I haven't uploaded on here in quite some time, however, I look to still be helpful in the fandom.
I decided to upload all of George DeValier's works to their own, private website. For now I only have Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart on here but if enough people are interested I will add other works by George deValier to the website/their own website.
Each chapter contains the original authors notes and YouTube links that could be found on George DeValier's work when it was still on ffn.
Thank you!
The Hetalia fanfiction "Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart" as written by George Devalier from December 8, 2010 to August 11, 2012.
Does Prussia have ptsd from his childhood marriage with brandenburg
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But I'm kinda brain dead today to really get into it but this is a BEAUTIFUL fascinating question and I want to invite @sand-and-swamp-and-wildfire @proosh @edelweissko and anyone else interested in branpru (i know there's more of you in the shadows) to come and reblog this with their take if they want to 🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵
Prussia has PTSD from many things, but (and this is all my interpretation of it) the marriage to Brandenburg is difficult because the position he was put in wasn't very easy to understand or settle into for him.
Johann specifically didn't intend for Gilbert to take the spot as representative of "their" kingdom, he meant to use him as a proxy to hold the title while he worked to make it possible to combine the lands and become a kingdom proper. Gilbert is expected to sit on his hands and die, essentially, being grouped in with the western territories like a nobody despite clearly being more important and crucial to The Plan. His ego is bruised, but the closer the coronation comes, the more fearful he is alongside it.
That fear, he doesn't know where to put; he's missed a good century of warfare and most of "his" current armed forces don't consist of his own people, so he's not only left at a disadvantage, but threatened in a way he wasn't when he was just a fief to Poland and not the intended sacrificial lamb for another man's ambitions.
That goes on until Prussia is hit with a plague endemic in 1709, and Gilbert, instead of dying from it for good as anticipated, survives it and comes out the other end still growing taller and older.
And now he's in yet another new position, this time thrust into being the literal physical centre of a rapidly changing kingdom that's perpetually readying itself for war against anyone and everyone. It's in some ways more familiar to him, but he also has to adjust to new societal dynamics and methods of warfare as the one leading the charge. It isn't the 15th century anymore. He's missed a lot.
Their power dynamic essentially gets reversed, which I feel is an important part of their relationship. It's not a gradual change, Gilbert goes from disposable to the authority in a quick moment, it fucks with how they view each other. Gilbert is a thief, Johann is a failure, neither of them will admit their part in the state they're building and considering each other fully formed people rather than shallow antagonists is nigh-impossibly difficult for a long time.
There's also something to be said about how Prussian society got a lot of its ills specifically from the consequences of Brandenburg's previous development, especially the rampant Absolutist and militaristic propaganda. Simply put, Johann is micromanaging what Gilbert does as kingdom and digging himself into his brain like a maggot. Gilbert can feel himself changing in ways that remind him of this person he hates a lot, changes he can't fight against and doesn't even necessarily want to stop because he is being psychologically changed at his very core; into something that's now more familiar, more warlike, more proactive than the inert state he was in just a few decades ago.
And this... amalgamation into each other that they do, "Prussia" coming to encompass their whole kingdom and Brandenburg becoming a center piece rather than the first half, slowly washes away the borders between their identities. They share a capitol eventually, their literal heart; they become synonymous on the grand scale of nationhood.
It doesn't erase their hatred for each other, but it makes it far more difficult to staunchly insist on it. They can fight over how to deal with the demands of small nobility, who to pick fights with and the general trust they have in their rulers, but in the end, they're not far removed from counting as one single being, and anything that hurts one of them will hurt the other, too. Their reality interferes with their ability to let their feelings run rampant.
I could go further into it but at the end of the day, Gilbert is traumatised by being married to his own deathbed, then ripped out of that certainty into the role of kingdom, then having his personal identity warped into something he vaguely revognizes, but also one that doesn't fit the old mold of his Knight-Self. All while the person he's meant to be married to is treating him in ways he can't recognize as love.
And in the end, Brandenburg dies, and Gilbert has that intermingled identity ripped out of him. And no one that ever felt how it was to exist together like that.
So now, he's perfectly happy being alone, thank you very much.
Edit: Updated the tags for the characters here. Turns out the character between England and Spain is NOT Prussia, but Netherlands! If you look closer on his forehead, you can see his scar. Apologies about that!
