#cleopasgard

The pharaoh and the grand authority of morality

Oh You know They’re just neat

I don’t know what happened. One day they didn’t exist. Now they’re all I can think of anymore. They haunt me on the daily. They make me insane. And it all started with a single throwaway line in voice chat: she can fix him.

What’s appealing to me is the fact that Cleo is the immovable object that Pasgard wants to try to push over, but can’t. She’s the pharaoh. What’s he gonna do, keep harassing her citizens and just never get punished for it? Never face scorn and criticism? She’s just gonna yield to his whims and let him have whatever he lost when all power was taken from him when he was exiled from Zontopia?

No. He has two options: to keep being himself, keep charging at everything, keep refusing to examine his behaviour and eventually lose everything she offered him and end up in a cold cell alone, or to finally swallow his pride and allow her to do something nice for him for once, change his ways, and let himself be happy.

Cleo’s character is interesting because on the one hand, she’s the most powerful person in her kingdom, even counting as both a ruler and a deity, but she’s also so benevolent, so human, so nice and sweet and meek, and such a club. That in and of itself is already interesting, but combine that with Pasgard’s character, who is the human equivalent of a lump of coal, and you get such a fun interaction. Someone nice and sensitive with someone abrasive and determined. Someone who isn’t all that dominant but has the power to put anyone she wants in their place and someone who is a domineering jerk but has absolutely zero power and constantly meets the consequences of his own actions. Someone who has everything and who is happy and someone who has been rejected by everything he cares about and who believes that he is doomed.

“But Eli,” I hear from the void. “How is this romantic?”

Simple. It’s hot, therefore it gets to be romantic.

(A tangent: while Cleo is not a very dominant person, her status yields her exactly what she wants anyway. And with Pasgard having possibly been a prostitute before Halberd picked him up from the streets, he’s pretty familiar with letting others set the stage and use him however they please. He wants to act like he’s super dominant, but we all know who wears the pants in this relationship.)

I can’t emphasise enough how important it is that Pasgard is in a mourning process here. He had power in Zontopia—power he earned, that he worked hard to gain and maintain—that was taken from him as a punishment for doing exactly what was asked of him. He thought Halberd was his ally, maybe even his friend, but it was exactly Halberd who scapegoated him to earn his own freedom. The people got to express their hatred towards him: Zontopia’s monster! And then, he was discarded, left to die.

And along comes Cleo, who not only happily lets him inhabit her kingdom, but who also, despite everything, just keeps trying with him. Even at her most pissed off, she still hates to have to hurt him, and she still comes around eventually and considers that second chance despite having done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

She’s the first person who has ever not only tolerated him, but also cared about him. Maybe even liked him. Who the hell likes him? Him? Hateable Pasgard? 

It was only a matter of time before he got infatuated with her.

Not to mention on Cleo’s side! She thinks that in every Zontopian, there must be a shred of good, because they all stemmed from the force of sweet wholesomeness that is Zontik (she’s definitely not biased, nope). Then along comes this irredeemable project boy who is immune to every attempt she makes at letting him see how nice it is to be good. Every single one of her advisors tells her to put him in prison for the rest of his time or drop him back in the desert. Her citizens complain that he makes their lives miserable. She loses sleep over the conversations they have. 

But he’s interesting. Fascinating, even. She can’t look away from this trainwreck, not when he’s so fascinating, so self-absorbed that she wonders how Zontik even made this evil tantrum creature. But her nurturing side just can’t let go of the idea that there has to be a way to get him to be better. She has to be able to tame this beast. In a way, it’d be a personal failure if she didn’t find a way.

And then she finds him crying, one evening. Of course he instantly yells and refuses to even acknowledge that he is capable of feelings, but it was there: vulnerability. A sense of grief strong enough to make him, when he thought no one was around to notice it, physically let out his emotions. 

Pasgard is human. Huh. Who’d a thunk.

She wants to draw this out. She wants to fully explore this side, maybe use it as a way to finally get him to make his life better and accept that he’s no longer there. And she wants to take away that hurt. Because whether he likes it or not, he’s now one of her citizens, and it hurts her so immensely to see her citizens in pain. She’s not stupid: she knows that behind that search for power goes someone who has never had proper control and who now overcompensates. She knows that by making himself unloveable, he perhaps tries to justify why Halberd would’ve abandoned him. Maybe she’s wrong, but she just can’t believe that someone she saw so vulnerable is nothing more than an evil person.

Hard as her motives are to determine, she has a very human core in there: she has a sad little guy, and she wants to make this sad little guy less sad. 

And then she got pregnant and needed to make some really big choices in really little time. Interesting stuff, I do believe that Pasgard fainted when she told him the news. Not ready to be a dad at all, let alone a bastard’s father. But that lil tot changed him a lot. Really brought out the best in him.

That aside, that pale-ass tall bastard with his fuck-ass haircut, his permanent bitch face, and his lanky lean body looks so good next to Cleo’s happy-go-lucky plump sun-kissed stature. They can be one hell of a power couple once they’re on the same wavelength. In the real world, I’d imagine that the power imbalance is less there, but Pasgard is also less of a bitch and simply grows infatuated with Cleo to the point where he’ll act as this bodyguard-like thing, maybe even the adopted villain that’s been declawed and who’s now going through his redemption arc. I think they deserve some silliness. As a treat.

Also, their ship name can be telepathetic. If that ain't the name of the century, I wouldn't know what is.

