Feed us more Claude lore pls papa plag 🤲
What kind of angel is he, and why is he on Earth? How'd he come to be a lawyer? Who else does he have relationships with (ocs or otherwise)?
I literally stalked ur #claudestantine tag for content and lore bc ur ship is sooo cutesy I love how doom-coded they are <3
AS U WISH. this is really long bear with me <3 Trigger warning for suicide / mental illness !!
So. Claude is a special type of angel, an entirely biological being that's born in a distant, closed-border country that is widely known to have the last remaining reserves of ancient magic. Claude is the firstborn to his father, Aldric's mantle— THE DIVINE PALADIN, which is essentially a human-turned-angel-turned-god. Aldric was responsible for fighting gods in the GREAT DIVINE WAR that resulted in the country of ouroboria being created under the domain of OUROBOROS, the Great Serpent.
However... he was born without a lick of angelic magic, and for all intents and purposes is a normal baby with wings. There were many attempts to fix this shortcoming by having him engage in multiple rituals to bring the magic out, and engagement with his religion, but Claude stayed ordinary. A lot of stuff happens in between, but after a few traumatizing events, Claude has a child at 16, and devotes himself to leaving the domain so that his son can grow up in a place that wouldn't hurt him the same way it hurt Claude.
Which is where he gets into Harvard! The main motivation for him becoming a lawyer is because of his mother, Maria, who went insane and committed suicide. Claude blames his father Aldric for this, becoming incredibly resentful of his father, and devotes himself to being a divorce attorney to help women escape from their husbands.
His main relationships include his son Eve, who he places a great amount of care for but ends up smothering and coddling him because he's too afraid to let him go. Their relationship waxes and wanes in how stable it is, but it's also suffering under the weight of Claude's suicide attempt, which Eve was there to remember. A lot of Claude's conflicts with his loved ones stems from his severe mental illness and inability to cope / talk about his feelings. He's very bitter about his suffering and tends to act like it doesn't exist, which in turn makes it worse. In the main story, Claude has no friends and is completely alone. He's estranged from his siblings, completely disregards his father, and has only his son as someone who enjoys his company, and he pours himself into work as a result.
He has a very fraught relationship with his sibling Amelie, as they were the prodigal child— intense angelic power, a greater connection to the divine, and the current heir to the mantle. With Amelie being everything Claude wished he was, he projects his resentment onto them, and their relationship suffers as a result. He gets along better with his sister Grace, but tends to be in a toxically competitive dynamic with her, always holding things over her head just as she does. It's very difficult to have intimate relationships with his siblings because he's so angry and permanently stuck in the past when interacting with them.
For Claude there's a lot I'd have to get into, but he also has a very important friendship with @deadboysheart's Joanne Hoshino, who was secretly attempting to kill him upon knowledge of his connection to the mantle, but ends up giving up on their plan and befriends him down the way. Joanne is one of his closest friends in terms of security and he trusts them completely, telling them things he wouldn't dream of thinking about out loud. He also has a fraught relationship with @muzzleguppy's Daire Woods, as he was connected to one of the most traumatic events of his life, and is subsequently haunted by Daire because of his proximity to John.
This is just the tip of the iceberg honestly but his relationship with John is also incredibly special, since he meets him at the lowest of his depressive episode, and has to deal with the morality of being an angel and being part of the divine sequence as John moves through digital heaven with him. From then on, they fall in love, but teeter on the line of not-quite-friends because of their combined fear of commitment, especially since Claude has severe internalized homophobia. Though he does eventually accept himself, the two tend to have a no-label relationship where they keep coming back to each other, since they are the only constants in their lives at this point. They do get married, though :)
