#this obviously is missing the true romance beats as well as sub characters and subplots

[preppymayhem]

What happens at a boring day of work

Per my tweet about plotting out a Gundam Wing “Anastasia” AU here is a pseudo wikepedia plot summary that I came up with.  It is pretty much just the plot and not so much full character or emotional beats 

~*~Another AU timeline~*~

Sanq is a country in ruin, barely surviving under occupied rule by the Unified Alliance and having survived two devastating revolutions.

The first dispatched the monarchy, lead by the Crown Prince.  In the chaos, the fallen monarch’s chief advisor attempts to steal away the young princess but is killed at the border and the princess is assumed dead.  The Prince (greatly reviled in the wake of the coup) sheds his name and takes up post in the new oligarchic regime as a mercenary.

The second revolution, sparked by the assassination of a reformist leader leads to an uprising from the universities and plunges the country into a civil war, which only ceased when the Unified Alliance came in and squelched both the oligarchy and the student revolutionaries. 

5 years following the end of the civil war, Relena graduates from a Catholic boarding school in the distant hills of the country.  She is given guidance to go into a convent as unlike other classmates she has no family or further prospects to speak of the.  She thanks the nuns and apologizes that she did very little to earn her keep while there and asks again whether they can tell her anything about who she was prior to arriving at the school.  

The nuns exchange a glance and finally told Relena that while they couldn’t speak to who her family was and that while they did provide her education for free, her boarding had been paid upon her arrival by a benefactor going only by the name “Pagan” who they don’t know the exact identity of, but think might be in Berlin.

In light of this, Relena opts to go to the city as opposed to the convent as originally planned.   On the way she meets a traveling writer.  Their meeting is short, but she tells him her story and the writer intrigued and remembering that the dead princess’ name was Relena parts ways with her and wonders whether she was the lost princess.  He circulates the rumor, which ends up getting to Marion Darlian, the widow of the chief advisor, now in Paris.  Intrigued, she approaches a Marquis in the Alliance who is the last surviving relative of the royal family to help ascertain the truth, as she had been a guardian of the princess prior to fall of the monarchy.  The Marquis agrees and offers a tremendous reward for anyone who can restore the Crown Princess (named posthumously due to her brother’s betrayal).

Back in Sanq, the capitol is abuzz with the news that the Crown Princess might be alive.  Two former revolutionaries from the second revolution, Heero and Duo, who have been sort of rival con men make a deal to try and fake a princess to get the reward and get out of the country once and for all. Relena is guided Heero’s way as a person who can provide her papers to get to Berlin to find Pagan.  Heero and Duo both ascertain that Relena could be a proper age.  They agree to provide her papers if she goes along with the con.  At first she is intrepid, not willing to defraud anyone, but they convince her that it is just a bored aristocrat’s game, no one honestly believes the princess or any of the royal family is still alive.   

Meanwhile, agitated and angered by the resurgence of interest in the royal service, Zech Marquise (formally the trecherous Crown Prince) comes down harsh on anyone who portends to be his presumed dead sister.  He finds that pretty much all of them are frauds.  Until he accidentally bumps into Relena in the square on the way to the train station, and mistakes her for his sister, he dispatches his second in command to tail her until she can determine that Relena is not his lost sister.

Noin meets up with the trio, who almost get caught at the border, she gets them through, not immediately addressing her association with Zechs.  She gets them through and agrees to help guide and train Relena to try and trick the Marquis. as well as get them in touch with a Sir Peter Fagan in Berlin, who could get them in with the Marquis.

Noin, having grown fond of Relena, sends a message back to Zechs that she doesn’t think Relena is the real princess thinking that that might spare the girl and Zechs’ emotional state.  She fears that if the princess really is alive, then Zechs would fall a part under the weight of his betrayal.

On a stopover, Heero catches Relena amidst a nightmare.  She confesses that she has had them over her entire life and doesn’t know what they mean.  She asks why he doesn’t sleep and he states he never could, it was trained out of him.  Unlike Duo, he was groomed as a soldier, originally under a failed anti-monarchy group and then as a revolutionary in the second revolution.  He tells her that with the reward he could finally disappear.  Relena presses, but they just sit quietly with each others demons.

They reach Berlin.  Noin goes and tries to locate Sir Fagan, Duo to reconnect with his old flame Hilde to obtain more papers to get them into Paris, and Heero accompanies Relena when they try to find Pagan.  It leads them to an old house just outside the city, that serves as a weird antique museum.  While in the store, Relena finds an old music box, this sparks a brief memory, and an old man comes from the back.  

