⭐I am here to indulge us both! Gate baby chaos coming at you: What would Helia think of Leocadio 👀
Oooh~! Yes! Talking about gate babies! That’s always a fun topic (except when it gets sad).
So first things first, Helia would probably first hear about Leocadio through rumors of him being an out-of-wedlock child from House Silva and House Vermillion. She wouldn’t believe it at first, thinking it’s baseless rumors to put the two families in a negative light. Based on word of mouth alone, Helia is suspicious of Leocadio’s existence unless she hears it directly from either family. If she heard about Leocadio from Nozel, she’s feel somewhat conflicted. She’d be happy to see Nozel’s family grow but also disappointed because it might mean that she and Nozel aren’t meant to be.
Upon seeing Leocadio, Helia would adore him on the spot! Suspicions and distrust are completely out the window. She has a very big, open spot in her heart for anything cute, especially babies. She’s got that big sister/mother instinct in her that demands she dote on babies. Leocadio would not be an exception. He’s such a sweet child that Helia doesn’t care who his parents are or what it means for her and Nozel as long as Dio gets the love he deserves.
Based on appearances and word of mouth alone, Helia would be on Leocadio’s side. He’s a baby and doesn’t deserve being involved in a royal controversy. He’s the child of her beloved Nozel so she can’t bring herself to hate Dio. But, the circumstances for Dio’s presence might be hard for her swallow and there would be some jealousy felt towards Fuegoleon (if she ever finds out that he is the other parent). Still, Helia would like Leocadio overall and wish only good things for him.
.....
Hopefully you like what I have to say. I tried to keep this concise but I think I ended up with a short ramble. Ah well. What a fun ask to answer!
Fuegoleon: are you sure you should be holding a baby? aren’t you worried your going to drop it? Nozel: oh please, that was one time and I was twelve, plus Solid was fussy
I took this and ran with it but in a slightly different direction abdksnanas
I. NEED. TO. LEARN. MORE. ABOUT. FERRO's. UNIVERSE. Like are you kidding me? Fuego and Leo pulled a coup and killed every non-vermillion??! that's, wow, that's rich!! What's the heck is wrong with /THAT/ timeline? What about Asta's story there? the elves? the devils? Fuego really killed everyone? including NOZEL? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS!
OH MY GOD ANON YOU’VE MADE MY ENTIRE DAY
HONESTLY this AU is underdeveloped because of the way it came to fruition in the first place, so nothing would make me happier but to make it a collaborative fandom project but here’s everything I’ve got on it
Under a Read More because it might get lengthy
First, a disclaimer: This AU was born out of a dream. I had a dream about a plucky teenager participating in a Magic Knight’s exam that was designed more like The Hunger Games, and when I woke up, I said to myself, I gotta get in on that. So that’s why some of the details of this AU are a little fucky. Dream logic.
Now, the inciting event for this AU is twofold: First, Acier lives. SECOND, her sister, Kirsch and Mimosa’s mother, dies giving birth to Mimosa.
Sister’s death completely breaks down any bond between the Vermillions and the Silvas. It’s just. Messy. A lot of finger pointing, a lot of people not handling things well. Because while the Silvas were taught from a young age to bottle up their feelings, Vermillions tend to use their feelings as a weapon. And relations go south fast.
Acier has still been training Meoroleona. Nozel and Fuegoleon have still been rivals. But when this happens, everyone is forced to pick a side. Acier and Meoroleona don’t end their relationship on bad terms, but they do end it. Nozel and Fuegoleon’s relationship swiftly turns hostile. In hindsight, nobody is happy about the way things went down, but at this point there’s a No Man’s Land to civility that nobody is willing to cross, and nobody will cross it.
The Vermillions have the roughest time with this, but unlike the way the Silvas handled Noelle, nobody actually blames Mimosa for her mother’s death. They turn their grief into what they see as righteous fury and determine to turn this into a “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” situation. This takes different forms over the years, but what basically happens is that everyone internalizes these feelings so deeply that while they all grow stronger, they also sort of grow apart.
Fuegoleon and Meoroleona have a blowout that completely shakes House Vermillion, and when Meoroleona leaves, she vows to never come back. No one believes that she would actually stay away, what with how close Fuego and Meoro were as kids, but when she leaves, she leaves. They see her once a year TOPS, and it’s never for a happy reason.
Fuegoleon, who has let his anger completely isolate him from the rest of his family, throws himself into being the Crimson Lion King, and while he’s incredibly successful, he loses parts of himself along the way. His ambitions override his caring nature and his inclination to share his strengths with others, and he becomes cold and determined, with a methodical outlook on relationships.
Leopold doesn’t become so callous-- he wasn’t old enough to remember his aunt’s death, he just had to grow up in the aftermath of it --but he follows in his brother’s footsteps, and while he’s not as mean about the way he does it, he’s not afraid to make some harsh decisions if it means being the best.
