#I CRY ABOUT MY BELMONTS ERRYDAY

[slewfirst-blog]

hc + family legacy

send me  ‘ hc ‘  + a word and i’ll write a headcanon about it regarding my character.

THE BELMONT LEGACY ft. TREVOR BELMONT . 

While I tend to follow the canon timeline, if there’s one thing I will always take away from the Netflixvania Adaptation is that Trevor Belmont is always the lone Belmont heir / survivor .

I felt it added a richness to his character and while a lot of his designs denote a very tough-as-hell person, rough around the edges  - it benefits for him to be given in one story outside that time-line, a very, very, very rough past and I keep that, because we know little of his background save he was a noble like every Belmont generally, and that the Church hired him in their time of need to slay Dracula despite fearing his family’s powers. If anything, I can’t think of anything more brutal in that series than what was done to the Belmonts . It’s subtle and not talked of often but Trevor literally embodies it . It’s in how guarded he talks; how stoic and unreadable he appears; how quick he is to flinch at any measure of affection . 

In the main time-line, and really every game / story the heart of Castlevania’s plot is there is a Belmont, the Belmont has the consecrated Vampire Killer, the only weapon that can defeat Dracula and kill holy god like beings / and all creatures of darkness - thus, making them the guardians of humanity. The Belmont scales the Vampire’s Castle. The Belmont destroys Dracula, and he’s revived as long as evil exists - and so the task is never finished. It’s a literal eternal war that makes the Belmonts invaluable and must be preserved. 

So where does a young twelve year old Trevor Belmont fit in? As a child, he grew up on tales of Leon Belmont, how he faced the Grim Reaper himself and wounded him with the whip that was made from his true love. 

It fascinated and filled him with awe.Surrounded by loving parents, harsh but strict, raised in the faith of his mother who still clung to the ‘real’ God and not the Church that excommunicated them - Trevor thrived as the oldest Belmont along with his baby sister, Helene - who did not have to bear the heavy mantle of destiny that fell upon Trevor should his Father, Auguste, fail or even Lisette, his Mother. 

Both valid hunters in their own right. Tradition and honor were quickly ingrained in him at a young age - as was compassion for those that were less fortunate because back then they were upper class nobles with a castle and a hold - and lands, servants, etc . They were literally light embodied in people, from the old to the young, and as expected of Belmonts, unparalleled warriors - training their youngest Son with the Vampire Killer. 

Trevor grew up on tales of how to kill vampires, how to slay ghouls, wicked faeries, all creatures which might haunt Romania, a home that was not even native to them - France was . He wore his crest proudly on his back; and took to training with a natural ease and quick-to-learn skill that made his Father especially proud, and someone he strove to emulate as much as he wanted to become a fraction of the man Leon Belmont was . 

He wanted to become his own warrior, and at an early age his eerily adept talent was keen - from hunting and hawking; horse-riding; what scarce time he had for tutors, he was a very serious, but loving boy with a huge capacity of ingrained integrity and heroism - as you’d expect from his Lineage . He didn’t think his legacy was a burden, his family was called to safeguard the world from any evil; and that filled him with pride and purpose. He’d prank his sister, sneak a piece of bread from the table, trick a tutor once or twice, get the scolding of a lifetime; all the while even immobilizing his own Father at eleven with an especially quick and cunning move he’d make on the fly with sheer natural talent - establishing his later strategist skills on the battlefield and his mission and his sheer skill as a prowess. Granted he didn’t often sneak up on Auguste, but he did it enough that it had his Father grinning with pride and wonder at what his son would become.

( He’d never live to see it or his greatness. )

It was a place of light and goodness - a place Trevor eagerly awaited the day he’d be able to visit the Hold and learn even more, learn ways to protect the people on their lands, the people who hadn’t yet scorned them, in the early stages before the unthinkable and unspeakable happened. 

And it did.

His family died suffocating either inside the Castle leaving him to be forced to see nieces and nephews own corpses, grandparents and uncles, aunts and cousins - but the majority were set on stakes, among them, his then seven year old sister Helene, along with his Father and Mother, who even in death were reaching out to each other with their flesh-tearing away hands. Most were not spared a suffocation - they died burning alive, like Lisa but multiplied by near twenties in numbers. They didn’t die, they were slaughtered, erased, culled, massacred.

And Trevor watched every second until every beloved face became a torn away skeleton that he couldn’t even bury because everything, everything he loved he had lost in a split of a second . At twelve, before Dracula ever planned his great war once more on humanity, Trevor’s world had already been eradicated - and in a sense, it was a complete massacre, even dying his family faced their murderers unflinchingly like Belmonts; fire in their eyes and no regret no remorse; no hatred for the people they had been put on the earth to save from any and all evil. The world’s saving light died that day - save for one, and most of him was as much of scattered ash as the family he couldn’t even honor in a monument.

Around his early twenties; Trevor struggles with an unwavering sense of purpose to hold to the light - despite holding bitterness just as much. He lives in a world where existing is a crime, and food often went without for days, as went sleep, as went comfort - as went kindness until literally forgot what it meant to be loved by others in any small goodness - every town spit at him, unaware that his was the Legacy of the very family that would deliver them from Dracula . He feels above all, that his parents, Uncles, Aunts, anyone but him should have survived - saying he has survivor’s guilt is an understatement and his pain can’t even be put into words, there isn’t a word for it.

He carries the legacy with desperate pride and purpose, and knows even more now, in agony, how even for all the hatred of the world he bears on his shoulders, he still bears a hateful world to save . He carries generations of good and honorable men and women who fought for light and salvation for all, not one race or creed, not any denomination or background or orientation . They fought because it was right - they fought because they had the power that made it critical for them to not stand idly by - because it is their duty to fight Dracula and the night, and anything else that stands in their way. 

So for how broken Trevor truly is, how much he wishes he at times could close his eyes and see not burnt away faces but the smiling thrall of his family; the mayhem and the diligence - he can’t. He can’t go back. He can’t play with his dogs, his cats, his hawks. He can’t train with his Father or pray with his Mother, he can’t kiss his sister’s hair anymore, get his hair ruffled by his uncles and aunts, dote on his grandparents, kiss his cousins and carry newborn babies of his relatives offspring - all he can do is carry the mantle that has existed since Leon Belmont’s day - and carry on, even if the world never thanks him, it is still his duty as a Belmont, to carry out the task only they can fulfill. And so it’s with pride and restrained bitterness that Trevor continues on, only hiding his crest to gain information - but mostly bearing it proudly, in a wild sort of grief. A brokenness, a bottomless well of sorrow and pain that will never mend. 

Somehow, the ingrained goodness he held as a child remains, mainly due to his relatives and parents, and so he isn’t a bitter, spit on corpses type of person - but a noble man, as they wanted of him - as confident as he is in his skills, his greatest fear likely is letting his entire clan down. Whether it’s failing to kill Dracula with the infamous Master Sword Vampire Killer or dishonoring their name, he would do anything secretly in his heart to ask his charred, not even bones left to remember them by family at the end of his quest:

‘Did I do us proud? Did you watch from heaven? Someone tell me I’ve done enough but no one is left to tell me anymore. ‘

Are you watching me? ‘ So for all they tried to do is break and emotionally kill Trevor, which, on a fair level they did, the legacy after the Belmont Massacre remains like a kindling fire in the surviving heir - and he can’t shake the cause or the calling, whether he wanted to drown in his pain or not, Trevor chooses to go forward, even if it’s visually limping from being half-buried with them. 

He’ll carry them on forever, and instill that same light in the Belmonts who follow after him that take up the cause .