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narcasseAn AU to this AU here without which it probably won’t make too much sense.
1123 words. Gender-bending of a sort.
Interregnum
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
++++++++++
The golden grillwork over the windows was an elegant touch even he had to admit. Seemingly delicate lattice that should break or burn dependent on the method he chose to use in his escape. In reality the wiry lattice would both hold his weight and repel his flames. The windows then were not a plausible means of escape. Next of course where the balconies which should and would have, in early days, provided a suitable exit. All he’d need to do was hurl himself off onto a lower rooftop or into the Boğazı. He was a Methesulah after all, an ifrit at the height of his powers, they hadn’t taken that from him so the jump would have been pratical rather than suicidal. Except all the balconies, just like the windows, were fenced in. He could see out, if he peered through latice and unbreakable and tinted glass but he couldn’t escape and certainly nobody could see in. Help, of any kind, even the sort that wouldn’t really be help at all, wouldn’t be fortcoming.
He was trapped in a palace of elaborately locking doors, doors that not ifrit nor broken table nor fire nor broken Autodoll hurled in a rage could even damange. He’d broken three of Ion’s precious Autodolls, his `Afārīt as he called them, and had wedged their fractured arms through doorway and carved screen as a testament to the fact, as a macabre greeting when Ion came to visit him. Ion didn’t let his `Afārīt anywhere near Radu now which suited both parties perfectly well. The new Autodolls in Radu’s service are generic, docile creatures that lay out his clothing for the night, serve him tea, prepare his bath. They do not speak unless it is to acknowledge a command or relay information that they have been instructed to uncover. Radu prefers it this way: the Autodolls that wear his face offend him.
Ion has given vast sections of the palace over to him. Radu has no idea quite how much of the Empress’ former home is his but he suspects that it may be if over a third, just under half. He is confined to his own domain but his domain is vast. He can walk the length of it as if walking the length of the Boğazı. He wants for nothing here. He is like the proverbal djinn trapped by a particuarly clever mortal, in a fairytale where the prince who became a sultan fell in love with the djinn who aided him: the very same djinn who now despies his former master. Not that Radu has laid eyes on Ion for quite some time. He declines to acknowladge Ion’s visits and now, in testing his limits, has discovered that he may refuse to recieve Ion at all. Still, this is not enough to deter Ion’s devotion which is mapped out in jewels and silks, perfumes and books or wine and sweetmeats. Radu may demand anything, save for his freedom, and Ion will provide it.
Thus, he is unaware of the passage of time in its usual small increments by the time he starts to acquiesce. He doesn’t even remember, if he even had one, any dramatic reason why he suddenly gave in to Ion’s strange affections. He presumes that it may have been in the face of futility, an eternity of beautiful, high ceiling marble rooms with locks and bars to keep him in, that his resistance finally wore down. Yet still, strangely, as if by some perversion he remains untouched while Ion sports with Autodolls instead though he heaps yet more gifts upon Radu and sends poets and musicians for his entertainment. The young sultan it seems will not come to him so the languishing ifrit must make better use of his time.
The silks he has transformed into elegant robes, worked over with brocade and jewels. They will be the frame upon which he will cast his form. Long robes in the palest of blues, gathered tightly at his waist, long sleeves in gossamer layers that cover almost entirely his slim hands. He veils himself, the soft fabric falling about his face and across it. Those who come to him will only see his shrouded and indistinct form, the tips of long fingers covered by nailguards of wrought gold, deep eyes accented by long, painted lashes. Nobody will know the face beneath the veils, the identity of the one that the foolish sultan seeks to hide from the world.
He sends for tutors and advisors as well as entertainment and it is not long before his spies number equally against Ion’s. And by then the rumours have begun, the fable that the young sultan is not in fact sultan at all. Of course it will not suit Radu’s emerging purpose to be thought of as the sultan’s bride or mistress so the most obvious solution is to cast Ion as Oedipus and name himself Valide Sultan instead. For a mother’s right is God’s right after all and if he can undercut Ion’s authority in the process then all the better.
It does take Ion a few decades to realise that he is viewed merely as a prince serving at the foot of his mother’s throne but by then it is far too late for him to reverse the process. The people grow restless at their weak sultan’s hesitance to start a war and when the council chamber is thronged with nobles clamouring for war it is not the sultan’s permission that they call for. Radu for his part stands silently beside Ion’s throne, placing a long-nailed hand upon Ion’s shoulder as Ion is forced to declare a crusade against the infidel.
It is not a war that goes well but that too becomes the young sultan’s fault.
+++
Three hundred years later, strangely, the matter is settled and a silver-haired terran priest officiates at the Valide Sultan’s funeral. Her body is carried through the streets, her brier born aloft on the shoulders of Methuselah Inquisitors. She is, officially, the first Methuselah saint though there is still some debate if she may in fact be the second due to the death of her husband prior. There is also the issue of her step-daughter who gave her life trying to protect the Pope in István. That their entire family will be canonised is not the issue, the Holy Roman Empire celebrates saints days for them already even if they differ across regions.
