Baldwin Montclair

"Typical spoiled princess raised in the lap of luxury to chase status even among elevated peers. I didn't let Freyja or Verin doodle disproportionate sheep on my maps, did I? It is not Hugh or Godfrey I have piggybacks to despite being smelly and needing a bath, was it. Need you hear it and have the obvious affirmed anaticula?"

"Oh real mature Isabella running to your mommy you big baby!"

@chervbino // meme

So this was Rome's answer to the sacking of Paris' coven? A child. A vampire not even a decade old escorted by the mad queen? No, Rome took from them and Baldwin with presession would take from them. A son for a son old poems of vengeance sung, a vampire for a vampire.

Marius was his friend. Did they really think they could kill him and have no one respond? No one to claim revenge? So brazen to send the only thing left of Marius to France? France! To what? Taunt them with Amadeo rising in power on the other of a country?

It happened fast. It was a precise and meticulous strike. Amadeo...Armand whatever the name, deserved a hero of old, someone virtuous and kind but instead...he got a soldier. One that planned this strike to the milometer, fast, disciplined, using terrain familiar to him and his sisters but unfamiliar to those sworn to protect him.

"I was looking forward to enacting the decimation" A brutal punishment from Roman times were cowards and traitors were made to beat their comrade to death to teach them the penalties of gross misconduct. But only one of them survived the assault.

"Take her fangs. Take her fingers. If you survive the walk back to Rome on your broken legs tell Santino I will come for him. He claimed a Roman life, I will see him punished the old way — tied to the stake, beaten until his spine remembers what courage feels like"

The young...so very young vampire curled his hand around his wrist when he went to take a step, it caught him out, the cherubic vampire had not spoken or moved since they ransacked the carriage.There was a moment where he assessed the value of the fledgling, it was not enough for him to be made of Marius, there had to be value as a man...and found him worthy. "I am bringing him to Sept-Tours. To Philippe to ask for sanctuary to be granted, he has seen Rome's coven from the inside, it's members...their weaknesses. Objections-"

Verin shook her head, Freyja did as well. Baldwin lost his friend, what was this if not an extension of his loyalty to Marius, a fellow Roman.

His hand rested on Armand's as he lowered himself to speak so very lowly for the young vampire's ears only. "They took him from me too. And I will answer the loss of him." If Philippe permitted it. If not, Armand would have to answer it for him.

"Answer me as a man, has Rome broken your strength is there a fight left in you. I have no use for a broken vampire...If I cannot take revenge do you have the strength to make Santino answer for his crimes if I teach you how." Eyes of a commander, a man that needed merely to glance at a man and see his worth and measure it dressed him down, had he been broken or merely dented.

@alyafae // meme

"The Iron King just declared war."

Hugh...executed.

She deserved the truth, she deserved to know and she deserved to hear it from someone that would let her lash out or collapse in the privacy of Philippe's study. "Hugh is not coming back-by order of the French King he was burned at the stake." He handed her the letters, one after another, death by a million cuts.

"No- there will be time for weeping and mourning. I will give you ten minutes alone to handle this how ever you need to and after that you will go and fetch your weapons and we are going to retrieve his ashes. I will take you if you can handle containing your feelings and do this without seeking revenge on the way. We will bring his ashes home...and then we will gather as a family and decide our answer. Can you do this? Can you pull yourself together and be sharp and focussed or will you be a liability. Speak truth-" Baldwin too was hurt...but there would be time for mourning and it was not now.

It had to be them taking the journey, their parents needed to think and mourn.

"It is the burden you and I must carry for them. Before their minds fall to action we must have returned with his ashes so we can bury him. But I can do this alone if revenge taints your strong mind" It is a warning, she can come and be the one to come with him but only if she did only that. Arm herself so they could defend themselves if they needed to...but no action to be taken until Philippe commanded it.

@unbeleveable // meme

The words hit him like a blade he’s taken before—clean, inevitable, merciless.

For a long moment, Baldwin doesn’t speak. The surrounding room is too still: Philippe’s study, untouched since the day the world cracked open. Dust motes drift in the late light like ash. The scent of old parchment, old leather, old memory. Ysabeau stands where Philippe once stood, and Baldwin feels the shape of absence like a second presence in the room.

When he finally answers, his voice is low, roughened at the edges, as if dragged up from somewhere he keeps locked behind armour.

"Then what is left of us is what we choose to carry."

He steps closer—not touching her, never presuming—but close enough that she can feel the steadiness he forces into himself for her sake. His gaze is not the commander’s now, nor the patriarch’s. It is the son’s. The orphaned one.

"You speak of endings but Philippe… he made us instruments of continuance. Of duty. Of memory. He knew life stops. He built us so that meaning doesn’t."A breath. A fracture of something unguarded in his eyes.

"He is gone. Yes. And it should have killed us both."His jaw tightens, a soldier’s attempt to hold back the tide. "But it didn’t. And that is the part I cannot forgive him for."

The candle nearest him gutters, throwing his face into a shifting chiaroscuro—half shadow, half grief, all discipline. "You say the meaning of life is that it stops" Baldwin says, softer now, almost reverent. "Then the meaning of us is that we do not. We endure. We remember. We avenge. We protect what he loved, even when it breaks us."

