#on his death bed Ivonne visits him and all he can see is Penelope

[doomed-prophetess]

Your post about Derrick and the possible fiance he had in OG timeline...really made me think ...Frollo vibes.

In an au where OG Penelope fake her death and run away with Eckles.

Would Derrick "know" peace? Bc I see him going mad. There is no Penny but in his mind, she lives rent free...and well, hard being a good husband if you are losing your mind thanks to unrequited lust.

The noble lady is losing the a "dead" woman with low birth as background.

I do think he would snap...either end his life to follow Penny or use some dark magic to bring her back.

Either way, Derrick cuases his own downfall as well for the family.

The version of Derrick that's in my head is basically if you put Frollo and Humbert Humbert into a blender, reduced the creepy age gap and replaced it with incest guilt and increased his yandereness by 120 %. Were noble children allowed to sing in a Boys Choir? Well, my new headcanon is now that Derrick had a gread singing voice and received vocal lessons. He'd slay it in a priest robe as Claude Frollo in Hellfire.

Suicide? I have a different perspective. Derrick is not the type of person who would end his life after losing the one he loves. That sounds more like Iklies or Callisto. Derrick would find suicide emasculating. It might sound strange, because Derrick's character is so strongly defined by his guilt from the loss of Ivonne but I cannot imagine him feeling genuinely guilty about the pain he inflicted onto Penelope. He would regret it that his actions had caused her so much distress that she would have chosen death over him but I feel like if given the choice to go back to the start he would do it again just slightly differently. It would take him countless failed attempts to fix the timeline until he realizes that he is the problem.

I'm unsure about Derrick using magic to bring her back. For once he's not the wizard kind of person, second he doesn't have the connections (yeah Vinter is friends with his dad but Vinter is super secretive about his wizard guild and Derrick acts quite frankly like a cop who would rat him out to the authorities), third he looks like he has been swallowing imperial propaganda (including anti wizard media) for two decades and is perfectly happy to keep doing it for another. Maybe Derrick would lose his mind little by litte until one of his knights gave him the coup de grace to release their master from his suffering. Or his lady wife finally tires of hiding her husband's condition and loosens his saddle before he goes on a hunting trip, hoping he might fall from his horse and break his neck before he could drag her family down with him. Perhaps he'd be declared insane and anonymously committed to a lunatic asylum or sent to the countryside to recover (under surveillance, of course). Everything he accused Penelope of being and everything he planned to do to her happens to him.

In a just world Derrick loses everything he valued. His razor-sharp mind, the spotless reputation of an aristocrat that he had spent years building up, the loyalty of his wife and Penelope (although he had never really possessed the latter in the first place).