#added the guinea pigs bc it was very mentioned

[countriesgame]

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*Despite the name, Guinea Pigs have no relation to Guinea, the country or the region, as they originate from South America.

[randomnameless]

My husband came up with this idea that made me see Ionius in a slightly different way: Edelgard mentions that the Empire "demands many heirs" in her Goddess Tower support w/ Byleth, hence why Ionius had a load of kids by different women. Normally I'd think "wow that's stupid, way to invite a power struggle after you're dead" but what if it's actually an Empire tradition? Like, Ionius maybe is the first Emperor in a while to try to consolidate power but maybe only one of many to have a ton of kids, AND the reason is not only to have a kid with a Crest, but that the Slitherers practice Crest experimentation on each generation of heirs with the hope of creating a two-crested Nemesis clone to help them kill off the Nabateans. Ionius just happened to be the survivor of his batch of siblings. Maybe having 10-11 kids is to make sure that some of them will live long enough to be the next Emperor, and that's why the "Empire demands many heirs."

Oh!

FWIW, the Index of Imperial Nobility mentions how House Vestra is supposed to "coordinate things such as Imperial Consorts", adding to that how House Vestra has been at the Hresevelgs' back since the danw of the Empire, yeah, we can make a pretty good case that Adrestia has a long standing tradition of, uh, imperial consorts and all.

It can be seen as dumb because it invites power struggles, but it avoids the issue that could very well have happened with the Kingdom, aka Dimitri ded = the King's direct line is dead and it's chaos because one of the first duties of a King/Emperor/Leader under those kinds of hereditary systems is, well, to secure a heir - the lineage cannot be broken!

(that's where we usually have sekrit heirs popping up from nowhere in some kinds of stories, or bastard children !)

Having multiple Consorts - thus a large number of heirs - makes it sure that the line will not be broken as easily as, idk, a baby choking on a pretzel or a serious flu.

However, as Hanneman mentions in Hubert's support, having dozens of consorts means creating dozens of families who suddenly have to get some privileges bcs the Emperor is figging their daughters - and depending on how powerful those families are, if the Emperor obviously favors one kid over the others (or pisses on one over the others) one of those families might not be happy and start shit in the Empire - taking more and more consorts means shaving little by little the power of the Emperor in Adrestia!

(and guesses who spearheads the insurrection? Arundel, one of those "consort kin"!)

The topic of Ionius' 11 children is sadly forgotten by the plot - but iirc Word of God said the Ordelias (Lysithea) were experimented upon as a test, and when the Agarthans had, uhhh, conclusive results, they experimented on the Hresvelgs.

Given who was in charge when Ordelia was ran over by Adrestia - even if no character mentions the consequences or make a link because you have tea bags to sell - imo it would totally make sense that Ionius killed two birds with one stone : flexing his underdeveloped muscles at peons who helped people who dared to betray him, and getting guinea pigs for his plans to get the strongest Emperor ever.

Bear in mind that the Ordelia fuckery was done before the Insurrection aka, Ionius had this plan before Ludwig'n'co decided to depose him!

(Was Vestra aware of what was going on? Who were the Agarthans working with Ionius? Is it a situation à la Manfroy'n'Arvis, people disapproving of the Emperor listening at shady people?)

The Ordelia experiments leads me to believe the plan to become "super strong with dual crests" was hatched and developed during the Ionius era, but again, the game is so crappy at lore building that we don't even know if Ionius had 10 (legitimate) sibs, or only 5, and what they are doing when Supreme Leader is running the show, or did when Ionius was defanged.

Granted, we don't know since when Agarthans are slithering in Adrestia - if we believe the "Willy's sekrit history" was tampered with and assume Supreme Leader was telling the truth, that it was passed down in generations, maybe Agarthans were slowly manipulating Adrestian Emperor to get their revenge on Nabateans (in Nopes, a book about the rebellion of the Southern Church mentions how the Emperor wanted to cut ties with the Central Church anyways since a long time, but doesn't explain why).

And so, maybe Agarthans devised several plans, that all failed, to make the Hresvelgs turn against the Church and be strong enough to be flattened in 5 seconds, and it only worked during Ionius' era ?

We will never know, but it's still fun to think and headcanon about!

To bounce back on the "Adrestia demands many heirs" thing, given how I am fond of a certain AU, what if

This came up as a reaction to the entire Lycaon debacle?

Wilhelm 1 picked a heir, his heir died "to a mysterious illness" and instead of assuming rulership or helping another heir to rule - like he did for Lycaon - Wilhelm bailed out of Adrestia.

