#Damen the “definitely just a slave haha what”

[bananadogpilllow]

laurent: how dare you fuck me. This is obvi an elaborate scheme created by my uncle to mind fuck me.

Damen: literally you wanted to fuck! I said no fucking!

Laurent: you wanted to fuck me more! I have receipts!

[princedamnianos]

Hi! I’m loving your deep dives into the Captive Prince. I only just discovered the books and binged them this month haha. Anyway, I watched an interview Pacat did a couple years ago where she was asked what moment Laurent fell in love with if for Damen it was the chase scene, but she wouldn’t answer. I don’t actually know if I agree with that but when do you think Laurent (and Damen) started to really fall? My guess is when Damen threw his whole ass sword into the mercenaries chest 😂

Hi, anon! I’m sorry it took me so long to get to this—it’s not something I’d really thought about before, so it took me a lot of reading and thinking to answer! Thank you for the lovely ask and the opportunity to dive into this.

Damen, I think, is relatively easy to gauge. One of my favorite things about him is how genuinely full of love he is—he just has so much of it to give. I think it’s really easy for him to fall in love, but it tends to be very fleeting and surface-level—more of an infatuation. I agree with the usual assessment that he starts falling at Nesson. He’s seen a lot of sides to Laurent before then, but they’ve all been very cultivated personas—the cold, in-control master with Damen; the witty and unattainable prince at court; the calculating leader with his men. Nesson, specifically the rooftop chase, is the first time he gets a peek at Laurent’s true self, at how vibrant he can be.

That side of Laurent is playful and vivacious, and still determined and clever. He likes the game, the thrill, the challenge. And I think Damen is drawn to both that brightness, and to the game of trying to draw it out from under all of Laurent’s defenses. That’s when he starts to fall in love, but I think for a long time he treats his love for Laurent more as an infatuation. It’s something intriguing, but with an expiration date—the moment that he sheds this persona of Damen, he thinks he’s going to shed their relationship as well.

I think that Ravenel is when he realizes this is something different. The closer he gets to freedom, the more he realizes that he cares about what he’s been building in Vere, and he cares about Laurent. And the moment that really rises up is a kingdom or this—they go through highs and lows afterwards, but once he realizes how impossible that choice feels, I don’t think there was any going back for him. He was going to stay as long as Laurent needed him.

Laurent is a little more complex. A really key moment in my understanding of his side of things is that first POV chapter we get in KR. Even after everything that went down in PG, there’s this distance when he thinks of Damen—he doesn’t even think of him by name, but just as the Akielon slave. I think he’s trying really hard not to think of him as A Person. That displays to me how carefully he has removed himself from all his feelings about Damen and Damianos.

In spite of that careful distance, though, we have all of these incredibly soft moments from PG. I am coming to know you; he would have liked you; the entirety of 19.5. A lot of his partnership with Damen can be rationalized—Damen had genuinely useful skills, and they were in a position where Laurent was confident that their interests were aligned—but I can’t explain away those specific moments. I think that throughout PG, he’s drawn to Damen, and he carefully removes himself from who Damen is to allow that. Because the thing is, as I’ve said before, Damen is unbelievably loveable.

Laurent is s o alone. He has been for a long time, and now it’s more true than ever, with his last surviving family member having graduated from just discrediting him to trying to kill him. I think that on a very human level, Laurent is tired. People aren’t designed to be so isolated for so long, especially not under such awful conditions, not even people as strong as he is. And then Damen comes along. And in spite of everything, Damen is safe. Both after the assassination attempt and at Nesson, we see Laurent commenting on how straightforward Damen is—sometimes to a fault. He’s open about his feelings and his intentions, and it’s not some front or strategy, it’s just his nature. On top of that, he’s just so steady. He’s honest, he’s brave, he’s hardworking. And once he decides to pursue an alliance with Laurent, he commits to it wholeheartedly.

Damen is the first person in so long that Laurent is able to relax around, and I think Laurent is j u s t tired enough that he can’t deny himself the bit of comfort that their relationship brings. And Damen is so genuine that he can’t find a reason to deny it. It’s not so much something he chooses as it is something he needs, and I think that allows him to maintain this separation between himself and Damen even as he is feeling this genuine fondness and trust towards him.

I think a significant part of why Laurent allows it is also that he, like Damen, attaches an expiration date to their relationship. Even after he realizes that Damen loves him—which, in my opinion, is what happens in the sword-throwing incident—he doesn’t believe that Damen would give up his throne for a crush on a foreign prince. He doesn’t expect that he’ll ever have to actually deal with the reality of who Damen is. He just wants to soak up whatever strength he can from Damen in the time that they have together. He wants to give into these handful of moments where he can show his true self, and rely on someone else, and not have to be so On and constrained all the time.

