#< almost there though I am up to Joel’s rule as emperor

[allay-uxini]

Ok, Ok, so you know how Lizzie and Joel got married and then Joey and Shelby saw the goodies and were like “You wanna get married?” “Just for the gifts?” “Yeah!”

….well what if they ACTUALLY got married

It’d be a platonic marriage (obviously) for convenience, forming an alliance and resources (both from each other and from the wedding gifts). At first when referring to each other as spouses to the other empires they’d be weirded out but after a while they wouldn’t even bat an eye at the romantic connotations from the status and refer to each other as spouses with ease. They don’t call each other husband or wife when talking to each other however they will play the spouse card on the other when they want something.

For Example:

“Hey Joey what are you doing rummaging through my chests?”

“Ah, Shrub! My what a coincidence, I was just…”

“You were trying to steal from me weren’t you”

“I wouldn’t call it that. I was just….. borrowing some things AND as your husband I feel like this already belongs to me. You know ‘What’s yours is mine’ so really I’m not doing anything wrong”

“I don’t remember that being in my vows”

“Ahem! ‘I shall support you and your empire in order for us to become stronger’. This is just……supporting my empire’s builds!”

“You know what, sure! I’ll let you ‘borrow’ as much stuff from my chests as you like”

“Gre-”

“Only if I get to do the same after all I am your wife so it’s only fair”

“…well I suppose that could be arranged”

“That includes your totem farm”

“What, do you want me to make a special wife chest in my farm”

“Yes”

Their marriage is actually REALLY good and healthy to the surprise of EVERY SINGLE EMPIRE as they were all sure they were going to be awful (the perks of marrying your best friend I suppose). Then Xornoth gave Joey the crown.

You see the best thing about a platonic marriage between Shelby and Joey is that it makes Jornoth infinitely funnnier because the entire arc Joey was after Shelby and she’s like:

“Is this REALLY how you want to treat your wife”

*gasp* “Shelby are you, jealous? Oh Shelby, don’t you remember our marriage is strictly political and I can love whoever I want”

“What! No, I just think that my husband should have better taste in men!”

And then you also remember that Xornoth was mostly targeting Shelby so Joey is like “Xornoth! Are you flirting???? With my wife???? Instead of ME???????” Though after the whole Xornoth situation I feel like they’d still have a pretty good marriage just with more teasing, bickering and banter.

Joey and Shelby's friendship in season 1 is underrated and just thinking about all the hilarities this marriage can create is making me giddy. Or maybe I’ve just been reading too much of Rain’s marriage of the state au and Mochi’s secret husbands au that I also wanted to make a marriage au.

(If this gets enough traction I might open up my ask box for this au and maybe talk about some fairytale trio shenanigans for this)