Laurent & Damen
From the Captive Prince trilogy by C.S. Pacat
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@kurotari
Laurent & Damen
From the Captive Prince trilogy by C.S. Pacat
(Prev.)

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Thinking about how 1,500+ years of life doesn't make Arthur a good father, but it does soften him up.
The rediscovery of Beowulf as the long 19th century begins and the first 100+ years of translations use the root word aglæc to describe both Beowulf and Grendel's mother. For Beowulf, the translators used "heroic." For Grendel's mother, "monstrous."
Arthur spoke that natively, his second language after his mother's Bythronic. He can remember the long house, warm with crowded bodies and the fire, smoky but pleasant. He can remember the voice of the bard rising and falling, the shadows in the shape of heroism on the wall flickering in firelight. He can remember the delight and shudder and communal thrum of each reaction. He can remember the loudest laughs and gasps coming from the great lady at the head of the table, who is the reason he is fed, clothed, and alive, who also holds the seax of all free people at her waist and commands the space.
His youngest two children sit in his Victorian library, perhaps with the neighbors' children, listening to their father at his finest and their uncle at his happiest, telling stories no human has heard in a thousand years. One too many glasses of port at dinner and a glug of brandy, and they're on their feet, telling tales. One or two of his mothers more than populate the compilation of the Mabinogion, and, of course, Arthur's Beowulf. And they listen as he once listened. To his mother, his sister, his brothers, and the bards. Watching shapes on the wall, the delight of triumph, and the grip of the tale.
His eldest, if not his firstborn, is content to listen from a spot apart. Leaned in a doorway, always curious about what came before the Normans made English as much of a mix of French and English as he himself. Actually understanding, born of the effort to please rather than just being entertained as Arthur wheels into a rush of English older than anything, tinged with Mercian vowels.
His next boy, social through and through, reacting as much to a sweep of the arm or an exaggerated face as to the expressions of the other children, running a finger over the illustrated copy open in his lap, eyes flicking between everything, excitement itself, holding onto the sounds because they are musical and there's nothing he loves more than melody. He will learn every song a thousand years and more can teach, but for now, he listens, concentrating on holding still.
And his last child. His girl. The very, very best of him. She holds herself high, back straight with interest, listening intently, following better than the other children despite little more inthe way of knowing. She is mouthing words, memorizing them for later, packing them away, He bounces around in the same language, between the oldest words and the newest. Her hands are on her knees, kinetic with the tale. She can be so still, but now she is alight. He finds himself telling her the story. Looking at her, facing her, orienteering like Jack does. She doesn't hide her expression and the monsters are always her favorite part. Grendel's mother takes action, moving the story, and she frowns. Rhys feigns pulling a sword from a sheath and raising it up, but the expression disappears. Zee is patient; she always has been. Time bounces across a sentence as he continues.
He knows the words of the translation; the book in Jack's lap speaks next. Grendel's mother, a woman, a wretched woman. This from 'aglæcwif', of the same root as speaks to Beowulf's heroism. The men will translate and transform. She becomes a wretch and later hell-bride, monstrous, evil. And later, the women translators will call her a warrior, and a mighty one at that. They are not that far yet, not in this long 19th century, but he can do better. For she is no wretch, no monster, no hell bride but a girl.
He can hear the bards of a millennium before, deferring to the great lady of the hall who sits in the great chair, circlet low on her forehead, brooches gleaming at her shoulders. The way his mother sat was commanding and tall. The bard bowed before her as he spoke the next words. His youngest before him, her back straight, He looks at her, her bright eyes are on the page near Jack's finger, and she is frowning.
Again, he hears the Bard's words and the deference there.
'Grendles mōdor / ides, aglæcwif.' He knows the words. He has spoken to them so often, but not for so long. Zee looks up at him. She is not nameless. She is more than his daughter as the great lady was more than wife or mother. She looks at him, and he wonders if she knows this isn't right, what the translation wants to put in his mouth. Neither helll bride nor monstrous nor wretched. He drops to her level, one knee down, more homage than seated. She meets his eye, and he will see steel there before long. He knows the word he wants, what Zee is.
Mother of Grendel, the lady most formidable.
Smaurent and Auguste ✨️
Sweet boy after the murder of a thousand Spaniards
cave guy: sorry i was out hunting a mammoth with gog
fujoshi cave wife: and how was it.

