#gisela: asks.

[kale-of-the-forbidden-cities]

gispera fluff

sorry this took so long, but in my defense you gave me THE LEAST FLUFFY SHIP OUT THERE

so yeah I did my best

yep lol they're kissing

vespera kind of looks like she's smiling, but don't be fooled. she is not.

@cutebisexualmess @dizzeners @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @keefe--sencen @tastetherainbow290

[chronically-ill-psionipath]

could you draw Fintan and Gisela together (not as a ship sob) but with a huge height difference? (Fintan tall af and Gisela short af) :>

Fintan is one of the tallest in our group T0T

[archduchessofnowhere]

Is it true that empress sissy was bad mother? Or just rumours

I think it really depends on what do you understand as being “a bad mother”. First of all royal women were not expected to be the main carers of their children: this job was divided among the many people in charge of the well-being of the kids. Parents usually only saw their kids little on a daily basis, since they did not even ate together. So one shouldn’t expect Elisabeth to have been changing diapers and heating milk bottles. The second thing to consider is just how young she was when she became a mother; giving birth to three consecutive babies in such a short time spam (with the additional stress of knowing everyone is expecting you to produce an heir) must have take a huge toll on her, so I don’t think is that surprising if she didn’t smoothly adjust to the role of mother.

Even so, she did love her children, as this letter she wrote to a Bavarian relative soon after the birth of her first child shows:

My little one really is already very charming and gives the Emperor and me enormous joy. At first it seemed very strange to me to have a baby of my own; it is like an entirely new joy, and I have the little one with me all day long, except when she is carried for a walk, which happens often while the fine weather holds. (Hamann, 1986)

But Elisabeth had no control in how her eldest children were raised: her mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie, took charge of them. Something important to keep in mind, however, is that taking charge of them doesn’t mean that she personally cared them (again, this wasn’t the role of royal woman), but that she chose the staff of nursemaids, nannies, governesses and tutors that oversaw the children’s caring and later education. But this lack of control over her children ended up being a great source of sorrow for the young mother.

During this time the first big conflict between Elisabeth and Sophie arose: the children’s nursery was placed on the same floor as Sophie’s appartements, which meant that she could go over to see her granddaughters with a lot more of freedom than Elisabeth, whose appartements where on a different floor. Being on a different floor meant than she could only see her daughters during the times set by protocol, and always in company of her retinue of ladies and lackeys, which ended up limiting even more the time she could spend with them in privacy. She told to her lady-in-waiting Marie Festetics in 1872:

Only now do I understand what bliss a child means. Now I have finally had the courage to love the baby and keep it with me [her fourth child Marie Valerie]. My other children were taken away from me at once. I was permitted to see the children only when Archduchess Sophie gave permission. She was always present when I visited the children. Finally I gave up the struggle and went upstairs only rarely.

This statement comes from almost twenty-years after the events, so it should be taken with a bit of a grain of salt (in the first letter I quoted Elisabeth mentions that she had Baby Sophie with her “all day long”, so she wasn’t “taken away at once” as she claims here). The most important takeaway from this statement to me is that even after all those years the fact that she wasn’t allowed to see her girls freely hurt her. So it’s not surprising that her first act of “rebellion” at court was when she decided to move the nursery to her floor in 1856.

After successfully moving the nursery near to her appartements, slowly Sisi started to take more and more control of her children. At the end of 1856 Franz Josef and Elisabeth went on a state visit to Lombardy-Venice and they took Baby Sophie with them. This tour was relatively successful, and months later they tried to replicate its success on Hungary. For this tour the parents decided to take not only Baby Sophie but also Gisela, since it was planned to last two months and they didn’t want to be separated from their daughters for such a long time.

As it’s known, Baby Sophie sadly died of typhus during this trip. Although is often repeated that Archduchess Sophie blamed Elisabeth for the child’s death, she in fact was very sympathetic towards the young mother, since she also had lost an infant daughter and could understand her pain. But Elisabeth seemed to blame herself regardless, and soon fell into a deep depression that lasted months and filled her entire family with worry.