Kirsch and Mimosa decide that the best way to deal with this is to keep their heads down. Kirsch is fiercely protective of his little sister, because even though nobody is blaming Mimosa, he can’t shake the feeling that she may still have a target on her back. This makes Mimosa jumpy and clingy, never really developing the confidence to be her own person. While she can’t really nail down a particular reason for it, she’s scared of Fuegoleon and doesn’t trust Leopold. She can’t help but wonder how her cousins in House Silva are doing, but knows that all hell would break loose if she actually sought them out, so she feels constantly stuck between a rock and a hard place; the living embodiment of a schism between the royal houses.
The Silvas, on the other hand, go the other direction. Acier is still here, and she’s not letting her family rip itself apart like it did in canon. She remains the captain of the Silver Eagles and well-respected. Her kids have an even easier ride to the top with her still there to pave the way. She misses Meoroleona terribly. She knows that none of this was fair to any of them, and losing her sister AND her star pupil is a lot to work through. She keeps thinking that eventually she’ll get a letter or a surprise visit from the Undefeated Lioness, but she never does.
Nozel is genuinely heartbroken to have lost his rival and best friend, and, consequently, be left in the dust when he can’t keep up with Fuegoleon’s ambition, but he’s still got his mother and three little siblings, so they become his whole life. Without Fuegoleon’s rivalry to spur him on, he becomes good but not great, and is content to coast. He’s a mama’s boy, and as long as his mother is satisfied, he’d rather read and organize missions than go on them. On the bright side, he doesn’t deal with 90% of the stress he deals with in the canon universe. He’s actually pretty happy most of the time.
Nebra ends up being the classic middle sibling. Her magic is nothing special, but she’s a Silva, so she can go with the flow and still come out looking a little better than everyone else. While Nozel would rather spend time with books and Solid and Noelle would rather spend time with each other, she’s a drifter; she can hang with any of her siblings, or her mother, but she’s no one’s first pick. It doesn’t really bother her all that much unless she feels genuinely left out, and Mom never forgets about her, so it’s all good.
Solid and Noelle are thick as thieves, and the Silver Eagles’ superstars. They bring out the worst of each other and have a great time doing it. They’re a dynamic duo on the battle field and harbor unfathomable chaotic energy off of it. Getting sucked into their gravitational pull is dangerous, so Nebra, Nozel, and Acier tread lightly, lest they get dragged into, or end up the victim of their shenanigans. Of all combinations of Silva duos, they are by far the closest. Totally ride or die. That doesn’t mean that they don’t drive each other absolutely batshit crazy, and have some HUGE blowouts that waterlog half the castle, but that’s what siblings do. The nice thing about having each other is that neither of them end up in their siblings’ or mother’s shadows. The not nice thing about that is that they’re just. Little shits. Imagine Noelle acting the way she does in the beginning of the series, but being sincere about it. Imagine Solid acting the way he does, except he’s never checking to see if he’s got his siblings’ approval. Now imagine them patting each other on the back for acting like that. Yikes.
Then Ferro comes along. He’s the result of Solid knocking up his unnamed noble girlfriend when he’s 16-17. Acier is PISSED. All the other Silvas are scandalized. Solid is in big trouble. Acier suspends him from the Silver Eagles while she does damage control. What she eventually ends up doing is paying the girl off, and when the baby is born, she takes him into House Silva to raise him in secret. Nobody outside House Silva ever knows about him. He is House Silva’s best kept secret. This is an important detail.
The coup comes together. Fuegoleon has been working on this plan for a long time. Years. Leopold is on board, because Leopold would follow him off a cliff. But he’s also scared shitless. This is a much bigger deal than stepping on a few comrades to rise through the ranks. He slips a little. Kirsch catches wind of the plan. He gets in Leo’s and Fuego’s ear to remind them, hey, we’re Vermillions, too. So we’re cool, right?
Yeah, they’re cool. All they have to do is help their cousins kill everyone whose last name isn’t Vermillion. Kirsch thinks this is a pretty good deal to save him and his sister. Mimosa will later have her doubts, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.
Meoroleona was invited, but never shows up.
We’re about at the beginning of the show when the coup begins. I don’t have a good reason that it goes off as smoothly as it does. But everyone in Houses Kira and Silva dies, except Acier and Ferro. Ferro, now two, manages to watch his entire family get bodied without getting a scratch on him, because no one anticipated him being there. Acier is only able to defend herself and him before sneaking away.
Acier and Ferro flee to the Forbidden Realm, to a little town in bumfuck nowhere, to hide. They are never discovered by the Vermillions.
Fuegoleon becomes the Clover King. As far as they can tell, the coup is 100% successful. But the thing about fire is that it’s super useful for making people really dead, but when people are dying in heaps and being burned to ash it’s kind of hard to count how many bodies you’ve got. They don’t realize that they’re one short. With no one to stand in their way, Fuegoleon crowns himself Clover King. He disbands the Silver Eagles, and within the next few years, will crown himself Wizard King. It actually becomes pretty easy after Julius nerfs himself, whoops.
Unfortunately, Fuegoleon is starting to unravel. He gained a LOT of enemies doing all this heinous shit, and he is not a beloved king. Leopold is now the head of the Crimson Lion Kings, and he’s reporting back a lot of hostility among the captains. Not that they didn’t expect that, but there’s no way to practice sleeping with one eye open. That’s not to mention that the people are scared and confused, and that doesn’t make for a peaceful kingdom.
