Lizzie who cannot hear the narrators. Lizzie who watches her closest friends laugh at something she can’t hear and only realizes the fourth or fifth time it happens that she couldn’t hear this something not because they were in a crowded room but because she legitimately can’t hear it. Lizzie who freaks out after Duchess calls Maddie and Kitty weird for hearing voices and tells Lizzie that “thank Grimm you’re normal in this regard”. Lizzie who is so afraid and tries so hard to avoid loosing what bits of wonderland she has left and panics because she suddenly has one more thing in common with the people of ever after.
The evil queens attack on wonderland drives me up the wall because if eah had been written for even a slightly older audience the effects of that would be everywhere. Like don’t get me wrong, wonderlands poisoning does have a big impact on the story with the well of wonder and all, and has some effect on the motivations of immediately impacted characters (the wonderland bunch + Raven) but if you want to get dark with the story theres so much more that could be dug up with it. It’s implied that the wonderland attack was just one part of a greater war between the evil queen and the rest of ever after. Even if that war ended when they were young, like 6 or 7-ish, theres still so much that could have impacted their upbringings and motivations.
Apple hears whispers from the adults at court about a terrifying threat. What threat? She doesn’t know. Maybe it’s the type that a brave prince slays, or the type that requires fey-like cunning to beat. But whatever it is it seems to be an unknown thing that scares the adults around her and takes the eldest sons of the court. Apple is six years old and just survived her fall in the well after being left alone outside while her parents rushed to meet with Grimm over something. She hugs her stuffed bunny a bit tighter and re-reads a book with no unknowns, whose future of certainty will one day be hers.
Pinocchio, now Geppetto, stares down at the little cedar puppet he has just carved. The dark fairies destiny has just been stolen. No one even knew until it was over; it was a great disguise, a great lie. Geppetto is sick of lies. He’s sick of waking up and lying to himself that the lack of business in the workshop is due to people saving for the holidays and not due to the “random” attacks on shipments coming in and out of the kingdom. He’s sick of what he knows deep down to be lies in the newspaper, that she’s finally crossed a line and will soon be caught. He’s sick of Grimm’s lies, claiming to be interested in the mechanics of his puppets and clocks but eyeing anything that could have use as a weapon. He just wants something without lies. He goes to bed and that little cedar wood puppet wakes up the next morning with a wide curious gaze and a spark of joy. She’s the only proof of true goodness he’s found recently. She hasn’t learned to lie yet. He never forgives himself for the curse but he doesn’t regret it either.
Lizzie, Kitty, and Maddie spend hours puzzling over a picture book. “What does this page say?” The worksheet asks. They don’t know - the riddle on it makes no sense. ‘The bear plays with his jump rope’ the book says. They can see that - the picture of the bear jumping is right there in the corner. So what is the purpose of the written words that tell of the same thing? In wonderland picture books always came with riddles that delved deeper into the pictures meaning. Does it mean something about how the bear feels? “No.” does the bear not want to be jumping? “No.” do bears not play in this land?“Sometimes.” this riddle makes no sense. “Thats because it’s not a riddle” the tutor replies. She has to wait for the hatter to translate this reply to them. Maddie cries out of frustration; The tutor treats each book like it’s the clearest thing in the world, yet Maddie can’t make heads or tails or underbelly of this familiar sounding yet foreign language at all. Kitty places a hand on her shoulder but doesn’t do much else; all three are exhausted from nightmares.
King charming returns home to a parade and a tournament and feasts in his honor. The evil has been defeated, the king returned victorious. His sons take place in a junior joust at the tournament. Dexters gets scared and tries to guard himself but overshoots the movement, leading his brother to hit him in the exact spot where his heart would be with the plastic toy lance. They drill blocking and shields for months after that. He won’t have a weak son. He’s seen the fates of to many weak princes already.
No one questions why Red keeps Cerise away from everyone for the first few years. Their queen was a mad woman, and she was trying to destroy as many tales as possible; Rapunzels twins were almost kidnapped, and they don’t even have a connection the way Red and the Queen do. Granny understands, but she still wishes her daughter would open the door and let her in when she drops food outside the remote cottage Red built miles away from hoods hollow.
Raven hugs her knees tight. “It’s over” people cry outside; “the queen is dead, long live the king”. But she isn’t; she’d seen the mirror. The queen was alive and the people who helped her were alive and the king had been ruler for all but six hours before one of her knight attempted to kill him. Long live the king, she says aloud to no one in particular. She’d pray it to Grimm - if she hadn’t just seen that in the face of her mother, he wasn’t as all powerful as they claim. A flock of ravens flies past one of the many new holes in the castles roof and her heart aches to fly away with them.
I think the roybel thing could work if it’s framed not as a self chosen stance but rather one thats almost forced onto certain characters.
Put it this way: legacy day just happened and the student body is splitting itself down the middle to take sides. The vast majority of people seem to have chosen within seconds of Raven tearing out her page, but there are a handful who seemingly haven’t; Cedar and Maddie who like their destinies but don’t think others should be forced into them, Poppy who doesn’t care for destiny but thinks those who want it should be able to follow it, Kitty who purposely keeps things vague, Sparrow who seems to be following the law but not the spirit of his destiny or maybe vice versa, etc. And this grey area bothers a lot of people, because it’s infuriating to the rest of the student body that theres a small group of “undecided” peers who aren’t smart enough/brave enough/wise enough/etc. to choose the “right” side (read: their side).
