#thequeenofthewinter

Monkshood: Does Rook ever think about their own death?

Honestly?? No lol. 

Magdalena has #been through it and has more than a little bit of survivor's guilt; she kind of goes through life not caring whether she lives or dies. She pushes herself to help others quite foolhardily, because her life is worthless anyway, might as well help someone with it? She puts her whole Russy into helping slaves, and then stopping Solas and then The Evanuris because Why Not, maybe it’ll all mean something then, a last gasp in the plastic bag of her long, miserable life. 

When Emmrich told her of his fear of dying, internally, she was probably like: why :/ do you not crave the reprieve of death wtf :/ 

But then stupid sexy perfect Emmrich makes her realize life is worth living; and you don’t have to be weighed down and haunted by the past or whatever 🙄💕

Morning Glory: What is something Rook’s partners could do to make them melt romantically?

Literally? Anything. Emmrich showed her one ☝️ ounce of kindness and Mags was like 

“Ew gross wtf. Get away from me. I’ll both kill and die for you btw” 

But specifically she’s a words of affirmation girly, reassurances and loving words were things she Did Not have for the vast majority of her life, and she still gets so overwhelmed by them that her insides tingle and she has to deflect with humor. 

She loooves when Emmrich writes her beautiful, poetic, adoring notes, because she can blush and gush in private; and read them over and over again in a covetous, gluttonous way, trying to soak up the admiration and warm feelings that are so foreign to her.

🖊 When he joined the Thieves Guild, Kieran became fast friends with Sapphire. He latched onto her because she reminded him of his older sister, and though she'd never admit it she quickly began to see him as a brother as well. They were each other's rock through his entire time with the Guild, and really his only regret regarding everything he did ten years prior (breaking into the vault, stealing what he could carry of the Guild's valuables, dumping Mercer's most prized possession into the canal) is that he didn't have time to speak to her and possibly bring her along. Growing up an orphan, raised by the Thieves Guild and losing her only friend who she saw as a brother is what gets us grumpy, backstabby Sapphire in game, so the headcanon goes. Eventually Kieran returns to Riften while looking for Esbern, having ignored his dragonborn blood long enough, and that means dealing with Sapphire again.

bonus: eons ago, I wrote about the two of them meeting again. I have plans to revamp and then repost my old writing on this here blog, but if you'd like a peek at the ole 1.0 version, it's here

🖊 Sweetroll named herself Sweetroll because she has absolutely no idea who she is, much less what her real name might be. She woke up in an island full of falmer with absolutely no memories, not even the most basic ones. Most things felt familiar, but she could not tell what they were called, nor what they were for, which led to some unusual situations such as biting into a septim, drinking a vial of mild poison, drinking an entire bottle of wine and passing out, and just in general ingesting a lot of strange ingredients because alone in an island with no memories made her go a little toddler mode. She finds she can still read, however, and becomes obsessed with books from that point forward. It is through books she relearns how society works, basically, but she still messes up quite a bit in social contexts. The first person who asks her name is Blaise, the boy in the Solitude Stables, and he tells her it's super cool that she doesn't remember, because that means she gets to pick a name. He says if he could, he'd name himself after something he likes - and sweet rolls are her favorite thing, so why not? Also no one's really sure what she is. Some people guess short nord, others imperial, but she's really good with magic so maybe breton? Really hard to tell. She'd hoped something about her appearance would stand out but really she is quite Generic Looking and it's no help at all.

🖊 Murien is a breton with a bit of a peculiar backstory. She has no idea who her birth parents were, nor where she came from; as an infant, she washed ashore near Dawnstar, neatly bundled and though cold, she was perfectly healthy. She was adopted by the nord couple who found her, and she was named Murien, 'born of the sea'. 'Sunbreaker' was a nickname given to her around the same time because she had very unusual, warm yellow eyes. As she grew, she decided to keep it as a last name. She left Skyrim for Cyrodiil when she was around 5, and grew up in the Imperial City. An incredibly boring life with parents who, as it turns out, were not ready to be parents and grew worse as time went on. She began working as a private tutor for increasingly posh families at 17, and also helped out with her father's blacksmithing business. By the time she turned 20, she could barely stand them both, but having grown up sheltered, lonely and manipulated, she stayed. At 25 she was the sole provider for the family, her parents' money being diverted to other ventures. Things reach a breaking point on her 28th birthday, when she receives a letter from her estranged maternal grandmother, who still lived in Dawnstar. As she makes it known that she would like to visit, a huge fight ensues, and later she books passage with a caravan going towards Bruma, leaving in the middle of the night with little else other than the clothes on her back and what little coin she could scavenge.

🖊 Rannadros' epithet, 'the Cursed', has quite a bit of history behind it. The man is, indeed, cursed, in the literal sense of the word. As a young young lad, Ranni, a nord, got incredibly drunk and woke up at the foot of a statue his own father, a dunmer, had built for Azura. He comes to find out that whatever it is he has done that night, she took it personally. Azura looked at this man and said fuck him specifically for what he's said, cursed him to slowly take the form of a dremora. He has no idea why, considering the dremora are not part of her domain, and he likely will never find out. All he knows is that after severe pain lasting over many days he woke up bigger than he was when he went to sleep and with a pair of horns that were both uncomfortable and terrifying to the average citizen. He tried apologizing, praying, going to a priest - nothing. He quickly became an outcast, lost his job, lost his friends, and even his family began stepping away from him. So he did what he would always do when life got hard: he drank. Twice as much as he did that night, a party that extended over another full day when he was invited by a shady man to find this place where wine ran like a river. When he finally came to, he was at Azura's feet again, but this time with a different name dancing on his lips: Sanguine. Sanguine, who found the whole thing hilarious and Rannadros too much of a snack to waste away being shunned by polite society. And so he bestows his blessing upon him: he could not revert Azura's curse, but he could at least slow it down and make it so others found him charming instead of terrifying. An already charismatic, confident Ranni turned the charm up to eleven and ventured forth to get his life back. And that is precisely what he did.