#harimad sol

[uddf]

Harimad Sol

La espada Azul // The Blue Sword

[words-writ-in-starlight]

also hey tell me about damarian courting rituals, I am intrigued

A long time ago I made this post and it had this comment from @amusewithaview:

Um hi yes please give me ALL OF YOUR DAMATIAN COURTSHIP HEADCANONS.

Please tell me about ALL OF THE MULTITUDE OF STEPS that Corlath either skipped or did out of order. Please tell me about all of the unsubtle commentary and mostly irrelevant advice ‘gifted’ to him by his Riders. Please tell me all about his inherited Riders telling the younger crop ALL ABOUT his father’s exploits and comparing the two.

So what I am saying is: let’s talk about Damarian courtship.

We know that gift giving is, and has been, a big thing in Damar ever since Aerin’s day, and we know that giving gifts in an attempt to convey interest was a thing at the time (Tor, poor beautiful Tor who keeps trying to convey his affection to a sol too enamored of dragon slaying to realize, she figures it out eventually), so like.

Gifts.

Damarian courtship is BIG into gifts, but it’s a desert, so normally these are things like services.  Food is also popular.  You start with a few small gifts or helpful actions, things that could be brushed aside as friendly solicitousness, and then once you’ve gotten up the necessary courage and sussed out that this person probably does not hate you, you pull out all the fucking stops and Go Big Or Go Home.  

Now, the key here is that the gift is theirs to keep regardless of what they say.  The gift is theirs.  You gave it to them because you’re generous and trying to prove a point about how much you care.  The gift is also a contract--they have to be nice if they let you down, and you have to be civil about taking the disappointment.  The gift is a big shrieking neon sign that says “don’t be an asshole” to all parties.

But so anyway, you’ve plucked up your courage and now you’re gonna give them the Dopest Present You Can Find, along with a statement of intent.  Generally there’s an exchange of gift giving up to this point, and sometimes if people are already aware of what’s up, you and your potential honey kind of race to reach the Big Gift first.  But regardless.  You give them an elaborately embroidered robe that you stitched with your own hands while you tried not to go insane from being cooped up during the rains.  You give them a saddle blanket woven out of bright red and white to make their horse look like a living flame.  You give them the best and nicest sword you’ve ever seen.  You make them an elaborate four-course meal with all of their favorite foods and serve it to them personally and eat with them and give them your best wine.

Or, if you’re really hardcore and very sure of yourself, or alternatively extremely rich and incredibly intense, you give them the most important thing Damar has going for it at any given time.

You know.

A horse.

A whole entire war horse, hand-selected to suit their temperament and match their visions of the future.

Plus tack.

Now...this is where Corlath gets into trouble, you see.

Because he has this girl in his tent.  And he’s already been giving her a lot of things--robes and food and being waited on hand and foot by his own hafor.  All of that is not helping his Riders’ opinion that the kelar is trying to get their king laid, because it looks like he’s trying to woo this girl even though--well, she needs clothes that suit the desert, not some six-layered cake of a nightgown, and she’s obviously got to eat, and she’s been kidnapped by people she can’t even talk to.  He’s trying to make her feel at ease.

Normally, no one except the royal family gets this kind of treatment from the hafor, so by the strictest traditions Corlath may have slightly declared her his fiancee, but it was with the PUREST intentions.

But so, he concludes, the girl has to be trained as a warrior, and therefore she needs a horse and a sword and a teacher.  The teacher and the sword he can justify as her nominal lord, but the horse is dicier--she’s not technically his subordinate, and he’s not adopting her, which would be the other two circumstances where it would be socially acceptable to give someone a horse.  

To hell with it, though, he’s the king and she needs a horse so he gives her a horse.  He sells this lie to himself with extraordinary success, but not so much to anyone else.

“That’s a beautiful animal, sola,” Faran says very neutrally, watching the Outlander girl as Tsornin more or less flirts with her.

“Yes,” Corlath says through his teeth.

“The best in our herd, probably, excepting yours.”

“She needs a horse,” Corlath repeats for the fifth time in an hour.

“Mmmhm,” Faran says, and arches an eyebrow very slowly at his king.  Corlath resolutely does not blush, because he’s a king and he made a completely reasonable and legitimate gift based on the needs of someone who could help his country.

