#Theomedes

[cxinis]

storge

familial love

[1hotmuyfunbro]

The "symbolism" of the Battle of Marlas

Since I’m on vacation, I’ve had plenty of time to think, and I couldn’t help but analyze a pretty symbolic situation in Captive Prince—one of those "destined" things in that world. Kastor was born 2 or 3 years before Auguste. I’m sure Theomedes loved him (especially since he was the son he had with his true love), but the pressure from the Kyroi forced him to marry and spend several years trying to produce an heir. This was necessary because Akielos is a group of independent states united under one king, and Damen tells us how his father was the only one who managed to unite them all with the sword, a "proud and warlike" man.When Kastor was 9, Damianos was born. For nine years, Kastor was raised as the future king, with all the effort and expectations that entailed. But then Damen came along, and in Kastor's own words, "everyone forgot about him, even his own father," leaving him marked by insecurity, rejection, and resentment.Imagine what Theomedes must have felt, with all his pride, hearing how Auguste, the legitimate son of King Aleron, was loved, adored, accepted, and practically a living legend—while his own firstborn didn’t represent the same stability or unity for Akielos. Ouch. During the battle of Marlas, Damen and Theomedes didn’t fight directly on the battlefield, but Kastor likely did. This didn’t help the father-son dynamic, as Damen describes how Auguste, the general of the Veretians, tore through Akielon ranks, killing many. So Damen decided to step in and deal with Auguste himself, killing him. For his father, this must have been like renewing the pride of Akielos and his own name. Indirectly, Theomedes extinguished the light and pride of Vere to strengthen the light and pride of Akielos.It’s likely that Theomedes loved Kastor, but he also probably felt frustrated that his son wasn’t fully recognized as legitimate. This must have been a blow to his personal and political pride, especially in a culture like Akielos, where strength and legitimacy were everything. At the same time, Theomedes was surely aware of Auguste’s success and popularity in Vere, which would have only deepened his discontent. Watching his political rival have a legitimate, beloved son must have been a constant reminder of Kastor’s limitations in comparison.Auguste, born into an environment where his legitimacy and position were never questioned, became a national symbol of pride—something Kastor could never achieve due to the circumstances of his birth and the lack of acceptance from the council and the people. The contrast between Auguste and Kastor could be seen as a microcosm of the rivalry between Akielos and Vere. While Vere had Auguste, their golden prince, a symbol of unity and honor, Akielos had Kastor, who embodied internal divisions and political tensions.It’s incredibly ironic and tragic how things played out. Kastor and Auguste were symbols of pride and conflict: Kastor represented Akielos’s insecurities, while Auguste was the epitome of Vere’s pride. Both were measures of success for their fathers, Theomedes and Aleron, as kings.The irony is that Damen, the son who met all of Theomedes’ expectations, was the one who ultimately killed Auguste. Instead of Kastor eliminating the shadow of Auguste, it was his younger brother—who probably didn’t even share the same personal grudge—who carried out the most significant act for Akielos in the battle of Marlas. Damen, the golden prince of Akielos, destroyed Vere’s golden pride, Auguste. This act not only ended the war but also symbolized how the resentment and rivalry between brothers, Kastor and Damen, were channeled on the battlefield in indirect ways.Furthermore, this event reinforces the idea that, even though Kastor hated Damen, he never would have been capable of that act. Damen was Akielos’s golden prince, the complete opposite of Kastor. In the end, Damen cemented the pride and strength of his nation while extinguishing Vere’s brightest light.

Now tell me, what do you think?

[ninicaise]

aleron lore in my head: classic neglectful strict, purposefully blind to his brother's depravity, preferred auguste over laurent bc the jock vs nerd difference, “man up” comments that we've seen a thousand times, maybe judging laurent in his afterlife maybe regretting ever doubting laurent but who gives a shit? certainly not laurent bc he wasn't even laurent's most traumatic or formative relationship, lame etc

theomedes lore in my head: loved his sons yet messed up catastrophically, raised damen to be King but raised kastor as His Child, duty vs love, unintentionally generated competition between them, “if i die tell damen he'll be a good king and tell kastor that i love him”, kastor grew up jealous, incompetent and easy to manipulate, an absolute nepo baby, can't even speak veretian properly + damen can't remember the last time he was hugged, has to be ordered by a person who hates him to go to bed after like three days of working his ass off with no sleep, absolutely insane parenting, interesting, juicy, nuanced and complex, tons of questions

[pijulle]

read on Ao3 >Be Theomedes Akielos.

