#*eris thought exercise

[eatsbooks]

If Neris had happened, where would Eris and Rhysand stand with each other? Assuming Beron is killed off, Feyre would probably still want some sort of relationship with her sister if only to make sure she is alright. Eris is now her brother in law so will they visit? Would he try to convince her to go back to her mate or would he just not risk war?

oh baby! my thoughts are that if neris happened as a canon divergence and not an alternate universe, the inner circle only let it get so far because they didn't think nesta would (or could) fall in love with eris. they allowed eris to sweep her off to autumn because they felt assured enough in the strength of her mating bond to cassian that it was a failsafe to ensure she would want to return to him (and thus be back under night court control) of her own volition. the intent was for her to serve in some sort of covert spy capacity and engender a sense of trust between the autumn court and the night court, then they would dangle something else in front of eris—someone powerful and pretty and docile—so that he would grow bored of nesta and discard her of his own volition. because the inner circle fundamentally misunderstands both eris and nesta.

but with her time away from the night court feeling like freedom, and with her social skillset put to such empowering use amongst the autumn court nobility, and with eris proving to be so much more complex than the cruel heir the night court paints him as, nesta finds herself certain that she has no interest in serving as rhysand's pawn—that she is happier with eris than she's been since turning fae—that her bond to cassian doesn't feel nearly as strong as this connection she and eris have forged with intention. and with him seeing nesta for all of her truths and appreciating each one, and with her so seamlessly navigating both the autumn court and his life, and with him and his family finally liberated from his father with her help, eris finds that he no longer just wants to use her for her power—that he has finally found someone he can trust to stand by his side—that he absolutely will not be letting her go, though he never had any intentions to. love consumes them.

this was certainly Not a part of the inner circle's plan. now feyre has lost her sister, cassian has lost his mate, and rhysand has lost a weapon—all because nesta had the audacity to make her own choices. i see it becoming incredibly contentious between all of these actors. i also see eris being incredibly smug about it. about being chosen. about taking from the inner circle. about immediately recognizing their game in using nesta as a pawn and coming out the victor. about seeing nesta true, truer than her own family, her own mate. about knowing that they can't do anything now that he's high lord, not even challenge him to a blood duel. after centuries of enduring their judgment and aspersions, he is finally vindicated.

so when the night court delegation comes to autumn under the pretense of ironing out the terms of the alliance between their courts, nesta has to incentivize eris to let her do most of the talking (yes naturally that gets sexual) and to trust her not to be swayed when [insert member of the inner circle] inevitably corners her alone to get her to come back (this is more a product of his deep-seated sense that no one could ever willingly choose him than a condemnation of her loyalty.) i think when the latter happens, he for sure has eyes and ears in that room somewhere, somehow. probably some charmed item from marius. eris is thoroughly warmed by nesta's conviction and loyalty to him, but he is furious about the way they're speaking to her—made even worse by the way that flame kindled to life inside of her begins to gutter over the course of the conversation. he can't keep his distance at that point, and the night court delegation is very promptly disinvited from their stay at the forest house.

it wouldn't end there by a long shot. nesta would want to see feyre and elain too so, at the very least, they would begrudgingly be allowed back. i think those visits are fraught and always occur with the undercurrent of all that isn't spoken between them, only for feyre to advocate for her return before she leaves because she misses nesta, and cassian misses nesta, and elain misses nesta, and if eris is keeping her here somehow they can help, and doesn't she want to come home? how could she be happy in a place like this? with a male like that? after enough of this, eris is pushed past the bounds of his civility and tells rhysand directly that if he continues to send his wife to try to take what belongs to him, the full might of autumn will be brought against the night court—insinuating, too, that his alliance with keir would see the hewn city rising up if he only requested it. that risk to rhysand's court would finally be enough to make him feign defeat, at least for as long as it takes him to devise some other way to get nesta back. for feyre, of course, and for cassian. not because he has ceded one of his greatest weapons to his enemy.

[eatsbooks]

How do you think Eris would react to/ treat a younger sibling who was born a female? Would he train her in secret because no sibling of his is allowed to be defenseless and overall try to her (relatively) safe person/place, would he be yet Another overbearing male bossing her around and telling her how to act? Bit of both?