And then, of course, Harry up and leaves for six weeks to train with Mathin and the entire camp kind of observes Corlath while he Refuses To Pine and goes “Yeah, okay, sola, a totally logical gift, we believe you.”

So when Harry comes back to the City, triumphant, literally no one is surprised when he gives her the blue stone garden.  It was his father’s gift to his mother when they got married, so obviously Corlath will want to give Harimad something equally dramatic when they get married and this is just...the Damarian equivalent of a DTR talk.  

Corlath knows what he’s doing with this one, and feels kind of guilty.  The Outlander--Harimad clearly doesn’t know what the gift means, and it’s unfair of him to expect anything from her (he did kidnap her), and even more unfair of him to be disappointed when she doesn’t reciprocate the gift giving as the social structures dictate, because of all the things Mathin taught her, courting rituals probably weren’t among them.

But he does still give her the room.

Gonturan doesn’t count as a gift because Gonturan would be mortally offended to be pawned off as a possession, and Corlath knows it, and also Harry is now a soldier in the king’s army and can receive a sword from his hands without any baggage.  But the room and the horse and more robes and more meals that Corlath quietly edits to remove foods Harry doesn’t like...can you blame people for whispering?

And then she disappears during the army’s march and their king is wearing her sash.

By the time they actually get married, Harry has sussed out that the majority of the population believes they’ve been engaged since she arrived in Damar, largely because Innath finally took pity on her.  

She goes to an enormous amount of trouble to buy Corlath a hand-worked leather breastplate for Fireheart on rush order, complete with the royal crest worked in red to flatter the bay’s coloring, and shows up with it in hand and a smug look on her face as she shoves it at him.

“This is for you,” Harry says, triumphant.  “I would be extremely honored if you would marry me.”

Corlath blinks at her.  “Hari, love, we’re getting married in a week, everything is already planned.  But the breastplate is very nice,” he admits.

Harry’s grin widens.  “Ah, but it’s not really polite to do half your wooing when your target doesn’t even know what’s happening.  I have to admit that I don’t actually know the proper forms for how this should go, though.  So.”  She gestures to the breastplate and says, “Will you please marry me, Corlath-sola?”

Corlath is laughing when he kisses her.

[mighty-mandoart]

More Damar sketches.

Hello, Blue Sword fans! Anyone out there?

@forsooth-verily @damalursols @wizqevelynart @whatrachelreads

[words-writ-in-starlight]

hey do you think harry can lift corlath bridal style. do you think corlath died. do you think she continued to do it at random intervals and eventually he asked her why. do you think she looked him dead in the eye and said, "payback."

First of all, we all know that, deep down, Corlath is a sap.  A fucking romantic.  Old school.  He gave Harry the blue stone room, he 100% brings her flowers and gifts and anything else he thinks she’d like, literally the second he knows she loves him he’s full throttle on the whole thing.  All of Damar rapidly gets used to the fact that, whenever the two of them are apart for more than a few days, the reunion includes Corlath sweeping Harry up into a hug and spinning her around and kissing her.  Their children are disgusted but tbh the Riders and everyone else thinks it’s...really nice.  Damar has been at war for a long time, their king has earned being silly and romantic with his hero-queen.

Second of all: bridal style is really difficult with someone taller than you because it’s an awkward way to carry someone--and Harry is tall, but we’re told very specifically that Corlath is a good handspan taller.  Speaking as someone who, even at my strongest, could not pick up someone significantly taller than myself in a bridal carry, I kind of doubt she’s literally capable.  Every once in a while she’ll pretend to faint dramatically on him and Corlath will catch her and look extremely stone-faced and go “Love of my life, heart of my kingdom, someday you have to let this go”, but that’s about the extent of her revenge.  She wouldn’t want him to think she held it against him when there’s so many more things to tease him about.

But one time Harry picked the king up in a fireman’s carry because she thought he was done in his study for the day, and she carried him with very little trouble through the castle in full view of anyone passing by and dumped him on their bed.

She hasn’t done it since but Corlath knows she’s capable and lives in paranoia.  

