Did Eris ever feel jealous of someone's relationship with their father? Who do you think that person was?
oh man i absolutely guarantee it. i think any male he's met with a good relationship with their father, even if that's only by comparison, he is jealous of—and as a youngling, i bet you those were the boys he menaced the most. i think that jealousy just feels to him like a really pervasive bitterness, especially while he's young, before he's accepted that beron is a terrible father. he sees a father look on his son fondly, or outwardly and enthusiastically praise his son, or literally just not strike out/rebuke his son where eris would have been taught a lesson, and eris just. experiences such irritation. such loathing. makes that boy's life a living hell at court. thinks the boy weak-willed, spineless, pathetic and soft—unfit for court life. probably even has the dissonant thought of—well, his father must not care for him like mine does me, since he didn't correct him, and then just seethes and seethes and seethes.
into adulthood, after he's accepted that beron is a terrible father/husband/ruler, after he's accepted that he will have to kill beron because of it, all of those feelings gets worse because he can recognize the jealousy for what it is. and he hates it so much. he hates that he wants after what someone else has and that it reveals weakness in him. he hates that if his father could just be a father, he wouldn't have to live this way. he hates that such satisfaction still courses through him to impress beron, short-lived but all-encompassing. why do others so easily get what he wants?
i'm trying to think if there's anyone already built into acotar he would have interacted with who has a canonically good relationship with their father, but tamlin's sucked, rhysand's sucked, cassian's sucked, azriel's sucked, feyre's sucked, mor's continues to suck. i could see tarquin or kallias having a good father—maybe especially tarquin, since he wasn't heir pre-utm, and the only reason he became heir was because his cousin's entire lineage was killed by amarantha as punishment. his father was (is?) probably involved in his personal life as well as his political life and, at least so it seems to eris, was gentle-handed. that would drive eris absolutely up the wall. especially because i headcanon eris tries very hard to cultivate a positive relationship between himself and summer to ease things when he becomes high lord, so by necessity, he'd be interfacing with nostrus pre-utm, and as a prince, tarquin and his father would potentially be around for any intercourt mingling.
