tja ja ja

And he fails, of course, but at the end of the day, we see Ludwig seek out Roderich's advice and opinion and council way more often than he does Gilbert's; he seems to respect him more, at a base level. Maybe the distance between them helped, maybe it's easier to respect an ally you view as an equal than an appendage that acts like he's in charge.

Roderich, in turn, is watching this child that is not his but could have been his grow up under the care of someone he considers a rival at best and probably as unfit to raise a nation, always with the thought in the back of his head that this could have been his if he just did something different; always with the loss of Holy Rome in his mind as well, whose death, although ultimately France's fault, was surely helped along by Austria.

And then you have the bit about the wheelchair, and I have to wonder when that was. Presumably after one of the World Wars, if it's meant to represent something about Austria the nation's state, rather than being caused by a random flare-up of disability (which is also possible!). Now, we've seen Roderich after WW1, in the Great Depression comic, and he wasn't in a wheelchair then. The statement up there came after that comic came out, so of course this wasn't actively intentioned, but that leaves two options; either Roderich stopped using the wheelchair before that comic, or he only needed it after WW2.

And that second possibility is super interesting to me. It builds off of what we're shown in the very early comics, where Roderich lives with Ludwig and is generally shown to have a rather cushy experience during the war; the comic never truly turns dark despite the subject matter, of course, but we don't see Roderich in uniform or participating in drills, for example. His relationship with Ludwig seems to flip-flop between shitty roommates and (rather oedipedal) married couple; he hardly seems to mind it, though naturally Roderich is very prideful and likely wouldn't openly wallow in his distress either way. There's always a possibility that he's been actively kept trapped, rather than just having the privilege of staying out of combat.

Now, Roderich doesn't have many people he *could* rely on and trust enough to help him move around while disabled. Erzsébet, he's been separated from, and even if Gilbert were here, he's been shown to revel in making him feel weak, so he wouldn't be an option, anyways. Switzerland, maybe? But I can't imagine their already constantly strained relationship got any less volatile after the war. Feliciano seems to be positively inclined towards him despite the childhood horrors, but is generally unreliable. Anyone else is too far away.

This one hurt me...