He identifies himself as the mysterious “Pagan” and reveals to Relena and Heero that he believes that she is the lost Crown Princess.  Heero scoffs and Relena, still having no real memory isn’t sure if she believes him, but she asks him how she got to St. Gabriel’s, and he states that he witnessed a man’s murder and her near by, hiding in the trunk of a tree, the man in his dying breath gave him the instructions and an account and so he did as asked, it was only later after he learned about the monarchy’s fall that he began to wonder whether Relena was actually the princess.   Relena asked what had happened, but the man shook his head, saying it was too terrible and that if she was the princess that she never remember what happened.  Pagan agrees to accompany to them to Paris to confirm the truth.

Relena discuss the monarchy, Heero who was skeptical, admits that at the very least the monarchy had been slightly better than the regimes that followed.  He recounts the one time he spotted the princess when he was young.  He says he doesn’t think that it is her and not to get her hopes up.  She agrees, but states that this would no longer be about a simple con for money.  Either way, the Marquis would have the answer.

When they meet up with Noin and Duo (along with Hilde), it is revealed that Pagan is Sir Peter Fagan.  On their way, Pagan provides Relena a lesson on the history, but stops short the fates of the last royal family.  Noin realizing that per Pagan’s story it is becoming less likely that Relena is a fraud, and is actually a princess, writes a letter to Zechs telling him the truth, but decides to not send it.  She hopes to convince Relena to keep it as a con.  However the letter is mistakenly sent and Zechs, upon receiving it, sets out to see Relena herself, and put an end to it whether she is real or not.

When they reach Paris, they meet other former revolutionaries and plan to crash into a ball in honor of the Alliances’ bicentennial to meet the Marquis.  The night before, on a walk throughout the city, Relena reminisces on her life, when she runs into Zechs.  They both freeze, and Zechs having gotten a longer look, realizes that she is his sister. However before he can get his gun from his holster, Heero intervenes, and Zechs leaves. Relena in shock over the encounter stumbles back and remembers most of her past though how it all ends is still murky.  Heero believes her and stays with her through the night.  

Noin meets Zechs, who laments that he was unable to dispatch her.  Noin tries to convince him to let her be.  There is no throne to be restored to and shouldn’t he be happy his sister survived.  He says she would have been better off having never come back, but he would not let her continue to be a potential pawn for the Alliance to continue to exert its control.  

On the night of the ball, Heero escorts her.  Relena asks him whether he hates her now that she is a part of the royal family he was groomed to hate.  He admits that no, the royal family is something of the past and that she is who she is, something completely separate.  He tells her that knowing may be one thing but don’t let herself be trapped by it.  She asks whether he really had to go, but he says that now more then ever there is no place for him.

The Marquis is in the ball, disgusted a the performance of a fake princess, when he spots Relena across the room.  He meets with her and asks her who she is.  She tells him that she hopes he can tell her, but the Marquis states that he is just the one to put the money at, that it was Marion Darlian who was looking for her.

Upon meeting Marion, Relena realizes that she remember her as she was often sent to live with the Darlians due to the many threats to the royal family, and that the Darlians were essentially her parents.   

The Marquis proposes that now that she has been found, that as the Alliance had been an initial supporter of the monarchy, that it would restore her crown and she could lift the occupation of Sanq.  Relena unsure of this responsibility, muses whether there was really a place for her there.

On the night before she was to make the claim official, Zechs sneaks into her room, he confronts her and calls her a liar and a fraud.  Relena remember the final days of the monarchy and that she had seen Zechs hesitate to kill their father only to accidentally kill their mother when she blocked his shot.  Zechs had meant originally to only convince his father to abdicate and form a more representative government, but was spooked into shooting while his mother tried to talk him down.

Heero comes in having regretting not settling properly,  he moves to protect Relena, but she stops him.  This was her battle not his.  Relena tells Zechs to kill her if that will lift his conscience.  Zechs shrinks back and later turns himself in as the traiter, Milliardo Peacecraft the disgraced prince.

At a private trial, the Alliance leaders threaten execution, and also tell Relena, that she could have no power as restored queen.  Relena said that she never sought a crown, and that her only wish for the country would be the vision of the assassinated leader whose death had sparked unrest.  Her final bargain for not taking the crown was to restore Sanq to its people and to pardon her brother.  

On the way out, Zechs asks her why, and she says it was the right thing, vengeance was not useful, but however she is not Relena Peacecraft and he is not Milliardo Peacecraft so as far as she was concerned they were strangers and should go there own way.

Cuts to scene of Relena leaving Marion’s home.  Marion asks her if she really wants to leave so soon, and Relena said that while she is glad she found her past, she had to find her future.

At a train station, Heero is waiting, and she meets him there and it ends on them embracing in the station.