Maybe it’s originally an insult from Faybelle or Duchess to mock those undecided. Maybe Poppy, ever the loyal sister, did come up with it as a way to try and stay in the same group as Holly despite her rebellious tendencies. Maybe Apple even came up with it during the days following legacy day; as we see in the beginning of the second book, she didn’t want to encourage separation of the students based on stance, mainly because she didn’t understand the weight of reasoning behind the rebel stance. She thinks they’re being selfish and made a mistake, but that friends are supposed to stick by and help one another when they do things that aren’t fairest to work through it.
Heck, all three could work together! Holly and Poppy have an emotionally charged conversation a few nights after legacy day; Poppy cheered when Raven rebelled and Holly didn’t. The look on Hollys face that night was devastating to Poppy She didn’t know, she thought Holly was still afraid of the tower, she thought they were always on the same page, she didn’t know. Holly wants to know if Poppy believes she shouldn’t get her happily ever after now that she’s on Ravens side, and Poppy insist she’s not on Ravens side, at least not like that. She just, doesn’t want a destiny, you know? A destiny would change everything, it means leaving behind her salon, her passion, to most likely be a queen in another land far away from Holly. Even if she got a small Princess role, it would force her to part ways with certain parts of herself that she isn’t comfortable doing. She wants Holly to be happy. And if being happy for Holly is following her destiny than Poppy will support that. Holly looks confused by this stance; she still wants to know if that makes Poppy a Royal or a Rebel. Poppy tells her something along the lines of “neither? Both? Cedar and I were talking about this earlier. We… I don’t know - I have a mixed perspective on this I guess. I mean if you had to put a name to it maybe I’d be a Roy-bel? Even that sounds off though…”
Holly doesn’t pay attention to that last bit; she’s too busy thinking. Her sister is scared! Thats why she doesn’t want to know her destiny! She supports destiny! She supports Holly getting her happily ever after! But she’s scared of change, and thats not right! Are the others also scared change? She supposed it would make sense; Nona did say that this was the year big changes happen for kids her age after all. Hollys scared too of the changes that have recently happened; no one sits together at lunch any more, and everyone’s worried about where the future will go next. But Holly believes in her sister; if Holly can make it through the scariness of change thats been happening the past few days, than she can help Poppy tackle her fear of change as well. And so the next day Holly marches into the Royal student council meeting with the biggest smile any of the royals have made since legacy day, and tells Apple and the others that they don’t have to loose hope with the rebels because a lot of them aren’t really rebels. Poppy, Cedar, the others, they aren’t rebels or undecided, their Roybels who mostly support destiny but have personal reasons not to want to follow their own or to support others that rebel, but that thats ok, because Hollys gonna work with Poppy to get through her issues with her destiny, and if Poppy and Cedar can still want to work together with Royals and Rebels despite their stance than the Royals should too! “Maybe instead of trying to convince the most extreme Rebels they could all work together with the Roybels and help show them that whatever’s keeping them from embracing their destiny isn’t worth destroying fate for, and since the Roybels are still close with the Rebels, they’ll be able to help us reach the Rebels when the time comes!” Apple and Holly exclaim at the same time.
Duchess laughs like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. But Apple is ecstatic at this news; it seems like a much better course of action to bring everyone together than sitting grumpily separated in classes and lunch. The Royal student council race is coming up. She’s against Maddie, and while Maddie is a sweet girl and fableous friend she shouldn’t be able to run as a commoner per school rules. It’s another example of Ravens rebellion breaking apart the school. A few votes could swing the whole election in either direction. So Apple sets about a 54 step plan to bring the rest of the student body back to destiny, to reason, and it starts with setting up a Royal-Roybel-Rebel alliance lunch in the Royal common room. Most of the student council is there, as well as Maddie (heard it was supposed to be an open dialogue and loved the idea), Raven (Maddies ride or die,and begged by Apple to come; tried to hide in a corner at the start since her appearance at things recently keeps ending in shouting matches), and Cedar, Poppy, Sparrow, Hunter, and half a dozen other students.
Hunters the one who bites the bait. “So… what does Roybel mean?”
Poppy dies a bit inside. Oh my Grimm what did Holly do.
Apple straightens her skirt and tells the room that she’s been informed that it’s what the neutral party among the student body have began to call themselves. They hold a variety of different beliefs on destiny, but the thing that distinguishes them from others is that they hold at least some form of thought from both sides of the destiny argument; wether thats wanting their destiny but not feeling others have to follow theirs or not wanting their destiny but believing others have the right to follow theirs.
Several around the room including Cedar and Poppy perk up at this; it describes Cedars current predicament pretty plainly she thinks. Apple is emboldened by this and moves forward with the preprepared speech she has in her head. So far moving according to plan!
