Selfcest: Ivan and Anya - The Most Complicated Relationship
I NEED TO GET THIS OUT OF MY SYSTEM.
This is my perception of Ivan and Anya’s relationship. I had to write this because I wanted to let it out since they are the most challenging characters to write. I just needed to add my insight of those two.
It’s rather angsty and bittersweet, but also beautiful at the same time. I don’t pick favorites in selfcest, but the more I write selfcest, the more insight there is for me that makes it easier to characterize them in my writing.
They were together since they were young, along with Ukraine (Dmitri and Iryna) and Belarus (Nikolai and Natalya).
But their relationship at that time was different. Ivan wanted to make friends and ebb away his loneliness and he would take the chance to approach others despite his nervousness. He is a little awkward and shy around Anya. They talked very little - and because of the bullying they had to endure, Anya grew more timid and nervous among others, while Ivan grew more unsure, and obsessed.
During the Golden Horde era, they manage to communicate with another normally. They casually help out one another, which leads to more
interactions. An example of helping one another out is by sneaking food for each other, and when Ivan gets injured from Mongolia she tends to his wounds
despite her own wounds. As Ivan nurses her back, she is driven to tears and breaks down because of the abuse they faced. Ivan tells her not to cry, even though he is also crying with her.
One day, Anya questioned if they are ever going to be their own country, and grow and have so much lands and soldiers. Ivan says that no doubt they will be. Anya, baffled by his confidence and optimism, questions how he is so sure. He doesn't answer that, but he simply smiles and tells her that they will make a lot of friends, and they will be a large country. Even Anya herself is puzzled by his words, despite being his other half.
After the Golden Horde gets defeated, Ivan and Anya grow up, and while they are completely scarred in and out, they are now partners, working hard to develop their country.
When they face more troubles and aggression, Ivan's sanity deteriorates, while Anya's emotional state becomes more unstable.
As they become the Russian Empire, Ivan and Anya grow closer and more comfortable in each other's presence. They are then considered as friends; having a nice talk with one another and engaging in discussions of different books and sources of knowledge as they explore each other's opinions. One drunken day, they sleep together - and that was their only one time. Their first kiss is shared, and they lose their virginity to each other. They don't regret it, but during the awkward morning after, Anya tells him she is not ready for something casual. They then act as if nothing happened (although they acknowledge that they are no longer virgins), and that situations like this occur normally when one is drunk, and they resume their friendship as it was.
Feelings then develop as they confide and express their deep trust in one another, but they take so much time to act upon them because of wars and all the other tension that rises and falls with the rest of the world which affects their relationship - leading them to be on and off at times. However, their trust is alive, for when trouble strikes Russia again and it causes Ivan's confidence to decline, Anya tells him that she trusts him - and she trusts them.
The Russian Revolution devastates the both of them. 1905, Ivan breaks down because he wasn't able to help anyone. 1917, The death of the Romanov children kills a part of Anya, who loved them so dearly. She treated them like she was their mother - because she was. She was their country, she took part in nurturing them. And when they died, Anya screams and cries in pain as she and Ivan hold one another in grief. Russia was growing weak, and they needed to pull themselves together - in whatever way they can so that their country wouldn't fall. They had to change. As Russia changes, so did the views, and mental and emotional state of Ivan and Anya themselves.
Their feelings remain unresolved in the Soviet Era. Soviet Russia kept things unofficial between them, and their emotional involvement with another is perplexed. They both carry what the other needs - the feelings they have for each other now is a mixture of passion, abuse, admiration, lust, convenience, violence, reliance and so much intensity that it is all just twisted to the point that other countries who look at them cannot put their finger on what they see, and the only easy thing to do is to assume the worst of them. The Soviet Union was too powerful to care. They use each other for themselves, for their release, and to find themselves. As for Ivan, he would simply call that mixture an "infatuation". The unsettled state of being captivated by someone.
To call it Love was a big thing for them. Anya sees love as commitment, in which your eyes and everything are for one person only. Ivan sees love as the alternative of giving your mind, body, heart and soul to the one person who is simply willing to stick by you through all; the one person who knows your struggles, understands you, and not once judge you. It was such a hard thing to come by for Russia at that time - especially when Love was a weakness in a world that seeks benefits. Their definition of love was simply imaginary until it's granted.
This ideal definition of theirs is then granted when the Soviet Union falls, and Ivan seeks someone who will not leave his side. And that someone turns out to be his counterpart, his other half, the one who is also Russia in every sense - Anya.
After the collapse and they progress as the Russian Federation, he and Anya decide to take a different approach of their relationship. After they've witnessed that they remain standing when they are together, though unspoken; they decide to find love. And as he realizes that it is Anya who was everything he needed all along, everything he thought of and wanted, that is when Ivan truly, most truly, falls in love with her. And Anya herself, as she senses the warmth and sincerity with what she has with her counterpart, as she senses that her heart truly belongs to Russia - her other half, she begins to give herself to the one man she cannot see herself without. And this way, the approach that they take changes everything - the way they are with each other - a relationship formed from a bittersweet mix of emotions now has only one definition to it - love. Their love was filled with passion, trust, comfort, and acceptance.
However, being alone is a permanent scar in Ivan who searched for friends when he felt no one wanted to be near him, and that scar often throbs when he
begins to have an uncertainty in his views and beliefs. Despite being engulfed in the realm of love, the uncertainties get the best of him and clouds his mind to the point where it breaks Anya's confidence of being the one who makes him happy and releases him from the chains of the unpleasantness of loneliness, bringing questions about how their relationship is functioning. In the end, the only thing they want is to work things out - even though life will not release them from such insecurities, it is learned that the two halves of Russia - Ivan and Anya - are brought together by hardship.
