Playpension

I need him to be torn apart and reworked and stitched up and thrown away by his bosses only for them to look at him and ask "why didn't you fix this?"

I need nations to not have known him until after the peace treaties were signed, keeping him the unknown evil that he was designed to be.

I need for him to be tired, injured, more corpse-like than not but in a way a rabid dog is; biting, scratching, resisting any hand that comes too close.

I need his behavior to be disturbing to look at: stubbornly trying to get up when fataly injured and slipping on his own blood, biting his way through rope and using bones from the fallen as a weapon.

I need him to be a shadow: he's the bloody handprint dragged across the wall leading u towards the basement, he's the feral eyes behind the gasmask, he's the figure obscured by the smoke and ash.

Need him to bury his hand in his hair and hold his head tight to his chest.

Need him to rest his head on top of Germany's.

Need for him to let Germany hold him like his life depends on it.

Don't have anything to say, other than this is 100% what Ludwig listens to while on route to another world meeting.

Germany's government preferred Prussia over Ludwig. Germany in turn hates his government. All of it, past and present, always. He has never liked it, they have never liked him. They've always wanted Prussia, not him. He was the necessary evil.

Poland is a girly pop badass. Motherfucker will disembowel you and he will do it in a pink frilly dress while listening to Sabrina Carpenter. No there's nothing you can do about it. He can and absolutely could destroy everyone if he ever really wanted to.

Italy is a manipulative liar, he is the embodiment of a performative male man pickme and all while having Bible verses in his bio and a cross over his bed. He would absolutely give his cat into a shelter if it meant he'd get you into bed.

Both America and Germany are the GenZ of nations and behave like it more often than people realize.

Canada is way more scary than people give him credit for. He very similar to Russia, in more ways than one. The only thing that really puts him apart is that he knows how to show affection and care for others in a way that doesn't send them ontop of the next tree.

I may or may not be preparing to write a little something...

I personally think that he'd try to put up with everything and just... exist. Like he doesn't really do anything but in a quiet resistance kind of way, if you get what I mean?

He doesn't actively participate in any resistance movements but he also doesn't do anything against them. He doesn't rat anyone out whether they be gay, Jewish, hiding people hunted down by the government, resistance members, defectors, or even escaped POWs. Mainly because in his head they're still his people or at least he understands their reasoning (and is kinda envious). I do see him protecting his own people more than he would do, let's say a Soviet soldier or maybe even a Ukrainian civilian but at the same time I don't see him harming them either.

I feel like Ludwig would experience everything like he's in a fever dream. He's constantly at a stand still, being pulled in all directions and compressed from all sides. He's constantly being manipulated by his government and he low-key wants to believe them because that's the path of least resistance but he can't. Like on one hand he wants to believe in the Dolchstoßlegende but on the other he was too close to his soldiers to believe that.

He kinda resigns himself to the front and into his role as soldier and nation because he can't deal with making any other choice. He hides away under canon fire and smoke because he fears Hitlers insistence on his cooperation and the things he wants him to do. He views every trip home as a punishment rather than a vacation. He is literally fleeing to the front lines as much as he can.

He at first wanted to resist going to Poland because he wasn't convinced that he'd been attacked but then Hitler started to be insist he'd join the SS for " the public's sake" and that he should be more active in "healing" his nation. After Poland he didn't want to face him again and so he pulled some strings and pretty much immediately joined the offensive of Belgium. Shortly after taking France he was ordered home and into the Reichstag. (Don't know if you want me to elaborate on the whole timeline, if so tell me) But anyway in the end that didn't safe him or them either.

He doesn't want any of his people to be hurt but protecting them in any meaningful way puts him on the chopping board and even worse them as well. He tried to find a way but the best he could do was... well doing nothing.

So, he just let's them perform experiments on him because of some semblance of hope that it will somehow benefit his people and keep them from being the lab rats instead. In someway he has completely stopped seeing himself as human because otherwise he wouldn't be able to handle what was happening without going even more insane. Because it is, in his mind, "okay" to SA some higher being to create a strong army, it doesn't matter that he'd told them that that wouldn't work beforehand, because he thinks it is okay to test those chemicals on something that isn't human rather than letting them test on his injured soldiers (again).

