Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Nikolai Lantsov (Shadow and Bone)

*Nikolai-related spoilers.*

I hadn’t expected to do any more Neurodivergent Alley posts about Shadow and Bone, but this one just sort of cropped up in my thoughts over the last few months, and some Googling told me I wasn’t alone in the theory. I happened to be rewatching Shadow and Bone when I saw Wicked: Part 1 for the first time—I hadn’t even reached season 2 at that point, but as Fiyero started pinging my ADHD radar, my brain just went, “Wait, is Nikolai ADHD?”

I could see an argument that he’s also autistic, but this is what stood out to me. While the rest of his family is content to stay at the Grand Palace, Nikolai continually feels an itch to be doing something. The prince has a deep love for his divided country and is anxious to find a way to help it. And as a second son, he doesn’t have that much power in the palace, but his position offers him more liberty to explore his own pursuits.

And explore he does! After serving as a soldier in the First Army, Nikolai takes to the sea, posing as the privateer Sturmhond so he can freely travel, furthering Ravka’s interests under the table. This satisfies his desire to help, his need for adventure/excitement, and his love of innovation. Nikolai is a skilled and creative inventor, tinkering to create new weapons and tools that will be of use to his crew. While he isn’t capable of building all his designs himself, he works alongside Fabrikators who use their powers to put his ideas into practice. He even tests multiple prototypes of a flying machine capable of entering the Fold.

Like Fiyero, Nikolai is a skilled masker, code-switching with ease. At sea, he’s a roguish pirate captain who wins the respect and loyalty of his crew. Among soldiers, he’s a down-to-earth man of the people. At court, he’s a thoughtful prince who can practice both diplomacy and strategy. But to my eye, his masking is less detrimental than it often is for neurodivergent folks, because regardless of the setting, Nikolai never loses the core of who he is.  He has a curious mind and an adventurous spirit, and he tasks both of them with realizing the dreams of his compassionate heart. He’s charismatic and confident, playful and cheeky, shrewd and observant. He shows different sides of himself to different people, but all of them are still him.

What I really like about Nikolai is how little he resembles Jesper. I’ve talked before about The Second Autistic-Coded Character I Spot, the often AuDHD-coded character whose traits present very differently than a more archetypal autistic-coded character (Leslie Knope to Ron Swanson, Janine Teagues to Gregory Eddie, etc.) But this might be the first time I’ve really experienced the same thing with ADHD-coded characters. Jesper is an absolute poster boy for an ADHD archetype: restless, distractible, almost always moving, usually talking without thinking. But while Nikolai and Jesper have a similar flirtatious charm, Nikolai doesn’t display most of the overt outward traits that Jesper does. His restless energy is reflected more in his thoughts and actions than immediately apparent in his body.

I know that ADHD “type” labels are oversimplified and not everyone likes them, but if you were to apply that type of language to these two characters, Jesper would have the hyperactive type while Nikolai has the inattentive type. And I really haven’t found much of that in fiction so far. Maybe I just haven’t developed the right skills to look for it, but most of the ADHD-coded characters I see are more “obvious,” aligning much more with the usual archetype. Characters like Jesper, like Peter Parker, like Dewey Duck. So I really appreciate coming across an ADHD headcanon that’s less overt. I’ve come to recognize all sorts of autistic-coded characters in media, and it’s good to see the same thing with ADHD.