#thank you for asking sweet bean 💞💖💘💕💗

[eatsbooks]

How do the vanserra brothers react to their child growing stronger than them?

eris — more than anything, i think eris is afraid of what this means for his child. to be heir + that powerful of one puts an even greater target on their back — his brothers, their children, other noble families in autumn, enemies beyond autumn too. when easier to get rid of such a threat than when it is young and unformed? i could see him getting even more paranoid about their safety than normal, especially before they have full control of their power. as soon as he clocks this in them, he puts a lot of work into honing those abilities into perfect defense, perfect offense. lots of pressure, but out of a sense of preservation. if they eventually wind up turning them on him, that’s something he has already had centuries to accept as an inherency of his lot in life.

emile — emile needs his child to be more powerful than him, needs his child to have the power of flame. if he can’t be heir, his progeny must take up that mantle. problem is, he would resent the fuck out of his child for this. he would demand excellence from his child, but he would also grow really cruel when he received it because it’s yet another reminder of his personal failings / misfortune in life. at a certain point, the child would learn not to use magic in front of him, to become small so as not to upset him, but even this would be met harshly. you must make something of yourself, make something of me; still, you must never be better than me.

carmine — carmine would take pride in this! it would confirm to him the excellency of his pedigree and his choice in a wife. i will say though, for some reason carmine is one brother i can just never picture with a child. aside from the accidental pregnancies he … handles, i don’t think he winds up with children. he doesn’t like responsibility or commitment. he likes the idea of those things. he likes the prestige the appearance of those things affords him. he likes the thrill of potential, of possibility, of perhaps. but to actually have something permanent in his life inevitably bores him. if he can attain it, there must be something better to pursue, something more deserving of him. so it is for the best he never has a child.

marius — this is kind of a given for marius. he only rarely uses his own abilities at all after silas, and even when he does, they feel a pittance. (he’s still exceptionally strong — but it will never be what it once was, and he will never be able to shake that.) i think he accepts it as a net neutral fact, but i think he probably encourages his child to pursue things beyond just power. maybe even to a fault. he doesn’t want his child to know what it is to lose something; if his child never grows truly attached to anything, they never can. if this is a child with adonia, though, she balances this out. she teaches their child to love their magic enthusiastically. in the doing, maybe even helps marius heal a little and work towards using his own.