#sorry this got so long I have spent a billion hours thinking about vesper's family

[cityandking]

4-7 for minah and vesper!

thanks tabby!! / oc asks: childhood edition

4. How was your muse's relationship with their childhood guardians? Has it changed over time, and if so, how? Do they keep in touch?

MINAH — minah's guardians were her parents and they had a good relationship! her folks both worked and weren't always super available, but overall their relationship was good, and they enjoyed the time spent together. she always looked up to them for how hard they worked and their commitment to the community and was looking forward to taking up their legacy, but then they both passed away when she was about sixteen, so her life took a pretty sharp turn. honestly she doesn't keep in touch with anyone from her family these days.

VESPER — her childhood guardians were her parents and then the mages at the Circle. her relationship with her parents was... not super great. it wasn't really anyone's fault; she was the youngest of six and very much a spare to a spare. her earliest years were definitely the happiest time for her family, but when she was about eight or so her uncle died and her family had to move to the city so her father could take up the mantle of Bann Trevelyan and vepser got sort of lost in the shuffle. then her magic presented, and her very Andrastrian (and very much in the public eye) parents were unwilling to deal with that. her father disowned her around the same time she was sent to the Circle, and he died before she ever left it, so she never spoke with him (or her mother) again. her older brother kit did his best to write her, but they were both children and neither of them were super great about keeping in touch. through her pre-teen and teen years she grew up under the distant care of the Circle enchanters and the watchful eyes of the templars. honestly they were more attentive than her parents had ever been, but it was an impersonal attentiveness. it wasn't until she was a teenager apprenticing directly under one of the senior enchanters who took her under her wing that she felt she had a true guardian.

5. Does your muse have any siblings? What was their relationship like growing up? Is it any different now?

MINAH — minah has a younger sister. they were... about average, I guess? the age gap between them was enough that they didn't really hang out, and her sister was always a little bit excluded from minah and her friends. I think they could have grown up to be much closer as adults, but unfortunately their parents' deaths sort of ruined that. they don't keep in touch these days. minah's more than a little guilty about that, but it's been a long time and she can't exactly undo all that

VESPER — has so many siblings. she's the youngest of six: Christopher (Kit), Helene, Roxane & Rosaline (Roxie and Rosie, the twins), Jonah, and then little Vesper. Kit and Helene were the oldest and the heirs and always busy, though Vesper was Kit's favorite and vice versa—she was the only one allowed to sit in during his lessons, and he was also the one she told when her magic appeared. on the flip side, Roxie and Rosie were twin terrors and Vesper was their favorite victim, so they did Not get along as kids. Jonah was deeply religious pretty much since the beginning, and a little sickly, and most just flitted around after their mother, though every now and then he and Vesper would have moments of solidarity as the babies of the family. she lost contact with all of them but Kit when she was sent to the Circle. as Inquisitor, she's been slowly getting back in touch with her siblings, especially Kit (who reinstated her after their father disowned her) and Helene, who is married to an Orlesian nobleman and honestly pretty cool as a grownup. Roxie died at the conclave, and Rosie blames Vesper for being the surviving sister—they don't talk. Jonah is too embroiled in his religious scholarship to care much about anything, so they don't talk much either.

6. Did your muse have a best friend? Friends? Who did they hang out with as a kid? Are they still friends?

MINAH — minah was friends with the children of her parents friends and coworkers, mostly. honestly they were friends of circumstance more than anything else—their parents all worked a lot, so they were sort of stuck with each other. even with their pettiness and infighting, they were still a little clique-y—one of those situations where they could fuck with each other but nobody else could fuck with them. she didn't have a best friend per se, but there one one boy who she was particularly close with, and it was an open secret they were going to grow up and get married. after her parents died, a lot of that didn't pan out, and they went their separate ways. much like with her sister, minah keeps up with them as best she can, but she's not in touch.

VESPER — her friends growing up were mostly her siblings. when the family moved from the farm to Ostwick, there were a few other children her age who she was expected to meet and socialize with at parties (or while their parents were busy), but she was shy and didn't make friends easily. at the Circle there were the other apprentices in her cohort, but there was always a sort of fear among them that kept anyone from becoming super good friends. honestly it wasn't until after her Harrowing that she really started to make proper friends. and she considers them friends still—a number of them have ended up at or passing through the inquisition at one time or another.

7. Did your muse have any enemies? Playground rivalries? How did that turn out?

MINAH — there were definitely rivalries within her friend group growing up, but they were mostly petty childish things, play-fighting and inconsequential. sometimes they mapped along the same lines as their parents' rivalries, but mostly they were the consequence of a lot of kids with a lot of pressure on them fucking around and finding out. minah doesn't keep up with any of them anymore, so it's not like any of it mattered in the long run, except maybe for a few hard-earned lessons in conflict resolution

VESPER — there were a few rivalries within the Circle—all that pressure and fear and kids packed in together and there's bound to be some shit bubbling up—but Vesper made a point to keep out of it. she pretty much perfected the art of blending into the background, which she'd already been practice as a kid growing up with all those siblings and trying to avoid the twins. if anything her worst childhood enemies were Roxie and Rosie, who were bored and clever and just as unhappy as everyone else at being tossed into the pit of Ostwick (and Marcher) politics and definitely took it out on Vesp. Eventually she reconciles with Rosie—or something close enough; there's a lot of shared trauma there even if they don't talk about it—but Roxie died without either of them getting any sort of closure