By the end of 1857 she showed signs of being pregnant again, and in September of 1858 she finally gave birth to the long awaited heir, Crown Prince Rudolf. And just as with her daughters, Elisabeth had no control over the boy’s upbringing.

In 1860 Elisabeth started to become ill - of what, nobody knew. I won’t go much into this (since that’s just an entirely different post), but by the end of the year, after exhausting all possible treatments, it was decided that the Empress should go away from court to recover from her mysterious illness. This was the beginning of Elisabeth’s two years trip - first to Madeira and then to Corfu. Franz Josef offered her to take Gisela with her, but since she couldn’t also take Rudolf (the heir had to remain in Vienna), she decided to leave her behind because she didn’t want to separate the siblings, who were very close (Winkelhofer, 2022).

Elisabeth returned a changed woman, much more confident in herself, no longer the shy girl who was easily intimidated by courtiers. But she still had no control over how her children were educated. Or that was until Rudolf started his formal education. At the age of six he was separated from his sister and governess, given his own household, and Count Gondrecourt was assigned as his tutor. Gondrecourt had the mission of “toughening up” the boy, since he was considered to be weak of mind; his method to achieve this consisted in psychologically torturing Rudolf, and after he fell ill, seemingly of a nervous collapse. When Elisabeth discovered what her son was going through she was horrified and decided to step in. So she did something almost unprecedented, not only for her personally, but also in general for a woman of her status: she gave her husband an ultimatum:

I wish to have reserved to me absolute authority in all matters concerning the children, the choice of the people around them, the place of their residence, the complete supervision of their education, in a word, everything is to be left entirely to me to decide, until the moment of their majority. I further wish that, whatever concerns my personal affairs, such as, among others, the choice of the people around me, the place of my residence, all arrangements in the house etc. be reserved to me alone to decide.

Even more surprisingly for the time, Franz Josef agreed, and gave her full control of the children’s education. Gondrecourt was dismissed and Colonel Josef Latour was personally chosen by Elisabeth in his place. Latour was highly unpopular at court because he wasn’t an aristocrat and had very liberal political ideas, but Elisabeth protected him and he kept his job. Latour ended up becoming a close friend to his pupil until his death. But even though she now had what she had always wanted, total control of her children’s upbringing, she never became really close to her eldest daughter and son.

This is the part in which we can talk about her being “a bad mother”. When you compare her relationship to her fourth and last child, Marie Valerie, born ten years after Rudolf out of her desire to have another baby, raised entirely by her (as always keeping in mind that this means she had full control of the staff that took care of Valerie), to how she was with Gisela and Rudolf, the clear favoritism is evident. It seems that she felt more distant towards the eldest, probably a combination of her not having a saying in their upbringing until they were older and her constant trips away from court didn’t help her to close the gap. Gisela, who was a very down-to-earth person, a lot like her father, doesn’t seem to have minded this (or at least she never showed it), but Rudolf always craved for a close relationship with his mother, which he never could truly have. He adored her and was always grateful for her intervention when he was little, but seeing how all his mother’s love and attention went towards Valerie made Rudolf jealous of his younger sister; because of this the siblings also never managed to become close.

Valerie ended up feeling overwhelmed by her mother’s love. Elisabeth was very emotionally dependent on her daughter and made her her constant companion and support, which isolated the girl from the rest of her family. Valerie adored her father and felt that her mother put her against him, and Elisabeth insistance in raising her as a Hungarian (Valerie’s mother tongue wasn’t German, but Hungarian) made her hate Hungary. She turned out to be quite different to what her mother had planned, and that was probably just the result of having so many expectations imposed on her since she was born. But even so Elisabeth loved her and only wanted her to be happy. And this is shown by the fact that (unlike Queen Victoria with her daughter Beatrice) she didn’t want her to stay by her side forever, but to marry for love and form her own family. So she supported her decision to marry Archduke Franz Salvator, who out of all her suitors was the least favorite (Franz Josef wanted her to marry the Crown Prince of Saxony and Rudolf Archduke Eugen).