Cleopas!!

In your big post on this ship, you mention a scene in which Cleo finds Pasgard crying, which leads to her to become even more determined to make him better and to relieve his sadness. Do you imagine this to basically be the point that she falls in love with him, or does that happen at some other time, and how would she relies that she has fallen in love?

What she feels isn't love, but pity and guilt. At least at this point in the timeline.

Cleo's insistence on giving Pasgard so many chances isn't necessarily born from just the goodness of her heart, but also from the fear of being wrong about Zontik and his kindness. If he created something so irredeemable, then what does that say about Zontik himself? She also has a hard time believing anyone could be fully bad, but Pasgard is undermining that belief every day. She holds on tight because she couldn't stand the reality she'd have to face if she were wrong about humanity as a whole.

What she feels when she finds Pasgard crying isn't love, but deep relief. She's found that human part of him, the crack he's so desperately been trying to hide in a moment of weakness. It feels good, because not only is her world view validated, but she also hates to hurt people, and now she may not be forced into giving Pasgard a tragic fate for how unfit he is in Cleondria.

It's also a first positive association she has with him. Even if he screams at her afterwards, he showed something nice. Something she can work with. Someone she didn't want as far away from her and her people as possible.

It didn't yet sow the seed for deeper feelings in her heart, but it did feed the arid soil, maybe give some hope that one day, something could grow there.

When she would've come to realise that she has feelings for him is still up in the air for me. I've yet to decide if she has sexual interest in him at this point, but definitely not romantic. But she definitely develops some romantic feelings for him before his second banishment. I'd say that she doesn't quite acknowledge them before his second banishment, but they are part of why his betrayal hurts so much. It's only when he comes back to Cleondria as a servant and he gets worse and then better that her interest in him is something she becomes aware of.

I'd say that they sleep around way before they ever acknowledge any feelings for each other. I can't believe these grown-ass adults are acting like high schoolers fooling around like mom and dad will get angry if they find out (and Cleo's council probably will!). But hey, when there's a tot on the way, you kinda have to make decisions about who's in your life to take care of that, and that's a pretty good reason to acknowledge that for the past two years, you've kind of yearned for the lowest person in your entire kingdom.

The realisation for her comes when she notices that she wants to spend more time with him and she's more lenient with him. She allows him to go see the donkeys even if he hasn't quite shown anything exceptional, and her heart soars when she sees the sparkles in his eyes when she tells him. She gifts him a filly. She takes him out on horseback to the prettier corners of her nation. She gives him more freedom to enjoy himself and roam outside of his working hours. And when she notices that he's becoming less extreme and he's capable of kindness, that might be when she realises that she's fallen for the guy she's been sleeping with for the past year (please get help girl).

She's actually pretty happy about this. Sees it as an exciting new avenue in her life. She very much has rose-tinted glasses on and thinks that the future is bright. Maybe they do have a little bit of a chance, if Pasgard's blackened heart is capable of such feelings.

Her advisors are terrified.

A similar question- How does Pasgard realize that he fell in love with her, and how does he react to this realization himself?

When he's knocked over the head by the fact that he no longer gets the satisfaction and relief he did from defying her, and that he's started to feel anxious and like a huge jerk over his actions.

For Pasgard to feel like a jerk, something truly incredible must've happened. He knows that he's not so pleasant to be around, but a jerk? When he's so justified in everything he does and the Grand Authority of Morality and Ethics is the most knowledgeable on how one should behave? For someone like him to doubt himself?

Oh, that's how you know it's bad.

Power is Pasgard's main motive. In Zontopia, as soon as Halberd offers him a higher position, he's on board. And in Cleondria, he's miserable over the fact that he's at the bottom of the hierarchy and that Cleo wisely refuses to offer him a position in her government. He acts out exactly because it offers him a chance to domineer over people. He's by all accounts a bully who has lost the power he needs to suppress people, and he despises this.

So when he does feel like a jerk, does feel something that has nothing to do with this power, that's bad. That's really bad and weird, and he's freaking out. He had a weird relationship with Halberd, but that was work-related. This is different. This is super weird. He never thought he'd fall for someone, let alone someone he's sure hates him to the core. He cane't feel like he can't be an ass to her. He can't respect her authority over him. He can't be in love with her. He doesn't stand a chance. She'll never reciprocate.

So all in all, he's quite miserable. Pushes it down, keeps trying to act like the jerk he's supposed to be, kicks himself in the leg when he sees he's disappointed Cleo. Screams at himself in his room at night to stop feeling like that this instant. And he remains oh so in denial of it, because he's Pasgard, bitch. He's the Grand Authority of Morality and Ethics. Fuck that! Fuck feeling like that! In fact, he doesn't feel like that at all! And that's the end of that!

To accept that he can love someone would be to swallow his pride and let himself be less than the most powerful man in the room at any given time. It will take a very long time before he's ready for that.

And the admission to himself is probably sober. Because by the time he's ready to admit that to himself, he's no longer that deplorable person who has no future no matter where he goes. He's no longer someone who is deeply offended by the idea of someone being his equal. He has grown, even if just by a little, but enough to allow himself to be vulnerable to someone and allow himself to maybe try out being less powerful than he feels safe to be.

Of course, he has a lot to work on, still. When the conversation comes, he's very deflective, doesn't wanna face it this head-on. But Cleo helps him. She always has. It's why he can admit it, both to her and to himself.