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How aware do you think the kids are of their father, uncles and aunt’s childhood? I can see both it being an unspoken thing, but then a drunk Rhys or Arthur occasionally letting something slip. And would they ever talk about their mother?
I think stories from what Arthur considers his halycon childhood between the 1st and 4th century C.E have slipped through. Even with the Roman invasion and the displacements it caused and Boudicca's revolt that literally scorched themselves into a layer of ash still visible today in English archaeology, he remembers being relatively protected and high status both in the Roman world and in the British. Britain under the Roman empire wasn't the most important place in the empire but there were a lot of natural resources the British exploited, and conflict along the borders of northern England and southern Scotland made and unmade several emperors, with at least one being crowned in England iirc. Eirian was forced to negotiate with Lucius (a tentative name for Rome) about Rhys and Arthur but she did keep all four of them close. So Arthur remembers her and references her most when doing human activities done even in a modified sense, since the dawn of time. Things like spinning weaving and ship building he learned at her hand even if his memories of that are kind of bundled into Brighid too. The first apple crop after the Romans introduced them to England, the emptying of the beehives for winter storage, being taught to draw his bow against his cheek and shoot straight. Being scolded for running off without his cloak because he was a high energy ambitious little shit who never thought things through. Those things and the mentions or her make it into his children's lives.
They're less aware of who Eirian was as a person because Arthur especially looks at his earliest years under her guiding hand with rose coloured glasses so thick he's looking at anything pre 500s like this. But they are aware of her existence.
He leaves out the headhunting or maybe not really human sacrifice (the mine level amount of salt I have with the popular interpretation of Lindow man is kind of insane.) He leaves out executions and exile, torture and terror. Eirian loved her children in the way Boudicca did. The kind of love that leaves scorch marks in the earth for millennia. Her death was 1000 years before any of Alfred's generation came into being but considering that craters leave marks millions of years later, she's a presence.
It is a lot of So much of what we consider "Celtic" today is a result of the Celtic revival of the 19th century. Most profoundly in Ireland, but also to a fairly wide extent in Scotland, Wales and surprisingly for me who studied the lionization of the Anglo-Saxons by the British empire, England as well. So Eirian was a shadowy but present figure. The diaspora in the U.S. Canada, Australia and NZ often being referred too as Anglo-celtic gives me brain rot. This perception of her as viewed by children, particularly Arthur, something still concrete and visible. A lot of who Eirian was surrounded this lot as they're growing up. Just in Arthur's Manor house I think there are post holes from roundhouses, reused Romano-British masonry in the first floor, Viking age bodies in the back garden. At least one statue of her that either survived when the anglos saxons reused old Roman and British villas or that was uncovered in church foundations or even an actual pig sty (this actually happens) is around the house.
Also... There's one headcanon I've had for a very long time where he always waits for them to wake up and start breathing again if it happens around him. Sitting vigil through a long night, turning the other way when Matt outright leaves to go check on Alfred and watching him carefully for answers when he returns. He searched Matt's face for what news, what despair, what relief marked his expression when he returned from tugging Alfred's corpse from the piles of dead at Antietam. And that, I think, stems from Brittania's death. When the sun went dark in the sky and pestilence followed hot on the heels of famine and their mother did not wake. Not that last time however it happened. And that may be burned into their perception of their own deaths.
Tldr: God I'm never going to recover from the brain rot that one asinine piece of dialogue from the dub gave me.
Matt: "My Grandma taught me the true power of the maple leaf!"
Alfred: "Your Grandma sounds hot!"
butt?
I had to substitute it for arse, sorry. Exploratory fic I began to explore some character dynamics and what the lifestyle of 4 growing nations and their mother in their last real time together would be like in a slightly Post-Roman Iron Age estate as the Migration period picks up and Germanic peoples cross the North Sea to make a home. I believe of these earlier themes have their origin with @balladofthewhitehorse.
5th Century AD, Cumbria
"Rhys," Alasdair appeared at the fence line, his face gloomy. Rhys had stopped here for his mid-day meal halfway between where the shepherds had herded the sheep in the northernmost glen and their home behind on the hill. It'd been a long two days in the hills. He offered the cider flask to his brother as Alasdair approached, his frown deepening. It wasn't raining, and the day's work wouldn't have been hard. Bad news, then. It was always bad news.
"What is it this time?"
"Rot in the south store."
"Oats, rye or wheat?" Rhys asked. The rye they might go without, but the rain hadn't come so early that anything else should rot.