[words-writ-in-starlight]

ok but ever since ur post about harry and corlath's children where u said smth like "corlath is too thrilled with his life to deny his children, esp when it's so unimportant" all i can think about is one of them when they are Small braiding his hair with flowers and getting sad when he tries to take it down and then he ends up going to some Very Important Kingly Meeting with a flower crown and keeping a straight face while harry's dying of laughter. (i hope your day is going well!)

Let’s be clear, Corlath is nailing the fuck out of fatherhood.  He’s acing that shit.  (He remarks very dryly, with tiny baby Aerin Amelia reaching up to clutch in fascination at his hair, that corralling armies is good training for corralling children.)  Now, Tor takes very much after his father once he’s older, trending toward seriousness with a deadpan sense of humor, but as a baby he’s talkative.  Not, like, coherent, but he’ll sit there and just kind of babble at you for as long as you seem to be paying attention.  He is also very attached to his parents and something of a hit at court--of course he is, the child of their hero-king and their damalur-sol, of Corlath, direct down the centuries from the Dragon Slayer, and Harimad, Hurler of Mountains.

(”Oh, gods, they’re really going to call me that,” Harry murmurs in horror to Corlath at a feast not long after their wedding, and Corlath laughs at her, and the fire in the hearth snaps and crackles and a grinning pale face flashes for a moment before vanishing.)

So when Tor just can’t bear to be left with his nurse, a very patient woman who puts up with A Lot from the royal family, Corlath and Harry look at each other and shrug and just take him with them.  He sits on one of their laps, as they hold court from their twin stone thrones, and sometimes when he starts burbling away his parents--more often Corlath, much to the surprise of everyone--will pause and listen attentively, and tell the petitioner in a grave tone “Well, you see, the young lord believes that you should bring your neighbor next week and he’ll see what can be done to resolve your dispute.”  It makes open court about a hundred and fifty times more entertaining for everyone.  Tor’s first birthday present from Innath is a tiny version of his father’s crown, carved out of wood, and Tor immediately attempts to put it in his mouth.

Aerin is much quieter as an infant, and only too glad to toddle behind her older brother, so she attends court less than Tor did.  However, she does enjoy flowers very much, so the court is disappointed to not have a small child in attendance, but they’re enjoying the periodical appearance of their sovereigns with crowns of whatever Aerin could get her hands on.  She decides very young that Corlath looks best in daisies, and she likes to find the reddest pimchies to weave into Harry’s golden hair.

When Jack is a baby, things are pretty quiet.  Aerin carries on with draping her parents in local flora (Jack and Aerin are very close in age), and Jack mostly smiles and blinks and coos quietly.  He’s a very compliant sort of infant.

Then Jack’s kelar comes in when he’s seven and the court gets a lot more lively.  Corlath and Harry can’t in good conscience leave Jack with his nurse--can’t really leave him with anyone but themselves or Luthe or his siblings, for fear that his strength might get the best of him.  So he starts coming to court, and banquets, and whatever else Tor and/or Aerin is attending with their parents, and he’s still a kid, so sometimes his magic sort of...leaks.

They got the chandelier back on the ceiling eventually, with Harry’s help, and honestly he and Tor didn’t mean to animate the fine china and, well, Corlath got it under control anyway, didn’t he?

Hari, of course, attends court pretty much from day one, because by then Tor is old enough to be there in a slightly more formal capacity as the not-yet-formalized-but-still-recognized Crown Prince who could do with seeing how a country works.  Between the draw of her beloved eldest brother and her parents, Hari can’t be pried away.

Then she turns three and she’s walking reliably and she can talk and it’s very hard to keep her under control, so she starts causing trouble at court.  And banquets.  And every other place she’s allowed to roam free.

“Honestly, Jackie,” Harry sighs, surveying the damage to the banquet hall that needs to actually host a banquet in three hours.  The walls are scorched and the chandelier is down again, among other, more solveable problems.  “What happened?”

“I just turned my back for a minute,” Jack says helplessly.  “Tor’s off with Papa and Aerin’s fixing her gown and she told me to keep an eye on Hari and--”  He gestures to his little sister, who has soot smudged across every visible inch of skin and a seraphic smile on her face.  “I only looked away for a couple minutes, I swear.”

