#she's got ambitions but they're more for being socially acceptable than for being herself y'know?

[hetagrammy]

I'd love to know more about Emma in your Regency AU, given the fact she was in the description of it

I don't talk about Emma nearly enough! In the Regency AU she and Arthur are engaged of course, but it's more of a convenience thing rather than a romantic pursuit. Emma's family, headed by Jan, is part of the Nederland's Patriciaat. They're kind of like unofficial nobility, they have wealth and influence, but they lack a title. The Peeters family got this position as successful merchants- the problem is that by 1810, the French have put that in jeopardy. Jan had been doing business in England for a number of years because of the war, but the French takeover made it difficult for him to exercise any power and authority in the Netherlands, and messed with his business in the Indian Ocean to boot. Emma, therefore, becomes a means to an end: if she can marry a member of the English nobility, their family will have some attachment to "truly" noble blood and a money safety-net. The fact that it's Arthur, whose family is also involved in maritime trade and who has influence in the British navy makes their situation even better.

Emma has always known what her role was going to be, and for the most part she'd accepted that. She's bubbly, inviting, good at parties. She's a queen of society, and she knows it. She also understands that securing that kind of life is the end of the bargain she gets from marrying Arthur. That's not to say that she never wanted a loving marriage, but more so that she spent years telling herself it wasn't worth waiting for one, especially when Jan had his own interests to look after. If Arthur wasn't infatuated with Francis, it's likely they might have had an actual loving marriage. She doesn't exactly know it's Francis at first, but she gathers pretty quickly that Arthur's heart is in another place that he can't present to society. She's at least got the consolation that she'll have Molly's company and Arthur will be gone for long stretches of time at sea.

What shakes this "perfect" arrangement up is Antonio. He makes his way to England through Joao, as a favor to his own fiancee, Anneliese. He was also a family friend to Lovino and Feliciano, giving him someone else to stick around for. Anneliese and Antonio are also headed toward a marriage of convenience, that is until Antonio sets eyes on Emma. The two start having a bit of a flirtation back and forth, especially as they start acting as "chaperones" for Molly and Lovino. It gets serious, and it's probably one of the first relationships Emma has ever gotten any emotional fulfilment out of aside from Molly, Lovino, and her younger brother, Alexander. It really forces her to reckon with whether or not she's willing to give up the prospect of having status for a future in which she's happy and fulfilled. She sort of overcorrects, and ends up projecting onto Molly, almost fucking up her relationship in the process as well. In the end, she really ends up kind of being a matchmaker around the ton, which in turn rehabilitates some of her views on her own love life and forces her to work with Antonio even more.

All in all, if I ever actually wrote this fic (maybe someday when I'm not booked up with an internship!), Emma would 100% be one of the more central characters. She's the one whose arc I really have the most thought out, and she's one of the strings that ties a lot of people together.