She says something along the lines of Roybels don’t all see eye to eye on everything, but they don’t let that split their friendships apart, and neither should any Royal or Rebel in this room. They should look at this meeting as a starting point for mending the relationships they’ve all callously abandoned the past few weeks.
Apple watches Raven stir from her corner to turn towards Apple and listen to what she has to say next. The plan is working fableously.
Which is why the Royal student council is offering their help to any Roybel who needs to talk about their more … sensitive feelings regarding destiny. The Royal student council knows now that there can be some negative emotions surrounding destiny due to … personal issues, and they want to help any student who feels uncertain with destiny to get back on the right path, the path of honoring and taking pride in their family legacy. And Rebels too!
The Royal student council politely claps and … no else does. And then Duchess laughs.
And the plan smashes against the rocks like a ship torn in the ocean.
Poppy stands from the table and faces her back to the table to look out the window, with a distressed Holly trailing after her. Cedar looks disappointed. Raven looks at her and mouths “really” before she droops her head back onto the table. Duchess keeps laughing, and since she’s the only one not feeling some level of mortification right now, everyone turns to her.
“Roybels Grimm what a joke!”
Cedar asks her what’s so funny about this all and Duchess in true Duchess form goes for the throat.
“I mean it’s just dumb. It’s all Ooo, I want my destiny but I don’t want the discomfort of holding others accountable to do what’s right, even if the others are needed for my story and society to exist, or Ooo, I don’t want my destiny because I’m scared, but it’s fine if you follow yours so long as you don’t ask me to do anything scary. Grow up. You’re either a reasonable person who follows destiny or your an irrational child trying to do what demands the least of you. No in between. Honestly Poppy, I cannot believe you came up with this. I mean I know Holly can be all naive or whatever-after due to tower schooling but you at least seemed like you had more head than hair on your shoulders”
The plan is now at the bottom of the ocean.
Poppy runs out of the room,and several people are yelling. Cedar decides right then and there that if the royals are going to only see her as either confused or selfish she’d rather be seen as selfish. Apple joins Raven in her corner and looks at her with her best please help me stop our friends from fighting look. Raven shoots back with her best you brought this upon yourself look, and the two end up bickering until Grimm comes in and demands everybody goes to class.
The results of this:
1. Roybel gets cemented as an insult that the more mean royals use against anyone not staunchly in support of one side, or who they perceive as abandoning the Royal cause. Ashlynn gets called a Roybel a lot during true hearts day.
2. Daring calls Dexter a Roybel once he learns about his crush but like, not in the insult way, more in the original your-confused-but-can-get-help-way that Apple meant. It goes about as well for him as it did for Apple.
3. Duchess gets detention from this. This is because Holly was to distressed to go back to class and breaks down in Grimms office about how Apple and her had a really good plan to help the more confused students and Cedar seemed interested and Raven listened to it and her sister was gonna do it and it was all going really well until duchess made fun of it. Duchess can’t really deny this accusation, there were like, 20 other people in the room at the time, and Grimm is loosing what little patience he has. His star student and her council finally made some inroads to tackle the problem and now it’s all for nothing due to school yard insults. I hope you learn something from this Ms. Swan; your a good student, destined for a great story, but you can’t be an embodiment of good if you plan to hurt others rather than help them.
4. This is not the lesson Duchess takes from this. The lesson Duchess takes from this is that actions would be better than words since everyone’s too sensitive for words. She uses those actions to expose Ashlynn on true hearts day. It’s a … slow journey to acceptance and kindness for her in this au.
5. Apple and Maddie get tied for Royal student council president and agree to co lead in hopes that by showing they can work together despite their differences it’ll help heal the rift in this student body. It does work a bit! People start eating lunch together again and classes no longer feel so hard to breathe in.
6. Poppy distances herself from Holly for a bit after this. Not very far but still. That conversation felt very personal to Poppy. She doesn’t know how to feel about Holly telling others about it or using it in the way she did. They make up in the end but it gets rocky for a bit there.
What is there to say for the princess of the dark forest?
Surprisingly, both more and less than you would think. The royal Court of Mirrors seems to hold quite unfavorable opinions of their future queen. They believe her mad. After all, what future evil queen would lower herself to the depths this one has. Rarely wears her tiara. Rarely wears shoes. Follows the kitchen cook around like a stray dog, and consorts with trolls and ogres alike. And that doesn't even touch the political side of things yet; eight years without a queen, eight years with the dreaded "Good King" as their ruler (Appointed by Grimm of course; The King and Queen had divorced prior to her death and thus he had no real claim to the throne, a fact no one but the Court of Mirrors seemed to acknowledge) And not a single assassination attempt on her part. Some say she went mad when the Queens curse was released; that her hatred of the Queen is a symptom of it. Others more loyal to the Queen (and those who realize they can't kill what is needed for the cycle) say similar but with sadness rather than scorn. Isn't it just tragic how the princess went mad from the attacks? Their poor, poor, princess, who was so cunning and beautiful and could cast the most brilliant spells you've ever seen was now reduced to something that barely speaks and can't dress herself and can't cast magic easily anymore. What a tragedy that Grimms attack on the castle led to this. Yet those even more loyal to the Queen, the most fervent of believers who think her just gone, not dead, have another theory. They think it's just an act. The princess and the Queen were inseparable before the queens "Disappearing". It's a trick all of it; the clothing, the lack of magic, the pathetic attitude. One day the princess would shed her fake skin and continue her mothers work; she's just lying in wait.
