn’t know how to deal with being emotional, he tends to have very extreme emotions and really struggles with emotional regulation. Often kicking a wall in angry or crying a lot, but he really tired not to in front of over people (mainly Belos, he doesn’t really care if he's emotional infront of Winslow), he has really extreme emotions although he tries to get outlet situation to outlet them this isn’t always the case.

Health

Hamlet has a lot of health issues, here’s a list of a lot of things related to his health problems

• He also gets nosebleeds (#nosebleed warrior, something something toughest battles, strongest soldiers something something ) pretty frequently, he’s good at dealing with them but it can be hard with the mask on.
• He has vertigo and a lot joint problems, theses then to be day to day thing, someday he's totally fine but other it can be a bigger issue from him. On occasion he wears knee braces.
• He’s not very physically strong but his agility makes up for this, so despite everything he’s a pretty skilled fighter, and spends a lot of time practicing. He’s also very tactical, can be really intelligent and a total overthinker often to his own determent.
• His staff is shorter, so its lighter and can more easily be lifted and used one handed, it is also designed so he can also use it as a mobility aid, helping him balance
• Grim walkers are (quite a bit) made out of palistrom wood, the part of him that aren’t properly forms (and then the cursed magic belos used to stop him from falling apart) is almost like a rot in wood, comparing it a bit to ash dieback a bit, He’s rotting away slowly, and he can sort of slow it down but he knows he can’t last forever because the rot is already there.
• Mallory’s arm, the fake one, he can’t move it at all, it’s got stiff joins so it can be posed but that has to be done with the other arm, for the most part it’s kinda completely useless the straps to hold it in place are bulky and it’s really uncomfortable it’s very splintery. It benefits him in no way what so ever, he only wears it becuase belos told him to, to make him look more regular, and he’s internalised that to thinking he wrong without it, he sleeps in it, never takes it off even though it’s a massive inconvenience for him.
• Hamlet is the owl house equivalent of gluten and lactose intolerant, mostly because of his digestive system not really being properly made but it’s also massively not helped by him being a clone of a human (whichthere’s a lot of magic realm food they can’t eat) and that on top of some sensory issues regarding food he can only eat like three things.
  He’s really struggles with eating, he can’t eat when he’s anxious and he’s anxious a lot of the time, eating is a chore to him and is pretty underweight as a result often going days without food, visible ribs very boney in general

Curse

The ‘curse’ has given him in some sense magic, but only very slightly, his ‘magic’, it’s a by-product of the semi curse belos used on him to stop him from falling apart, it’s basically the stuff belos for from eating palismen but instead of the source coming from palismen it comes form his own body and the material it’s made up of (like the Palistrom wood) so every time he uses it, it eats away at him because his physical body is the power source.

It’s also very uncontrollable, when he uses it, it’s utter carnage. And it’s dangerous he has no control over it. It’s a bit like tentacles that just thrash about (maybe I’m still working on it) but belos has fed him the story that what’s wrong was him is a result of wild magic, and the magic he has and his ‘curse’ is wild magic. And this is reinforced by hamlet seeing how dangerous his magic can be. So, he’s pretty fixated on irradiated it and is very supportive of the covert system. Believe wild magic has gotten in the way of the titan's plans.

Belos views on him

Belos sees him as an embarrassment, he’s a failure who has to stick around, he’s rarely allowed in public and often kept hidden. He really wants to help belos but feels like him being the golden guard is a burden in a way

Belos does hate Hamlet but he doesn’t openly show this to him, often being more sympathetic, (in a very Belos manipulative way) being told, stuff like “oh what a shame your not good enough, well that’s because of wild magic” him not being good enough is always the root but he doesn’t blatantly blame hamlet for this (to his face at least) often blaming something else, fuelling hamlets anger but driving in the fact that he isn’t worth while. Every time he does anything it’s put down with ‘Imagine how much better it could have been of wild magic didn’t ruin you’. But in short he can’t do anything without being put down by belos despite him being really skilled and this just fuels his hatred for wild magic.

