#notably that im just gonna shorten Cecilia to Cici and Arianna to Aria. for ease. though i think i prefer Aria as a name........ hmmmmmmmmmm

[isaacathom]

So, when the dragons first reappeared, they did so in a big show of force - attacking the Sevarian Castle, home to the royal family

the royal family was very public, as is common. the king and his queen were well loved and admired, as was their eldest child, the princess Mathilda. her many younger siblings, while too young to make real character impacts, were adorable and loved. but there was a sibling of hers who seemingly avoided the public at all times. the second oldest child, the princess Sofia.

noone was sure exactly what her issue was with the public, but Sofia never left the castle. Many Sevarians didnt even know she existed, unless they thought hard about exactly how many children the king and queen had. She was quite and contemplative, and simply faded from the background. Mathilda, on the other hand, was very boisterous and confident, a hogger of attention and a genuine sweetheart.

all these children are at home in the castle, playing with each other in one of the big rooms while their mother watches over them and chats to some officials. Princess Mathilda is taken away to talk to her father, and in the course of their discussion wind up on the parapets between two of the towers, chatting in the sun. The clouds above moved fast, quite fast. When Mathilda noticed the glowing eyes and glittering fangs, it was far too late.

The dragons, arriving from the sky in groups, tore down the centre of the castle, splitting Mathilda from her father. His last clear sight of her was her screaming, the flapping of faded blue wings, and an empty, crumbling parapet.

Within the castle, little Sofia feels the rumbles and hears the screams. Interpreting it as an earthquake, and being old enough to have learnt about them, she quietly picks up her youngest brother and walks crawls under the table where her mother is sitting with the officials. as the rumbling gets worse, the Queen stands up and calls to her children, and holding their hands firmly where shes able, escorts them quickly to the safest room in the castle. and there they wait for news.

it comes slowly, at first. the Queen is denied exit to the safe room on the basis that the King cannot be found, and that in his absence her safety is paramount. News comes from chamber maids coloured white as snow, whispering gently to the Queen as she pats the heads of her children and coos gently. Sofia stands quietly at her side, looking intently at each bearer of news, barely hearing but completely understanding all the words that pass their lips. to the third maid, she asks a simple question - where was Mathilda? there was only silence and the shake of a head, but it said enough for Sofia to understand what that meant. for even as young as 8, Sofia knew her place. she was the second oldest of the royal children, and in the absence of the true heir, she was the heir.

The rumbling would eventually stop, and with in the news erupted. The queens exit from the safe room was met with screams for aid, for anything. The kids were instructed to remain in the room with a maid, but as she devoted her attention to soothing and feeding the crying toddlers, Sofia quietly slipped out into the wreckage of her home.

im losing steam and thats good fun, but the idea from here is that Sofia sneaks into the kitchen - which was ok in the attacks - and steals a bunch of sweets. and the cooks, who are busy making like, soup and shit for the people who were injured as well as like, really rudimentary potions (because you could hundred percent make potions here) either didnt notice her entry and exit or thought nothing of it given her hitherto complete obedience. actually, she probably offered to deliver some of the soup, like carry one of the trays, and the cook instead gives her a loaf of bread to carry (to accompany the soup, yknow) and directs her to where everyones kept. (like the main hall or smth)

and what Sofia does is she gives people a slice of bread and a lil lolly. she finds a couple of her cousins, whod been visiting, and she gives them extras and draws smiley faces on their band aids with a texta. in the chaos, shes noticed and told off, but never told to leave, and she continues quielty coming and going to deliver sweets and quiet smiles.

it takes far longer for concrete news about Mathilda to arise. the King is finally found, dazed and exhausted at the base of a collapsed tower, having had it collapse around him as he tried to descend, and only protecting himself from the falling debris with the magic inherent to his bloodline. hes incoherent and babbling, and quickly hidden from the sight of his emotional children and taken to the nearest hospital.

on the next day, as the media floods with the news of the dragon attack and subsequent major structural damage to Severia Castle, the King comes to and reveals Mathilda’s fate - kidnap by one of the dragons. through coordination with the castle knights, whod fired en masse at the dragons, they work out where it SHOULD be and begin to set up a troop to track it down. but until they know for certain, the kids aren’t told what they expect happened, simply that Mathilda is missing. but little quiet Sofia, with wide eyes and hushed lips, knows. she knows. and she steps up promptly.