Raven herself would say she isn't mad - unless wanting to not be a tyrannical dictator set on world destruction is considered madness, in which case she might be clinically insane.
And a small portion of villages near Queens Castle call her Raven the Hopeful every time a flock of ravens come to drop pillaged food from the castle into their town squares - not that she knows of this little epithet yet.
Anyways, I've been trying to figure out what exactly the home life of the two girls are like, since that'll have a pretty large role in how i write them. Trying to parse how dark i want to go with it and what I want to take or ignore from what little were given in cannon.
For Raven, I originally toyed with the idea of her family only being royalty in title and not really having a real kingdom for simplicities sake, but that felt wrong? like, the Evil Queen led at least an attack on another dimension and at most a whole war on every kingdom + another dimension; it's got to be a big kingdom. So the way I'm treating it is that a large part of the dark forest is part of the Evil Queens kingdom, and it has all the large-kingdom-that-is-being-punished-internationally-for-loosing-a-war things like constant struggles to make trade deals and a terrible royal court who couldn't make an ethical decision even at knife point. They don't like Raven much, because a good portion of the nobility has this whole "you didn't defeat us, we lost the battle but we'll win the war" mentality and messaging that they kind of need Raven to be like, present and acting like her mother for, and meanwhile Raven will do literally anything to not do that. No she doesn't have time to put on one of her mothers old dresses and stand in front of a mirror cast and give a speech about nationalism. So what if "the youth of the kingdom are apathetic and saying they hate the kingdom". Mood. She does to. No she will not apologize for saying that. What your going to do, ground her for saying that? Good, if she's grounded she gets to go do chores in the kitchen with cook. In fact there doesn't need to be an argument about it anymore, Ravens giving herself three weeks of grounding where she'll work with Cook and the laundry maids, nope no more arguing, leave her alone.
As for the food it's not like she had any big plan or anything. they were wasting food. during a curse induced drought. She may be destined to be evil but she's not as dumb as her grades would imply. And she doesn't think she would be a good queen at all. So she maybe accidentally trained the ravens to steal from the kitchen scraps and drop it at the Ogres village end after seeing her do it a few times. it was an accident. so was training them to alert her father when the court was meeting in secret, and to attack any nobleman who got too close to the wing in Queens castle that held Her mirror and to - Look she's accidentally trained them to do a lot of things ok? it was accidental. She did those things out of guilt, because she wants to be a good person but knows she's a bad person, or at least is going to be one after legacy day. that's just the way being the evil queen works. Right?
Adores their kids friends: Briar's parents, Maddie's dad, Blondies parents, Ravens dad, The Charming's (for early story)
Hates their kids friends: Hunters parents, Duchess's grandmother, Faybelle's mother (Evil doesn't have friends), The Charming's (post spring unsprung when Darling start openly rebelling more)
Is very confused by their kids friends: Ginger's mom, Raven's dad (he's not mad, just surprised considering, y'know, everything her mother did.)
Is very scared for their kids friends, because of the unspoken tragic nature of their destiny: Briars parents, Ashlynn's parents, Raven's dad, Duchess's grandmother, Cupids parents
Also lol, cannon! Snow White probably does hate most of Apples friends, but Revamp au! Snow is a pretty different character and likes most of them... except for Briar.
You see Ashlynn's got an epic work ethic and a whole lot of that princess-helping-others vibe going on so she gets the Snow White stamp of approval. Blondie has her show and puts a lot of work into it, and she's very loyal to the Royals both before and after legacy day, so she falls into a the same "nice, hardworking young girl" territory that Ashlynn does in Snows view, just with "naive" tacked on to it due to the more gossip-y nature of her show. But Briar...
Snow wouldn't say she hates her. Briar is a kid, and Snow is a an adult who knows from personal experience that having beef with a high schooler is deranged. But she does worry that Briar is a bit of a bad influence on Apple.
Like sure she's a nice kid, but Briar is definitely the opposite of the traditional princess standard that the Whites have. When Apple hangs out with Ashlynn or Blondie she usually comes home touting pictures of them helping orphaned baby animals or a Just Right episode where Apple and Blondie discuss the five most ethical cape brands to buy from before winter and what not. But when Apple hangs out with Briar she always comes back with a story about how Briar took her to go extreme pogoing across the enchanted glades or threw this giant party that went past Apples bed time or forgot to do her thronework again and needed Apples help to finish it before class. Ashlynn and Blondie come over for tea and to compare summer reading notes, Briar comes over talking about how much fun skate boarding is, how Apple should totally try it, and how she doesn't understand why her father tried to ban it from the castle. Oh, her wrist? don't worry about it Mrs. White, she clipped a statue while doing a grind trick in the courtyard, but the cast should be off just in time for school to start. No, she doesn't see how what she just said and her parents skateboard ban could be correlated.
