#and how much of Alfred and Matthew's personalities/behaviors could be explained by being raised by teenagers

[romericas]

having thoughts about Arthur, Francis, and Antonio being relatively young teenagers when they start colonizing the world, like Antonio only being around 15 or so physically, Francis somewhere around the same, and Arthur only being like 13. this is not a "feel bad for the colonizers because they were babies UwU" this is a "being an adolescent and believing wholeheartedly that you are correct in your perceptions of the world and those around you and being encouraged by the adults in your government, but still not being mentally old enough to understand the full weight of your actions and then later refusing to acknowledge the full realities of the atrocities you committed at such a young age and the tragedy of that because it's hard"

I'm talking about thirteen-year-old Arthur deciding he's mature enough to take care of a literal child and is startled by how much he's forced to physically and emotionally grow up in the process of trying to raise Alfred only to watch him later follow in Arthur's imperialist footsteps. I'm talking about Francis being a shitty and distant parental figure to Matthew because he was too immature for the responsibility, shedding it at the first opportunity and still not understanding the full extent of the harm he's caused as an adult. Antonio taking on more and more kids because he likes having people who look up to him and don't call him on his shitty actions, who are little enough that he can just ignore them if/when they do and say things that he doesn't like, pretending that he's being a perfect parent to feed his ego and letting the fact that parenting is difficult excuse his shitty actions so he doesn't have to think about them too hard

like also imagine how it changes the dynamic during the revolutionary war if Arthur is barely 18, still a teenager in most regards himself, fighting against a physically 13 year old Alfred and the amount of cognitive dissonance happening for him to say that Alfred isn't old enough to be independent, when he himself was trying to raise a child at the same developmental age

just them being young and thinking that they're doing terrible things because it's all for the right reasons and not knowing how to confront that as adult, especially when faced with their adult children who reflect all their actions back at them