(Additional stressing factor if Loa and Helion's love child is a red haired, fire spirited little girl (Poor Lucinda, Fate was laughing at her face since day one))

very much a bit of both i think! because with lucien, at least he has his maleness as a safeguard, especially in a court like autumn, especially with beron not only as his father figure but as someone who (at minimum) suspects lucien is not his son. at least he always has a relatively secure social standing in that he is a male, which offers him innate protections navigating the court. this isn't even something that would cognitively occur to eris to be grateful for. maybe in passing when he's confronted with the abuse his mother endures under beron—but even then, in most all other ways, loa is untouchable in their court. not included in any actual governance of course, but no male would dare open his mouth against her or make presumptuous advances on her, even if that's just because beron would kill him.

but a sister is so, so much worse. inherently, daughters matter less to beron. they can't become heir, so what's the point in them? even worse—a daughter of his and his wife's blood runs the risk of passing the high lord lineage into someone else's bloodline and out of the vanserra bloodline if she has a baby. add on top of this that beron suspects her of not being his child at all. add on top of this that she is mouthy in a way unbefitting of a female. add on top of this that beron doesn't care to hone her abilities beyond cursory training because they won't amount to anything anyway. add on top of this that males see her and covet her for the access she offers them to power, the same way females have been doing to eris since he first showed markers of being heir. young. so young. add on top of this that these males take cue from beron's disdain of her and feel more emboldened to treat her presumptuously. it's like the perfect storm.

i do think loa would be extreeemely protective of a daughter, even more so one between her and helion. beron might initially try to wound loa by keeping this daughter away from her and with wetnurses/governesses, but ultimately he is too distrustful and doesn't care to raise a female himself so it goes back to loa. that's the duty of a wife. so he would let loa have her little doll to keep her busy. loa in turn would be even more protective of her daughter because of their closeness and the lack of interference from beron, who will ultimately only care about her when it comes time to leverage her in an advantageous political marriage.

that poses real big issues for known control freak eris vanserra, who would take it upon himself to keep his sister prepared and safe, just as he has always done for his brothers. picturing it sort of like the thought exercise where he has a daughter—him knowing how males treat females and therefore deciding to minimize her femininity as much as possible so that she has better standing in this male-dominated sociopolitical hellscape. but all the while loa is lashing at him even more viciously than she did in canon when it came to lucien. because what does eris know of being female? what does eris know of navigating life as a female? what does eris know of the ways females learn to protect themselves—which they do and have and will continue to do without his "help?" why is he nosing about her daughter anyway? what purpose could he possibly have for this?

not one that is any good—never one that is any good.

[eatsbooks]

If Eris is magically assures some other guy would make a much better ruler than him, Suriel or some other power he actually believes in says no, would he give it up? If yes, what would he choose to be and do?

this literally made me go 🤩 because i was torn so many ways over it. i interpret eris as a character whose ruthlessness and ambition is rooted in his drive to protect his own, as well as the bitter spite over the fact that the people he suffers to protect hate him—have to hate him for him to protect them. if he isn’t in beron’s favor, he doesn’t have the standing to keep them safe. if he isn’t in power once beron is gone, the unrest amongst the political factions could see them all killed. not to borgias my vanserras yet again, but i think their lives are very much dependent on beron, then eris staying in power.

SO i feel like ……. eris loves autumn. he does. he loves the magic of his land so much, and it loves him so much. he wants to do right by it. he wants to heal it of the rot beron has let fester and overtake. he wants to bring his people towards bounty and harvest. but not at the expense of his family. his being heir is a shackle as much as it is a boon—more. this situation would cause such intense cognitive dissonance because—

—wouldn’t it be so nice? to be free? to let someone else carry the weight? to be assured that they would do so with ease? to know his court and his people were in good hands? a childhood dream, caught on the edges of sleep, because he could never let himself think it outright. but it is never to be. he is bird and cage. he has to be in power, he has to have control, no matter that someone else would be better equipped. he’ll simply try harder, work faster, be stronger; he’ll simply become what he must to have it all. he’ll make sure everything falls into place the way it needs to. (and wouldn’t it be so tragic if that was what made him the worse choice for a ruler in the end?)

