#cottia

So apparently my brain decided that what the Eagle of the Ninth really needed was post-canon bisexual chaos, polyamory, and a druid with a strawberry agenda.

🍓Polyamorous OT3 💘✨

Marcus/Esca/Cottia (MMF), slow burn, angst, fluff, and Romano-British historical nonsense in equal measure.

AO3 link –>

"[A] girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen, with a sharply pointed face that seemed all golden eyes in the shadow of her dark hood."

-The Eagle of the Ninth, Rosemary Sutcliff

Plus layers, fluffy layers of bunched up clothes clothes since it IS the Saturnalia games and she IS outside, and I would imagine Britain is quite cold during the month of December so...

1. I forgot how fucking virtuous Marcus is, especially for a son of imperial Rome. It feels good to be in his head! I forgot that he’s the one who makes the choice to buy Esca, and that he frees Esca before the journey.

2. I forgot that Esca’s moods aren’t always as harsh. Still a spicy Esca, just … a little less pepper, I guess.

3. I half forgot Cottia!! I remembered Cub, but not Cottia, not really. God, I forgot Marcus/Cottia was a thing. Why am I not digging it? I’m usually fine with het pairings (what can I say? I’m a bad queer). Is it that they don’t seem that close and I don’t really believe Marcus when he insists how much she means to him? Is it that the bond with Esca feels more real to me?

Or maybe it’s because Sutcliff is doing the ‘hard-as-flint, ice-cold queenly foreigner’ thing with her? I remember Ness from The Silver Branch was written like that. It’s not fair to call it a Not Like Other Girls thing, because Guinhamara is written like that and it’s framed as a Desirably Spiky Strange Woman thing. It’s not a vibe that I personally have a taste for, I find.

Cottia: Weak. I sleep with a gun under my pillow.

Marcus: You both are pathetic.

Liathan: OH yeah? What killer weapon do you sleep with, Mr.Badass?

Yay, thanks!

How I feel about this character

I adore Cottia! She’s tiny and fierce and loyal, and a great foil for the boys.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

I’ve always been fine with canonical Marcus/Cottia, but it was the BBC series that made me actively ship it. (It helps that the actress is certainly older than 13-14.) Their scenes together are so nice, especially the one where he takes his leave of her and gives her his military bracelet before going north. The way he caresses her hand while they talk is so lovely.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Again, Marcus and Cottia. I really love their bond. @pythionice and I have chatted about them quite a bit, and one of the things we talked about was that they have very similar background, in that they were both plucked out of their childhood homes after the death of a parent and sent to live with relatives who don’t understand them, and who they don’t get on with. That must certainly be something that helps bring them together. 

My unpopular opinion about this character

There seems to be this view floating around the fandom that Cottia only marries Marcus pretty much as an escape from her aunt and uncle, and I just don’t see that. She has too much integrity, to herself as well as her loved ones, and I can’t see her agreeing to marry anyone just as a means to an end like that. I can’t see her thinking that a marriage of convenience as anything but another cage. My view is simply that she loves Marcus and Esca, and wants to make her home with them.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I wish we could’ve got to see more of the dynamic between Cottia and Esca. They definitely seem to approve of each other, but we don’t get to see any interaction between them at first-hand. I’d love to know more about how they get along, not just as Britons living among Romans, but as Britons from different tribes. Imagine them getting into heated debates about obscure details of custom and religion, and Marcus just between them like “???”. XD