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katimus_prime) wrote2020-04-22 11:35 pm
katimus_prime) wrote2020-04-22 11:35 pm
Cages Thing
Corvus Terrachus on his deathbed, trying to get some memoirs out. Vague mentions of child abuse.
“What will you do when you die? Do you really want to die alone, not surrounded by family?”
That is what my mother said (shrieked) when first I told her I would take no wife. I was a child when we had that screaming match, a lad of 15, and I’d made the mistake of saying it outside my head.
Now at 90, I can barely hold a quill myself and Hadrian’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter is writing everything for me. I’m rambling, but I want to keep this in. I took no wife but led Terrachon through its darkest hour. I passed the mantle of leadership to my cousin Hadrian when I got sick of it. He was always going to be Emperor either way. Everyone knew it, even our grandfather, even as he banished Uncle Atticus from court for marrying someone other than his intended.
In my grandfather’s time, the Family Terrachus inherited a terrible practice of being too stingy and selective with whom was to wed whomst. Family lines were planned three generations in advance, but there were no contingencies built into those plans set aside for loss of life, illness or infertility, so we became smaller, and started to lose our look. If Zunsalaa had descended to take us to the stars when I was a lad, I would not have been recognized. We shan’t have that again, Yanon-willing. The cruelty placed upon the nobility to produce direct heirs will have to wait until this story fades from memory before it grips our family again.
I was almost going to live my entire life according to someone else’s plans, once upon a time. Thank every last god I’m so stubborn.
—-
I was affaianced to Mia Veron on the day of my father’s death. The Verons were a very highly disciplined line of royal guards, and the generational crop had produced an unusually marriageable heir. Most Verons took to the blade or the scroll with ease, but Mia could master neither, making her a terrible potential guardsman. The people who tried to raise her consistently made her feel inadequate, but chose not to correct or support, which just made the things she was inadequate with worse. To counteract this, she became an avid people-pleaser and listener, and developed a sweetness to her that was abhorrent to the rest of her house. A Veron in name only, one who dreampt of being married off so she could finally be away from her terribly incompatible family. She is a wonderful and forgiving person, and I did my best to keep her heart from breaking before she got attached to me.
Exiled or no, I was permitted to travel to meet my Uncle Atticus and Cousin Hadrian. I had a proclamation from the Emperor himself to try to bridge the gap, even though it made my mother angrier than she could bear. Uncle Atticus had been Heir Apparent for nearly twenty-five years before he was exiled, and that was a long time for people to form plans. My mother had been betrothed to him since they were toddlers, though they only met once every decade and sent letters quarterly since my mother’s side of the family hailed from the far north. It was the scandal of the century when, not three days of having moved to the capital, Uncle Atticus broke their engagement. Turns out that if you don’t socialize certain heirs as they’re growing up, they’ll fall very hard and deeply for a chambermaid instead.
My Aunt Vess was an absolute sweetheart, and I don’t blame my uncle one bit for spurning my mother. Once Grandfather got to know my mother, he began to understand the whys and wherefores of Uncle Atticus’s actions, and made myriad attempts to reconcile. My own father was of noble birth, but since his brother stood to inherit, he became a brute. He preferred fighting to thinking, and drinking to either of those. I shan’t recall exact details of how he treated my mother and I, lest I scare my dutiful scribe, for they are dark enough that I was put off from ever wanting children or romance of my own. when we learned of his death, my mother and I had such cause for rejoice that we needed to travel to safely express how relieved we were.
I spent my boyhood bitter that I was not Uncle Atticus’s second son. He, Aunt Vess, and Cousin Hadrian lived in the mud in a town a day and a half’s ride from Cair Terrach, surrounded by fresh air, rough people and dressed in rags. Uncle Atticus was large in stature, but so was Aunt Vess, so as their son, Cousin Hadrian turned out to be a bit of a giant, especially next to me. I barely crested ten hands high in my prime, and Hadrian was easily twenty after his growth spurt. Uncle Atticus taught him the art of Blacksmithing, which was the art of Aunt Vess’s family, along with keeping him well socialized and in the villaiges volunteer guard, so he was positively strapping, while I was often called miss and ma’am around strangers.