"Oats,"
"Fuck." Rhys sat on the low wall of flagstones and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fuck,"
He glanced up. His brother looked even more dour. "Gods, what else?"
"Seven horses," Alasdair said, sitting beside Rhys, boneless and upset.
Rhys gaped at him. "Seven? That's three more than were sick yesterday!"
"It's spreading." Alasdair shrugged helplessly. "I took the healthy ones into the third stables, and it didn't help."
Do you still have that one shot of France, Canada and England. Where France wants to talk with Canada over a bottle of whiskey/wine (?) but it goes south and he says something hurtful
And later when Canada goes home to England they have a moment where England takes a shard of glass outta Canada's head
I really liked that one and was sad when your other account got deleted and i couldn't read it anymore
Yes! It's on AO3 here and crossposted below. After the abandonment of Canada in 1760, there was very little cultural exchange between France and French Canada for nearly 150 years. Informal relations were established in 1800 with the opening an office for Quebec affairs in Paris, but there was very little cross-pollination. If you look at Quebec culture today, there are often more British and Belgium culinary and cultural influences than Metropolitan French. There was quite a lot of bitterness that remains to this day but it began to ease up in the 1910s. Francis' next try will probably be better.
It's a quiet day on the front. As quiet as it ever got, at least. François found his boy on infantry duty and decided he'd best make his peace before another Verdun took him entirely or a sniper shot the glass bottle of whiskey Alasdair had gifted him for the purpose and wasted it. He approached in the early morning when the world matched his uniform, the world awash in a fog as blue as the virgin's cloak. He produced the bottle and told the boy he had something for him.
"What do you want?" Matthieu said. Not unkindly, but there was a hardness to his eyes that François didn't know what to do with. Had it only been a year since the boy had wept for him while hauling him back from the front at Ypres? War drained the colour and life from them all, even the art. And, he s supposed, even Matthieu had been one of the beautiful children of the New World.
"To talk," François said, the bottle of scotch in one hand as he lifted them both. A gesture made not in surrender because he would never surrender, no matter what anyone did, allied or enemy. But still, he lifted them, hoping to lower the boy's defenses.
“Is this a bribe?” Matthieu said, tugging down the green sweater. It's Arthur's handiwork, both the clothes and the fucking attitude. Blunt and calculating. His son is as much Arthur's child as his own now. “What's the plan then? Get me drunk until I break down and forgive you?"
“It's a bribe,”
“You always did give better presents,” Matthieu said, tipping the flask towards François. “Ardbeg Uigeadial. Single malt made from the freshest loch water in that godforsaken island. Uncle gave this to you didn't he?”
François smiled. “He said it was your favourite.”
“More like it's the strongest liquor of his I can drink two glasses of without being sick everywhere. Since I was raised on wine.”
François flicked his gaze at the boy. But the set of his shoulders hardens. “Hate it now. Tastes like sugar,”
They've spoken since 1880. The boy had opened an office in Paris, and reached out, seeking correction and education. There were many in Canada who could be ironed out if brought to France and reformed. That was important now. He needed Canada as a refuge for his own best minds, for at least as long as this war lasted. Matthieu refused to even drink wine. What he had of Alasdair was one thing, but to so forsake the France of his birth?
His son drinks again. “You might want to demand whatever it is you're going to demand before I sober up,"
“I don't want anything," François said, and it was at least half honest.
you and your goddamn chunky, rosy-cheeked babies. i had the violent urge to be pregnant >:( I'd love to see a fic about bilge rat Arthur soothing his fussy baby aboard his ship, heart-breaking every time the ween takes in a breath to cry and just being a loving father
You and me both bud. I'm lucky I look like warmed over death right now or I'd be ripping out my IUD and sitting on the first acceptable tinder dick. And I don't even really like dick. And ahahaahhaa ask and ye shall receive. Baby Alfred on a boat. I posted part of this fic several months ago and part of it dates to 2019, but due too a shortage of fucks and an excess of 'hgnnnnn babies' it is freshly expanded and edited so here we go. On AO3 here.
1580s, The North Atlantic.
Arthur rallied after a few sips of rum enjoyed, like so many things were these days, in the captain's quarters he'd commandeered. He peeled off his doublet and shirt, hung them from the chair and dressed. In the fresh clothes he picked up his freshly woken, cranky, fat baby. He likely would have slept all night, but Arthur wanted to hold him again.