Briar, in her attempts to "live it up now" likes to push boundaries - and often pushes Apple to do the same. During their first year if Apple was ever in an incident report from school her name was usually followed by "-tried to stop Ms. Beauty from skipping class to go to an extreme sports festival," Or, "-helped Ms. Beauty to the nurses office after a potion mishap in Chemythstry," Or even once, "- and Ms. Ella helped sing the enchanted birds from Beast Training and Care back into their cages after Ms. Beauty released them." Snow has never had to check which Ms. Beauty it was. (She should have since Rosabella was actually the last one, but Briar had solidly earned her spot as the bad-influence-friend months earlier with the enchanted pogoing thing.)
And in a way she is kind of right? At least if your idea of bad influence is breaking the rules. Something that Briar does early on in the Revamp au is encourage Apple to ask to be Ravens roommate without telling her mother. As royal student council president she gets to choose her own roommate, and she was planning on rooming with Briar - but then she finds out that Raven might be not as dedicated to her destiny, so Apple ask to be Ravens roommate instead. But she can't tell Snow that, because her mother might freak out and insist she room with someone else, but Apple feels it's her duty as future queen to help others so she can't room with anyone else, but she can't lie to her mom Briar she just can't! and Briar's like "well. i mean you could".
Briar brings out the teenager in Apple. She encourages her to have fun, to try new things, to be lazy or moody or wild or just be. It's something Apple desperately needs, but it certainly hasn't made her popular with Snow White.
The goal of the Revamp au is to take what already existed in the series and pull it towards its darker or more logical conclusions, and as such, Legacy Day and the resulting consequences end up playing out a lot more chaotic here than in the original series. For starters, most of the parents are there, and the entire thing is not only being broadcast across normal mirror television, which was forced to cut out after Ravens rebellion, but also Blondie's livestream, which crucially didn't cut out after Raven refused to sign and thus captured the aftermath. The news discusses the 'Legacy Day Fiasco' (as it had been dubbed) furiously, and social media spends weeks debating if Raven went up to the roof afterwards to sic her dragon onto the crowd or to truly ... free herself from her destiny, as Headmaster Grimm seems to believe. Apple and others who signed the book prior had to be quarantined for a full day as Grimm and other sorcerers checked them to make sure the tearing of the book didn't have any negative magical impact on them, which fueled conspiracy theories for a good few hours that they were dead or had "poofed". Several of the parents refused to leave the school afterwards, and a closed-door meeting was held for nearly ten hours over night at the school including every monarch in attendance to the ceremony. All in all, a day to remember indeed.
what were the friend groups and known rivalries (outside of destiny-related ones) between the classics generation?
who's parent hates or overly adores their child's friends? (like there's something in me that feels apple's mom hates ashlynn, briar, & blondie.)
Hi! I Got very yappy so this will be two parts!
I don't have concrete friend groups and rivalries for the Class of Classics characters since their not the revamps main focus; but what I can say is that the relationships they did have at school were much more restricted by social class and destiny type than our main casts - and that had a ripple affect on how the school operates in modern times.
This is about to get very ramble-y and is only tangentially tied to your first question in some places but I swear it's related.
There's this line in the first book that enchants me.
"When their parents, the Class of Classics, had ruled Ever After High, they had kept the royals separate from the commoners. But things had gotten more lax in their children’s generation. Even though she was the royalest of the royals, Apple approved of the elite mixing with the commoners. After all, Headmaster Grimm often said, “You are all destined for greatness. There is no such thing as short
stories or tall tales.”"
I like to create AU's where I mine a story for any depth it's worth and then some, even if the original work was very much not made for that. And fellas, EAH may be made to sell dolls but this line is prime digging material.
We know a few things about cannon from this line:
1. there was a stricter social class divide when their parents were in school.
2. Assuming most of the Class of Classics had their kids in their mid twenties, this class-divide-softening had only 20-ish years to occur. And like - that's fine for cannon where the wider politics of ever after aren't that important but is wild in any context outside of a kids show. Each generation does tend to get a bit more progressive than the last but damn that's fast.
3. Apple approves of this, which is extremely in character for her - but considering how much of her early character is modeled around the expectations others have for her it poses the question of why is this an expectation for her and who set it?
4. Grimm specifically calls out how all destinies are important in his yearly speech. It's important enough to him that he says it every. year.
Now, in cannon this strict divide gets walked back a bit? We see in the Class of Classics books that the royal and common students seem to mix a lot more than that quote implies. Like sure we don't see the actual common rooms but they seem to share the same friend groups, classes, lunch tables, etc. So for the Revamp au I've chosen to handwave this problem away by making that all specific to their first year/freedom year.
20 years pre-main-storyline your first year at Ever After high would literally be your freedom year not just because you could choose your own classes, but because you had the "freedom" to associate with whomever and go wherever you pleased. Legacy day was (and still is) seen as a marker of adulthood, similar to a debut, so first year is the last year everyone has to still be a kid. But past Legacy day? Things can get really restrictive, really fast.
