#deltarouxls

in deltarune, the points i believe that are most important for susie's character development are:

lancer being so genuine about how much he admires and cares about her and validates her when ralsei criticizes her

the care she feels for lancer and his worries about the fight with king being what convinces her to try being nicer

kris jumping in front of susie to defend her from king's attack, showing her that they care about her and makes her fully consider them a friend

the mutual agreement that she and ralsei come to about knowing when to fight and when to be nice, on her side coming from lancer, and on his side coming from the fact that king can't be reasoned with

rouxls, meanwhile, is nowhere near as sweet as lancer. he's selfish, he's rude, he's arrogant, he's a turncoat, just overall not very conducive to Susie Character Development. he himself is a bastion of Never Receiving Character Development!

that said, i do think rouxls and susie could bond in a way. rouxls sucks, but he CAN care, and i think if they spend a prolonged period of time together, that could happen. i don't think their initial team-up would be as genuine as with lancer, who actually admired her—rouxls probably would just like to have her for his benefit at first, and coaxes her to stay with worms and boxes. it works because susie loves both worms and boxes. there's a period of time where they'd bicker for a while i think, they definitely don't get close nearly as quick, but they warm up a bit to each other over time. while rouxls isn't as sincere about it, he would also validate her in the way that lancer does in order to earn her favor, and to susie who is not used to that she would cling to that immediately.

there's also them both Not Fitting The Mold, i guess you could say. susie does whatever she wants, she doesn't let other people define what she can and can't do. rouxls is actually quite similar, i'd say. he's the only darkner other than spamton to actively reject his 'intended purpose' as an object, being a tutorial provider. he goes out of his way to avoid this, and i could see them, like...having something to do with this. i dunno it's hard to explain without actually fully writing the interactions lol

i said earlier that rouxls is the bastion of Not Receiving Character Devlopment but i think he can have a little here, as a treat. just a bit...maybe he doesn't become completely allied with the fun gang, but rather Specifically cares about susie. kind of like fluttershy and discord (platonic)

the main result of susie's development is her learning to trust others and find the value in talking things out, which is prompted by lancer being terrified that the gang and king will kill each other. but rouxls wouldn't have a scene like that, so...it's possible, she may never actually get past doing nothing but fighting. when would she rejoin the party, even? and the ending of the chapter, with the king fight and him tricking the fun gang into surrendering, leading to the events that confirm kris's friendship with her and allows ralsei to admire susie's fighting side...with the queen swap, maybe none of that even happens. especially for ralsei...if he gets validated by the fact that things in the prophecy have changed after being nice, and there is never a scenario where doing so gets them hurt—how will he ever start seeing rude buster as badass?!?!?! especially when it comes to a susie that may never gain a reason to start wanting to act nice?

King and Queen swap with each other, and they do keep their names! King is the laptop and Queen is the Queen of Spades, though right now she's being referred to as the King. There is a reason for this. She's a girlking, if you will

For similar reasons, all the other kings become queens as well. This doesn't change anything about their characters (well. really, character) they're just women now. They can also have a little more character than just Diamonds, too, as a treat (the Queen of Clubs specifically I have an interaction planned for!).

Queen in this scenario also harbors some distaste to the Lightners that King had after the abandonment, that grows into bloodlust with the influence of the Fountain on her mind. She goes about it completely differently to King, though. Where King didn't seem to care much for his subjects, Queen makes making hers happy her main focus. She wants Kris and Susie dead, but when it comes to Darkners, she's even kinder than her canon counterpart! The fact that she isn't (and physically can't be) enslaving them really helps this. She isn't perfect by any means—she's still quite bossy and insistent on her own idea of what will bring them happiness rather than what they actually want (not everyone agrees with casting Lightners aside, after all), but she tries her best, so she's generally beloved by her people, until the Fountain makes her more intense.

