#I'm loyal to HC that he had someone to take after and it's definitely Nut

[egypquotes]

Seth, skipping rocks on a lake with Nut : It’s such a beautiful evening.

Nut: Yeah, it is.

Nut: *Throw the stone hard* Take that you fucking lake.

Seth: play it harder mom! No mercy!

[secret-engima]

Oo! For your Nox verse you mentioned Axis and now I'm all ears for anything you're willing to talk about for the Kingsglaives. Is Axis Nox's assigned guard? Does Noctis have one he's close with like you hinted Arra is for Nox? Does Regis assign *Ardyn* a glaive? It might give more reason for him to interact with Titus? Just what is the Kingsglaive in general's reaction to the chancellor being not that bad actually and basically defecting to Lucis?

(cracks knuckles) Anon. ANON. Kingsglaive are a fav okay? I am always willing to talk about them. ALWAYS. In this AU though, Axis is not actually a glaive. The Kingsglaive was only formed a few months after Nox and Ardyn time-traveled, and Nox met him sometime not long after arriving in the past, so Axis was wandering around taking Hunts to get by. Axis, upon meeting Nox “I’m going to single-handed blow up ALL the Nif’s stuff” Izunia ended up tagging along a few times and then just … never really stopped. Be ends up becoming Nox’s official Shield after Nox is discovered by Regis, but honestly considered himself that well before (because someone has to keep these moron, and his uncle by extension, alive). Nox gets to know the rest of the galahdians through Axis after he’s discovered.

For the rest of the glaives (who are actual glaives in this), Noctis … I don’t think he has a particular favorite? Nox starts dragging Noctis down to the glaive HQ to “train” with them (read: play with them and endear himself to them) so Noctis kinda ends up adopted en masse by these guys (though honestly Tredd might glom onto being Noctis’s buddy/reckless older bro just to spite Axis, because how DARE his buddy in crime get his own LC and not share with Tredd?). Regis assigns the Kingsglaive and the Crownsguard in rotation to guard Ardyn because Chancellor of Niflheim, but Ardyn’s trolling tendency weeds out 98% of the Crownsguard pretty fast (Ardyn: ”It’s not my fault they can’t take a joke!”). Titus, being also Glauca (and secretly Ardyn’s newest minion) tends to volunteer himself after the first five trolling sprees just to keep this moron (who is also somehow his boss, Astrals save him) from driving the entire Citadel nuts.

For your last question. Hmmmm (straps on HC hat) warning this is gonna be LONG:

-Nobody in the glaive is happy when they learn that the Chancellor of Niflheim is a guest (actual guest, not prisoner) in the Citadel. The fact that he’s going to remain a guest for the indefinite future because their King apparently had a kid with the Chancellor’s sister just makes it worse. Nobody is happy and some Potentially Traitorous Things are often mumbled half-heartedly over their alcohol in the first few days when only the Crownsguard are allowed near him (mostly just different ways of calling Regis an idiot, nothing actually harmful or murderous). The glaive however, don’t think the Crownsguard are going to stay Ardyn’s primary keepers for long. Not just because of their general disdain for the organization that prefers to hide behind the Wall rather than fight, but because all of them saw Captain’s face when Ardyn’s arrival was announced. It was the same face he wore the last time the Nifs unleashed a trio of Behemoths onto the field. The one that screamed “Damage Control Inbound” and “This is Going to Become Our Problem and We’re All Collectively Doomed”.

-Then they actually start getting assigned to the man and he’s … nothing like what they were expecting. There is no brilliant tactician, no cunning, poison-tongue politician. No enemy infiltrating their second home using his own nephew as leverage. There’s just a man in tacky clothes and the world’s Dumbest Hat who hides from the irate doctors who insist he needs medical intervention for his weight and general health problems Right Now and only lets Captain or his nephew bully him into eating more than a single meal per day. There’s just an uncle who teases his nephew mercilessly but never lets the boy get lost in his own head (which is too easy for the kid to do, they all recognize the signs of Battle Trauma) and dotes on their crown prince like he’s a long lost nephew rather than the son of the Lucian king.

