#eeeeeh im not gonna tag durant

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]

This whole thing came from the single thought of “Wait, can I think of a single fic where Roman is actually a prince?” which was followed with “What if Roman was the Faerie Prince in LAOFT?” The thought wouldn’t leave me be until I wrote it down, and I figured, hey, since I wrote it down, might as well share it. (I think everyone here is sympathetic, because that’s how we roll.)

Now, without further ado, I give you… LAOFT role swap au headcanons!

In which Roman and Remus were Lords of the Forest until a mortal witch came between them. Roman, who had always views the humans as nothing more than, say, characters in a story (small and rather unimpressive), learns one, to never piss off a teenager with a sharp tongue, and two, the meaning of ~friendship~ when a somewhat cocky witch strolls into their forest. Remus, who rarely showed interest in humans aside from the occasional “game,” becomes worried that this witch is going to take his brother from him (be that by the witch betraying Roman, or by Roman choosing his human sister over his faerie brother), and acts accordingly, which, for Remus, probably means a murder attempt or four. Furious that his brother attempted to harm his friend, Roman retaliates. Unlike in LAOFT, where Dee uses trickery to incapacitate Virgil, Remus goes for more of a blunt-force route (see: their first canonical interaction, where Remus hits Roman over the head with a morningstar). Roman is put in the casket though one method or another. Remus probably viewed the whole thing as a prank or sorts, where Roman would be out of the picture until the witch was long gone, and problem solved. Greta, however, may not have gotten that memo, and goes ahead with the deal to awaken Roman. This, to Remus, is where the prank evolves into a game. 

We pick up a century-or-so later to meet Patton and his “twin,” Thomas (I’m just switching around the six sides, and leaving everyone else where they were, for the most part). Pat is just the sweetest soul ever, but most are too leery to come anywhere near him.

Exception number one is Virgil, the boy who was blessed by a fairy to have a charming voice. However, something happened (insert angst), and poor V accidentally weaponized his gift (see: tempest tongue), resulting in lots of anxiety and being generally quiet out of fear of hurting someone (instead of using qualifiers to avoid telling people to do things, like LAOFT Pat does, Virgil just doesn’t really say anything at all). Upon learning that Patton is immune to his curse, the two became inseparable.

Exception number two is (one of my favorite concepts in Sanders Sides fics ever: Feral Logan) Logan, the witch’s great-great grandson, who lives with his grandmother and probably already knows all about witchery and will not hesitate to hex someone who acts rudely to his two best friends seven ways from Sunday. Logan stumbled upon Roman when he was younger and decided that awakening the sleeping prince would be a perfect test of his magic. Logan views magic as another type of science, and loves to test all sorts of hypotheses, which is… stressful for any and all other parties involved. 

Remus, meanwhile, is doing a wonderful dance of denial. Does his miss his brother? Pshhh, absolutely not! That’s crazy! He’s having a grand old time ruling the first by himself, if you can call what he’s doing “ruling.” Remus doesn’t really put much effort into controlling the fair folk, so they do steal the occasional human from the woods, but he doesn’t actively encourage messing with the humans. (We still have the same dragon-witch-monster-ghost, who is desperately looking for Roman.) Remus might even be a little afraid of the mortals, though he’d never admit it. This may be one of the reasons whatever faerie who gave Virgil his gift wouldn’t be allowed to see him— why give the humans more power then they already have? 

Janus I’m not really sure about, but I am gonna pretty much ignore LAOFT’s Dee because I want sympathetic!Janus (that reads kinda rudely, sorry, I do really love how you wrote him, but I’m in a sympathetic!Janus sort of mood)— maybe he’s one of Remus’s knights. Maybe he’s Virgil’s fairy godfather. Who knows? He’s Janus, he can do what he wants. 

Plot wise, I’m not sure how much would change. I don’t think Logan would make a deal resulting in the Day/Night split— maybe Virgil would? If we go with that, we’ve got V running about with the faeries at night (that explains the eyeshadow, haha)(though that would open up some questions and plot holes about his gift/curse/blessing/whatever), and him letting Roman out (maybe this follows the magic sword thing from The Darkest Part of the Forest as opposed to your spider-shawl)(which, personally, I think is so much cooler). Roman then goes to Logan, and the two of them collect Patton and Virgil, who’d just come back from the revel? I’m not sure how it’d end, but probably with Roman and Remus getting along, Greta going to rest, true love saves the day, etc. etc. 

Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading my mess of a “What if.” I really, thoroughly, truly loved reading LOAFT, and I get excited every time I get an email to tell me there’s been an update. Thanks for making such a cool series!

(Also, it’s worth mentioning that I’d never heard of The Darkest Part of the Forest before reading LAOFT. I borrowed it from my local library to read, and I don’t think you’ll ever understand how disappointed I was when there were not any witches, haha.)

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V: this is so interesting, i love it sm!!!!!