Post Legacy day relationships look like exactly what you would expect if I told you to imagine the friend groups and rivalries any basic fairytale retelling for kids would have. Groups started to segregate themselves along 3 lines; royals and commoners, good and evil, and important destiny vs unimportant destiny. Good and evil were the most stark; Cedar said so herself in the first book that people start to see each other for who they become rather than who they are during legacy year, so there's a general purging of evil and evil adjacent students from many friend groups and social events post legacy day.
(Side note: one of the cards from the old website says that there are 3 common rooms in ever after high - a royal one, a rebel one, and one for wonderlandians since Headmaster Grimm can't figure out where to put them. I hate this, since it contradicts the much cooler worldbuilding of royal/commoner common rooms, so I've decided instead that prior to our main cast's time, the three common rooms were royals, commoners, and villains - with the villain common room having been defunct prior to our main cast attending the school due to certain ... circumstances).
The other 2 divides, commoners and royals, and important vs unimportant destinies were not as student driven but were no less painful. Previous generations of royals didn't just have their own common room - they had their own everything. Tables at lunch, areas in the schools gardens, clubs, sports teams, etc. The school was quite literally designed to split the student body by social class.
For royal students, it usually started as a convenience thing. some prince or princess is in their second year just after signing the storybook a month ago and classes are getting really intense, and the passing periods are so short and - oh what's that? If I take the royal promenade path it'll lead me through a short cut to get to science and sorcery faster, and I won't have to climb all those stairs? Hey guys we should go this way! We can - Oh, only me? Ah, I guess it is the royal path. Well, I'll just get there first and save us all seats so we can sit together!
And so you stop seeing your common friends during passing periods. Then it becomes clubs - sure board game club sounds fun, but your mom really wants you to do royal student council like she did and the princes poetry club happens at the same time as the game club. What? No, I can't do all three who has time for all that? Er, well yeah you, but you only get to do three clubs because your classes are all about cooking and stuff. I have to learn to manage a kingdom. I swear that essay about responsible finances during natural disasters almost did me in - where are you going? what did I say?
And after you join these clubs it becomes, well - Sit with us for a lunch won't you? the royal tables on the upper level are wonderful, a fairy brings you your food so you don't have to wait in line yourself, and eventually, When it comes to the royal student council our goals need to come first and you need to show up for every meeting. you can't skip a day of being queen just because your friend has a talent show. and finally, when in the safe privacy of the royal common room it would become, Common destinies mean common aspirations. I mean look at how their stories end "I learned not to lie, or not to break into a house, or not to eat a house". Not us. We don't learn anything when the storybook writes The End because we don't need to. We inspire morals with our tales of triumph over evil. She's a nice enough girl Charming, but honestly, you need to accept that your not of the same world.
By the class of classics third year most commoner/royal friendships and relationships had dissolved. They weren't mean to one another (at least not in public) they just. Stopped hanging out. Goldilocks and Pinocchio got used to waiting in the lunch line behind King Charming's fairy. Snow White and Red Riding Hood stopped seeing each other as much outside their dorm.
And then there was the splits based on destiny importance - this one was felt nearly everywhere in the school. There were different levels to the social hierarchy depending on your story type and role. Legends and big prince/princess stories were at the top of the hierarchy, along side anyone who had a fairytale named after them. Nursery rhymes, Aesop's fables, and secondary characters in less royal stories often fell towards the middle. But "lesser" stories and characters? All those random henchmen in the background of a tale, or those generic tower princess stories? they were pushed straight to the bottom. After all, your destiny can't be that important if your not even getting a name from it. Everyone knows Odette or the Dark Fairy - no one cares about swan maiden #11 or troll #3. Students training for background roles were literally called backgrounders - they took far less classes, had far less clubs to choose from, and were considered too socially low on the totem pole for the rest of the staff and student body to care about. Most of them wouldn't even do a full four years at the school. They'd show up for their legacy year to sign the book and then graduate at the end of their third year, receiving only a partial education.
This means the Class of Classics had pretty restrictive relationships with one another prior to graduating. But! after the Queens war this changed. And for the same reason these strict separations were undone so quickly - the Evil Queen weaponized them during her war.
I've mentioned it before somewhere else on this blog, but the Evil Queen wasn't a part of the Class of Classics in the revamp au - Due to sorceresses living so long she's from Apple's grandmothers generation but was training to be our Snows Evil Queen as the Snow White story used to be on a generational delay between villain and princess. When the rest of her generation was settling down and having the Class of Classics she went to a lot of those "lesser" villain peers from her school years and started forging ... well, not friendships because she didn't do that but dependencies.
She'd find an old classmate who just had a kid and would go "heyyy, congrats on the kid, yeah, yeah, beautiful claws just like his dad. Candy told me all about the henchman negotiations, I think it is such a shame that Fairy Anne wouldn't give you a pay raise, especially since the Sleeping beauty isn't set to wake up for another decade! I mean does she expect you to raise a family on a pittance? And right when the royal councils think things might go up again - oh I shouldn't have said that! You can keep that secret right? Of course you can, you've always been great. Just between you and me, I may have an opening for some contract work in the future. Simple side work, breaking a few bridges, raiding a few towns, Small gigs. Maybe if you take on a few we can talk about a permanent role after the Sleeping dimwit wakes up. I hear you don't have to stay with your assigned villain, if the stories over..." and once she'd done that enough times she'd gather them all and then go "Heyyy, old drab Daffodil just got rescued from her tower and is now Queen Rapunzel, who wants to go raid one of her outer villages as a wedding gift for all those times she kicked us out of the library? (so i can test the strength of the Rapunzel kingdoms borders) and then after your all invited to my solstice ball! Its event of the season for the best of the destined."
