Orig Fic Wittering
Apr. 18th, 2019 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
toujours_nigelThis isn't among the ones I'm working on, so it's just a premise rather than anything like a proper plot, but that's what DW's for.
So, this is a culture that has a notion of acknowledged and unacknowledged children rather than legitimate and illegitimate, i.e. any child born to either of the marital partners can be un/acknowledged regardless of actual parentage. If A and B are married, and A has children with B and others while B has children with A (obvs) and others, none of these kids are automatically socially inferior to the rest. As you go up the social ladder, there are different degrees and types of acknowledgement, but not usually predicated on parentage.
The marriage we're looking at happens between a Prince Regent of H and a Princess of the Y clans, and the latter brings into the marriage a boy (V) who is about four at the time, and ends up about six years older than the first child born of the marriage. When V is about thirteen, his parents present him his choices about the type of acknowledgement he would prefer, because they're done having their children and so is the King, and the royal lines of inheritance etc need to be properly delineated. (As things stand, the first child in the marriage (HY1) is a few months older than the king's eldest child (HG1), so adopting V into the line of inheritance would make him the putative heir which: OTOH an eventual Kingdom, OTOH a lot of trouble. V's siblings are between seven and three, his father's niblings between seven-ish and one; they're not inheriting in the next several decades; it's just important to know early.
V goes off and has a think, writes to his mother's brother, and the Acknowledged-but-not-Inheriting Princes in his father's line, and eventually decides that he's gonna opt out of the line of inheritance, thank you, it sounds far too dreary. Plus not being in the line allows him to be a Prince in several clans and allows him a lot more mobility, so he can get on with his chief ambition untrammelled. This ambition is to master as many weapons as he can amass, and his parents aren't precisely happy about it, but it's a perfectly reasonable thing to want, and V spends the next several years learning from arms-masters and sages and whathaveyou.
Then his father dies, and they have to return to the capital. V is technically not bound to this, being an adult, but he's not leaving his mother and baby brothers alone in the royal labyrinth, so they all go. And it's... okay, it's massively disorienting, and excessively mannered, but it's fine really. HY3 transfers his affections largely to their Great-Uncle, who is non-Inheriting and generally acknowledged to be the reason H is still intact as a Kingdom: this great old man who's ageing like a tree, just getting tougher by the year. HY2 takes to life as one of a rowdy pack of princes and aristos like a fish to water; HY1 disappears into the councils of their non-Inheriting Uncle with every scrap of 14 y.o. solemnity he can dredge up. V and his mother are a bit at a loss, because there's nothing for them to do as such, because the palace runs itself along very arcane lines, and even there Y gets absorbed into the women's circle of concerns.
V is just. very lonely and not actually cut out for the excessively mannered life. He left H&Y's palace to wander around for a reason, and that was in the provinces and considerably more relaxed. Everyone in his generation is a half-dozen years younger, and everyone a generation up expects him to either become Political or an Officer and he's just Real Sad. He writes a lot of letters to his mother's niblings and the couple of friends he's made on his travels. Then HY2 gets poisoned, mostly accidentally, and V is very glad he's around, if only to take care of his siblings while Y frets over her sick kid and her mother and sisters-in-law find out how it happened and who caused it. But the princes could have gone to their uncles instead, and do when HY2 comes home again, so there can be peace and quiet.
At this point V sort of gets taken over by HG1, at the time a prepossessing and hilariously self-assured thirteen, who latches onto him with no real intention of ever letting go. And all the proper adults in question, from their Great-Uncle to all the parents, just let it happen, because hey, maybe V can control HG1, and forsure HG1 is enough of a handful to keep anybody occupied. The only people to demur are their Uncle, and HY3 who wasn't using V's attention right then but would have liked it to be reserved for him thanks.
And then however many years later--seven or so--V's siblings go on a pleasure-trip with their mother, and are reported dead. That's where the story starts, when V--who has spent his twenties the Old Man of a coterie of his princely cousins--realises that this kid he really likes (and possibly likes) has engineered the deaths of his blood-family and expects him to work past it pretty fast. And he can't go to anyone with his suspicions, because they rest on the fact that HG1 coaxed him into missing the trip, and came very close to propositioning him. His siblings and his mother are dead and everyone around him thinks he's unlikely to be particularly unhappy about it.
Then idk, machinations, shenanigans, siblings not actually dead after all. But just. Palace intrigue!
