#wthcdau

I was originally just going to copy and paste our notes for you guys but then I opened the doc and remembered that it looked like this

and decided maybe it was best to write up an intelligible summary for the public instead loL

so! for recap, the “what the hair canon divergence au,” or wthcdau, is a story my sister and I came up with a year or two ago. It’s based on the what-if that varian’s boilers didn't blow up in the first episode, the spectrometric press didn’t get crushed, and rapunzel got to read the results of the tests. The entire plot line diverges from there, so buckle up :D

rapunzel reads the test results, and it tells about her connection to the black rocks and the source of them in the dark kingdom. remember that this is basically the first time any of them are hearing any of this information, so theyre all kinda like "???" varian tells them to come back in a few weeks so he has time to research more for them. rapunzel, eugene, and cass head back to corona with the results of the test.

back home, rapunzel shows the test results to king frederic! to her shock and horror, he immediately rips the paper into shreds and then dismisses her to go do some random task. obviously, this bizarre reaction from her dad really bothers rapunzel, and she's determined to get to the bottom of it. the next day, she tells cass and eugene that they're going back to varian.

when they get there, varian's like, "okay, so you're a bit early, so i dont have your answers. but~ i do have something that might help us." and he reveals that he's been doing some top-tier snooping, found his dad's old dark kingdom chest, and found the piece of the incantations scroll.

while he's explaining his theories, quirin comes in and is like, "...sooo what's going on here?" varian panics and tries to carefully deflect with a very vague explanation about the black rocks, but unfortunately that happens to be the exact thing that catches quirin's interest. he decides he needs an audience with the king. rapunzel's like, "yeah, we can arrange one—" and quirin goes "no. right now." and theyre all like "oh— oh okay—" so quirin goes outside and hitches up the wagon. he sternly tells varian to stay home and varian politely ignores that suggestion and sneaks into the back of the wagon with the others.

they arrive. quirin does an exhausted dad sigh when he finds varian but lets it go. rapunzel lets them all into the castle, and then there's this silly little bit with nigel where he tries to stop quirin ("the king is busy right now!! he is not accepting audiences!") but quirin just barrels past him. and then a silly little bit with old lady crowley where she's cleaning the throne room, sees everyone marching in, senses trouble, and goes, "im on my lunch anyway" and floats ominously out of the room loL.

quirin and frederic greet each other. quirin attempts to talk about the issue with the black rocks and rapunzel's hair, but frederic plays dumb and pretends he has no idea what quirin is talking about. at this point, we get a fabulous quirin and frederic duet, arguing about the black rocks in ~song form~

—and then right at the end, rapunzel interrupts them with "SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT IS GOING ON" and then nigel bursts in late to the conversation yelling "THE KING IS BUSY— oh." frederic takes the opportunity to ask nigel to escort varian and quirin to an empty room because they're "...guests..." and says they'll talk more later once he's had time to think things over.

a day passes, and rapunzel, eugene, varian, and cass can see that the dads are not going to figure things out anytime soon. if they want anything done they need to take matters into their own hands.

skip to night. eugene and lance (who has been here since before the show started in this au) knock on varian's window as any normal people would. they tell him theyre having an Important Meeting to discuss the Important Stuff and they need him because he has ideas about the scroll and whatever. and varian's like, "ah yes! the scroll i stole from my dad that started all of this. i will be right there."

now we get a lore reveal! because varian has conveniently figured out the sundrop stuff from the scroll at some point. the style switches to a cut-paper art style (our way of conveying backstory/lore dump stuff) as varian explains what he knows about the sundrop, the moonstone, and the whole removal of the light awakening the darkness thing and how they have to go to the dark kingdom to restore the balance and find the answers.

as they muse about why frederic is so secretive about the black rocks, cass tells them they have two options: 1) clearly bad option, sit around and wait for the parents to do something, or 2) clearly good option, which is sneak out and figure it out themselves. they all agree it's a good idea to go with the good idea. they split up to gather supplies for the trip— food, clothes, weapons, road trip games, horse gear, books, etc— and then rapunzel lets them all climb down her hair out of the castle.

they head to the snuggly duckling. the snuggly duckling thugs are miffed to be woken up in the middle of the night, but the princess wants a vehicle for travel and it's urgent, and they like the princess, so they give her their caravan thingy. and just like that, theyre off! rapunzel, Eugene, cass, varian, and lance are on their way to the dark kingdom!

unfortunately, their absence does not go unnoticed. back at the castle, quirin wakes up from a nightmare about varian being gone and discovers that— gasp!!— varian actually is gone! tired dad sigh. just then, frederic comes bursting in like "quirin rapunzel is gone have you seen—" and quirin's like "varian's gone" and theyre like. oh no. and they check and, yep, theyre all gone. frederic is frantic because he knows exactly where they've gone and he's not quite ready to be exposed for his Big Mistakey with the sundrop yet, so they fill arianna in real quick and then go find captain and ask him to organize a search party. captain gets up and does that all while singing this terrible overdramatic marching song, and then all the parents and the guards set out in hot pursuit of their kids.