#i just like to imagine Luz discovering the GG is actually the heir to the throne

[justarandomsideblog]

So I admit I have a thing for characters with parental issues and existential issues and honestly just Issues so that's why I've attached myself to Hunter in ToH but because I have many Thoughts I won't shut up :)

Anyway AU? Not much different from Canon, but where after every Golden Guard has betrayed Belos he decides to take a different approach with Hunter, who ofc wasn't one of the grimwalkers helping his rise to power/establish his authority but was instead the second grimwalker created after Belos became emperor (assuming Darius' mentor was the first (and longest lasting, old enough to be a mentor to a teen/young adult in his final years), created within the first 20 years of Belos' 50 year reign).

This approach he took with Hunter would have had Hunter being raised and taught as the prince, while the Golden Guard was a high ranking official who only went out by direct order of Belos and was rarely, if ever, seen in public outside of an important, highly classified mission. No one, not even the coven heads, would be aware that their prince and the Golden Guard are one in the same, and most thinking each one is spoiled in their own way (the prince being isolated and taught by tutors handpicked by the emperor, and in some cases the emperor himself, and seemingly always getting what he wants, while the Golden Guard is seen a having been handed his position without earning it). Of course Belos is still terrible and abusive and Hunter is still suffering, doubly so with a forced secret identity that keeps him in check with and without the mask, and unable to socialize in either identity because the Boiling Isles know his face as well as his mask.

I gotta get to work soon but basically just Hunter being depressed and isolated and always either with Belos, his teachers, or on a secret dangerous mission and trying to just keep his sanity intact.