It could be explained by Lycaon being the golden child and favourite kid of his dad, so if he's not the one ruling, Dad doesn't give a fuck anymore about his Empire... or -

What if Lycaon was Willy's only child, and the subsequent Hresvelgs are "cousins" or members of a branch family?

In that case, it wouldn't be Willy playing favourites, but bailing out because his own son "suddenly fell ill and died" and he wouldn't be as involved as he was in helping his own kid, if now we're talking about helping a great grand-nephew or someone else.

(Rhea would have had to give a transfusion to the subsequent Emperor - i name her by convenience Hildegarde bcs no imagination and it's faster to type than "the female emperor who succeeded Lycaon and dueled against Ferdie's ancestor who wanted the throne" - to make people believe there is a direct continuity between Wilhelm, Lycaon, Hildegarde and her future heirs).

In that "only kid" scenario, it would also justify why House Hresvelg became so obsessed with taking Consorts and having a lot of heirs - Adrestia was nearly left Emperor-less after Lycaon's death because they had no other heirs to pick a successor from...

[gutsfics]

so like. im kind of a sucker for Meeting Each Other Before You're Supposed To And Then Not Realizing It At First When You Meet Again type tropes & i was kind of zoned out thinking about it all day & ive kind of just added to my oph mc's canon bc of it?

this isnt a fic or anything just me rambling. idk if i can actually write a whole fic out rn so im just putting out what i can lmao lol better this than nothing

tw for Child With Mysterious Illness That May Kill Them (except its like. the mc. so obviously they dont die)

so. Baxter was always sick as a child. they had some genetic autoimmune disease that made it so every time they got sick, their body would sort of. shut down and attack itself? bc it couldnt tell The Sick apart from Their Body. so they were constantly in and out of hospitals because of it. unfortunatley though, bc of how immunocompromised they were it meant that while they were in the hospital they couldn't really leave their hospital room

also worth mentioning that their parents were The Original CEO Of Panacea Before Charlotte + His Administrative Assistant & they were kind of a little bit used as a guinea pig to find a cure for their autoimmune disease (good intentions only on their part, but they really fucking dropped the ball so hard there. didnt even come close to catching it. and by good intentions i mean they were doing this for their kid and their kid only- any cure to come out of it would cost millions)

Ethan, after blowing up his neighbor's garden shed in retaliation for them smashing his cello, ended up having to do community service hours to make up for it. he chose to volunteer time in the children's ward of a hospital. i'd say he's about 16, Baxter is 9 or 10

after a few weeks of spending time in the children's ward, he realizes that there's this one room that's always got a patient in it but he's never actually seen said patient. out of curiosity, he sneaks in when no one is paying attention & meets the kid. they're sweet, and very obviously haven't had any human contact outside of doctors and nurses and their own parents. they tell him that they've been in that room for some time, & they just want to go outside, just once

so. yknow. naturally.

Ethan breaks them out of the hospital.

not like breaks them out breaks them out, but he takes them to the park right across the street and they get to sit in the sunshine for a bit before he takes them back

he gets in huge trouble for it and is asked not to finish his community service hours in the hospital

Baxter does get sick from it, but them getting to be outside, even for just half an hour, meant everything to them. their world went from their tiny hospital room and what they could see of the hallway from their door + what was out the window to something so much bigger. and it kind of gave them hope? it gave them the energy to actually want to overcome their sickness, bc it might mean that they could go to that park again

they do, however, eventually end up assuming that it was a fever dream that they had due to being super sick & watching Peter Pan too much (guy w red hair + green shirt whisks them away on an adventure-- they did always want to be wendy darling) and they kind of forget the details (it doesn't help that their mom insists that they had a guardian angel who helped them recover)

Ethan just kind of assumes that they died-- they transferred hospitals shortly after & no one would tell him anything when he tried to visit

they almost meet again when Ethan punches Declan Nash- Baxter was there and they did see the punch happen, but they didn't get to interact with Ethan at all

neither of them realize this until Baxter is stuck in quarantine after the biological attack (Baxter didn't name themself Baxter until they were in college, their deadname was some normal boring biblical name so Ethan wouldn't recognize them from that). they're sick as hell and should be resting, but they refuse to lie down and get rest. they insist they made a promise to someone that if they ever ended up hospitalized again, they would never get so weak that they couldn't walk, but that they can't remember who it was, just that it was their "fever dream guardian angel"

when Ethan finally gets them to lie back down, they tell him about what happened when they were a kid, that they weren't sure if it actually happened or not, but that they had thought about it so often that they had eventually decided that if they ever met him again and he was a real person, they would kiss him about it as thanks for helping them

and then they both Realize.