>Your eldest is in Ivy League, your thirteen years old has just been accepted in Prestigious Middle School

>Move in Prestigious Middle School City

>While you admire your brand new mansion on the sidewalk with thirteen years old, Biking Kid speed toward you

>Biking Kid stops in front of you out of breath

>Wtf does he want??

>Looks a little younger than the eldest, you assume sophomore highschooler or freshman college student

>hands you a cardboard

>go on a tangent about his brother who is a great magician and who’s going to give a show in their backyard

>brother apparently can make a cat disappear and guess your card

>never been interested in magic because you hate tricks and illusion

>Biking Kid left

>Thirteen years old watches him

>He is drooling

>You conclude your son is not straight

>Thirteen years old insists on going to the magic show

>You tell wife and mistress, they both look mischievous about thirteen years old’s crush

>The invitation is fancy, you live in a rich neighborhood and the magician brother is apparently a famous guy

>Networking opportunities

>You tell thirteen years old you’re going to the wand-erful magic show

>Watch thirteen years old dies inside

>go to the neighbors backyard the next day

>Greeted by Biking Kid’s father

>Excuse his wife because she’s caught up in Traffic-Magic

>You like him

>Backyard is full of chairs

>Too Fancy decors and buffet

>All the guests are Biking Kid’s age

>Ask one about School and parent’s profession

>Go to Prestigious High School but has a scholarship

>Something is Wrong

>Thirteen years old is still drooling

>The Show began!

>Music starts

>A boy comes on stage on a horse stick

>No older than eight

>He introduces himself

>He is the magician brother

>Wtf

>He guesses all the audience’s cards correctly

>How the f- does he do that??

>He makes the plushy cat disappear 

>The tail is stuck in the box’s lid.

>He struggles to unstuck it

>Everyone is deadly serious they all applaud at the end of the poorly made trick

>He makes the coin disappear 

>How the f- does he do that??

>It falls from his sleeves

>It was obvious 

>Thirteen years old encourages him

>Magician brother stop mid-show to drool over him

>Biking Kid’s father invites him to continue

>Magician brother blushes and refuses

>End of the show

>Kid clothed in brown proposed you brownies

>Thirteen years old is talking to Biking Kid

>You go see how’s thing going for them

>Biking Kid explaining to everyone why is brother is Very Cool

>You ask where is magician brother

>Has he gone wand-e-rest?

>Watch thirteen years old dying inside before his crush

>You’ve peaked as a Dad.

[tajmutthall]

here's a germ of an oddball story idea for Captive prince, spawned by the Wikipedia article about "interregnum." Among all the discussions of tsars and kings and emperors and queens and princes, including historical and fictional, there is a section on chess!

what if it were CHESS that determined the next ruler of each country? citing Wikipedia: "FIDE, the world governing body of international chess competition, has had two Interregnum periods of having no chess champions, both during the 1940s." (the preceding men's champion died of natural causes and the preceding women's champion was killed during World War II.)

so – – of the top of my head, Theomedes won the championships that gave him sovereignty one at a time over Akielos, Delpha, etc (as cited somewhere in the books I think) rather than warfare. And he continued to win whenever challenged. Damen of course trained with the best chess masters in expectation of winning after his father's death in the future. Aleron had likewise gained the Kingship of Vere, and of course Auguste had been winning all the lesser chess titles in expectation of following his father.

meanwhile, Kastor had been learning chess since he was old enough to understand the rules, and his father had abandoned his training after Damen came along. But he continued training in secret. And then one day he challenged Damen but managed to drug him before the match and so Kastor won.

meanwhile part two, in Vere, Aleron died probably by some evil plot and ditto Auguste before he could prove his championship, and then the Regent either faked his own championship or simply decided that that was a stupid way to become king and took over by force…

so eventually Laurent has to beat the Regent in chess publicly before the Regent kills him, and he has to try to beat Damen, possibly in private, because it was something to do with Auguste losing to Damen in a chess match that led to his death... but, twist, Laurent actually wins that private match? I mean, it's Laurent. And chess.