“I believe you, Jackie,” Harry says, and drops a kiss on his hair.  It’s difficult to manage this while also trying to look forbidding in her youngest’s direction.  “Hari,” she calls.

“Yes, Mama?” Hari says brightly.

“How did this happen?”

“I found a recipe in an old book, Mama.  Only I don’t think I did it right, because instead of just making smoke it exploded.”

“You don’t say?”

Needless to say, the banquet is held outside in the setting sun, and Corlath and Harry try not to look too visibly amused and/or dismayed when Hari pops out from under her sister’s skirts to steal a fistful of grapes.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

do you think that during the scene where harry and corlath sit at the fountain he was like holy shit holy shit holy shit she's holding my hand holy shit and then later was like sheheldmyhandsheheldmyhandsheHELDmyHAND and one of the riders (probably mathin) was like im gonna tell this story at your wedding

Well, as we all know, the exact order of people who realized that Harry and Corlath were in love* was:

The Riders

The hafor

Bystanders at the laprun trials

Sungold

Corlath, probably immediately after she took his mask at the trials

Gonturan

The City hafor

Random City folk

Various Damarian soldiers, including Senay and Terim at different times

Luthe/Aerin

Jack Dedham

Random Outlanders following mad Harry into battle

Kentarre and her archers

Richard Crewe, probably because Jack tells him

Small animals on the side of the path

Passing birds

Thurra probably????

MAUR THE BLACK DRAGON, DEAD THESE MANY CENTURIES

PEOPLE IN SUNSHINE, WHO AREN’T EVEN IN THE SAME UNIVERSE

Harry

*Narknon is not included because, as it has no bearing on her life besides the improvement of her porridge quality, she maintains catlike, disdainful disinterest

So what I’m saying is: yes, yes he does.  And at their wedding Mathin, in his capacity as Harry’s stand-in entire family, presents her as the Daughter of the Riders and tells the entire assembled city about how it took a fight, a mutiny, a war, a miracle, and a near-death experience for Harry to see what was right in front of her nose, and in the meantime their noble king was blushing like a teenager after so much as touching her hand.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

idk about having half a fic written (if it's a Probably Angsty one then YES THAT IS ME SCREAMS LOUDLY IM SO EXCITED) but I am glad I could make you happy :D thank you for the rec!! i hope your day goes well!!

YES IT IS that’s the one and listen, it’s like 3K already and it’s clearly gonna take me A Minute to finish this Blue Sword fic, so here is an excerpt as a teaser. 

He sees yellow hair first, singular and striking andforeign, the way he did the first time the kelarthrust a vision of her onto him.  Theblood comes later, and there is a lot of it, and then a fleck of blue, like aflower amidst a barren waste—like a jewel catching the sun.

Corlath blinks, and blinks again, but the vision refuses tocome clear, a reflection in a rippling pool rather than still water, and hegrinds a curse between his teeth.  Itcould be the kelar twisting a cruelfist in his chest, or it could be his own fear, the worry nagging at the backof his mind blooming wide—he cannot begin to tell, cannot separate the visionfrom his own immediate reality, and he can feel the edge of panic kept at bayby long practice.

He can’t make out the image, that’s the source of the panic,not in any degree of detail beyond the shuddering smears of color andshadow.  It’s not the present—it’s barelydawn outside, not the full light of the vision, but is it past or future?  Where is the hand matching the gem-glint ofblue, holding up the sword?  Which of thefigures in swirling desert robes, standing against the malformed shapes of theNortherners, belongs to that unmistakable yellow hair, which of them is his sol, his Rider, his—

The vision shiversand dies, and the kelar feels almostapologetic as the image fades.  Corlathhas more might in this than anyone has in generations, but he cannot seeclearly enough.  In order to do that, tosee all of the battle and know with surety whether it was past or future, hewould need the strength of Luthe, or Aerin—or Harry.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

hi!! i absolutely adore your Blue Sword headcanons (why doesn't it have a bigger fandom. why.) and i cried a little when i read the last ones. if i may ask, do you have any headcanons about the children?

(i sent that before i meant to weeps, sorry, feel free to ignore this one if you want) also, luthe is probably their weird uncle who loves them all and tells wild stories that no one quite believes. (i hope you're having a good day!)