So was she a bad mother? It’s complicated. She loved her children (and I do think she loved all of them, despite Gisela being often considered the “forgotten” child), fought to have control on how to raise them (which was unusual for the time) and when she lost them she deeply grieved them. But she couldn’t be the support that her son needed, and the child she did gave her constant love felt suffocated. Sometimes an answer isn’t as a easy as yes or not, and I think we should keep that in mind when looking at Elisabeth as a mother. I hope you find my answer helpful, and sorry if it’s too long!

SOURCES:

Hamann, Brigitte (1986). The Reluctant Empress: A Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (translation by Ruth Hein)

Winkelhofer, Martina (2022). Sissi. La vera storia. Il camino della giovane imperatrice (translation by Federica Saccucci)

[mis-n-the-unwise]

yk this trend currently going around thats like "my father is the worst man alive and i am his favorite daughter"?

well this, but with Keefe and Gisela.

[the-great-gullon-incident]

Neverseen college au

Vespera has no idea how she got into the friend group and wants out

Alvar has the worst sleep schedule known to man

Gisela keeps failing all her science classes and refuses tutoring from anyone but Vespera who doesn’t want too

Brant is the only one that actually knows how to cook

Everyone else’s skills range from Can only microwave leftovers to the apartment is on fire because they tried boiling water

Nobody knows anything about Ruy or his past

He just showed up one day with Gethen and has been there ever since

Rayni is the perpetual third wheel to Trix and Umber

Fintan is Brant’s tutor in history

Rayni is majoring in biology because she forgot to pick a major until the last second

[synonymroll648]

sometimes i just reread the scene where keefe finds out it was lady gisela that was with the neverseen and not cassius and i just.

[id: a shaking autism creature with tears in its eyes, mouth pursed shut like it’s trapping air/sobs in its mouth.]

REALEST THING I HAVE EVER READ HOMIE

[marellaredeks]

Funniest Keepers moment is when Gisela tries to claim the moral high ground for only experimenting on her kid AFTER he was born. Funniest possible moral stance.

[i-must-confess-i-am-an-idiot]

Tell me about a fictional character you absolutely despise BUT you must find at least one good thing about them. If you fail to do that - you lose /@i-send-you-random-asks

ANSJDJNSJDJWND okay okay okay. So if you don’t know im. I’m a little bit unhinged about my fictional children.

So… let’s see who our options are here…

Uh John gaius has some redeeming factors but bringing them up makes him less fun to hate…

Ianthe tridentarius is such a wet cat. Such a failure. But I don’t really despise her, so long as she keeps her mitts off harrow…

Lady Gisela? I do in fact despise that woman…

COOL OKAY

so Lady Gisela is basically the sometimes-head of the sometimes-terrorist/revolutionary organization/resistance/disorganized mess that is the neverseen, the bad guys (?) who kinda make a good point but are shit at actually making it WELL

bonus reasons for hating her guts are: emotional manipulation of both her son and spouse, emotinal/mental abuse of her son and spouse, lying, experimentation on her son, attempted murder, and a bunch of others I can’t really think of right now (im sure my other people will be able to mention them in the tags)

But I mean she’s not WRONG about her motivations? Like the world they live in isn’t very good and does need change but… you know. She’s evil so.

Idk man, she’s a semi-prominent villain in a YA fantasy novel series who borderline abuses her son and commits heinous crimes on the side.

She’s not really the most complex villain but whatcha gonna do?

[you-have-been-frizzled]

hi! @tiana4evahh (you’re a lot less new because it took me a month to get to this) there was some difficulties with me trying to answer your ask, so we have to do it this way, third times the charm i guess.

thank you!!