(And someday, I’m going to write a post about how strongly Damen reminds him of Auguste and how comforting that must be in the moments where he allows himself to forget who Damen is)

That is, of course, why he’s so awful at the start of KR. He’s punishing himself for falling in love with Damen in spite of who he is, and punishing Damen for being so easy to fall in love with. Most of the start of KR is him waiting for Damianos, this monster he expected him to be, to emerge; and instead he’s forced to realize that the monster never did exist—there has only ever been this one Damen, this good and honorable man that he fell in love with. So I don’t think there was necessarily one moment where he fell in love with Damen. It was something that grew slowly, quietly inside him, , until the moment in KR that he finally makes the conscious choice to commit to it.

I think that moment comes at Karthas. We have just been through this slow burn of Damen proving, unintentionally, over and over, how truly good and worthy he is. The sword fight, the tent scene, after the griva. There are so many moments where Damen could respond with anger and cruelty, where he could take advantage of Laurent or hurt him, could prove Laurent’s judgements correct, and he never does. He definitely pushes back when Laurent is particularly terrible, but even when he thinks there is no chance Laurent will love him, even when a harsher reaction would be fully justified, he treats him with honour and respect. And then they get to Karthas, this first moment where Damen is vulnerable, when he needs Laurent instead of the other way around, and Laurent finally falls. Finally makes the choice to love him.

And once he makes that choice, he never backs down.

One final point about Laurent—I think that over years of trauma and abuse, he’s built up this level of disconnect between his mind, his emotions, and his body. I think that’s part of what we see him trying to heal, especially when he is in bed with Damen and in those few openly emotional moments late in KR. In addition, I have always headcanoned him as demiromantic, though I’m not sure to what extent that is something he was born with and to what extent it was born of trauma. Either way, I’m not convinced that Laurent himself realized how strong his feelings were in PG. It’s not until later KR, when Damen starts really pushing him to recognize who he is, that Laurent was able to realize or understand or acknowledge what it was he’d been feeling towards Damen all along.

[alyy--caticus]

!!! I've read so much queer literature, this is my time to shine. I've read all these books this year so they're quite fresh in my mind. no spoilers ofc :)

- I'll give you the sun by Jandy Nelson. About Noah and Jude, twins, who are just trying their best. Noah, bless his young gay soul, falls in love with ephemereal Brian from across the street . BEAUTIFULLY written. This book deserves a huge fandom, I don't know why it isn't more popular.

- The dangerous art of blending in by Angelo Surmelis. About a gay Greek boy who struggles with a crazy religious, physically, and emotionally, abusive mother, and a partially absent father. Not the best written, but I think it's important nonetheless. I read it front to back in a day. Hit a bit too close to home haha.

- Release by Patrick Ness. Currently reading this. Again about a gay teenage boy with religious parents. So far, from what I've read, it's a really sad fucking book lol. I'm only 130 pages in but the main character has just been... put through the ringer... definitely an interesting read though. If youre looking for a good author, Patrick Ness is the guy. A lot of my friends and peers have read his different works, and the general consensus is "yeah, I quite liked (insert Ness book.) Bit weird but cool."

- Call me by your name by Andre Aciman. definitely one of my all time favourites. If you've watched the movie, this needs no introduction. If you haven't, watch the movie. 7$ on youtube for one watch. Then go and read this book. It's about a boy in Italy, Elio, falling into love and lust with the student his father brings over on a kind of internship programme. If you have to read any book on this list, read this one.

- Maurice by E.M Forster. A classic! It's the O.G book yo. (It was inspired by Belchamber, and only really published in the 70's or something but shhhhh it's still the gay classic that hit things off) I mean, there's not much to say about it? I read it early this year, so my memory's a bit fuzzy, but I do remember crying over the relatability like... 100 years after this was written. I'm making it seem bad, it's really not, it's great.

- Captive Prince series! Yo lmao this shit's tight fam. I read this after CMBYN and I thought it would be easier on my heart but it wasn't. It's a trilogy about a king, Damen, who gets stripped off his title by his brother's betrayal and is sent over to the enemy kingdom as a sex slave to the young king-to-be whose brother Damen killed. It's all pretty fucked, but through Damen's sheer stubbornness and charm, he makes his way. Has a big fandom, so once you finish it you instantly go to read the fic where Everyone's happy from the start and stays happy.

(book I haven't read but have seen around and looks good)

- They both die in the end. (can't recall by who but it sounds angsty and i can't wait to hurt)

And those are my book recs :)

I purged my books in my move which means…..I have room for more books.

GIVE ME BOOK SUGGESTIONS.

DM or ask or reblog with your suggestions :)