#this does remind me im pretty sure i have some princeveth stuff somewhere i meant to do... something with

[laurelnose]

His Royal Highness Prince Iorveth of the Free State of the Pontar Valley? Okay, but what about prince-consort Vernon Roche of Nilfgaard? How will they negotiate?

They … wouldn’t?

Like. First of all. Roche is a disgraced, commonborn foreign national plausibly implicated in the murder of King Henselt and, depending on where you set the timeline, also of King Radovid. At the end of Witcher II, he has literally nothing to his name. Crowning him Prince Consort of Nilfgaard not only yields no wealth or alliances, it is political suicide.

If we ignore that it makes no sense for the emperor to marry Roche, which is, to be clear, a fucking lot to ignore, then my answer is that Iorveth has no interest in negotiating with quislings and hypocrites. Roche will condemn Northern elves for fighting under the Vrihedd and Black Sun banners but Roche himself is just rolling over for the emperor these days? Fuck off! (The fact that he can’t tell Roche to fuck off because the Free State can in no way afford to offend Nilfgaard quickly becomes a source of deep, boiling resentment.) He remains icily within the bounds of politeness for diplomatic reasons but Saskia takes care of negotiations and tries to let Iorveth excuse himself as much as possible, the same way she handles Dol Blathanna.

(You can’t even get hatesex out of this scenario. Iorveth isn’t gonna fuck the consort of Emhyr var Emreis or of Geralt’s daughter. The first because cuckolding Emhyr is a suicidally bad idea. The second because it’s weird, and Ciri might mind less than Emhyr would but the optics would be bad for her if they were caught, and Iorveth is indebted enough to Geralt to at least not want to make things awkward for Ciri.)

If this is like, very AU and Roche was, idk, raised as Emhyr’s pet instead of Foltest’s or something, this … still doesn’t work because Roche is then Iorveth’s ally right up until the Peace of Cintra and the execution of the Vrihedd officers. At this point, if Roche doesn’t try to intervene — which I cannot imagine him doing, he would have no power to alter the decision and he’s not the type to break from the pack when given distasteful orders — the relationship is over. Iorveth never forgives that. He does not forgive Francesca and he would not forgive Roche.

Affiliation with Nilfgaard being a dealbreaker for Iorveth could be gotten around by making Roche consort of a different country, but I gotta say I’m not all that interested in royal!Roche in any scenario. princeveth probably kinda makes it look like I just like royal versions of characters but I don’t care about the royalty part of royalty AUs, I care about the power differentials they introduce. I mean everyone is allowed to get whatever they want out of princeveth but for ME the thing is that Iorveth and Roche are perfect equals in canon, right down to having equivalent ranks — or at least they are during the Second Nilfgaardian War and after Foltest’s death; the power dynamic is skewed in Roche’s favor during the time period where Iorveth has lost Nilfgaard’s backing but Roche can still draw fully on Temeria’s resources and military power — and princeveth is about what if they were not equals anymore. Introducing Roche as Iorveth’s social equal, from a country with more military power than the Free State (this is true of almost any country you could make Roche consort of, not just Nilfgaard), is just ... reinstating the canonical power balance but now instead of getting out the knives and fucking nasty against a tree about it they have to perform Social Niceties at each other. A completely different vibe, and one pretty much out of my wheelhouse!