bonus: i do often think about what life would be like for eris after becoming high lord. i feel like once he achieved relative peace in autumn, he would be in agony. a constant buzzing under his skin. insatiable restlessness. his shoulder, always looked over; his back, always watched—for nothing. any threats to him are paltry by then compared to what he knew before. he’s always moving, always seeking, but there isn’t anything to look for, so there isn’t anything to look towards. centuries spent paranoid and vigilant and wary—and he just can’t turn it off; he doesn’t know how. peace is a curse to someone who has known only war and shaped himself around it. who is he without the burden, the fight, the rage? no, the rage is still there. eating him alive. so i like to think a situation like this, if it happened, would be much the same. and i think it would be very, very important for eris to have someone to help him survive it. otherwise i don’t think it’s very likely he’ll be able to.

[eatsbooks]

I know genia has been paired with like.. everyone.. and the best choice is Tamlin obviously.. but when i first came across her lore and i read through her stuff i was wondering What if she had a mating bond with eris 😭

i wish i could properly express the synaptic event which occurred after receiving this ask my god!!!!! there are a few fixed factors at play to make this bond just absolutely diabolical for both of them: beron having had sex with (and having uhhh enslaved) iphigenia, beron having abused eris (while simultaneously molding eris into his image), iphigenia looking a lot like loa, eris looking enough like beron. because of these there are many many avenues to pursue with this bond but i think there are two overarching onsets to them: eris is young and so he leaves iphigenia to beron for a while before liberating her because he 1) doesn’t have the means to intervene 2) thinks it’s better/safer to have her close by than somewhere he can’t monitor her 3) knows he’s his mate and his match and so must be as resilient and hearty as he is; or eris is older/post-utm timeline and intervenes as soon as he is realistically able, but even that isn’t enough to spare iphigenia of beron completely.

first option is one of the worst timeline alive!iphigenias i think. every beat of her arc with eris is diametrically opposed to how she is with tamlin in renascence. because she’s known (of) eris so long before he intervenes and reveals their bond, his saving her has none of the inherent Goodness that endears her to tamlin. instead, it’s—how could you have known we were mates and let this happen to me for so long? she gets so incredibly bitter and probably more than a little suicidal to know she wasn’t worth saving sooner, which manifests not as those overly careful fear responses to keep her alive but now as intentionally volatile responses to tempt death. her tongue is sharp. her emotions are weaponized. every revelation about what happened to her is shared with intent to hurt eris like he let her be hurt. she takes all her anger with beron out on eris. also ! she knows eris prefers maidens. which she is not. because he let her be made into a whore. which she would throw in his face All The Time

and for eris, who knows love to be pain, who has learned he’s deserving of blame and violence and mistreatment, who is indeed culpable in this situation, who sees echoes of his mother’s face every time iphigenia lashes at him—oof! big oof! real big oof!!! worst part? he’s fuckin HORNY about it all. she is beautiful and vicious and hits such a good masochistic spot for him. one night iphigenia, drunk and wanting to hurt him, the wood of the forest house rotting all around her, lashes out at him. you will never be your father; you pale in comparison to him. eris snatching up her jaw. iphigenia thinking—there he is. finally. (because he hasn’t laid hand to her for pleasure nor punishment, not since he bedded her on their mating night.) but eris is just viscerally lustful because not only is she trying to hurt him but in her attempt to do so she actually ?? comforts him. cue FUCKNASTY TORRID SEX!!!!! which is the only way he subsequently knows how to feel connected to her. which makes her spiral out about being just a whore to him. it’s very not good

second option is better ! he intervenes quickly, so she has more affection for him from the outset. in this scenario, the antagonism is more subtle. she looks like loa; he looks like beron. each of them looks away from the other for what they see of people who mistreated them, and that leads to lots of misunderstandings/small hurts between them. but always, iphigenia is uniquely suited to see eris—she knows all of beron’s cruelty, all of his little tells, all of his expressions and mannerisms, and so anything she sees outside of that in eris is absolutely glaring. some of it is loa that she sees, (who she uhhh does also hate,) but there are other elements to him too. little shards of who eris really is as himself. loyal. fiercely protective. shrewd beyond his years. a man of action, even if that action is hidden behind cutting word. angry, so angry, so quick to lash with his tongue but never violent with her. he’s even sad beneath, if she cares to look.