All smiles until they'd gotten on the ship, Alfred had been nothing but grumpy since. A sailor's son he was but seawater his blood was not.
"Hello, little one," He said, watching as sleepy fists twitched and a yawn brought the baby's mouth open wide into the world's widest tiny 'O.' He couldn't help it. He was a beautiful baby. Arthur kissed him—the kind of kiss where his mouth just grazed the edge of Alfred's fine downy hair before he got a fat little fist giving the world's softest hammering to his sternum. Cheeky little bastard. Arthur grinned.
12, Matt and Arthur?
For prompt 12 "your hands are so cold!" Okay, so this is kind of outside my usual timeline because it's the 18th century and Arthur's being nice to Matt, but I was feeling dangerously tender towards rat man and his ghostly tree baby so the following resulted. Quick note, I set this too early for ships to actually come up the Saint-Laurent but just pretend Arthur's such an amazing sailor it's possible. Also, scurvy was such a common phenomenon in early Canada it was literally just called "spring fever" and everyone just kind of dealt with it until spring kicked in properly and they could eat some greens. But Arthur to the fucken rescue, I guess. I've really got to stop writing while I've got a fever, honestly. Also, my ancestral citrus obsession is showing lmaooooo. Also on ao3.
Quebec City, Late 18th Century
Father arrived as the last of the vegetables in the cellar went rancid, and the weather began to turn to the bizarre warmth only Quebec could bring days before another freeze. The world at this time of year was grey, like smoked glass. The river ice broke up into jagged chunks, and olive-green water carried the ice slowly northward. Ships had to fight their way downriver, but under Father's skilled hand, they managed even this early in the year. The only colours in the world were monochrome. The Laurentian mountains sometimes showed a little green when the fogs thinned enough, but the white of winter was gone. Only grey rain and greyer ice and blackened trees.
On another grey day, two nights after landing, Arthur finally disembarqued the ship he always preferred to Quebec and came to stay. There was always rain, and Matthew met Arthur at the docks with his waxed sailcloth cloak pulled over his head and as straight-backed as he could manage.
"Matthew," Father nodded. Matthew was grateful Arthur wore his navy blues in Quebec rather than the hated red coat and was pleased to see he looked well and healthy for someone who had made the winter voyage. He looked less annoyed than usual.
"Father." He nodded back, striving to control himself. After a long winter alone in the little row house in the shadow of the walls of Quebec City with only the single letter from Alasdair that had made it on the last ship of the year before he'd saved to read on Christmas, he was half mad with loneliness and the spring afflictions as stores dwindled to practically nothing. "You look hale!"
He looked grand and important. The miserable freezing rain didn't seem to touch him. Matthew felt pitiful in contrast, huddling under his cloak and the twenty pounds lighter he always was when the spring rationing thinned him down to a shivering shadow of who he was when the harvest was fresh. It was too early even for tapping the sugar maples.

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Silver for the prompt?
Day 1 (Feb 5th): Historical || Winter/Cold. @royalredbrosweek After Pearl Harbour was bombed in 1941, Churchill got his ass on a boat, and they went to go hash out what the war would look like. The British were saved by the bombing of Pearl Harbour, barely keeping themselves in the war and only saved from starvation by massive flotillas of armed convoys making the journey from Halifax and Montreal too the ports of the United Kingdom. It was enough to keep them alive, but it was only when the convoy system expanded from New York and Boston and other points of access that the Allies started hoping. I've got salt about Churchill that extends much further than what's outlined here but ehhhhh. TW for alcoholism. And yes, Churchill did drink that much.
December 1941
HMS Duke of York
"You forgot your coat." Matthew approached his father.
"I'm fine," Arthur said. He was in the first few layers of naval blues, peaked cap on his head and chain smoking cigarettes he wasn't supposed to have, but Matthew smuggled from America every trip anyway.
"Sure, catch your death before we make Annapolis. That'll be grand. The British lion passing out before Congress that'll be sure to impress the yanks."
"The lion cub should mind his bloody tone," Arthur said, giving him a smack upside the head that was more gentle and affectionate than anything, and he took his coat off Matthew's arm. "I do know the water."
"And I know the cold." Matt gave him a pointed look. His father pursed his lips around the cigarette but didn't argue. "Were you planning on eating breakfast before or after you froze to death?"
"Depends; how much are you going nag me about a morning tipple?"
"I won't if you actually eat something," Matt said and took the cigarette from his father as Arthur pulled his coat on and buttoned it.
