lin yixin. 一鑫. the new king. by leo doc - threads - musing
stats: name: lin yixin age: 29 sexuality: pansexual mbti: intj
a study in: the loneliness of leadership. softness on the precipice of turning sharp. how far love can drive someone. the foolishness that comes hand in hand with intelligence.
biography: yixin remembers very little of his childhood, but as far as he can tell, that's entirely normal. at the very least, he knows what everyone knows: he was a pampered boy, raised playing strategy board games in luxurious palaces. when he tries to scrape through the fog of his childhood, he always finds the same thing: sobbing into his father's arms, feeling a sense of loss and loneliness so palpable it's still hard even now. he has no reason to believe this whatsoever, but he does: that was the day he lost his siblings. it slips out of his grasp when he thinks too hard, and the few times he's divulged this to trusted company they've looked at him like he's mad. you never had siblings, my prince. if you did, they'd be here in the palace. eventually he stopped telling people. they surely assumed he'd abandoned it, like the countless projects and hobbies he'd abandoned as a careless youth. remember that time our naive prince yixin insisted he was a brother? much like the time he insisted he could learn to play the harp.
and though he never really abandoned the belief, he let it die, becoming a serious - and ambitious - young prince.
an energetic and empty-headed young boy without a care in the world grew into a sullen, ambitious young adult. your father will die one day, everyone kept telling him, and you need to be ready. he never told anyone how much it shook him to hear this, after already losing his siblings and his mother, and the only thing he knew to do was prepare. he would lose his father and have nothing but a kingdom. and he would run it well. he would know everything, he would be able to draw a map by heart and list exports without assistance, he would win every political game. and so as he grew into adulthood he withdrew, gained a reputation for being haughty and detached. but still everyone who had been in court for long remembered the ditzy young boy who had been able to make anyone laugh.
and so he was as ready as anyone could be when his father passed. he had very little reaction to the news; at the funeral proceedings, the courtiers found him either pale and forlorn or cold and unfeeling, depending on their feelings for him. during his coronation, he conveyed no emotions on his face, stoic and committed to the cause.
the next step for asteria is, supposedly, a lasting alliance which will be cemented by his wedding to the spare princess of sotera. but yixin has a few other plans.