But too belos, Mallory is still Caleb, he’s not going to just straight up kill his brother (again) without a proper reason, so he’s looking for one, sending Hamlet on increasingly challenging missions, wanting to see him fail, and when he doesn’t this just fuels him with more anger and resentment towards him.

Relationship with the novel

Mallory is neurodivergent, although he doesn’t know this, the novel is his hyper-fixation, he hasn’t really had one quite like this before, nor does he know how to intract with media in a way that healthy. He has idea how to deal with it, his whole life revolves around it. One of the only ways he can acutally process stuff about Belos is by using the logic of if he is hamlet then Belos must be Claudius, the evil king, so there for has to be evil.

Mask

His face mask is part of him, it’s sewn into his skin, can’t take it off, this means since he can’t fully take the mask off there’s not such a split as him and himself and as the golden guard, no work life balance. He can’t separate himself from being the golden guard

Ramblings about his Death and relationship with Ezekiel

Near the end of Hamlets life, when Winslow gets arrested and sent to the conformatorium, Hamlet thinks she’s dead, and although this might not be the most logically conclusion he's very emotional. Without Winslow, Hamlet has nothing left, he has betrayed belos and all that he has worked for prior has crumbled (he was planning to change stuff WITH Winslow and he has no idea how he can do anything on his own) and when returns to the castle, he is very aware Belos might likely kill him.

When he returns Belos very angry at this point especially at Hamlet and having wasted such a valuable bone on him and immediately wants to sets out to make a new grimwalker with the same bone, so they it doesn’t go completely to waste.

In this AU Belos has been saving the more ‘valuable’ bone and hasn’t use them on earlier grimwalker since they seemed more likely to fail and he didn’t want to use this. And the more important the bone, the more the Grimwalker looks like the original person. In this AU Caleb’s skull was used for Hunter which is why he looks the most like Caleb.

(this paragraph is also on the Ezekiel page) Ezekiel took over Hamlets room, although any somethings have been taken away, the way it’s decorated, the posters on the wall things Hamlet put there. Hamlet also hid stuff, notes, around the whole castle but majority round his room, he finds drawings, short stories, even pages of his journal. Ezekiel starts to form a very fragmented idea of who this predecessor was, being in his rooms gives him a very personal view very contrasting the cold comments from Belos. He’s living in the place of someone who wasn’t expecting to be gone, to him it’s like Hamlet disappeared and he was just thrown in his place. It’s everything, the clothes in the wardrobe don’t fit him (since he’s not fully grown yet being about 15 at the start). Especially before he became Golden Guard and got a bit more do his own identity, he can’t help but link who he is to the fleeting memory of Mallory, he can’t seem to forge an identity outside of him and the people around him can’t either. So much of his life seems to be determined by someone he’s never met.

When he meets Mallory Ghost properly, he has such a strong predetermined idea of the sort of person he would be, and it’s all wrong. This isn’t helped by how standoffish Hamlet is at the start, he’s just an illusion really to start with, who doesn’t communicate, lurking in doorways not paying him any attention. But Hamlet rooms was full of very very personal things (hidden but when someone is spending all do their time in certain place nothing stays hidden forever), Hamlet wasn’t expecting to be killed when he was, he didn’t think to arrange his life to prepare for someone else to take over and Hamlet has no idea how to feel about someone basically becoming him overnight, finding his secret things that he would never willingly share with anyone, seeing his personal note, dreams, deeps fears all be read through and being totally unable to stop it. He can’t help by feel like Ezekiel had taken something from him, be angry toward him and everything he’s doing despite knowing he means no harm in it, he can’t help but hate Ezekiel. But then he does the opposite, he so fixated him hating Ezekiel and thinks that’s what he wants to do but then he does what everyone else has does and starts to see himself in Ezekiel, but he starts to see him more as his own individual person rather then a rushed copy made to replace him, he watches his draw, learn violin, he sees the way Belos treats him, and can’t keep hating him, he can’t do anything but pity him, and once he realised that he wants to do nothing but get him out of the situation but he can’t

So Hamlet does have CPTSD and this really develops once he’s a ghost and out of that situation he’s kind of able to calm down and process a few things (not very well) partly he doesn’t want too have to deal with it but also ghost hamlet pretty much has no worries and is just floating, barley aware of thoughts of conciseness. But then all of a sudden, he’s back in that environment having to sit back and watch Ezekiel go through the same abuse he did and it’s really hard, he actually can't for a lot of it. He can't function mentally in that environment. It also impacts how well he can communicate with Ezekiel since he really really struggles to talk about it, for him talking about it is like reliving it.