She forged a lot of bonds with the lesser villains from her class this way, and then continued the trend with their children when they were in school, although in a less personal more Para-social way through mirror broadcast across the dark forest about "How the school is failing the current generation of future village destroying ogres and evil warlocks by insisting general villainy is only for main villains" and "How so many of these so called good kingdoms are bleeding the dark forest dry of resources and one has to wonder if the fact that there aren't many big destinies here (aside from my own of course) has anything to do with it?". and like … objectively she was right. But she didn't do it out of altruism, she did it because she knew that when it was time to kick off the world domination plans and start stealing destinies she would need an army of school trained destined henchmen to fight off the waves of school trained destined knights and princes Grimm would throw at her.
And it worked; A lot of the princes and knights weren't expecting to be fighting former ever after high students, who are trained in how to use their magic touches to their advantage and get henchman training - they thought she would be the big fight and it would be a bunch of nobodies between them and her. A small handful of the knights and princes from less prominent Charming families straight up died to their former classmates, and the rest had to go home to either their monarchs or wives and be like "Heyyy, remember those henchman students from years ago that no one liked and that we called lesser? turns out their kind of bitter about that :(" So they went to their common peers from school and were like "Heyyy, my good friend from school! We need your magic touch to make/get/do this thing to stop the Evil Queen" and the common destined were like "Heyyy, we have not been friends since we were 14. You called my story and magic touch useless in the tenth grade. I will help you because your my King though. :(" which they all laughed nervously at. And then! And then they couldn't even go to their former evil classmates for help! Because when people started asking why the Dark Fairy hadn't gone and killed the Evil Queen yet she had to go all "Heyyy, remember all those ogre's and trolls and Imps I used to boss around? apparently their bitter about being threatened with constant replacement for small infractions (since lesser destined are easy enough to find) so they all ditched me for the Evil Queen :( I can't get past them either".
Like i cannot stress enough how much of a nightmare this was for Grimm. several generations of trained henchmen fueled by destiny magic decided to side themselves with a woman who's stated goal was world domination and then eventually annihilation because she treated them and their status as destined with the barest minimum of respect. It became a total surprise for everyone else since like. Those were their classmates. they sat near each other in Science and Sorcery five years ago. Aren't you. Aren't you worried she's gonna try to steal or destroy your destiny too? oh what's that? that won't happen because she's only focused on the Important destinies and has promised you a better future where your child will be treated like a proper destined? hahaha, shiiiiiiiiiiiii-
There was a big movement among the destined after that to integrate the students more. The whole "no such thing as tall tales or short stories" that Grimm says in his yearly Book-to-School speech comes from this. By the time we pick up with our main cast the separations that dominated two decades ago are mostly gone, because everyone's parents regardless of destiny or social class had to pitch in to defeat the Evil Queen, and because towards the end of the war Grimm alongside every ruler in Ever After went all in on the "were all important for our stories to be told, all destined are true destined" rhetoric to keep that from ever happening again. Everyone now takes four years of classes, and there's a lot less separation based on royals and commoners (outside of Grimmnastics and theater seating) because of this.
And! the Class of Classics adult relationships are just as mixed as their kids now that these barriers are no longer as strict. Rapunzel and Goldilocks become super close after Goldie stops the Evil Queens kidnapping plot, to the point that they hold weekly get togethers, which they hadn't done since their freedom year. The Dark Fairy and Snow White have grudging respect for one another as two people who know what it's like to have the Evil Queen mess with your story. Pinocchio hates everyone he went to school with for letting this all happen in his eyes. He was friends with both Goldilocks and King Charming after all - he saw how the royalty pulling away from everyone else post legacy day could hurt people first hand through their break up. They could've taken the dorms being integrated with the commoners as a sign that they didn't need to be so rigid with the class rules but nooooo. Briar and Rosabella's moms both have to beg and threaten their husbands before family holidays to behave themselves since the Beast mentioned off hand a few times during the Queens war that he could kind of understand why the creatures of the dark forest would want to side with the person promising them proper treatment, and Briars dad did not take that with any amount of grace or personal introspection. Every so often Gingers mom shows up on Little Reds Riding Hoods couch to drink wine and talk shit about their kids (supposed) deadbeat fathers, which like, Red has no idea how she got in but sure, whatever. Hilariously she tries to do the same with Queen Charming once that relationships problems get more public. Magnolia kicks her out the first few times but by the end of dragon games she just sighs and pours a glass.
The answer to your second question can be found here!
I wanted to say that I absolutely LOVED your take on the whole roybel thing. Do you have any thoughts on where various characters would fall on the scale of willing to work together to extreme Royal/Rebel?
