@arathina: ❝ i must be strong. if i despair, my grief will consume me. ❞
‘𝐓𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐠𝐨, 𝐦𝐚𝐲𝐡𝐚𝐩 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐥 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 and not one split between two wills, when he’d realized that what rests in the unseen shadows of the capitol is a blade. An edge that would cut easily into the unwitting. He’s no wounds to bear for his own missteps, but he knows of its existence all the same. The weight of a crown is a strange shield in some ways, but even he ill needs such protection when divinity still flows through his veins. The self-same blood he has blessed cursed his children with, only one marred by the red of his hair and thus suffers most for being her father’s child. In temperament and in appearance. Both children of his heart, his one light within this wretched city, who have become heirs to his burden and with it his own enemies.
The knives turn at times to the twins. Radagon toils harder still for a greater shield than what a throne fails to provide, for a happy people would mean safer childhood. He works through the night and finds himself yearning for simple days when the only yoke he need bear was that of a mere champion, when an enemy is the one he meets upon the battlefield. Now he fights for his children with failing diplomacy and an iron hand.
Godwyn once spoke of children sequestered away within the country. When he places a hand atop young Miquella’s crown of flaxen gold he thinks of his child amidst fields of wheat. Would that he had such luxuries. Would that he could take both children and settle within the azure lakes of Liurnia. His burden is their burden, and such are shackles that’d clasped tight about their wrists ere they’d been born to this world.
His precious and precocious son already feels the rattle of such chains, who remains at the same height now as he’d been years ago whilst he watches his sister age and suffer through the years. What use is the power of a crown when his children must feel its weight all the same. When Miquella must utter words of strength and grief. He halts in his tracks, hand falling away from his son, the same knot of grief that has tied about his heart since the moment he’d known he would be a father once more tightening once more.
‘Twould be so easy to waver and to have such temptation steal away within him now when his child feels the necessity of strength. What manner of father is he when his own son is forced to such a position, in what way has he failed? He sighs, looking away. “Grief for thy sister and what ails her?” For he can ill conceive of what else would cast such a pall for his son. Radagon has wept as well on his daughter’s worse days, when none but the gods themselves can see his weakness. “Thou’rt still too young to think of strength, my sapling. With much of thy life ahead of you. Even thy sister wouldst not have thee preoccupy thyself as such. Let me shoulder this grief, for I am thy father and I would have thee and thy sister free and full of joy.”
