#*twindom

wtf that's such high praise wow thank you so much:') i'm glad you're enjoying<3 all part of my master plan to pyramid scheme style expand the azris fandom with cool peeps

i think for the nc, ophelia rejecting the bond would be like. probably almost tantamount to a declaration of war—or at least a positioning of the autumn court as a truly hostile entity to them. i know that sounds dramatic, but feysand 1) romanticize the mating bond because of their own experience with it and 2) love nyx and want him to be happy and whole. if his mate rejects him, he'll never know that sense of completeness they know; he'll go through life with a hole in his heart. they would full stop blame eris for it, too. he must have been in her ear the whole time; they can't believe he couldn't put aside his hostility and cruelty to let his daughter be happy. honestly ... no matter how pissed eris would be to be tied permanently to the night court, i don't think he'd let his daughter reject the bond outright because of how volatile the situation would become. if anything, if ophelia really had no interest whatsoever and was putting her foot down and refusing, he would turn it into a kick the can down the road type of deal. let the nc and nyx cling to their hope that she'll come around eventually. and like. eris doesn't want her to live her life with a hole in her heart either. so he'll probably be hoping for her to come around too.

hooooo boy okay i will say — his children are never without some form of supervision. probably like ever in their lives, even when they think they are, even when they’re older and can fend for themselves. eris is near-cripplingly paranoid and has plenty of reason to be. (even if he at some point somehow got to a place in his life where he didn’t have reason to be paranoid, he would never be able to stifle those instincts.) so at the very least, the twins would have personal guards nearby, prepared to sacrifice their lives and/or slaughter an entire room full of younglings if the need arose lolol

but this could still be the first time eris doesn’t have eyes on them himself at a revel! and that would make him real antsy. you will never have seen someone better at pantomiming an engaged conversationalist than eris holding court with the snakes of his nobility while their viperous little hatchlings are slithering about his children.

i feel like at this age — i’m picturing them as the fae equivalent of pre-teens maybe? — his fears are pretty much the same for both. he’s concerned that they won’t be able to hold their own if (when) the conversation turns nasty — or not even that they can’t hold their own but that whatever is said will nestle into their minds and take root. (be that something as minor as adolescent insecurities or as major as turning against him.) there’s also the concern of these other younglings being tasked by their parents with wooing his children, making inroads for betrothals, taking advantage of their youth, etc.

lmfao yeah i kinda put my whole pussy into building out girl!twin and just left boy!twin in the dust huh?? whoops

okay so usually i love fictional children challenging their parents by being narrative foils or just otherwise being rebellious in some way that encourages character growth in their parent. but i think the biggest challenge for eris would be for boy!twin to be just like him. not only in innate disposition — but boy!twin actively modeling himself after eris because he idolizes him so much. very much how eris felt about beron as a youngling, except where eris earned beron’s disappointment because nothing he did could fully meet beron’s expectations, i think boy!twin doing this just freaks eris the fuck out because — eris is a lot like beron, even though he doesn’t want to be! to eris, he is exclusively his father’s creature, and that means his son will be too. (even though like … eris is more than that. he still wouldn’t be able to see any of it.)

so young boy!twin carries himself a lot like eris. he’ll (very conspicuously but in that way kids try not to be) look over to his dad and angle his head the same way, cross his legs the same way, turn the corners of his mouth down the same way. one day eris’s partner says smth about some noble lady at dinner and boy!twin, cutting neatly into his roast the way his daddy does, snorts and says, “that’s because she’s a vacuous cunt.” (eris — who was about to say much the same — can only stare. and ignore the look his partner is giving him. which is what boy!twin is doing with the look girl!twin is giving him.) boy!twin also probably reacts really poorly to hearing anything bad about eris — to hearing anything bad about his family at all, but especially eris. honestly, i kinda feel like where girl!twin sees and accepts eris pretty easily for what he is, flaws and all, boy!twin is less willing to call a spade a spade. even terrible things eris does are good because his father is the one doing them, and his father is high lord, and his father is great.

i agree it would not be an easy or necessarily healthy father-child dynamic :( it would not be free of the constraints of all the other relationships he's had in his life. he as a person is inextricably political. he has never not been an heir or a high lord. he has never, ever been able to have a relationship outside of those truths, and he never will be. he cannot shirk his duties — not even for his children.

but he would try his best, for them. he would learn, through trial and error, how to love them and how best to show it. he would want better for them than he had, even if he didn't know exactly what that looked like, even if he stumbled and tripped and fucked up and hated himself for each instance. plus his bone-deep disgust with how beron-like he already is would make him rage against being like beron as a father. so i think he would fs play the mind games to prepare them for the world, but he would do so with their core family inside of that, instead of in a way that isolates his kids or turns them against each other. you can't trust anyone — except us, except your sibling and your parents. we have your best interests at heart, even though nobody else does. because that was what he always wanted and never had growing up. just someone to be in his corner, someone he knew he could turn to when things became too hard for him. he would always want to be that, at the very least, for his children.

yeah!!! i love that too because in doing what he thinks will help girl!twin, he effectively ensures that boy!twin has this small chip-on-his-shoulder reason to want to prove himself all the more. to want to prove himself better than girl!twin. he's heir, but she's firstborn. or even just little childhood / adolescent arguments of her being like i'm older! i get to do xyz first! and him being like doesn't matter. the land chose me, not you, remember? i get to do xyz first! and her just like internally shutting down but refusing to let it show how bad that hurt.

it's all so crunchy to think about. because like eris does not ... actually really know what will help her. he never had a sister of his own to know how a brother might treat a sister. he also never had to question himself, always had assuredness in his status heir, even when lucien came along and everyone who wasn't as smart or informed as him sensed the heir-ness in lucien and thought that was a challenge to him, even when he fed into it so that no one began to question why two sons of autumn could have such an aura about them. so he tries to help with this little lie, and there are still unforeseen outcomes of it that he could not account for. he learns so quick that his children are wild variabilities beyond what he ever could have prepared for because — he can't just manipulate or coerce or threaten them into what he wants them to be like he could with anyone else, because he can't be like his father. and that is stressful for him!!! there is never an unquestionably Correct move to be made.