"Mind sharing?" Matt asked, handing the cigarette back and flexing his hand at his father's pocket.
"With your lungs?" Arthur snorted. "In this weather? Best steer clear, lad."
Flowers
Kiwi Field Hospital, Wisques France April 1918
Zee brings Alfred some food herself rather than let him wait for the orderlies with the tea cart of mashed peas and oatmeal. She doesn’t know why she cares. He’s probably eaten better than her for years now. But she does it for Jack, stealing him handfuls of the golden syrup and oat biscuits that come in the post and bits and pieces of home that come through the black market. Dried pineapple, tinned mangos. Or the oranges that the French fruit sellers hawk at the train stations for 5 times what they’re worth because homesick Australians will pay that and more for a bit of familiarity. Then there are father’s warnings, of how they need Alfred if this war is going to end without destruction of their father’s empire. Her family.
There are fewer patients in the officer ward, and they are near enough to England that wives have taken the ferries across the channel to sit with their husbands and fathers. It’s not a sight Zee is used to. She feels most at ease amongst the Australians, and her own, with their broad clipped accents and stubborn refusal of formality. Amongst the Anzacs, even in a dress, she’s “the Kiwi sister” or “Sister Kirk” because there’s not a single Australian on earth who can pronounce a whole sentence without shortening something in it. Her own, and Jack’s are so far from home.
There is no one to visit but their mates who trickle in one or two at a time when their sergeants allow it. Most of her soldiers lay alone in their beds until someone comes to tend to them. Zee sits with them when she can, writes their words home for them, lets what she has tamed into a mild accent flare into full New Zealander. Sometimes she could give Jack a run for his money in sheer brogue. But when she can’t sit with a man, what visitors do make it onto the wards consist of tired, grubby soldiers. Men who are a day or so’s march and a hot meal from being hospitalised themselves. It's a far sight from smart-looking society wives who simper over their ‘poor, poor dears’ in the officer's racks. What has been a normal sight thus far in the war is now strange.
Alfred lays alone, turned on his side, so she can’t see his face or his hair, just a broad set of shoulders. His spine running between the muscle of his back shows from the dip in his collar and the divots and shapes are the same as Jack’s. But she has never sewn Alfred up. Jack still limps when he’s tired, a souvenir of the shell that nearly blasted him back to Sydney from Suvla Bay, his arm aches when he’s stood with a rifle to his shoulder too long from where he was shot at Fromelles. She knows where he burns when the outback does. She knows the sound of his breathing at night when they’re huddled together, fearing being far from home when they were children and artillery and ottomans now that they’re grown. She knows Jack. And yet here is something the same marking Alfred as much family. She blinks and taps the hard sole of her boot down onto the boards and he startles awake, turns over and kicks so hard he nearly topples out of the narrow bed.
“Mhmhuhwhat?” He manages before he’s blinking up at her, rising on one elbow, looking owlish and a little lost. His hair is properly mussed, not the accidentally-on-purpose scrubbed back look of a soldier on leave looking for a girl he doesn’t have to pay, but the boyish disarray of a child woken from sleep.
“I brought food,” Zee says, because she has to say something. The sight of him, prone and peaky with the smudges under his eyes is uncomfortable, too… vulnerable to match up with the caution Matthew has about him whenever Alfred is close. She has only seen him on horseback really or strutting about trying to reform the entire of the Entente all by his lonesome. An active young man with the zeal of youth, Father had said, with a wave of his hand. Bloody showboat, Matt had said with a shake of his head.
“Oh,” Alfred says, sagging a little.
Have you ever put all the art you relate to characters in one place? Especially Zee?
All the paintings plus some reference photos. Not all strictly what I think she looks like but vibes + style.
Can you pleaseeeeee do what you did for Zee (the pictures that you think relate to her) for Alfred?
A lot of these are even more vibes + style based than the Zee ones because there's so much fanart of him I'm mostly just looking for story references rather than face claims.

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i highly recommend for women and girls to be intellectually curious and difficult to shame
Thinking heavily about Arthur who, more than most people, is characterised by hunger. Hunger for power so that he can stand up for himself. Starved for touch because he denies vulnerability. A craving for the sea at his back. Literal physical hunger gnawing in the pit of his belly because there's always something to be done that's more important than eating. A constant need for more.
Hungry Arthur who, only in the last twenty years or so, has learned how to be full (with France's help).