(you should know that you leave my favorite comments on my fics they are so exciting and really do encourage me to work on fics)

i do have a bullet point fic based off of the Wildwood colony fic (link) it would be used as the outline for the fic “rewrite” if i ever end up doing it, i want to but i also have several projects higher on my list.

and because i don’t want to make you wait another month to get an answer even though this ask did end up inspiring a fic that fits some of the prompts for the Neverseen Extravaganza

the headcannons (side note while i say Rayni here i’m actually way more attached to @crymeariveronceagain version of Glimmer i kinda put my own twist on her in my head but you get it)

Tam was held prisoner for 6 months and from the second the light cuffs where put on his wrists, they felt like they where on fire. as time went on he started to get tremors in his hands. he hoped he would be rescued before it became permanent. because there was no way he would escape on his own, the one time he tried they beat him unconscious, and Gethen filled his mind with images of Linh dying in a 100 different ways. he refused to go though that again.

By the time he was rescued it was too late, the nerve damage in his wrists from the light cuffs was too bad, he was going have permanent tremors in his hands, on top of that his hands and arms where covered in scars that looked like ink stains, because of how he was forced to use the shadowflux

he was terrified of having his mind read, and of Teirgan the council suggested a mind probe to make sure he was telling the truth and to see if there was any important information hidden in mind by the Neverseen and he completely broke down, sending shadows everywhere because he didn’t want to have someone tear though his mind like Gethen would.

after he came back he only spoke if he was spoken too, because that’s what Gisela had trained him into doing, you can only take so many backhand slaps to the face with jewel encrusted rings that leave your face bleeding

he was terrified of the light because of how it effected his scars and the fact that they would use it as a punishment when he misbehaved when the Neverseen found out about its effects on his scars, but they stopped when they realized it also effected his ability.

people didn’t trust him even his friends, who would question weather he was still on their side, because he was so attached to Rayni and some of them where convinced she was a spy and had tricked Tam into trusting her. or that Tam really had switched sides and that he was actually the spy. the only people who fully trusted him where Biana Tiergan and Wyile, as Linh was convinced Rayni was a monster who stole her brother

Tam was the one to release Gisela, and Rayni took to the fall for him to protect him from the council because they where already looking for reasons to accuse him of being a member of the neverseen and locking him aes everyone would expect her to do something like that.

Rayni was the one to get Linh to talk to Tam when she said nonchalantly in a meeting that he wasn’t present for that “Tam thought Linh hated him” and Linh snapped back that it was Rayni she hated, they got in a bit of a fight until Rayni told Linh that the entire reason that Tam didn’t come to the meeting is because he couldn’t handle how Linh looked at him.

even after he and Linh made up and Linh went back to live at Solreef, he still didn’t feel safe going out in public because no matter where he went people would hiss traitor and that he should be locked away in Exile.

Tam and Keefe ended up bonding over their shared experience with the Neverseen once they found him again, and Sophie was the first person outside of his family and Biana that he actually trusted .

[kale-of-the-forbidden-cities]

You forgor about gisela

HOW COULD I FORGER ABOUT GISELA

SHES THE SWIFTIE OF THE LOST CITIES

[crymeariveronceagain]

Heyy Riverrrrr

Just a quick question. A yes or no question, really: Do you think that Lord Cassius ever actually hit Keefe? If ya do, care to give an example of when Sophie finds out?

(Just so ya know, I 10000% do. It fits. It hurts. But it totally happened. And I just need this info for my fic >:)

Love you!

mmmmm

you say yes or no but it's never that simple

okay so i specifically try to leave this up in the air in my mind

because....

well

first of all, it's never directly mentioned in canon except to dismiss the notion, and while it could be lies, i don't.... i don't want to rush to disbelieve what's blatantly been said

secondly.

in my re-reading of the books, there is one parent i think would find it easiest to physically and intentionally hurt keefe, and it's not his father. his mother has no empathy for him or his pain, and it's jarring and disturbing. she does things that actively cause him physical pain in the text. it's way more physical pain than his father ever causes in the text.

