{{Tagging @prvssianblve because it’s most immediately relevant to Prussia out of all the citta hetalia muses, but anyone else familiar with the series at all is welcome to comment!
Hello! So I was going to just ask you in the tags of the reply I just sent out, but it got way too long so I figured I’d tag you in a separate post instead. I’m quite curious what your thoughts are on why the ex-Nations stay alive for a while after their country ceases to be! I don’t think canon mentions it in depth, but there’s been a few interesting details, like there was a strip where modern-day Prussia is shown to heal wounds at a much more human rate than before, and then one of a bedridden HRE set after he’s stopped being a Nation? And then a micronations one where Niconico Republic was stated to have ‘gone back to being a normal Japanese citizen’ or something to that effect.
From all that, I’ve gathered a tentative theory they have a ‘grace period’ of immortality/agelessness after losing Nation status, perhaps roughly proportional to how long they’ve been a Nation (idk like maybe around a tenth or a twentieth of how long they’d lived)? so that they can… get their affairs in order or train whomever is going to replace them as the Nation in charge of that piece of land that they occupied. And throughout the grace period their healing powers and Nation senses and strength and stuff would diminish gradually, leaving them weaker and weaker (eventually bedridden), until at some point the grace period runs out completely.
And then I figure one of two things happen from here. For the more ‘veteran’ Nations like Prussia or HRE, who have racked up countless injuries and deaths over the years, their bodies are probably not going to be able to cope with all that once there’s no more magic supporting them, so I kind of think they’re likely to just… die on the spot. Either disappear or fade away or whatever happens to permanently dead Nations. But for the ones that haven’t been Nations that long or intensely (like a micronation who has never seen war, for instance), they would ‘become human’, in that they’ll begin to age and function completely like a normal human and eventually die from what would kill a normal human (old age, illness, accidents, what have you); the only difference is that upon their death, they’d also disappear/fade away/whatever form Nation death takes.
I’m tentatively tagging this with my headcanon tag, but since you’re the one with an ex-Nation muse, I’d love to hear what you think! Thank you and sorry for rambling so much ;w;}}