Over the course of years, he puts greater and greater restrictions on magic. It starts as permits to use spells in public places and soon grows into a near-total ban on grimoires for anyone outside the magic knights. With absolute power, he can kick people out of the magic knights AND take their grimoires. These rules both ease and exacerbate his growing paranoia. Everyone is pissed, but effectively stripped of their power, there isn’t much they can do about it.
Meanwhile, Acier is raising her grandson as a peasant, but never forgets that they’re royals. She teaches Ferro all of their family history, even though they have to keep it a secret. That gets kind of tricky since Ferro has royal-level magic in the middle of a town of peasants, but, you know, who’s gonna call him on it?
When Ferro is ten, he get recruited by a mysterious hooded figure to train his magic in secret. 90% of his magic training happens in a location he is taken to by a spatial mage. He, along with about a dozen other kids, are trained by a small band of mages who claim to be the resistance. Their goal is simple: Train the next generation of mages to take out the king and restore order to the kingdom. Ferro thinks this is pretty cool, and the honor isn’t lost on him, but he’s mostly glad that he can learn to control his magic in a way that makes his grandmother proud.
By the time Ferro is 15, grimoire ceremonies have been almost completely outlawed, so it’s a big deal when the resistance throws their trainees a grimoire ceremony. Once they’ve received their grimoires, they begin the next leg of their journey: become magic knights.
The Magic Knights Entrance Exam has changed a LOT in the last 15 years. This exam is deadly. In many instances, the point is to kill or be killed. Magic knights are being trained as a military force first and foremost, and their most important feature must be that they take orders unblinkingly. This does not fly with Ferro. While he’s extremely qualified for the position in every other way, he’s too nice to let people die, let alone kill them. He fails the exam. However, some of the other kids he’s trained with make it in.
So he needs a new plan. Spurned on by his grandmother and his teachers through the resistance, he decides to travel the Clover Kingdom. In the midst of his travels, Acier dies. At 20 years old, he is now the last Silva.
This fact makes Ferro pretty fatalistic, and at this point he decides the only rational thing to do is to force an audience with King Fuegoleon. Surely this won’t end in disaster. Definitely won’t be his untimely end by flames.
--
So there are a lot of holes in this AU, because it sprang up around this one character I had a wild dream about. A few mores notes:
Noelle joined the Silver Eagles, if that wasn’t obvious
The Vermillion coup takes place 1-2 years after the start of the show, and I have no explanation for how those events could fit into this timeline. They would definitely look a LOT different, that’s for sure
My notes on this end where they do because at the point where Ferro breaks into the royal castle to force this audience with the king, he actually gets thrown out of this universe and into another. So I guess for all intents and purposes, the Silva line ends for good in this universe
I know exactly where Meoroleona is and what she’s doing
I don’t know where exactly Kirsch and Mimosa are and what they’re doing when they disappear
So that’s all I’ve got! This isn’t a super duper happy AU, and definitely not flattering for everyone, but I was forced to flesh it out because I was told, very emphatically, “Evil Vermillions sexy.” I don’t disagree.
OKAY since deviantart is dead in the water, I’m going to post this here!
This is the story of what happened after the last Silva was kicked out of the Acier Lives but nobody else does timeline!
This comic is near and dear to my heart because even though the art isn’t as nice as my current stuff, it’s the first time I really davveled in representing the Silvas as complete clowns. This is Ground 0 for my shenanigans.
Although everybody looks the same as they do in canon, this is actually 15ish years post- elf invasion. Everyone looks the same because uuuuuuuh I want them to.
“I don’t think the grimoires have family insignias on them,” I hear you say. Well you know what I say to that? Please leave me alone it’s a narrative device
Hahahah okay so.... This is how Charlotte found out she had a child she definitely is not supposed to have. You can read about the cockamamie reasoning behind that here!
I drew this back in March, before we knew that canon Charlotte was. Like that. About these things. This was based on two other semi-canon materials, the first being a clip from the Quartet Knights game and the second being her little clover clip, which has been removed from YouTube 😠 In it, she talks about how if she and Yami had a child, it would be a beautiful black rose.
It's so amazing to me that time proved that Charlotte would react WORSE to this than I imagined
I never really asked about this and it.... I can't sleep at night cuz of this. Who gave birth to Leocadio? Fuego is the one with more of tiddies so... ??? I need an answer!
This is a good question! The short answer:
The long answer:
Leocadio comes from a reality where Nozel and Fuegoleon had the right combination of parts to make a baby. We haven't nailed down who had which parts because a) with the exception of Ferro we never davvel in the gate babies' original universe b) it doesn't really matter, since no one in THIS reality will ever know, and c) they're both Dad to him. Personally, I can't even decide! So you can decide for yourself, but for right now I don't have a straightforward answer for you.
Fun Fact #1: All of this also applies to Yami and William's gate baby Kashmarin!
Fun fact #2: In this reality Leocadio actually has 4 dads because Nozel and Fuegoleon are both possessed by elves when he's about 2 (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ He calls all 4 of them Dad/Daddy and that gets as confusing as it sounds.