He looks at her fully then, the way a son looks at the only other person who understands the shape of the wound they share.

"When we lost Hugh, Philippe felt like the only constant left except from you." There will never be softness to his words to her but to a man of duty, of hierarchy, to a son made heir she is the only one of what is meant to be the twin pillars of their family.

His hand reaches for her left shoulder slow and deliberate enough that she can avoid it if she chooses, if she did not then he would squeeze it gently.

@floripire // meme

Baldwin didn’t answer her at first.

The corridor is narrow, old stone and older shadows, the kind that swallow sound and make breath feel too loud. A draft moves through it like a warning. He stands with his back half‑turned, profile carved in cold light from a high, barred window—every inch the medieval predator he has always been, every inch the commander who has buried more wars than Floribeth has lived years.

When he finally speaks, it’s low. Controlled. Dangerous in its restraint.

"Farther than you’re prepared to see."

He turns fully then, and the air seems to tighten around them. His eyes—ancient , unblinking—search her face not for fear, but for resolve. For the steel Matthew saw in her. For the reason Baldwin hasn’t already sent her back to her dorm and locked her out of this entirely.

"You’re asking me about limits,”"he continues, stepping closer, boots silent on the stone. "I don’t have them. Not when it comes to my family. Not when it comes to Matthew."

His jaw flexes, the only sign of the fury simmering beneath the armour of discipline, Matthew is missing and Matthew does not disappear leaving Floribeth wondering if she had been abandoned.

"And not when it comes to you." His not quite....niece? Foster whatever? Matthew took her under his wing recently and the lost duckling meant something to his brother.

The torchlight flickers, catching on the sharp line of his cheekbone and the tenseness of his jaw , remnants of a life before immortality, before command, before he learned to bury softness under centuries of duty.

"If someone has taken him," Baldwin says, voice dropping to a quiet that feels like the moment before a blade is drawn, "I will tear apart every coven, every council chamber, every hidden nest from here to the Levant. I will burn down alliances. I will break ancient laws. I will make enemies of old friends."He leans in, just enough that she feels the cold gravity of him.

"What I need to know is how far you are willing to go. Because once we begin, Floribeth… there is no path back to the life you had."

Another breath. Another flicker of torchlight.

@endless-youth // meme

Baldwin doesn’t react immediately. He never does when Dorian throws something wicked and glitter‑sharp into the air. He just looks at him—slowly, like he’s turning a jewel to catch the light, or a blade to catch the edge.

The party hums around them, warm and bright. Baldwin feels like the one cold shadow in the room.

Then he steps closer, close enough that Dorian feels the shift in temperature, close enough that the words land for him alone.

@endless-youth // meme

Baldwin doesn’t laugh. He never laughs at Dorian’s little barbs, even when they amuse him. What he does instead is look—a slow, assessing turn of the head, the kind that makes the air around him feel suddenly colder, as though the chandeliers above have dimmed by a fraction.He steps closer, enough that Dorian can smell the faint trace of cedar and old paper on him, enough that the noise of the party blurs into a distant shimmer.

"Glass, is it?" he replied in a low voice. "Then he should be more careful where he stands. People who live in transparent rooms tend to forget how visible their fractures are." His gaze flicks toward the man in question—brief, surgical, dismissive—before returning to Dorian with far more interest than he ever grants the rest of the room. He stands next to a peacock but assessed a while ago that it is an armour Dorian wears, much like colour means danger in nature, he advertised with warning.

He does not judge them. Not morally, not personally. Baldwin understood better than most that some truths are dangerous to reveal. He spent centuries hiding parts of himself—his grief, his loyalties, his weaknesses, his desires. He knows what it means to survive by silence.

What he cannot stand is hypocrisy.

Baldwin’s loyalty to Ysabeau is one of the most complicated, quiet, and misunderstood loyalties in the entire de Clermont family. It is not the fierce, sacred, identity-defining loyalty he has for Philippe — nothing could be. But it is also not the cold, political loyalty he gives to the Congregation or the Knights.

It sits in a third category entirely:A loyalty born of respect, shared burden, and the strange intimacy of two people who loved the same man in utterly different ways.

Baldwin’s loyalty to Philippe isn’t loyalty in the ordinary sense. It’s not affection, not gratitude, not filial devotion. It is something older, harder, and far more binding:Baldwin’s loyalty to Philippe is the axis his entire identity rotates around.

And the tragedy is that Baldwin doesn’t even realise how absolute it is — because to him, it simply is. Like gravity.

Baldwin never saw himself as a victim of Philippe’s turning. Not for a single heartbeat but he also didn’t experience it as a soft, sentimental coronation. What he felt was something sharper, older, and far more Roman: He believed Philippe had chosen him — judged him worthy — and that this choice bound him to a lifetime of service, excellence, and obedience. A coronation made of iron, not gold.

To Baldwin Philippe was a demi-god come to bestow duty and purpose on him beyond the mortal plane...and in a way it was true.