Courtroom Women & Mayfly Men, Part 4 – We need to talk about Sholto.
(If you’re just tuning in, this is part 4 of a 10-part meta series. Links to the other chapters can be found here.)
Welcome back, kids. It’s time. It’s time to talk about Major Sholto. And I hate to tell you this, but we are about to launch into some major feels. So cozy up, pour yourself a favorite beverage, and maybe open up another tab with pictures of kittens or your favorite piece of fluff just in case you need to safeword. And I know you think I’m being facetious right now, but one of my beta readers compared these oncoming feels to Reichenbach. You’ve been warned.
I’ll start off by reviewing what we know about Sholto before the moment Sherlock shifts his focus to him in the reception hall deduction sequence. The tl;dr version here is that we are getting confirmation after confirmation that Sholto and John definitely have some non-platonic history under their belts. (See what I did there? Belts?) The fandom is already well versed in a lot of these subtextual cues. But applying the direct mirroring we’re applying here – the victims of the Mayfly Man are all direct mirrors for identifiable people in John’s romantic history – we get a truly ridiculous amount of new information about what happened between John and Sholto. The fact that he shows up at all as a victim of the Mayfly Man basically confirms that yeah, John and Sholto were decidedly romantically involved. Again: all of John’s exes have direct, identifiable mirrors as the victims of the Mayfly Man. Private Bainbridge is a victim of the Mayfly Man. John has been involved with a man. It was Sholto. It’s confirmed, guys. The extent and the details are the fun part the subtext can tell us.
Then there’s the mirroring between Sholto and Sherlock. Fandom understanding of Sholto is that he is a mirror for Sherlock, and this is dead on. This is set up right at the very beginning of The Sign of Three where we see both of them getting dressed for John’s wedding, preparing for battle. Their armor is as interesting as it is telling – Sherlock is hiding behind his best man (best friend) uniform, while Sholto is hiding behind his military (honor, duty, tradition) persona. There are other cues that confirm this mirroring in a big truly ridiculous way, which I’ll be pointing out as we go along.
Just to get this out there right now because I know it can get confusing: at different points in The Sign of Three, Sholto is mirrored against both Private Bainbridge and Sherlock. I’m going to break this down as simply as I can, because the elegance is absolutely heartbreaking once you see it. The literal victims of the literal Mayfly Man (photographer) are the metaphorical victims of the metaphorical Mayfly Man (John). During the case of The Bloody Guardsman, Private Bainbridge is the victim of the literal Mayfly Man, which is metaphorically representative of John and Sholto’s romance. This case happens before the wedding. It is in the past. At the wedding itself, Sholto becomes a victim of the literal Mayfly Man. His status shifts from being a metaphorical victim to being a literal victim. Once he becomes a literal victim, this means he is now a mirror for someone else becoming a victim of John/Mayfly Man. Once he gets stabbed at the wedding, he becomes a mirror for Sherlock. In other words, in the past, Sholto was in love with John, and they were involved. But in the present, here at the wedding, Sherlock falls in love with John. Because the Mayfly Man’s interests have shifted away from Sholto (the rehearsal) and over to Sherlock (the main event).
God. Are you emotionally compromised yet? I am. And it just gets better! And by better I mean worse! Meet you on the flipside, folks.