because people liked i walk the sewers of paris so much, here’s some director’s commentary!
- its pretty commonly thought that spain was a pretty big asshole for most of history, and my fic is no exception. however, i think that he might’ve been a bigger asshole than usual in this time period for a couple different reasons. the biggest of those is because by this point, many of the spanish colonies in latin america had become independent. antonio is both a sore loser about this and very physically and mentally ill. his physical illness is due to the independence movements in latin america- although its unclear how, land represents body parts in hetalia, so i feel like he’s probably experiencing a lot of phantom pain type stuff during this point in time. he’s also not really coping with his own mortality in this fic. it’s kind of difficult to see because the fic is from romano’s pov, but spain is basically really scared that he’s going to die soon. he’s seen nations die before from getting stretched too thin, and seen empires collapse, and a whole lot more. and while the empire had been in decline for a long time, he’s very scared that he doesn’t have very much time left now due to most of the latin american colonies becoming independent in the earlier 19th century. what spain thinks he’s doing here is reaching out to romano, although he doesn’t really know how to do that without being a bit of an ass. he’s not used to asking in order to get what he wants, and especially with romano, a sort of harsher control is the only thing he can really think of to do. he thinks that not being in control of everything is what’s killing him, so he’s seeking out both the familiarity of romano’s presence and also the familiarity of controlling him and what he does.
- romano in this is very much having an identity crisis. the way i see it is that before italian unification, there were a lot more nation avatars, like one for sardinia and piedmont and lombardy and all that. during unification, a lot of them just straight up fucking died. lorenzo and feliciano happened to be the ones that survived, partially by chance and partially because they happened to represent venice and sicily/naples. the by chance bit of it is what’s got lorenzo kind of fucked up in this part, and is also why he’s so close to vene in the future*, despite not really getting along with him. he’s very much still grieving in this, and doesn’t know what to do about the recent deaths of a lot of people he’d thought would never die. lorenzo is also sort of in the same boat as antonio where physical stuff is concerned, because he’s always been relatively young, physically, as a result of him being sort of always controlled by someone or something else. i’d put lorenzo’s physical age in this as about 18-22, where antonio’s physical age is more in his mid twenties. lorenzo has just very rapidly gone through a lot of body changes (i’d put him around 14 or 15 at the start of the 19th century? aging that much over 70 years doesnt sound like a lot but he has been 14 for hundreds of years, so. feels fast to him) in a short amount of time and is also sustaining worse injuries than he has before. he’s very scared about his mortality as well, but also still caught up in the hope of independence and his grief about his other lost family members. however, due to the wars that are currently happening, lorenzo is also struggling to let himself feel things, and not just focus on winning. that’s part of why
- lorenzo would actually really like to take antonio up on hanging out together, because he too craves the familiarity and comfort, but the picture of him that antonio has in his head is inaccurate. they don’t know how to talk to each other as much anymore
*when i say the future, i mean the future as portrayed in my writings. the sort of default settings for my hws fanfics/analysis is present day nationverse, so unless otherwise stated, all of it does take place in the same timeline. anyway i say all this to say that by ‘the future’ i mostly mean brother of mine