eris feels immense guilt for what beron did/what he couldn’t prevent beron from doing + assumes she sees only beron in him. i really like the thought of eris trying to make this up to her and do right by her by doing away with the bed slave system in autumn as a whole, thinking it’ll be a sweeping gesture of his care for her—but iphigenia becomes distraught. first time he actually sees her cry. she always felt a cut above the rest, being favored of the high lord, and this means that her mate sees her as any other whore. she doesn’t want justice; she wants revenge. she doesn’t say it outright, but the way she barbs at him is telling. eris is massively offput by this, but only for as long as it takes him to resonate with it—for he was abused by beron, too. he knows her anger. that stuns him. he knows her anger, and so she must know his. he knows what has alleviated it for him in the past, if only for a while: blood, violence, power restored. so he finds the males who brought her to the forest house and presents their slow, methodical torture to her like a bouquet. she’s barely said a word to him since he told her about the abolishment, and he has to coax her into accompanying him.

but when she sees them.,,,,,,.,.iphigenia, even with tamlin, has vast propensity for violence/revenge when she feels it’s deserving. so i mean she is literally bricked up over this gesture it’s the first time erenia have that like . enthusiastic, carnal, lost in the sauce sex. possibly in an empty cell of the dungeons. they’ve had sex of course, but this is Different. iphigenia feels seen and loved and cared for. properly protected. eris feels like he’s done something right between them—and now that he knows how best to do that for her, he can continue doing it. he teaches her not how to be soft and earnest like tamlin does but instead how to use her mistruths as weapon rather than defense. safe in the iron-grip protection of him, she’s free to be the autumn lady she should have been aka Maximum Cunt and Entitlement. she’s lying for fun. she’s got the nobility wrapped around her little finger. she’s saying everything to helion and loa that eris holds back, then she’s getting fucked to the gods because don’t ever, ever speak to my mother like that but also do that again you’re so fucking sexy i love you so bad

they come to complement each other, but beron and loa are always imposed over them in some capacity. eris does look like and talk like and make decisions like beron, and sometimes it freezes iphigenia up; that crushes eris—reactivates that I’m My Father wound. sometimes iphigenia says something harsh or gentle and eris grows distant and it’s because he envisions his mother saying it to him. consistently, iphigenia has complex about not being a good enough lady of autumn, not like his mother, who the commonfolk all saw as their mother—she is no mother; she is just a whore. you will not say that of yourself, he tells her. and why shouldn’t i, when it is the truth? and god bless em when they do have children together they’re each other’s worst parenting nightmares

wow truly you have revolutionalized all things for me with this

[eatsbooks]

If Eris genuinely cared for a human and his attempts at turning them immortal failed, at what age would he/she be dumped?

so truly i think he sees them to their death. he would feel wholly responsible for them. he loved them and so he was meant to find a way to keep them alive and he failed in doing so. he is not a male who can let things go, even if it's out of his control. he failed. to fight the nature of the world. as if such a thing is meant to be fought. very vampire whose mortal lover refuses to be turned. bonus points if their memory begins to fail in their old age and they keep asking and asking and asking if he's found a way yet, they want to live, they want to be with him, they love him so much, he'll find a way, won't he? he always finds a way. eris nods. yes, he says. he'll find a way. they die while he's still seeking a way.

bonus bonus points if his search is what domino effect leads the king of hybern to realize the potential of the cauldron :•)

re: this ask !

