Stone Cold Bitch of Vere

'There was a man I was supposed to meet. He's got all these ideas about honour and fair play, and he tries to keep me from doing the wrong thing.' Icon art by Asuraaa

[quelmdn]

Can you please draw Nikandros? 🥺❤️

I still need to rework an actual good design for him😞 but them teen!

[quelmdn]

🍊

[quelmdn]

[fancysmudges]

It was one kingdom, once.

[autiacorart]

kingsmeet

[eklaize]

"....Even to me."

[frogpropaganda]

Thinking about how Damen does not even begin to comprehend the absolute life-altering trauma he caused Laurent by killing Auguste until like halfway through Prince's Gambit. Thinking about how their mutual dehumanization of each other led Damen to see Laurent as incapable of love or affection for anyone, he never even considers that Laurent loved his brother and was shattered by his death, never shows a shred of sympathy, his first assumption was that Laurent resented Auguste for being the golden child/crowned prince, and it's only when Paschal looks at him like he's crazy and says "no, he loved him." that he begins to realize the Laurent he's been experiencing is one that in many ways *he helped create* and that the purest form of Laurent was a sweet, shy little boy who loved his brother without a cruel bone in his body, he never wanted power or glory or anything, all he wanted was his big brother, and Damen killed that version of Laurent when he killed Auguste.

I think that is in part how Damen begins to come to forgive Laurent, or at the very least to begin to sympathize with him, realizing that in a fucked up kind of way, everything Laurent does to him, while still totally being first and foremost Laurent's responsibility and moral failures to atone for, is partially a consequence of his own actions, that he helped turn Laurent into the tangled ball of pulsating yearning in the shape of a man that he is.

I think realizing how wrong he'd been about the kind of man Laurent was, was what began his journey to coming to terms with the kind of man he, Damen, was at the beginning of the story. When he first meets Laurent he thinks he has him pinned and describes him as arrogant, self-absorbed, self-serving, spoilt, and "raised to overestimate his own worth", which in hindsight is definitely meant to be projection because those are all ways that Damen himself could be described at the beginning of the story, something he basically admits to at the end of Kings Rising when he reflects on the version of himself that existed before he was imprisoned.

[quelmdn]

a mimir

[c-leadraw]

Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat

[fancysmudges]

underrated moment

[quelmdn]

Deities ✨

[bloodyplunder]

On my gazillionth reread, I'm so obsessed with them 🤧

[solarmidnight]

What annoys me the most about Captive Prince discourse in the book fandom is that people don't know you need to read the whole trilogy to judge the first book. There is so much context missing from the first book because Laurent is so far removed from Damen there. They do not know each other, they aren't working together yet. The story is 99% told from Damen's perspective. In the first book, you do not know Laurent at all. You only know what Damen knows, and Damen knows shit fucking all.

If you're going to read Captive Prince, you need to commit to reading Prince's Gambit and King's Rising, no matter how you feel about Laurent in the first book. No matter how repellent the world they exist in is to you. The context you need is there but you need all three books!

[missescara-23]

“You don’t get it!” I scream being dragged away “ they were BOTH captive princes !!” They lock me away to scream at the wall. 😭😭😭😂😂 I spent entirely too much time rendering them that the thought of doing a background made me want to collapse so this is all y’all get lol . I’m currently rereading ‘ The princes gambit’ it’s just as great as I remember 😍😭

[disappear-into-the-role]

Damen: Laurent is a fucking monster, am I right?

Laurent's people: Absolutely not. He's never been this horrible to anyone. What the hell did you do to him?

Damen: Well, he definitely doesn't know who I am or that I killed his brother so...it can't be that.

[nomira-lou]

I made the sketch for this about a year ago and then left it to rot on my ipad, I finally reworked the sketch and finished the drawing a few days ago! I love art noveau and I love Damen and Laurent, so of course I needed to put them together again!

I'm actually so so happy with how this turned out!! I just love working on eleborate pieces like this

[frogpropaganda]

People criticize the first time Damen and Laurent sleep together for happening when Damen is technically still a slave, but I've never seen anyone point out that the dynamic was ethically questionable on both sides. Damen had sex with Laurent thinking Laurent doesn't know who he is, and thinks that if Laurent did know he'd never go through with it, and that if he finds out he'll be devastated. So he was, in his mind, having sex with Laurent under a false identity, which means both of them were being kinda fucked up.