This has an impact on quite a few things about the world. The other three queens are allowed to be more present, as mentioned before, because Queen never locks them up. In general, Queen doesn't really punish people, and the Prison is still just a Basement Which Just So Happens To Have A Lot Of Cages. Technically, there are still four queens—but Queen asserted herself so much as the one ruler, everyone just kind of let her. They still get to live in luxury and keep their treasures, with less work involved, so there wasn't much of a struggle to take power. There's Four Queens, but only one Ruler...only one GirlKing.

This also directly is the reason for the Rouxls<-->Lancer swap! Queen is a much more attentive parent than King, and rather than sending him to do her dirty work for her, while the Lightners are around she prefers to keep him locked down at home, where she knows he's safe. I imagine he went home just a little before Ralsei and Kris entered the Kingdom. The lack of pressure for him to be 'the bad guy' is why some signs are him actually trying to be helpful. And because of her leniency, he's also a little more inclined to rebellion (well...with encouragement from a Certain Source). He digs holes all over the maze, because he doesn't have to be afraid of making a mess. He isn't supposed to eat the Dark Candy, he does, and then learns why he isn't supposed to. Though, also because of this, he's a little more cowardly when it comes to being faced with actually scary things, because he hasn't become used to his own parent threatening him this time.

Rouxls's side of it comes from Queen not firing people. Everyone still keeps their jobs, so the puzzle guys are still the puzzle guys, and Rouxls Kaard is still the tutorial guy. This AU also operates under the assumption that Rouxls is the former boss of the Great Board (because like. he is) and so he is still in charge there, too. And Rouxls? He doesn't want to be the tutorial guy. He is going to so many lengths to not be the tutorial guy. Without being given second-in-command position by the Queen herself he has to go out of his way in order to earn her favor, which will get him what he wants, whatever that is, he thinks. Somehow. His plan is very well-thought out, for sure. This all encourages him to take the opportunity to oppose the Lightners when they show up.

Oh, and I think it's also important, that Queen is similarly ignorant to the grander scheme of things like in-game. She has not been told the Prophecy. There are some things she knows...but she doesn't have the full extent of King's knowledge. She's aware that there's information she doesn't have, though, and finding out this information is one of her main goals.

As for King...I have less on him, since I'm mostly focused on Chapter 1 right now with only some concepts for the others, but I do have basics about him.

I'm taking Universal Mother Theory and putting it on him. He's the Universal Father now. Which makes the contrast between his dynamics with the characters almost funny. Because with Kris and Noelle, he's super friendly and caring towards them...but to literally anyone else, he's like. The Worst. And I guess he wouldn't be as bad as canon, maybe—since he'd still care about the Lightners by default, as he hasn't been abandoned by them, but perhaps more...expecting, of them. I think, like. He looks down on them. He wants them to meet what his expectation for them is...it's a little hard to explain in a way that makes sense without the full context, haha. It'd be especially present in his dynamic with Berdly. Obviously, we don't know what his dad would be like, or if he even has one. I'm just rolling with the assumption that whatever other parental figure he has would be the kind to only acknowledge him if he does well, given his whole complex, and is otherwise incredibly neglectful. Just to differentiate a bit from Queen. King never fails to be hateable, sorry...he does have some redeeming qualities, but he's still King, and the horrible fatherness still shines through I'm afraid...

He's not too popular among the residents either! Though it's not like they're powerful enough to overthrow him, it allows characters other than him to be popular figures in the Cyber World. Junkan can keep Tenna's desperate cling to his lasting fame through sheer refusal to be left behind. He's washed-up, but people hate King so much, he's still able to stay somewhat relevant alongside him. I mean, before the Fountain opened, maybe he wasn't as bad, like Queen, and had his fans. But he still doesn't retain as much likeability as her, and his cruelty being upped after the Fountain and outage does not do his popularity any favors. And while nobody's powerful enough to overthrow him yet...there is a certain power strip who remembers the time before the King even arrived who'd like to see the day that bugger was told what for.