I guess I don't think that canon Cassius would like, actively hit his son.

In my head, it's all more of a "he threw something and it hit Keefe unintentionally, his hands hurt when he grabs Keefe's shoulder, his fingernails are leaving red crescent marks in Keefe's skin, he shoves him, pushes him, pulls his hair, invades his space and kind of lets Keefe know that his body doesn't belong to him" sort of behavior, instead of a "i get filled with rage and try to make my son ache and hurt down to his very bones" behavior

Like Cassius seems like a gaslighting narcissist who constantly tries to make his son feel inferior. It's about the emotional effects twice as much as it's about the physical.

And while i thoroughly believe that Cassius would be a violent and angry man if pressed, and that he's capable of it, I don't think it would be his go-to.

Gisela is who I'd peg for hurting her son for the sake of hurting him. She's got his blood on her hands, she uses pain as a tool to manipulate him, when she hurts him, it's about the hurt.

But with Cassius, it's about hurting his son to make the kid feel what he wanted him to feel. And because of that, the ways they come at their kid are very, very, very different.

but anyways this is all about the canon interactions of this fricked up family, and in fanfic you can do whatever the heck you want

[archduchessofnowhere]

Episode 4 done! This series just dgaf anymore about anything lol

I have a lot of thoughts but I'm going to boil it down to the one thing that has been bothering me since the beginning of the season: I can't stand Sisi. She has become the charicature many authors make of the real Elisabeth, the utterly selfish woman that only lives for pleasure and thinks of no one but herself. Which would be fine as a character arc (I don't love it but character regression is an arc nonetheless) but I just don't feel that is how it's being presented. Sisi taking Rudolf in the middle of the night without even a lady to help her was stupid, her trusting a random woman and agreeging to travel with her was even more stupid, her leaving Rudolf with the father of the random woman while she goes out is the most stupid thing. But the way things so far have been framed, Sisi is in the right because we know (solely because of hindsight) that the military training is going to be awful for Rudolf. It's only in episode 4 where Sisi's actions have been presented as, if not wrong, at least mistaken, but to me she has been wrong the entire season. But let's see how they wrap this up in the next two episodes.

The only positive thing I can say is that this is at least consisting with the way her character has been since season 2, in which she also made impulsive desicions without thinking on the consequences. The problem is that so far there hasn't been any consequences lol no wonder she just does whatever she wants at this point.

[dragons-ire]

🎵 🎵 🎵 (Three for three different characters!)

(Breandan)

I am hiding from some beast But the beast was always here Watching without eyes Because the beast is just my fear That I am just nothing That that's just what I've become What am I waiting for? It's already done

So give me something to believe 'Cause I am living just to breathe And I need something more To keep on breathing for So give me something to believe

(Gisela)

They ran back into town and hid in the church They explained their situation and they feared for the worst The priest told the brothers that she could not be killed She flew out of the stone cold ground and

She'll find you and she'll kill you She'll find you and she'll kill you She'll find you and she'll kill you

(Chizuru)

When we're young we set our hearts upon some beautiful idea Maybe something from a holy book or French philosophia Upon the thoughts of better men than us we swear by and decree a Perfect way to end the war of ways the only way to be a

Work of art

oh to be a work of art

[the-great-gullon-incident]

🎁 Gisela

[elwin-at-your-service]

Elwin have you adopted Keefe or what??

“Or what,” unfortunately.

I would absolutely adopt him and parent that poor little guy all better to the absolute best of my ability, but unfortunately the elven legal process doesn’t recognise him as being in need.

Because the Council seem to have an inability to recognise incompetence when they see it.

[kaibaspuppy]

Gisela!! I finally made her a ref!! She broke the chain of prosecutors in the Von Karma family >:3

i knew she was a von karma from "her last name's german"... i like her :-)