🍐 : how intelligent is my muse overall? are they smarter than the average person, or less than? are they primarily self-taught, or did they acquire most of their knowledge in school? are they more street smart or book smart?
★ // FRUIT HEADCANONS. / @soireenea
i’d likely place leif at average, with the acknowledgements that intelligence is hard to quantify, etc etc. he’d never be the kind of person people would call a ‘nerd’, probably, but he puts a good amount of thought into things that he does, and is studious when he puts his mind to it. he’s mentally flexible and a lateral thinker, which helps him substantially with becoming proficient in things quickly since he doesn’t ascribe to a top-down way of thought where things have to fit into established patterns of knowledge in order to click for him. so rather than saying he’s ‘intelligent’, i think it’s more accurate to say that he’s a quick study because he’s not rigid. his love of learning for the sake of learning, and his eagerness to absorb any and all knowledge — academic or otherwise — that he can plays a large part, too. leif is naturally curious, and always seeking out new stimuli when possible. in a lot of ways, he’s a teacher’s dream pupil haha.
like most of the 2nd gen kids, leif didn’t attend school or receive traditional schooling for royalty. early on, he was taught by finn and lachesis — incredibly basic things, like simple numbers and script. in alster, he was cared for alongside miranda, though neither of them remember this as it was too early in their lives. in frest, he was given secret lessons by the bishop who hid him, and took some of these in little church ‘classrooms’ alongside other children orphaned by the war. he has fleeting memories of being taught here and there by dorias, glade, and selfina when they were able to shelter them, and later the occasional tutor that could be trusted in tahra. leif’s gone through a revolving door of mentors, depending on what could be provided at the time, so his “studies” are pretty all over the place. this is part of the reason he’s excited to be at garreg mach, haha.
generally speaking, leif is more street smart, though this has more to do with circumstance than nature. because he grew up a wanted refugee constantly on the run, he was forced to learn most things ad hoc, everything from combat to how to tack a horse to how to bargain at shops. he picked up most of his “commonfolk” skills from his years in fiana helping eyvel as one of the fiana freeblades, since prior to that he was highly sheltered and wasn’t allowed outside much for fear that he’d be discovered by the empire. so he’s not “street savvy” or anything, but the disadvantaged setting he was raised in didn’t afford him the chance to develop “book smarts”, either; the church in frest barely had books, for instance. by the time he was a child, the imperial occupation of the manster district was to a point where most indigineous culture and resources had been stamped out or wrested away, so he worked with what he had.
