#(once again tagging for posterity so i can read my thoughts later lmao its 4am)

[year81]

you mentioned porteng in your other ask and, if its okay, i just wanna know your thoughts on the pair? and i guess how it fits into the porteng-fruk-usuk dynamic you mentioned?

OKAY!!! I'm finally getting around to approaching this ask... just note that my headcanons change ALL THE TIME and these are just my favourite ones at the moment.... I rambled a lot and I’m sorry 👀

Honestly there's part of me that feels a little embarrassed talking about why I headcanon the whole porteng->fruk->usuk progression as awful... but then there's the majority of me who doesn't care because they're not real lmao.

In short, porteng is such a sweet relationship and they were really good for each other. I think this relationship was probably Arthur's healthiest, longest, and most vanilla.

HOWEVER "We accept the love we think we deserve." is the quote that always comes to mind when i think of Arthur.

Arthur didn't have many positive relationships growing up and was surrounded by conflict/trauma from an incredibly young age, which I think manifests in his constant self-depreciation, his reluctance for Alfred to call him “big brother” (I hope everyone understands the cultural meaning of the Japanese “onii-chan” by now), and his denial about how he’s actually not okay being rejected and alone.

Considering this, I think Arthur has a fearful-avoidant attachment style, where he yearns for closeness yet thinks that he’s unworthy of another’s love and finds it difficult to trust his partner completely.  

So considering the porteng relationship, Arthur probably withdrew from the relationship to protect himself from being rejected by João in the future, to stop himself from being too vulnerable with this gentle himbo who would do anything for him, and to stop feeling so trapped by João’s totally unreasonable emotional needs. (A HUG AND A KISS?? IN PUBLIC??? jfc João give him a break… I jest.)

The way I make this awful is in how I imagine Arthur dealt with his fears of being emotionally vulnerable with João 😬, that is, through sleeping around at any given moment PARTICULARLY with Francis. Multiple studies actually state that fearful or preoccupied attachment styles are linked to increased odds of infidelity, which is interesting (X, X, X). It’s an interesting dynamic for Arthur, who views both himself and others negatively but also has a large portion of his self-worth dependent on what others think of him. I think this would push him towards Francis whose perception of Arthur is that of a “stinky yet SOMEHOW attractive English devil”, which I think would be more accepting to Arthur than João’s mostly positive view of him.

I don’t have a solid idea of when Arthur would have broken up with João (maybe in the 1600s after reinstalling the Portuguese monarchy and consolidating Portuguese independence??), but I think that it would have been a fairly calm and respectful conversation (also the two definitely hooked up in the future during the 1800s let’s be real).

As mentioned in my previous ask, I think that Arthur and Francis would only have become An Official Thing™ in the late 1800s and early 1900s, where they became comparatively gentler with each other and settled into more of a loving relationship rather than… uh… whatever they were before. However, I think this would make Arthur somewhat uncomfortable as he has a lot more to lose with their relationship now than he did before when they were only hate screwing, leading him to repeat all the mistakes he made with João ~400 years in the past. That is, emotionally distancing himself, testing Francis’ commitment to him by showing his worst side, and it all snowballing into Arthur cheating on Francis with Alfred as soon as Alfred showed him the slightest bit of interest.

I won’t go into detail about why I think usuk was awful too because you just asked about porteng and I rambled on for much longer than i thought I would…..