Whenever he can't flee to the front he tries to seek comfort in his people. Attending bars, visiting old WW1 comrades, getting completely wasted with his friends. He tries to get away from everything by just ignoring that the war is even going on, he avoids any and all uniforms as much as he can, frequenting underground bars rather than the huge popular ones, he goes to the half abandoned shipyard rather than the park. And he avoids his father, he couldn't face him since the treaty of Versailles and he can face him even less now.

He often pretends that this is just some sick and twisted conspiracy against him by the allies, while being completely aware that that is not true. He faults France for his people being killed just... everywhere. He blames England for all the experiments that he and his people are being put through. He blames Russia for the dwindling food supply and he blames America (and France) for the insurmountable debt. All in some desperate attempt to not hate himself for everything because he can't blame his people, he just can't.

Does that kinda answer your question? I slipped into something of a rant again, I'm sorry. But I have so many lined up regarding Ludwig and some others.

Like on the one hand like I explained he can't harm his own people. Which might be great for his conscience but a bad for his overall health considering his boss wanted him to do exactly that.

Also the fact that the Nazis knew he was a nation aka basically a soldier who (at least in their eyes) doesn't need as much food, sleep, or even medical supplies because he comes back after dying. That fact alone kinda gives me a bad vibe, but also because they know that Ludwig can't do anything against them. Poland and France might hide in the underground (at least in my heascanons to yk lead the resistance) and later take revenge but Ludwig can't do that. They have something close to a god in their midst, but most importantly a god that can't take his revenge because he can't hurt them. I mean that's just such an invitation for Nazi scientists to play around and find out. Cough Lebensborn project etc. Cough. And they can mask it so well as Ludwig's duty ,as the nation, to take part in despite the inhumane aspects of their tests.

And even further as I already stated they can kinda just not give him supplies such as food or bandages etc. because (in their eyes) he can't die. Of course he "dies" and yes he's in pain and disorienting afterwards but who cares as long as he gets back up? Who gives a hoot if his health is slowly but surely deteriorating when he will wake up anyway? I say this because I have the feeling that fascists will not see him as a person and therefore not treat him as one. And Ludwig, even more so than Prussia, seems like the one who's more likely to put up with that and maybe even be inclined to belive it.

But the dehumanization isn't where I'm gonna stop his torment, that'd be boring. No. Again he can't kill his own people, aka he can't kill his Jewish, gay, disabled, etc population. Which I think is not going to sit right with the Nazis as, as we all know, they didn't think that they were German. So we have about two possibilities at this point. Either they will put Ludwig in a "victim" role and tell him that his "weakness" comes from them and that ones enough of them are gone he will be "purer" and able to carry out his "duty" or they will believe him to be "weak-minded" or even collaborating with them which historically did not end well. Both situations are horrendous for Ludwig, either because of his mental anguish or because of his physical anguish.

But that's still not all, as while the Nazis may have idealized him in their weird twisted way because... look at him , he clearly, once again, disappointed them in not being "strong" enough to take over Europe. A disappointment that as we can see through the Nero decree was taken very seriously. I personally see the Nero decree as a sort of death penalty for Ludwig as it would've been for the German people and that leads me to belive that they somehow made him out to be a traitor in the last few weeks or days of the war. For example they could've blamed him the same way they blamed the Jewish soldiers for their defeat in WW1 or perhaps they went the Rommel route and accused him of knowing about assassination plans (which in my headcanon is true...) but either way I'm not seeing Ludwig coming out of this war without a bullet in his head.

And all of this is without them finding out about his queerness.

Like, ok, they can't die... At least not permanently... At least as long as their country still exists. (Except, of course, if you're Prussia.)

But like, is there a limit? How do they come back, for example, from being burned? Do their ashes just reassemble themselves? How long does it take? What if their parts are spread throughout?

I mean, what if there is nothing left of them? Do they just pop back up?

