Tumgik
#but the problem is nothing else fits hsdf
pisceancryptid · 2 years
Text
au ra xaela names are hard
3 notes · View notes
swanwinged-princess · 6 years
Text
hsdf idk how to start this off but basically i’m gonna do some worldbuilding and also some editing to my main verse
i’m gonna separate it into two main offshoot-timelines, one taking place within the events of the prince & the raven, where she is adopted and raised by siegfried’s family, and another one where she’s.. not.
generally speaking, the difference between these two timelines is, in the first one (the main-main verse, i guess you could say), Schwanensee only consists of the sacred island in the center of the Swan King’s lake, and is really only a ‘kingdom’ in name because the inhabitants are all only the royal family (extended up to like 3rd cousins). 
(the ‘royal family’ was originally more of a sacred priest/sage bloodline, but evolved over the years into more of a leadership role, so they started calling them royal.)
in the other one, Schwanensee consists of the lake, the island and a good portion of the land around the lake- not a very big kingdom, but enough to be counted as a kingdom. 
In this verse, the actual royal family had retreated to the sacred island for several generations, leaving the nth-time-removed cousins who didn’t inherit the holy bloodline powers to run the actual kingdom. this decision was probably made to protect the empowered members of the royal family from got/tudors-style royal murder intrigue, or something like that.
However, that probably backfired because within like, one-and-a-half generations the regent side of the family started to abuse their powers- under the table, of course, but basically they became the actual kings/queens in all but name, and kept the distant concept of the actual royals on the sacred island over the heads of the citizens as sort of a threat, like ‘oh you think we’re not fit to manage this country? would you say that to the royal family’s face?’ or ‘oh the harvest has been poor this year and maybe there might not be enough food for all of you this year but just keep a stiff upper lip and think of the royal family, they’re praying for us or something’
this is also going into OC territory here but in Tutu’s time, the main-- magistrate, minister, regent, what-have-you-- is her several-times-removed cousin who is the perfect golden child on the surface; all glasses-pushing-up and theatrically clumsy and bookish and all smiles and etc., etc., but- of course- you can’t judge a book by its cover. 
When Tutu was rescued from the wreckage of the sacred island, he was somewhere in the 12-14 age range, while Tutu was 5, and his father was actually the magistrate/regent/whatever-the-fuck. 
The aforementioned father was almost CARTOONISHLY corrupt- like, not subtle about it at ALL, there were crying children in the streets while he was eating 3 whole roasted pheasants at a time up in the castle and all that stuff. You know how it be. 
He made a big show about having rescued the princess, who is ALSO the daughter of this kingdom’s like LITERAL GOD, and how he was going to raise her and protect her as if she was his own, this was a miracle, etc. etc. but really his plan was to raise her and spoil her absolutely rotten to make her more of a figurehead to wave from balconies and for all intents and purposes be under his thumb/so vapid she has no thoughts of her own. 
It worked out pretty well for the first few years because she was a traumatized child, but she started having her own thoughts and opinions at about 7 years old, which also coincided with when the current magistrate started coming down with a case of Ye Olde Consumption or something like that- after a long, painful illness he- of course- died, and his son, Name TBD, became the next one. Almost immediately, he basically turned the kingdom from cartoonishly-poor-and-obviously-run-by-a-villain to actually-an-okay-place-to-live. 
Not because he actually wanted to help or anything, but the peasants had been getting restless and there was a high probability that they would have actually staged a revolution sooner rather than later. That obviously gave him points from the citizens, and it was a lot easier to continue doing his corrupt activities under the table when starving people weren’t pounding on the castle walls yelling. 
He was actively a lot nicer to Tutu- for one, actually talking to her like she was a person, and letting her do things she wanted, to a reasonable degree, because, like, she’s only a little kid and anyway it’d be a lot easier to control her/get her to do things YOU want from her if she likes you. 
He only started getting worried when most of the things SHE wanted to do were to actively help the citizens, and then of course the entire kingdom basically started falling in love with her in a ‘our princess is also our literal messiah and she’s so kind and beautiful i can’t wait for her to be queen’-type sense, and that only grew when she started using LITERAL HOLY MAGIC to heal sick children or cure blight on a field of crops. At first he was like ‘okay i can work with this’ but as she got older she also started getting more involved in the kingdom’s actual politics and managing, and undoing literal generations of corrupt money-funneling and keeping-the-masses-ignorant and so on and so forth, completely unaware the whole time that they were anything more than clerical errors in the contracts and paperwork. 
So at this point he’s like ‘...ah fuck, this kid is actually smart and altruistic and literally beloved by all, this could ruin EVERYTHING and what’s gonna happen to my side of the family when she gets married and/or becomes queen, which is eventually gonna happen because she’s beautiful and every half-bit noble from lords to full-on emperors are probably gonna want to marry THE CHILD OF AN ACTUAL GOD at the very least for bragging points if nothing else.
So for one he changes the age of her coronation from 18 to 21, but that’s not gonna solve the problem forever, so I’m not saying he started actively conspiring against her- extremely low-key, of course- but that’s basically exactly what I’m saying. 
For one, he only arranges meetings with, like, the most obnoxious possible suitors- the French-royal, powdered-wig types, or the dickhead playboy pinches-girls’-butts types, or the straight-up just like actual marauding Viking kings or something- the ones that she would NEVER even give the time of DAY to, and disguises his actual intent in having her reject all of them by ‘of course i would never FORCE my dear cousin to marry against her will, women- even princesses- are PEOPLE, you know’ like. wow. so progressive. 
Also, while it’s true that some of the perils she faces are naturally borne from being a) a princess in a fantasy setting and b) the only child of an evil deity’s sworn enemy, who has powers that actively destroy his powers and minions, approximately, like, a FOURTH of them were probably more like ‘somebody got slipped a bag of gold to try and get the princess’s horse to run off a cliff’ or ‘hey coachman why don’t we take a detour through these woods known to be the territory of violent bandits/dangerous magical beasts/etc., it’s probably fine if we go fast’
They’ve all failed up to this point because. Hey. Heroine plot armor, dawg. That shit be TOUGH. 
They also probably won’t- or wouldn’t- turn into literal assassination attempts until she starts getting closer to her 21st birthday, but they do probably slowly ramp up in intensity the older she gets. There’s also a high probability that Name TBD would actually ally himself with the Monster Raven, or at least some of his human cultists and/or his horrible children to either kill Tutu or get her out of the way somehow (coughcough COR cough. absolutely irredeemable creep REALLY wants to ‘have’ her. Gross on so many levels.)
.....yeah man that’s basically all i have *dabs*
3 notes · View notes