[eatsbooks]

Eris and his apothecary oc mate having angst sex after she is punished by beron for perhaps not fulfilling her duties. And and he is so terrified by how close he came to losing her that in their haze he lets the L-word slip and she stares up at him breathless and dizzy and now the truth is out . Yay

ohhhxbchdjdjfhgsjhh eris who comes across her tending her own wounds. nothing crazy! just a split where a ring caught her cheek, maybe a few bruises on her jaw. she looks up to find him Frozen. he’s always so good at controlling his reactions but his mate has been hurt at his father’s hand and he knew this would happen and it’s his fault for not stopping it, for not stopping her from taking this post and now the air is rippling around him like it would above open flame. she goes to open her mouth, say his name, but this snaps him into cold, efficient motion. he’s taking the salves from her and just, show me. she still doesn’t know they’re mates but she sure as hell knows not to push back on him when he’s like this. hushed and steady, she directs him in tending her. it eases something in him, just a little, to have taken care of her in some way. it’s always been the other way around. by the end, he’s standing with his hands white-knuckle gripping the edge of the worktable on either side of her. this time, she does say his name. so wretchedly soft. like she’s worried more for his reaction to this than the pain she suffered. it’s the only thing said before he’s pushing her back onto the table to [redacted]—and the only thing said before he takes his leave after is: all of this would be easier if i didn’t love you.

[eatsbooks]

If due to some circumstances Eris had a kid before Beron was gone and Beron started physically abusing the kid too, would it be 1:1 his siblings situation? Or would he do anything different.

i think it would be different in its efficacy. (and that would eat eris alive.) because eris's children are his. if nothing else, he can invoke that—beron cannot abuse his children because they belong to him. and beron would respect that if eris did it right, which eris would. it isn't that beron has no claim to them as their grandfather/high lord; it's that for them to respect eris, they must fear him most of all, and if beron intervenes, that can't happen. so eris is able to fully protect his children by feigning cruelty. and in private, he can be soft in a way it isn't even safe to be with his brothers, because his brothers might use it against him. but his children really are his. they are his to care for. they are his to love. that won't be perfect—but it will be heartening, to see that even under beron, he can spare a person he cares for. even as he watches his siblings suffer for the way he can't do the same.

[eatsbooks]

my liege 🫡 i had a thought abt eris and his happily mated/married lady. they're settled in, theyre not as insane anymore, eris can actually initiate physical touch by putting his hand by her waist — things are great ! but as it happens, they end up having an argument; maybe it's about something silly, maybe not. but either way, his tongue slips and he says something harsh, and she goes quiet, just staring at him with those big eyes, tears of hurt welling in them.... what does our very emotionally healthy, happy-childhood-having high lord do?

> : ) oh man i mean i think he bluescreens for a second right??? eris who is always prone to lashing with his tongue to maintain control in emotionally heightened situations, who has done so for decades and centuries and still does during political maneuverings, who is unaccustomed to softness and tenderness with those he loves—he barbs her during this argument and gets the exact outcome he knew he would. leverage is returned to him; she has fallen silent.

just like that, he is beron, and he has made her his mother.

except his mother always schooled her hurt. his mate feels comfortable with him, so she doesn’t. worse, he probably feels it like a wound to their bond. violent eris, cruel eris, painful eris. he hears his father’s satisfaction with him at his ear, and he feels ill but doesn’t know what to do about it. doesn’t have the language for remorse or apology. words are insufficient besides—surely she knows this, that they are paltry things, that his actions speak for him, that he didn’t mean it, not like that? but the first tear falls, and it’s dark to his eye as spilled blood.

he reaches forth to brush it away on a knuckle and she doesn’t flinch and somehow that makes it all the worse. he doesn’t want her to fear him, but it wouldn’t surprise him if she did; doesn’t everyone? at the very least, she should be angry. she should want to hurt him back. none of those things happen. her jaw tightens. her chin wobbles. she doesn’t want to concede so easily, but she leans into the small comfort of his affection. maaaybe depending on the severity of what he said/what their argument was about, he offers, i misspoke.

much more likely if any of it was Serious, she has to be the one to take command and steer the conversation. if she isn’t willing to and walks away from it, she’d have to reinitiate. he might try to bring it back up again but only once emotions had settled, likely after they had sex or came together strongly on another matter, something to show him there’s still intimacy and connection and love between them, that she isn’t going anywhere and doesn’t think he’s his father. i could see him trying to navigate the situation without addressing it at all. showing her his apology in some way—depending on their argument, maybe doing what she had been advocating or at least showing her that he took her words to heart.

god i’m going to eat this situation like dessert