#in all honesty she's more keen on the boys in particular being elsewhere

[hetagrammy]

silly question, how does Emma feel about Arthur having kids already in the regency au? Does it bother her at all, or is it just kinda like “oh well,”

Not a silly question! Emma has a lot of mixed feelings about them. She's in a weird position where part of the whole point of her marrying Arthur is that she's supposed to have legitimate children for him (gross idea I know, but this is 1810). Having his illegitimate children around is inconvenient to say the least for any potential children of her own. While she's betrothed to Arthur, she's essentially reserving hope that once they're married he'll send his children to live in a separate household, such as with Alasdair or Seán. The problem is that she wants to have that discussion with a man who is gone half the time, and when he's home, he wants to discuss literally anything except their future together. She also knows that deep down, Arthur wouldn't agree to it, at the very least not until his boys were much older.

On a personal level though, she's perfectly cordial with his children and she thinks that they're pleasant! She's definitely not maternal toward them and there's a big distance there, but there's no spite or jealousy there. This is compounded by the fact that her closest friend is Molly, who would literally die for those children. She couldn't say a bad thing about those children even if she wanted to. However, whatever mild distant affection she has for them, from a practical standpoint, she believes it's better for them to be out of her sight and mind.