Ummm, let’s see, headcanons about the kidlets.  I’m not going to do the headcanon meme because I’m mostly making these up, but I hope these are good!

Tor Mathin

Tor is a lot of things--first sola, horseman, a good tactician, a promising young king--but a swordsman is not among them.  He’s passable, technically very good, but he lacks joy.  Tor is the first person in his family in the gods only know how long to prefer spears, and dredges up an old design for a Damarian saddle that allows him to strap the poles to his horse’s side for easy access.

Tor takes after his namesakes--both of them, actually, although naturally Tor’s dry humor and stoic sufferance of small children didn’t make history nearly as much as his Just-ness.  But what I’m saying here is that, basically, Tor has a very droll sense of humor and is an incredibly excellent big brother who claims dibsies on his youngest sister on the spot and routinely allows himself to be dragged into trouble with her.  Mathin is delighted.

Aerin Amelia

Obviously, Aerin Amelia is the next carrier of Gonturan.  One of them, at least.  She is a talented stateswoman and the beloved first sol of her people, and her mother teaches her swordplay, and Aerin associates it with laughing and joy and the beat of sunlight on her cheeks.  She beats the crap out of her brother frequently and Tor puts up with it because he’s a good sport.  

She likes to dress up like her godmother--Amelia dotes on her, and for Aerin’s sixteenth birthday the girl shows up in crimson and blue, a dress Amelia sewed for her over the winter, somewhere between a Hill robe and a layered Homeland dress, with pearls woven into her bright red hair.

Aerin and Senay’s baby sister Rilly fall in love and get married and Senay and Harry are both pleased beyond belief.  Aerin, much like her namesake, is Tall, and Rilly is kind of Tiny all her life, they’re adorable.

Jack

Jack is a fucking kelar powerhouse.  All his siblings are, they take after the old kings, but Jack in particular is juiced.  His talents run toward rock and stone, and when his kelar wakes he almost shakes down a wing of the citadel.  He and Harry ride out into the Hills and she sets up a camp in a little valley where she once learned how to fight, and they just sort of wait out the worst of it.  She kisses his hair and rubs his back and it’s a terrible few weeks, as he tries to get control, but it’s an oddly warm memory, later.

To that effect, Luthe likes Jack very much, he reminds Luthe of the Aerin easily as much as his sister, and although Jack is far from being a full mage, Luthe teaches him a few tricks.  One that Jack particularly loves, because of the way it makes his sisters yell at him in mock aggravation, includes turning little posy rings of pimchie flowers into golden birds that sing before flying away into nothingness.  Luthe observes Jack’s talent for this particular parlor trick and very scrupulously does not burst out laughing.

Hari

The youngest child of Harry and Corlath is two things above all else: an incredibly skilled rider and the fucking family prankster.  Tor adores her from the minute she’s born, a wrathful little thing with jet black hair and tiny clenched fists, and he makes a fantastic babysitter, and she gets on her first horse at two years old because she talked Tor into letting her ride his stallion.  It was a terrifying experience for Tor as well as all the sofor who witnessed their teeny baby sol shrieking with delight as she clung to the horse’s mane like a burr.  It was also the moment that Tor realized his baby sister could probably ask him to hand over the kingship and he might actually do it.

Hari and Aerin trade custody of Gonturan, sometimes, more just for variety than anything else.  Aerin usually carries it because Aerin actually likes swords, whereas Hari likes to fight with a pair of knives.  This is considered something of a sneak-thief’s weapon, in Damar, but Hari is very stubborn and Harry isn’t exactly a strong candidate for telling any of her children “No, you can’t, Because Tradition” and Corlath is too thrilled with his life to take a hard line on something so unimportant.  So it’s mostly Hari’s tutors kind of moaning through their teeth as she learns to throw knives and Hari young woman is that your brother’s best tunic you’re using for target practice.  

Yes, it absolutely is Jack’s best tunic, because Hari, in the fashion of younger siblings everywhere, is, after all, something of a sneak-thief, and she stole it to see how long it would take him to notice.  

It has been three weeks and while Aerin and Tor have both noticed, Jack shows no sign of picking up on it.