That is all. I doubt I'm going to write that.

Tip: Roger Zelazny wrote a short story, "unicorn variations", about chess where some human had to play chess against the unicorn in charge of the world to save humanity (?), And Zelazny wrote sometime after it won awards that he had scoured the details of chess games from many championships until he found one that had sort of a "tricky" and unexpected move that allowed the underdog to beat the current champion. And he worked that into the story. 

[zumurruds]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

—from the Akielon Royal Family

[kybelles]

sometimes it just hits me that. in prince’s gambit, damen didn’t know that laurent knew he was damianos all along. and he still went ahead and fell in love with laurent despite not knowing what was the reason behind laurent’s earlier antagonism. what i mean is, laurent was awful towards damen in book 1. he had damen beaten multiple times, drugged him, forced him to fight and almost got him raped by govart, whipped him, humiliated him by dressing him as a pet and called him a whore, sa’d him by proxy via ancel etc etc… and even though laurent never gave a logical explanation about this earlier treatment, damen still found it in himself to forgive him and fall in love with him?

what does this say about damen?

[cxinis]

three tickets of the challengers for the akielon throuple

[merrivia]

Day 1- Family (I know it's late)

Thinking today about how a crucial part of Damen's relationship with Theomedes was knowing that his father was going to abdicate the throne for him one day.

On his deathbed, Theomedes reassures Damen that he will be alive to see him live and reign as king. That can only mean that he was going to give up power, sometime in the near future we assume, and retire. There to watch proudly as his true son ruled, looking forward to all the great things he believes Damen will do.

Perhaps this is why Damen finds it so hard to conceive of his father being dead at all. Halfway through King's Rising, Damen is still struggling with the notion of it. A prince, you might think, would be raised with the uncomfortable knowledge that they will only gain by losing, something Laurent knows all too well. The death of a parent is the traditional way to gain the throne, and is also part and parcel of patriarchal culture- and old men hanging onto their power, unwilling to give it up, is an old story. But not Theomedes.

That Theomedes isn't that type of man or king, that he loves and trusts Damen to that extent, and has the inner humility to prefer to see his son take his place within his life time, gives us an inkling as to where Damen's sense of fairness comes from, where his stability and certainty in himself comes from and why he doesn't hunger for power darkly, like Kastor. And why Damen loves his father to the extent he does.

[seasonsofcapri]

New Fic: At the Drop of a Veil

Title: At the Drop of a Veil

Ship: Damen/Laurent

Creator: @seekthemist | Seek_The_Mist (AO3) 

Rating: Explicit

Word count : 19,140 words

Warnings/Tags: Auguste Lives (Captive Prince), Political Alliances, Sexual Coercion, Dubious Consent, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, Marathon Sex, It's never just the Tip, Semi-Public Sex, Size Difference, Everyone Has an Excellent Time at the End Trust me on this, Age Difference, Just the Tip, Here Laurent is 16 and Damen is 21

Prompt #: 37: "to celebrate their alliance, king aleron gifts damen with a night with his youngest son during the winter festivities in vere. he does so in front of an audience, and physically hands laurent over to damen nudging laurent to give a step forward."

Summary: "The Battle of Marlas could have brought the relationship between Vere and Akielos to a breaking point, but it didn't. As the peace treaty is finally signed, King Aleron has a very clear idea of how to ensure the agreement is truly felt.

"Since the formal establishment of Vere and Akielos as independent reigns, there had been twelve peace treaties. The Peace of Marlas, signed by King Aleron and Theomedes-Exalted before the beginning of autumn, would be the thirteenth.

The thirteenth peace would not go down in the history of the Kingdom as an abject failure. Not if Laurent could help it."

Read it here on Ao3!

Don’t forget to kudos and comment to show our wonderful creators your love!

[altruistic-meme]

me: *existing*

my brain: hey heres another fic idea!!! and another!!!! oh wouldn't it be so cool if you wrote this??? wouldn't you LOVE to plan this fic out??? you should definitely plan this one, i promise you don't even have to write it ;) [<- is lying, knows that i'll want to write it even more if i plan it]

[laurentspeach]

wait hold on is hypermenestra still alive??? did she know about the coup??? what does she do post canon??? or during it???? if this was mentioned in the books i completely forgot lol please help

[ltrllynbdy]

unpopular opinion about captive prince

Maturing is realizing that Damen was far from a perfect goody goody two shoes and he was quite as bad as Laurent maybe even worse.

