can I ask for some headcanons of ferdinand as a child and as a teenager? there hardly is anything about him from when he's 13 onwards :)
sure!! i’ve written posts on this in the past, but i’m not at all going to force you to scroll through 500 posts to find those, so i’ll basically summarize everything i’ve said here!!
-- ferdinand was definitely reading voraciously the moment he learned how to read. whether it be about weapons, or great nobles of forgotten ages, or obscure tea flavors, he would spend days in the giant library within his home.
-- his father probably hired tutors for his son at a very young age, and ferdinand was an eager student. sometimes, his eagerness made him a nuisance to some of his less patient tutors, for all the questions he asked. even if he annoyed some of his tutors with his barrages of questions, he was always intelligent and did very well academically.
-- ferdinand has always been a horse girl, okay?? the problem is, he was super energetic and maybe not the most cautious, considerate kid in the world, which meant he wasn’t popular in the stables. horses need a tender hand, and it took ferdie a long time to master how to act around them to prevent himself from scaring them off. once he did learn, however? he’d spend as much time as possible with the horses, whether it be riding them or begging the servants to let him do their stable duties.
-- and there was no denying nine-year-old ferdinand whatever he wanted; the kid had puppy eyes down to a science, whether he meant to or not. so, much to his father’s chagrin, ferdie was tending to the horses like a - give duke aegir his moment to wince - common peasant.
-- when ferdinand tells manuela he didn’t miss a single one of her performances from the ages of five to eleven, he wasn’t lying. i can imagine ferdinand pleading with his father to take him to the opera, and the duke disregarding his son for interrupting him and sending the little guy away himself. ferdinand was toddling to the opera on his own the second he could. i’m picturing him humming the songs he hears there under his breath while going about his tasks for the day - and when he first began his training, you better believe he spent more time practicing the sword dance from his manuela supports than he did actually preparing for battle.
-- he was definitely lonely growing up: he’d never gotten along well with children his own age, and his father obviously ignored him whenever it was possible. his father’s servants were his friends, right up there with the horses.
-- just because his father showed no interest in ferdinand didn’t mean ferdie was going to stop chasing a relationship with his father: whenever time allowed, he’d sneak into the duke’s study and start chattering away, asking what his father was so busy with, if his father wanted to come watch ferdinand train for a moment because he’s gotten so good, telling his father about something silly the horses did, etc, etc. his efforts were met with cruel dismissals from his dad.
-- ferdinand was probably ten or eleven when he stopped regarding the servants as friends: he heard his father speaking ill of them once and was naive enough to assume he was right. that didn’t stop ferdie from helping them with their tasks on occasion, though, even if it was just to combat his boredom. he went from warm with them to formal and awkward.
-- ferdinand was probably a teenager by the time he realized his father wasn’t a great person - not that the realization stopped him from bothering the duke. now, he’d start arguments with his father, shuffling through his father’s documents and criticizing the policies his father endorsed. ferdinand was well read on true nobility: he knew there was nothing noble about his father’s wish to oppress commoners, and expressed as much. his father went from ignoring to resenting ferdinand, and ferdie...well, he didn’t really know how to feel...























