#caused in Caracalla's remaining stability

[grimaldiapologist]

Woke up to roll out of my bed today because my body's decided to murder me in my sleep and this and everyone's tags are the first thing I've seen and like. I've been howling.

Yes. Yes I've found my people. We've been served a tragedy and you know what I don't like about that? The tragedy. What if it was a (dead serious) sitcom instead.

What if we had the most dysfunctional family built nearly entirely out of nothing but political necessity into a marriage that used to be shelter and used to be refuge from exactly the madness you've now had to bring into it? To nurture the dream of Rome, in a world that simply isn't ready for her to change yet, what if your most straightforward means of change come from acting as if your insurrection is an alliance? That you all WANT to be there? That NOBODY is being coerced? That you're NOT holding the emperors hostage in a 24/7 guarded bedchamber with a sheer drop down two stories outside the only two latticed windows? That they are NOT cooperating with your insurrection because their only other alternatives are to face public execution now or face public execution after a pre-settled trial, AND because they're playing you for more freedoms to get back to exactly the position they used to have before you, without telling anybody about it, took your five friends and their 7 000 men combined into the heart and marrow of Rome to stand by in case someone decides to lay sideways across your self-justified march to free the empire from the kind of bloodshed you disagree with? That you WANT to endorse their rule - WANT to bring them into the family line - and aren't doing this purely because it's the only compromise that you all can settle on?

Acacius, night after night with less than 3 hours of sleep, coming to let the emperors know if the council has decided to just execute them yet: I hate you, I hate your guts, I hate everything you stand for, we forgot to feed you and I do not care one bit because for months now I've watched you starve continents for your own pleasure, I will sit here to tell you exactly what I've thought of you this whole time now that you're nothing but two half-dressed, terrified children being held at swordpoint, and I am slowly, inevitably, going to find myself in a compromised position where I realise I mean that. Two terrified children no one ever told how to rule. No one ever told how to win friends, how to build trust. No one ever told how to show compassion to, so you don't know how to show it to others, either. Just two miserable, entitled, privileged boys stuck in a world where they've never had anybody outside each other, so you just don't think further than yourselves. Pretending that I'm not growing fond of the way you shut up when spoken to, firmly, with authority, and respond to gentleness where you expect cruelty. Pretending I'm not looking forwards to leaving the plans, the organisation behind for the night so I can sit with you, to challenge you, to pick you apart and see where the rot really lies, and which parts could still be salvaged. Pretending it didn't profoundly change how I see you to begin with to find out that, when put against the wall, your first and last thoughts are of and for each other, that instead of throwing the kinds of insane tantrums I'd have expected from tyrants, you shelter each other first and do whatever it takes to stay together, because that's the only shelter and security you've ever had.

Lucilla, meanwhile, exasperated, sitting in the gardens eating grapes compulsively: I hear what you're saying but I also think you've eaten something toxic and should lie down so you don't end up dead for it. I spent months being their prisoner and they're the worst people to exist, and everything about them reminds me of the worst of my brother.

Lucius, unseen, unheard, unknown, tracking his path through Rome to kill LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE IN THE STORY sans his mother whose allegiances have still deeply disappointed him: I'm going to make this so much worse

unhinged concept (I'm entering that stage): Lucilla actually does adopt Geta and Caracalla which ruins Acacius's life but also makes him their step-father and they finally get an actual father figure who teaches them how the fuck to hold swords and not be the worst people ever.

and we just cancel Macrinus entirely, which, I don't know what the hell happens to Lucius but that's someone else's unhinged concept to worry about.

And we put Caracalla on a leash because the boy cannot behave. That's no way to treat your mother