-There’s just a very, very tired soul who they sometimes find in the Hall of Arts, staring up at the picture of the Founder King and First Oracle with deceptively blank expression and a faintly cracking voice as he sings something Ancient that sounds like a lullaby for all they can’t understand the words, swaying to the melody of his own song like he’ll topple and shatter the moment someone puts pressure on the wrong place.

-Nyx is the first one other than Captain to find him like that, and for all he wants to hate the man who represents Niflheim (represents the empire that burned Galahd and killed his sister), he instead finds himself coaxing Ardyn away from the Hall with gentle words and steady hands, just like he would any of his brother or sister glaives. Nyx mentions it to Captain later, which is how he and the others learn that this isn’t an uncommon occurrence. That they should keep him away from the Hall of Arts if they can.

-It’s the first sign that Ardyn isn’t a vicious leader of monsters playing nice to trick an enemy, but a broken, tired man using his nephew as an excuse to finally escape his glittering cage of “Chancellor”.

-None of them are quite sure what to make of that, so they watch, they listen, they learn. …They get attached. Grudgingly. One prank and melodramatic smile and accidentally witnessed quiet moment at a time. There are a lot of sides to Ardyn Izunia, like the individual fragments of a broken mirror, and somehow the glaives keep being allowed to stumble on them. Somehow they keep getting attached to the shards, one by one and moment by moment without realizing that Ardyn is getting attached in return.

-Until one day, on a good day when Ardyn is wearing his Cheerful, Melodramatic Self and the glaives are hiding their snickers in the corners as they follow him like shadows, two of the King’s Council meet him in the halls. Look down their noses with contemptuous eyes, just like they do the glaives themselves and (in that uniquely flowery way only politicians can) start insulting Ardyn under the guise of casual conversation. They watch, seething despite themselves, as Ardyn takes it, smiles through it, tilts his head like he doesn’t know exactly what they are doing. Libertus finally ducks out of the shadows, bites out some made up excuse of Ardyn’s presence being requested by Cor (the councilmen wouldn’t prevent the Marshal’s orders from being followed and wouldn’t ask him about it later and discover the lie), grinds his teeth when the two councilmen turn their flowery poison on Libertus and the Kingsglaive (the Galahdian refugees) as well. Just like they always do.

-In the middle of taking a step to follow Libertus away, the glaives see Ardyn go still as a painting. See blue eyes sharpen like blades and then-. He turns around in one fluid movement, like it was intentional all along, his easy smile still in place but now dripping an unstated sort of malice that takes the glaive by surprise. They watch, gaping and confused, as Ardyn suddenly transforms into the monster they expected to find those first weeks he arrived in the Citadel, the vaunted Niflheim Chancellor who could ruin people with a smile and a few honeyed words. Where a moment ago he’d been passively taking insults, now Ardyn runs verbal mazes around the two councilmen, ripping them open and stripping them down to their barest, ugliest parts all while never dropping his friendly, polite mien. Somewhere in the “conversation” (massacre), the glaives are pretty sure Ardyn blackmails the two councilmen into supporting a bunch of refugee support programs that, as a technical enemy politician, Ardyn should not know about and they are definitely sure that Ardyn manages to pull it off while simultaneously insulting the two men’s family lines all the way back to the era of the Founder King. By name.

-As he suddenly bids the sputtering councilmen good day and trails along after a wide-eyed Libertus and a long-suffering Captain who arrived somewhere in the verbal massacre, his footsteps silent and predatory when around the glaive he’s always been easy and noisy (to let them know he’s there, to ensure he cannot startle them), the glaive realize that Ardyn is every inch the monster they were expecting. Every centimeter the poisonous, deadly politician they complained about before getting to know him. He just … doesn’t bare his fangs at the people that, by all conventional logic, he should. Somewhere along the way, this Niflheim Chancellor decided that he was more loyal to the line of Lucis and the ragtag refugees called the Kingsglaive than he was his own empire, and that if hiding his claws and acting oblivious around disapproving, snobby nobles was what it took to stay rather than having to return to his own country (his prison), then he would.

-Over drinks, they all agree Ardyn Izunia, former Chancellor of Niflheim, is the scariest person they’ve ever seen. And that they are all really glad he’s on their side.

(hope that satisfies your Ask, Anon! It … spiraled out of my control)