#i literally randomly once scrolled through his fandom wiki looking for something irrelevant

[zetsu--bou]

One of the things about canon vs fanon Akashi that probably shocked me the most is the age he was when he lost his mother. I've seen almost everywhere that "he was a very young child", and I don't know, maybe it's just my definition of a young child being different, but I've always interpreted it as "around 5 years old", especially since we're talking here about someone who's 15-16 when the main plot is happening.

Seijuurou was in fifth grade when Shiori died (Chapter 266, Volume 30). That boy was around TEN OR ELEVEN when she died. At TWELVE he started Teikou. The trauma wasn't even probably healed. He lost his biggest and only support in the extreme domestic situation he was in and literally like 3 years later we have the GoM falling apart and him switching personalities. By Winter Cup, it was around five years after her death. On the other hand, he was only 15-16 at that time, so for him, it was a third of his life, but five years is still not a lot.

He probably remembers her very vividly, causing him even more pain. Also - he started switching personalities right after her death (also mentioned in the same chapter) and Midorima did acknowledge that sometimes Akashi seemed to be a different person, so the grand switch wasn't just "I'm going to lose" moment, it was going on since Shiori's death and it just cumulated and exploded then.

He wasn't a baby when Shiori died, he was a preteen, which was probably the worst moment in a person's life for losing someone you're that close with, because you're old enough to understand that they're gone forever, but young enough to not understand fully how the future might look like and how to cope with the lost.

If he was younger - he would probably forget most of his life with his mother there and it would only be some nice memories.

If he was older - he would probably be able to cope better with her passing. It sure would've been hard, but probably not that hard as it actually was.

He lost her in the worst possible moment, also almost right before starting a new school, right before starting to mature physically. With everything new suddenly appearing in his life, he was left alone, without the only person that seemed to have cared about him.