And yeah, I just finished reading The Goblin Emperor, and also yes if you're familiar with the Mahabharata you can see what I'm riffing off.
So, this is a culture that has a notion of acknowledged and unacknowledged children rather than legitimate and illegitimate, i.e. any child born to either of the marital partners can be un/acknowledged regardless of actual parentage. If A and B are married, and A has children with B and others while B has children with A (obvs) and others, none of these kids are automatically socially inferior to the rest. As you go up the social ladder, there are different degrees and types of acknowledgement, but not usually predicated on parentage.
The marriage we're looking at happens between a Prince Regent of H and a Princess of the Y clans, and the latter brings into the marriage a boy (V) who is about four at the time, and ends up about six years older than the first child born of the marriage. When V is about thirteen, his parents present him his choices about the type of acknowledgement he would prefer, because they're done having their children and so is the King, and the royal lines of inheritance etc need to be properly delineated. (As things stand, the first child in the marriage (HY1) is a few months older than the king's eldest child (HG1), so adopting V into the line of inheritance would make him the putative heir which: OTOH an eventual Kingdom, OTOH a lot of trouble. V's siblings are between seven and three, his father's niblings between seven-ish and one; they're not inheriting in the next several decades; it's just important to know early.
V goes off and has a think, writes to his mother's brother, and the Acknowledged-but-not-Inheriting Princes in his father's line, and eventually decides that he's gonna opt out of the line of inheritance, thank you, it sounds far too dreary. Plus not being in the line allows him to be a Prince in several clans and allows him a lot more mobility, so he can get on with his chief ambition untrammelled. This ambition is to master as many weapons as he can amass, and his parents aren't precisely happy about it, but it's a perfectly reasonable thing to want, and V spends the next several years learning from arms-masters and sages and whathaveyou.
Then his father dies, and they have to return to the capital. V is technically not bound to this, being an adult, but he's not leaving his mother and baby brothers alone in the royal labyrinth, so they all go. And it's... okay, it's massively disorienting, and excessively mannered, but it's fine really. HY3 transfers his affections largely to their Great-Uncle, who is non-Inheriting and generally acknowledged to be the reason H is still intact as a Kingdom: this great old man who's ageing like a tree, just getting tougher by the year. HY2 takes to life as one of a rowdy pack of princes and aristos like a fish to water; HY1 disappears into the councils of their non-Inheriting Uncle with every scrap of 14 y.o. solemnity he can dredge up. V and his mother are a bit at a loss, because there's nothing for them to do as such, because the palace runs itself along very arcane lines, and even there Y gets absorbed into the women's circle of concerns.
V is just. very lonely and not actually cut out for the excessively mannered life. He left H&Y's palace to wander around for a reason, and that was in the provinces and considerably more relaxed. Everyone in his generation is a half-dozen years younger, and everyone a generation up expects him to either become Political or an Officer and he's just Real Sad. He writes a lot of letters to his mother's niblings and the couple of friends he's made on his travels. Then HY2 gets poisoned, mostly accidentally, and V is very glad he's around, if only to take care of his siblings while Y frets over her sick kid and her mother and sisters-in-law find out how it happened and who caused it. But the princes could have gone to their uncles instead, and do when HY2 comes home again, so there can be peace and quiet.
At this point V sort of gets taken over by HG1, at the time a prepossessing and hilariously self-assured thirteen, who latches onto him with no real intention of ever letting go. And all the proper adults in question, from their Great-Uncle to all the parents, just let it happen, because hey, maybe V can control HG1, and forsure HG1 is enough of a handful to keep anybody occupied. The only people to demur are their Uncle, and HY3 who wasn't using V's attention right then but would have liked it to be reserved for him thanks.
And then however many years later--seven or so--V's siblings go on a pleasure-trip with their mother, and are reported dead. That's where the story starts, when V--who has spent his twenties the Old Man of a coterie of his princely cousins--realises that this kid he really likes (and possibly likes) has engineered the deaths of his blood-family and expects him to work past it pretty fast. And he can't go to anyone with his suspicions, because they rest on the fact that HG1 coaxed him into missing the trip, and came very close to propositioning him. His siblings and his mother are dead and everyone around him thinks he's unlikely to be particularly unhappy about it.
Then idk, machinations, shenanigans, siblings not actually dead after all. But just. Palace intrigue!
And yeah, I just finished reading The Goblin Emperor, and also yes if you're familiar with the Mahabharata you can see what I'm riffing off.