Going further, how does medical care look like for them? It seems to be implied that they can get some medical care and that they normally heal fairly quickly. But are there doctors specifying in nations or can they just go to the normal physician?

But then... they get sick when their economy tanks... so how does a normal doctor help with that? Does that effect their healing too?

And on that note, does everything heal 'right' every time or can there be errors? I mean some of them have scars... so not all wounds heal perfectly. (For example Russia's neck scar.) Or is that more of a mental thing?

But that would again imply that a nations mental state doesn't heal 'right' all the time. Which implies a huge abundance of PTSD and the like in nations.

Are there therapists specialized in nations and their psychology, like there are for children and criminals?

And going back to physical healing. If they just heal quickly, like humans would, how many nations had to live with deformities, like wrongly healed femurs or ribs?

Give me answeres!!!

North Italy: immediately feminizes his voice when he feels threatened.

Japan: disappears into his own worlds whenever someone talks to him with more than a 5% rate of intimacy.

Germany: disassociates to the point where sometimes he just runs on autopilot and forgets that he is an actual person, with feelings, needs etc.

Prussia: cannot for the life of him leave a spelling mistake be once he spots it. Like he will go full drill Sargent until either you fixed that apostrophe or he did it for you.

Like they can tune it out, for most of the day but randomly or whenever they pay attention they can hear the heartbeat of their people around them.

Which is a really useful ability when you need to figure out who is "save" to be around and who isn't (and where they are), especially in the early years of nationhood. Kind of like the Fall-Reflex of babies if that makes sense?

But you know what I find even better?

Germany creating himself. Him being born of revolution (1848), of fire and sheer will. Him ready to tear down the world in order to become his own nation. Fighting tooth and nail to take the place of his predecessors.

And one day, they both meet on the battlefield, Germany ready to tear Prussia down limp for limp. Prussia ready to do the same, after all no one takes his land from him alive.

Prussia wins.

Germanys want for democracy, freedom, and justice are locked away just as he is. Everyone is waiting for him to die as Prussia hunts down the rest of the revolutionaries.

But he doesn't. The will of his people is too strong, demanding for Germany to survive, waiting for him to rise again.

And Prussia?

Does he kill him? Does he finish the job?

No.

He is impressed by the fighting spirit of this young ,not yet, nation. He respects how he has faught tooth and nail for a place in this world.

And so after a lot of deliberation and fighting, he takes on Germany as his own, trying his best to break the spirit of socialism and democracy within him. He recognizes the potential. He sees the potential benefit for himself.

He does everything to mold this boy into a soldier. A nation, while independent, doing what he says when he says it.

The boys debut as a nation? It is not the ball when the Prussian king now too rules over Germany as Kaiser, not really no.

Many, especially France and England see through the charade. Call him out on it. Say that he is using a nation as means to gain power for himself.

They are not wrong yet they too are not right.

Many years later, the boys real debut comes along. A war. A world war.

It doesn't go as they had expected. It is longer, it more brutal than they had thought. It is nothing like any war had been before. There are so many deaths.

And somewhere doing all that, Prussia experiences a new emotion. Something he has never before felt for another nation.

Worry.

Has one of the dogs eaten him?

Has Italy gotten jealous?

Was he used as means to start a fire?

Or was he just a hallucination of Germany as he was lost in the forest?

Like sure Italy can be an idiot sometimes but have they ever considered that some if not most of it is intentional? He knows how to shoot, he knows how to kill, he has down both canonically. He just prefers not to.He is not helpless. He is a pacifist.

It's the same with America. He is not helpless and definitely not stupid. Most of the time he is making fun of everyone else and no one notices because of the assumption that he is stupid. He knows what he is doing.

Portraying either of these two as stupid, bumbling idiots waters down their characters to basically nothing.

Like think of them in a cemetery, looking around knowing that all those gravestones were a story they outlived or even them seeing, or even holding a child, knowing full well that they will inevitably see their funeral.

And the guilt of raging war against someone, knowing that the only certain survivor will be you.