#huntlynn

Hunter being in the commoner class and his family’s livelihood being hunting, he doesn’t have many options when he’s home to be as selective as someone like Ashlynn could be. He’d likely have access to basic staples and seasonal, local foods.

Ashlynn however, being royalty, no matter the fact her mother has her do all her own chores and work as practice, I don’t doubt her parents would facilitate her desired diet bc why would the deny their own daughter the food she wants? They may not live in a castle but they have many of the means for a cushy life. She can coast around the need for the staples with relative ease through finances.

Veganism is a privileged diet too, tbh. And I’m talking in general not about ppl who medically can only survive off the diet. There’s a level of money you need to not rely on staples that’ve been farmed and cultivated for generations that are usually the only readily available food around.

Hunter being a vegetarian meaning he still eats animal products that don’t actually harm animals and are a natural consequence of farming, is also how he would facilitate the protein and nutrient intake he can add to with vegetables, starch based foods like grain, rice and potato variants, along with nature foraging for things like berries, roots, herbs, nuts and the like. As well as honey would be their main sweetener, sugar has always been expensive.

Huntlynn is a forbidden romance because one: they’re from two different classes (royalty and commoner, no Hunter isn’t even any type of future duke or lord he’s literally just a commoner), and two: their stories were NEVER supposed to intermingle.

The Destiny system was supposed to keep them apart bc in monarchies if too many people marry and have kids ‘outside’ of the ‘approved’ pool of people, power actually spreads and becomes harder to funnel.

Their love is an inconvenience and threat to both systems, hence it’s forbidden nature. This can even be tied to racism as while we never get a clearer description of Hunter’s family, he’s at the least some sort of ambiguous vs almost all royalty being clearly fair haired and skinned and in eye colour.

You can make Huntlynn as queer and as different as you like but you cannot ignore the fact their forbidden nature is literally classism exemplified.

Like I imagine the story to actually be realised when they’re adults and some Royals even when they have the voice to back to their Destinies, and Rebels would still be choosing their own fates but that could still backfire with his clearly the economy and politics of this world depends on the fairytales happening on a regular basis. So someone like Hunter along with other Rebels may well have charges of some sort against them, warrants for their arrests even!

Ashlynn going back home and thinking she’ll be completing her Destiny, I’d imagine in this that Hunter told her to go because he couldn’t bare to see her in danger, they still love each other but it’s too dangerous. So, heartbroken but back at home, time passes by and everyone kind of realises her mother… she isn’t falling ill. There’s a worry that maybe the destinies are actually broken for good.

It’s okay! The royals would say, maybe everything just needs a restart! Perhaps the next generation will kickstart it again!

So arrangements are made to pair Ashlynn off in hopes that maybe her child will be the Cinderella of the next cycle.

Still in love with Hunter, wanting to stall until she can find a way to contact him, she requests suitors from all across the lands, particularly advantageous ones that would get her parents approval, but also get the word further. However, bigger parties mean more preparation, more money, more people, more time.

The bigger the party the easier someone could slip into the crowd after slipping through a side entrance. The bigger the party the more servers they need, the less people can recall faces.

She makes one final request of the event, that it be a masquerade, so she can ‘truly know their heart’ before anything else happens.

Raven of course would learn of it, and would see the look in Hunter’s eyes, wouldn’t even need to be asked before she’s cooking up a spell and thinking of how to dress him with some other helping hands.

I’m seeing this as happening well past Ever After High, they’re all adults, so Hunter’s also grown his hair back haha. Also this would make his father Lady Tremaine at this point too, would probably be hunting him down to make him complete his destiny.

Like, no one actually wanted to be an executioner in Europe majority of the time, but it was a job called for by the king and someone needed to fill it. But it would reduce your descendants to the same or worse jobs because the act of taking a life as a job was looked down upon despite executions still being held.

There’s a similar concept in Japan where your family was low if they were butchers or handled blood and, again, executioners, to the point the caste system is still alive and well because of it. Often times they can’t get approvals from a family to marry their daughter/son and they must ‘join’ the lower group to get married, keeping everyone stuck.

Which makes me think in terms of Ever After High, the Huntsmen of the stories must be thought to be something similar. They’re henchmen, they do dirty work, the only time they draw the line is when asked to kill a beautiful girl that we know each Huntsman would’ve known beforehand.

All this to say I don’t think. Huntsman could ever feasibly marry someone who had a Destiny, in fear of them ‘ruining’ the destiny line or something.

Making Hunter and Ashlynn’s relationship probably even more of a risk to the status quo.

Huntsmen are meant to live a life of shame for their loyalty to the evil Queen and get one chance at redemption by saving red riding hood, no one would really forgive them for the dirty work but at least they’d have done their job.