There i said it!

Damen literally supported wars, killed people and had many slaves and sex slaves only because he was raised to do so. Just because Theomedes wanted him to. Just because it was his culture

If you think having sex slaves and iniciating and supporting wars is not worse than most things Laurent did then your morals are flawed.

This is why when Damed said "I don't want to be his type of king" about Theomedes is a huge moment of development for his character. This is why i like damen, because he is not the dumb himbo goody two shoes. He is a well written, well developed character

[zumurruds]

Vere and Akielos Parallels: Royal Bastards' Attempt on True-Born Heirs

In Vere, the illegitimate son of Queen Yseult's consort attempted—and failed—to murder Prince Edgard, the queen's legitimate son and rightful heir. Queen Yseult had him executed for his treachery. In Akielos, the bastard son of King Theomedes and his mistress made two separate attempts on the life of Prince Damianos, the queen's legitimate son and true-born heir. Prince Laurent of Vere avenged the Akielon prince's second near-fatal attack by slaying the traitor in a duel.

Captive Prince Lore Interactive Map, One morning at the door of the Louvre by Edouard Debat-Ponsan, Cain smiting Abel with God's Expulsion of Cain from the Garden of Eden by Marco and Sebastiano Ricci, Captive Prince, King's Rising

[kybelles]

damen & theomedes

kings rising by c.s pacat - chapter 12 // andrew garfield interviewed by stephen colbert // fleabag season 2 episode 4 // the year of magical thinking by joan didion

[stardustcasti]

But, regarding Captive Prince AUs-

We all like the "Auguste Live AU" I've been writing one myself, but I had a dream about CaPri today and I thought to myself what if we had:

(Note: Some of those AU had probably been done before, and If you know any good ones like that you are welcome to leave recs on the comments.)

1. Damen is actually a soldier from the Akielon army instead of the prince.

I have to think this one through but I think my half-asleep brain thought about a complete change of dynamic while Damen is not the one who killed Auguste.

2. A...modern Royalty AU?

I think it's possible someone else had thought about this one, I mean something similar to RW&RB, but instead of how Alex is a politician they both are princes from modern Royal Families, not ones that necessarily exist in our reality.

3. Make it actually Historical and not part of Fictional countries AU.

This one might exist somewhere as well- I am not sure about historically accurate while Damen is Middle Eastern-ish (I am talking about the botanics and the nature in Akielon that are clearly Middle Eastern) Roman? And Laurent is French?

4. Detectives AU

Laurent Being the Sherlock and Damen being the Watson obviously. But like, a true murder mystery, with a romance sub-plot, not the other way around.

5.a Dancers AU

Can't write this one since I don't understand enough of the Dancing world (And I am talking about professional dancing), but I guess that with enough research-

5.b Comcert Band AU

Definitely can write this once since I have experience with it, especially Wind concert bands 👀 and I might as well do it.

6. In my dream...

Laurent was a Painter, probably some kind of court painter and Damen was a Spy. Specific? VERY. But I can't deny it's cool.

7. Library AU

LAURENT IS LIBRARIAN AND DAMEN IS LIKE, A FOREIGN EXCANGE STUDENT WHO COMES TO THE CLOSENT LIBRARY TO STUDY AND THEY LIKE, FALL IN LOVE AND DAMEN TAKES SOME RECS TO IMPRESS HIM AND THEN FALL IN LOVE WITH READING? LIKE IN SOME "The Last Bookshop in London" situation. (Dose anyone know this wonderful book?)

Bonus for this AU: Laurent is a student for some kind of scientific feild who dreams to be an Author and write a novel in secret.

8. Mafia x Police AU

I though about this one a while ago, Laurent is a police officer and Damen is a member of the mafia. He is a son of a mafia boss and there is all of the canon-like Kastor kills Theomedes and sends him to the version of the Regent for this AU, Damen killed Auguste a while ago and He knows Laurent will kill him if he knows of his identity. Instead of preventing a war between Akielos and Vere in Prince Gambit, in this AU they try to keep their country in peace.

I can develop each of them into a long molti-chapters fic, I swear.