When the Queen appears before the media to issue a statement re: the dragons sudden reappearance and attack, Sofia stands proudly at her side, her first major public appearance since she was a very small child. When the Queen finishes talking officially, the journalists press the two of them for more information on what they experience, and Sofia tells them about how she stole sweets for the injured and gives a massive grin as her mother looks on in horror and the crowd laughs. the queen laughs too, in the end, and gives Sofia a massive hug.

individual scenes dont really go much further than this, but the idea is that, with Mathilda’s death at the hands of the dragons (which is confirmed when her body is eventually recovered from the dragons lair), Sofia basically Becomes Mathilda. she emulates her deceased sister in a lot of ways in regards to her personality.

and what was fun about this, beyond general melodrama which i love, is what this means for Cecilia. see, Cecilia is the daughter of a Duchess, and has visited the castle a few times. but primarily, the royals would come to her estate for celebrations, and as such, Cecilia rarely if ever saw little quiet Sofia. its unlikely she never did, but with age, she believes that must be a younger sibling of Sofia (as Sofia does have a younger sister). and due to a delay on meetings between the royal family and Cecilia specifically due to the disaster, Cecilia doesnt see the royal children for like, 2 years. and when she meets Sofia then, shes a different person. and what Cecilia has done, with her naivety, is replaced Mathilda with Sofia in her mind, despite the fact that all of her memories of a pre 11 year old Sofia are actually Mathilda. the reason this works is not just general physical similarities, like hair and eye colours, but the fact that Mathilda hadnt hit puberty when Cecilia last saw her (she was like, 10?) and when Cecilia met Sofia proper, Sofia had, and basically looked to match. in Cecilia’s head, all that happened in that gap in time was that Sofia hit puberty. she didnt realise the age inconsistency because she didnt realise Mathilda was actually older than her, or even that Sofia was 4 years her junior. she simply had no reason to think

what it boils down to is this - Cecilia doesnt know that Mathilda and Sofia are different people. she never referred to Mathilda by name, only as ‘her highness’ or ‘her majesty’, and simply never realised the mistake she made. up until someone - probably Arianna, because Sofia doesnt know either - tells her the truth about it. in a conversation along the lines of ‘do you know all of sofia’s siblings’ ‘yea. younger bro and sis... ooh, another younger bro!’ ‘youre missing one’ ‘what’ ‘she had an older sister’ ‘WHAT’ and its kinda wild.

my idea for that is that Arianna, being as she is the daughter of a Marquis, has herself visited the castle and met the royal siblings. likely at an event relation to her families history as powerful warriors. something about veterans. whatever it was, Arianna personally met both Mathilda and Sofia, remembers them clearly as distinct entities, and clearly remembers hearing about Mathilda’s death. especially since its part of Arianna’s whole cowardice complex (smth like that). since the de la Fayes promptly fled the city following the dragon attack instead of helping people recover, blackening their once respected name. and like, the family does feel guilty about it, which is Why Arianna’s cowardice is her whole thing for her book specifically. but the point is that she knows Mathilda died because she feels like her family is responsible, even though realistically their aid would have done little except recover her body sooner.

the irony there is that Arianna is the same age if not slightly younger than Sofia, who was 8, while Cecilia was 12, and yet Cecilia had no idea about Mathilda’s death specifically. the whole naivety and coddling thing.

while all this is happening Leila was probably aware of the whole thing (being shes in the middle of Sofia and Cecilia age wise, i think, or older than Cecilia) but isnt aware that there was every any confusion. she never saw any reason to bring up Mathilda based on the simple fact that to do so would be a faux pas real bad. so Leila’s very much out of the conversation here. like, itd make sense for her to tell Cecilia about it since she and Cici are friends, but shes also not aware its a problem specifically. shes knows there is an issue with Cici’s perception of Sofia and who Sofia actually is, but she doesn’t know the source and doesn’t have the first idea of how she’d work it out, so she sticks to just cutting Cici off when she starts getting weird about it. hence it falls to Arianna to fix it, especially since shes met Sofia and Mathilda (while its not impossible for Leila to have met Mathilda or Sofia prior to Dragon Attack, its unlikely and wouldnt make a huge change) and since shes antagonistic towards Cici. like, Aria is a lot more critical of Cici’s actions, and is therefore more likely to notice whats causing it and address it, ESPECIALLY since Aria considers Sofia a good friend and she wants to help her. plus Aria adores getting an upper hand on Cici, fuels her ego real good. Sofia would never confront Cecilia about it, not just because of her general nature, but also because thats a really sensitive topic for her and has a lot to do with her personality as a whole, so bringing that up is.... yknow.... faux pas, again. hence Aria doing this 1v1 with Cici instead of bringing it up in a bigger conversation.

tl;dr Mathilda was real cool and then got totally fucked up by a dragon, and a quiet and shy Sofia promptly filled Mathilda’s role as heiress by basically emulating her sister and her mother in equal measure and just. bam. there she is! and Cecilia, for a long time, has no idea that Mathilda and Sofia are separate people, or even that Mathilda ever existed.