I do for a few! In my rough outline for the re-vamp au fic the Roybel plot is actually a sub plot to the larger student council race plot that takes place right after legacy day. Essentially, the story arch as follows is that the school is at it's most tense since Legacy Day just happened - students are refusing to associate with those outside of their own camps and have been causing all sorts of ruckus around campus due to the split such as the food fight, splitting the royal common room and commoners common room into the Royal and Rebel common rooms instead, established friend groups are refusing to associate, etc. It's extremely stressful for everyone, Royal, Rebel, and those who are undecided/between/outside the rigid binary. On top of this all, you have the Royal Student Council Race coming up, in which Apple was supposed to have been running unopposed but ends up finding herself competing against Maddie, who launched her campaign both because in the major hand she was interested in having a leadership role, and in the minor one she was saving Raven from the pressure the newly formed Rebel group was putting on her to run. Technically, Maddie shouldn't be allowed to run since she's a commoner and not royalty, but when Grimm tried to disqualify her on those grounds there was a school wide riot over staff interfering in student government that ended up breaking a few things in the vault of the heirlooms (not the Uni Cairn though. Yet (i think)). Because they're all like, 15, the students put all their weight behind the upcoming student council election. This will be the deciding factor in the major political-philosophical schism breaking apart their school, Royal vs Rebel, Rebel vs Royal, Their Fair Leader vs The Witches Pact Puppet, The Brave Little Commoner vs The Unfairest of them All! (Children are cruel sometimes). The tie and subsequent joint leadership of Apple and Maddie at the end of this arc does help to calm some of the polarity in the student body, but before that happens you kind of have several groups of perspectives clashing with one another on the topic of working with the out group as shown below:
Team No Nuance Never Negotiate: Duchess, Faybelle, pre character arc Briar (for like, the first third of the student council plot), the Crumb twins, Cerise
On the Royal end of this you have characters who see the rebels as breaking a fundamental law of the universe. it's like, the equivalent of coming across a deer eating meat in the forest to them. Your born, you train for your fairytale role, you sign the storybook of legends, and then eventually you play out your role, its what you do. There is no wiggle room there, and anyone who tries to deny that is dangerous, because their either mad, Evil-Queen-level evil, stupid, or a collection of all three. On the Rebel end you have a bit more variance in how they reach this stance, But Cerise specifically is not putting up with anyone trying to do royal talk with her. She gets approached by Blondie the day after legacy day about how she feels about her story being in jeopardy of going poof (Since Hunter plays a role in both Snow white and Little Red Riding Hood, and thus if he disappeared due to Raven rebelling so would the Little Red Riding Hood story), and Cerise, high off the adrenaline of both watching Raven tear her page out of the book and of revealing her wolf heritage to Raven that night and getting a positive reaction from her, says the equivalent of "I'd rather disappear than play out that shitty old story three damn times, and I refuse to hear anyone out on why i should want otherwise". and she sticks by it. this is the most hope she's had in years, she's not listening to any royal who wants her to hear them out.
Team Were all In This Together (so help me Grimm): Holly, Apple, Maddie, Hunter, Cedar, Poppy, Sparrow surprisingly
These are students that for better or for worse want the general student body to take several chill pills and put the pitchforks down, whether that's because the Royal-Rebel schism has split their friend groups (Sparrow, Hunter, Holly kind of), they're undecided or have viewpoints that exist outside the rigid binary rapidly taking over the school (Cedar, Poppy), or in the case of Holly and Apple specifically, they believe that the Rebels are just misled or mistaken, and getting everyone to be friends again is the first step in fixing this great mistake and setting everyone back on the path to destiny (ignoring that they weren't all really friends in the first place, seeing as the school split them up by social rank and heroes vs villains a lot). It's an extremely varied group, with many different ideas on how getting everyone together would work, from Maddie's and Hunters ideas of creating a third common room out of an old classroom that can be a third space free to anyone to Apple and Hollys now infamous Roybel speech.
Team Do None of You Know How To Have Emotionally Charged Conversations: Rosabella, Cupid
Some one help my girls. Cupid has been fielding "my partners a royal/rebel, should i break up with them?" questions since five minutes after legacy day ended. Rosabella is watching Apple stumble through the worlds most stilted babies-first-community-mental-health-outreach idea pitch and crying into her hands. Sit down. stop throwing food at each other please. stop trying to segregate the lockers based on Royal vs Rebel. Please stop insulting the people you claim to want to build a bridge with. Dragons above some of you are supposed to rule kingdoms soon. if this is how you react to changes in the political-philosophical landscape of your school then your all doomed.
Team I Accidentally Started A Massive Societal Schism and Don't Know What To Do: Raven
Look Raven didn't know this would happen ok? She thought she'd rebel, and then Grimm would come and scoop her into a mirror or something, she had no clue other people would like. Get inspired by her rebelling or something. I mean it's nice to no longer be alone in hating her destiny but damn, she absolutely did not plan to accidentally become a leader like this. She'd like for everyone to work together again, if not for the sake of the school than for the sake of her blood pressure, because Cerise just looked at her and asked "so do we all leave the school now or what?" and several other people turned to her and waited for her response, and this will be the end of her she swears.