So, he’s very distant with Ezekiel, his explanations are short and often snappy, and Ezekiel just doesn’t fully understand what Hamlet is trying to tell him. The times that Ezekiel might need hamlet the most, when he’s dealing with the worst of Belos, hamlet isn’t there (l his ghost will just disappear), because he isn’t mentally able to witness that or be around Ezekiel during that time. (And since Hamlet is the only person who isn’t abusive that Ezekiel has spoken too (till he meet Winslow), so when his only friend disappears when he’s in his most need doesn’t feel great for him. So, this does really confuse Ezekiel who doesn’t understand much about hamlet nor what he’s going through (mainly since he’s a lot dealing with his own stuff and is like 15) but hamlet is really distant, and when he finally is able to tell Ezekiel stuff, Ezekiel is frustrated because he doesn’t understand why this really important information that impacts his whole life wasn’t shared with him sooner. This partly why Ezekiel is around so long because hamlet isn’t able to really talk about it so he never rests learns the truth till much later.

But this really doesn’t help hamlets self-esteem issues, since he also doesn’t understand why he’s acting the way he is , and just think he’s being weak, he isn’t able to help Ezekiel when it matter most. He doesn’t cut himself any slack in reference to his own trauma.

When ghost hamlet is originally really annoyed and jealous of Ezekiel when he first appears to him and spends a lot to time trying to ignore him and being passive aggressive, since when Mallory died he was in such an emotional state he stays this way in death, no matter what he is doing he is always very very emotional about it

He changes ghost appearance a lot, depending on his mood. Hamlet really struggles to talk about any serious stuff to Ezekiel, and big issue for him, but this also effects his physical appearance, when topics such as this get brought up and Hamlet can’t get himself to talk about them, his appearance change to how he looked in death, with his jaw missing and bleeding out from his mouth, his mental bloke manifests as him physically not having a jaw and not being able to talk about his trauma

This also happens with his golden guard outfit, his causal outfit and he also has an way more causal outfit he wore when he was almost running away, but he’ll quickly switch how he’s looking depending on the situation (he can’t control this it just kinda happens). So, he’s often looking different to Ezekiel.

The mindscape experience was not a great one for Hamlet. Mallory’s physical health has always been poor, and he feels like he can’t rely on himself, due to the unpredictability of his physical condition. But he could always rely on his mind, he thought no matter what he was sound of mind. And that he can always rely on his own thoughts and memories and be able to work stuff out. But being in his mind and finding out that he’s got false memories, and suddenly he can’t even trust himself anymore, he can’t rely on his ability to make choices, and not only does this end everything he had by being golden guard and working for belos, it makes him unable to trust himself, he is suddenly completely alone without purpose and he knows now that even the stuff he remembers is wrong. It’s also during this time where he’s on break that his trauma issues really start to develop (there where there before but because he was always in the situation it wasn’t able to set in) and suddenly he’s dealing with emotions that make him freeze, and this really doesn't help his inferiority issues nor his overall happiness.

Ezekiel was a second chance for Mallory; he fucked everything up so badly the first time. But he doesn’t want a second chance, firstly he doesn’t think he deserves it and secondly, he really doesn’t have it in him to keep fighting Belos. He can’t, the idea of someone being in any way reliant upon him, when he believes he can’t even be reliant upon himself,. It’s so much scarier when it’s someone else. And this worsted once he gets to know Ezekiel, and he really begins to care about him