#eadmund

hiiii thanks for the ask!! :D im gonna do eadmund and leofflaed bc um. theyre fun :3 just for reference bc we only became mutuals recently & i dont talk abt them thag much i think this all takes place in like a hand-wavy historical fantasy setting based primarily off like 1000-1200 AD england but also i do what i want with the setting its not any specific historical kingdom and i do diverge from history as is most fun to me lol

also i use he/him for ead most of the time but also she/her sometimes um. ead is a cis woman but also her gender is (handwaves) born-king so uh. yeah. shes VERY butch & shes a cis woman & her gender is actually a different thing than that its complicated i can speak on it at length but the short version is this setting has 2 biological sexes and at least 4 biological genders . so! yeah 😭

3. What were their first impressions of each other? How does that compare to their impressions of each other now?

ok so for ead and leof they met as VERY small children because they were arranged to be married from, like, infancy, so their first impressions and their earliest remembered impressions are different lol. when they were like three or whatever and leof and her family moved into eadmund's family's castle, eadmund was incredibly grumpy and disliked leof because he didnt like the thought of new people in the castle, and leof was Also not thrilled because ead was so standoffish to her 😭 they dont remember this tho.

if you were to ask canon-era ead for a first impression of leof, he'd say something about her standing up for him to their shared tutors-- if you asked leof, she'd say something about how she resented being made to marry and not having a choice in it. she liked ead a lot both because they got along rlly well and because he would be easy to manipulate one day, but she resented the necessity of the manipulation because of the part where they got along well.

in canon, they're very close. leof admires ead's wit and, uh. can-do attitude (if she were sisyphus shed be convinced she could get the boulder to the top of the hill via tools and engineering, its just the kind of person she is). ead admired leof's refusal to take no for an answer and fierce insistence that she be treated as an equal at WORST if not a better at times depending on the context. the queen is expected to sit quietly by the king's side, but leof's voice is heard loud and clear on every issue she has a take on and ead really appreciates that. they both trust each other a lot-- very much an "if you're here i know everything will turn out fine and if it doesnt we can handle it" situation

21. What is their worst memory together?

Eadmund is an Anglo-Saxon masculine name composed of ead (wealth) and mund (protection), cognate with Norse Auðmundr, Icelandic Auðmundur, Faroese Eyðmundur, and Norwegian Odmund.

Variants:

Eadmund [Sharon Turner 1805 The History of the Anglo-Saxons, 1st edition, 4: 48].

Edmund [Heinrich Meidinger 1833 Vergleichendes etymologisches Wörterbuch der gothisch-teutonischen Mundarten, 1st edition, page 505].

Ædmund [Joseph Stevenson 1841 Liber Vitæ Ecclesiæ Dunelmensis, page 2].

Eædmund [Joseph Stevenson 1841 Liber Vitæ Ecclesiæ Dunelmensis, page 13].

Eadmundus [Joseph Stevenson 1841 Liber Vitæ Ecclesiæ Dunelmensis, page 14].

Ædmundus [Joseph Stevenson 1841 Liber Vitæ Ecclesiæ Dunelmensis, page 44].

Eádmund [Ludwig Ettmüller 1851 Vorda vealhstôd Engla and Seaxna, page 59].

Ēadmund [Henry Sweet 1886 The Oldest English Texts, page 560].

Edmund(us) [Elizabeth Withycombe 1945 The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, 1st edition, page 42].

Éadmund [Oswin Kinsey 2016 English Compound Names, 2nd edition, page 55].

Note:

Forms ending with -us are Latinizations.

Prototheme:

wealth = Ead- [Henry Bradley 1888 The Goths, page 369].

Deuterotheme:

mund = protection [Edward Freeman 1869 Old English History for Children, 1st edition, page xv].

Usage:

3. What were their first impressions of each other? How does that compare to their impressions of each other now?

okay so lore re: how they met is kind of murky to me now because i suspect they were lying when they first told me about it however!!! the first impressions were uh. well.😭 wulfwynn thought eadmund was a pompous rich fuckhead afraid to get his hands dirty, and ead thought wynn was REALLY IMPRESSIVE but like. in the way a racehorse that wins all the time is impressive. he was like wow :0 u r so good at killing i have GOT to get u in my guard (does not especially care if she wants to be in the guard)

now of course they have this like codependent polyamory thing going on wynns a living weapon & eads the only one allowed to wield her etc so id say present impressions r probably both somewhere along the lines of like. this person is part of my soul we regularly act as two arms of the same mission so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ if thats better or worse i could not tell you

11. Does one act as a narrative foil to the other? How so?

hmm. i actually am not sure! im leaning towards no just because that's not really something i've considered much but also absolutely yes in the sense that they're very much counterparts. a knight and her liege, a hawk and her falconer, a man and his dog. the sun and the moon. so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk if that rlly answers the question tho

26. How would these characters react to being stuck in a small room with each other?

hey everyone i was recently informed that eadwulf actually have a thing* going on with eads queen who i had previously not thought about At All and hadnt realized existed! so! everybody fall in love with her right neowwww her name is leofflaed (dear/beloved beauty) & her title is either aelfwynn (elf joy) or aelfgifu (elf gift) also ive determined aelfric & aelfwynn-or-gifu are actually bestowed at birth and in early childhood, respectively, wulfwynns the odd one out with aelfgar everyone just saw how its always the three of them and was like uh okay! well u also need a title.

*by "a thing" i do and dont mean poly bc ead and wynn were never going to get married and therefore never saw their thing as romantic its just. a thing. so ead and leof are married theyre romantic its v cute and wynn is Kind Of their third but its not romantic to any of them but its not less important. its basically queer platonic but they dont have that word bc i actually personally dislike it for fiction** so its a thing. but the point is theres polyamory afoot

** i like it fine for real life i just find that i prefer fictional relationships that defy all attempts at labeling. wynn is a personwho is near-desperate to devote and give up her life to someone, and shes picked ead and leof to be those someones. theres a major inheramt power imbalance here bc theyre her bosses at the end of the day but at the same time they trust her implicitly and would do anything she asked without question. they like her more than they like each other but also theyve been trusting ONLY each other since they were like 10. queerplatonic as a term for this whole thing wouldnt be inaccurate but imo it flattens the relationship and isnt even a term theyd use! granted they wouldnt say lesbian or poly either but imo they carry less explicit connotations as to what's going on in this relationship altho ofc everyone's different so whatever. the point is its not not a queerplatonic thing w wulfwynn. i think she may be aspec actually but id rather soeak more to her on that before i say anything definitive

also new loredrop ead is a she/he lesbian whose gender is that hes the king. similarly leofflaeds gender is that shes the queen and wulfwynn rlly doesnt gaf but was born a girl so shes rockin w that. to be clear king and queen are like specific genders in this society bestowed with the titles. also theyre never actually called king or queen just the titles. anyway point is new ead picrew