“What will you do when you die? Do you really want to die alone, not surrounded by family?”
That is what my mother said (shrieked) when first I told her I would take no wife. I was a child when we had that screaming match, a lad of 15, and I’d made the mistake of saying it outside my head.
Now at 90, I can barely hold a quill myself and Hadrian’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter is writing everything for me. I’m rambling, but I want to keep this in. I took no wife but led Terrachon through its darkest hour. I passed the mantle of leadership to my cousin Hadrian when I got sick of it. He was always going to be Emperor either way. Everyone knew it, even our grandfather, even as he banished Uncle Atticus from court for marrying someone other than his intended.
In my grandfather’s time, the Family Terrachus inherited a terrible practice of being too stingy and selective with whom was to wed whomst. Family lines were planned three generations in advance, but there were no contingencies built into those plans set aside for loss of life, illness or infertility, so we became smaller, and started to lose our look. If Zunsalaa had descended to take us to the stars when I was a lad, I would not have been recognized. We shan’t have that again, Yanon-willing. The cruelty placed upon the nobility to produce direct heirs will have to wait until this story fades from memory before it grips our family again.
I was almost going to live my entire life according to someone else’s plans, once upon a time. Thank every last god I’m so stubborn.
—-
I was affaianced to Mia Veron on the day of my father’s death. The Verons were a very highly disciplined line of royal guards, and the generational crop had produced an unusually marriageable heir. Most Verons took to the blade or the scroll with ease, but Mia could master neither, making her a terrible potential guardsman. The people who tried to raise her consistently made her feel inadequate, but chose not to correct or support, which just made the things she was inadequate with worse. To counteract this, she became an avid people-pleaser and listener, and developed a sweetness to her that was abhorrent to the rest of her house. A Veron in name only, one who dreampt of being married off so she could finally be away from her terribly incompatible family. She is a wonderful and forgiving person, and I did my best to keep her heart from breaking before she got attached to me.
Exiled or no, I was permitted to travel to meet my Uncle Atticus and Cousin Hadrian. I had a proclamation from the Emperor himself to try to bridge the gap, even though it made my mother angrier than she could bear. Uncle Atticus had been Heir Apparent for nearly twenty-five years before he was exiled, and that was a long time for people to form plans. My mother had been betrothed to him since they were toddlers, though they only met once every decade and sent letters quarterly since my mother’s side of the family hailed from the far north. It was the scandal of the century when, not three days of having moved to the capital, Uncle Atticus broke their engagement. Turns out that if you don’t socialize certain heirs as they’re growing up, they’ll fall very hard and deeply for a chambermaid instead.
My Aunt Vess was an absolute sweetheart, and I don’t blame my uncle one bit for spurning my mother. Once Grandfather got to know my mother, he began to understand the whys and wherefores of Uncle Atticus’s actions, and made myriad attempts to reconcile. My own father was of noble birth, but since his brother stood to inherit, he became a brute. He preferred fighting to thinking, and drinking to either of those. I shan’t recall exact details of how he treated my mother and I, lest I scare my dutiful scribe, for they are dark enough that I was put off from ever wanting children or romance of my own. when we learned of his death, my mother and I had such cause for rejoice that we needed to travel to safely express how relieved we were.
I spent my boyhood bitter that I was not Uncle Atticus’s second son. He, Aunt Vess, and Cousin Hadrian lived in the mud in a town a day and a half’s ride from Cair Terrach, surrounded by fresh air, rough people and dressed in rags. Uncle Atticus was large in stature, but so was Aunt Vess, so as their son, Cousin Hadrian turned out to be a bit of a giant, especially next to me. I barely crested ten hands high in my prime, and Hadrian was easily twenty after his growth spurt. Uncle Atticus taught him the art of Blacksmithing, which was the art of Aunt Vess’s family, along with keeping him well socialized and in the villaiges volunteer guard, so he was positively strapping, while I was often called miss and ma’am around strangers.