If he were still alive it’s entirely likely that Dietrich von Lohengrin would laugh himself sick at the entire resolution. If he himself hadn’t been written into the story; the current Holy Roman Emperor claims descent from the Valide Sultan and her terran lover.
++++++++++
Valide Sultan is the title given to the Sultan’s mother.
Considering that they had an Empress called ‘Seth’ it’s possible that Radu kept his own name, though if he didn’t he may well have gone by ‘Hürrem’ instead.
At a tangent to the above in drabble format. What if Seth had let her children simply fight it out?
Will
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
+++++++++++
There are two principles that the Empress believes in: natural selection and the will to power. Those who embrace both are lauded by her state.
Mirka believed in the supremacy of the Methuselah race: that earned her Imperial favour.
Süleyman believed in his own ambition: that strength raised him up.
Ion neither believed nor succeeded in either. Thus he became unnecessary, disposable. The only reason he has not been disposed of lies with his puppeteer.
Radu believes in both. He even, charmingly, says it in German: der Wille zur Macht, which the Empress admits is the nature of her model.
++++++++++
It doesn’t get much more obvious than Nietzsche.
525 words. AU. Based on theorising here.
The last of the Nightlords: the brightest and the best.
Destiny
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
+++++++++++
“The last will be the brightest and the best.”
The words echo through her dreams, always rousing her from sleep just before she can identify that voice.
She, the last of the Nightlords, the smallest, the weakest. That voice is speaking of her. Lauding her as the finest of creation. It doesn’t make sense. She was the last, the afterthought, the unfinished one not even fully grown.
“She will be their goddess.”
The voice is always so certain, so determined that she of all the siblings will be their brightest star. A voice lost in her memory, if she ever even heard it at all. I doesn’t seem right at all.
“I will teach her.”
Who will? She doesn’t know. It’s just an odd voice, a fragment that echoes through her dreams. Maybe she’s just making it up? Playing at make-believe? She isn’t a goddess after all.
“This is my duty.”
A warm voice, smooth and polished in its timber. Matched perfectly by a face as white as chalk, as artificial skin. In the mists of her memory she sees, as if through opaque glass, a mechanical hand placed solemnly over the speaker’s heart as if in holy vow.
It is easy to push the thought? memory? aside in her waking hours, to laugh at its absurdity. She? A Goddess? A goddess with a mentor no less. What nonsense.
But when the dawn breaks and the world falls silent it is harder for her to ignore the prickling fingers of long submerged memory. Perhaps she was lying in a capsule of some kind, the stasis tube in which she was grown. Perhaps, because she was unfinished, she was given a mentor. A machine to direct her growth. But if that is the case then where is he? Where is this mechanical adjunct to help guide her steps?
Perhaps she supposes he was never sent to Mars. Perhaps they thought her complete already. Perhaps says the nagging voice in her head that she knows is nothing more sinister than common sense, there were budget cuts. It sounds right to her, fitting that the glorified colonisation project was undercut by that sort of pettiness. The machine created to instruct a goddess left behind simply due to cost. Which still doesn’t answer the question of where he is now. If he even exists and she isn’t just making up comforting fairytales again.
She’s almost convinced herself that she dreamed it all when they finally do meet. When that white face smiles up at her, dying.
“You were… it was you.”
He reaches up, hand cupping her face just as someone else has done before.
“Don’t die. Please, stay with me.”
Perhaps in the end it is his death rather than her brother’s actions that are her undoing. This thing, her brother, this monster that he’s become has slain both her lover and father. She will not forgive him: she will not forgive herself.
When she falls headfirst into the darkness of death it is that familiar voice that haunts her on the way down.
“The last will be the brightest and the best.”
She has failed the world.
++++++++++
1123 words. Gender-bending of a sort.
Interregnum
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
++++++++++
The golden grillwork over the windows was an elegant touch even he had to admit. Seemingly delicate lattice that should break or burn dependent on the method he chose to use in his escape. In reality the wiry lattice would both hold his weight and repel his flames. The windows then were not a plausible means of escape. Next of course where the balconies which should and would have, in early days, provided a suitable exit. All he’d need to do was hurl himself off onto a lower rooftop or into the Boğazı. He was a Methesulah after all, an ifrit at the height of his powers, they hadn’t taken that from him so the jump would have been pratical rather than suicidal. Except all the balconies, just like the windows, were fenced in. He could see out, if he peered through latice and unbreakable and tinted glass but he couldn’t escape and certainly nobody could see in. Help, of any kind, even the sort that wouldn’t really be help at all, wouldn’t be fortcoming.
He was trapped in a palace of elaborately locking doors, doors that not ifrit nor broken table nor fire nor broken Autodoll hurled in a rage could even damange. He’d broken three of Ion’s precious Autodolls, his `Afārīt as he called them, and had wedged their fractured arms through doorway and carved screen as a testament to the fact, as a macabre greeting when Ion came to visit him. Ion didn’t let his `Afārīt anywhere near Radu now which suited both parties perfectly well. The new Autodolls in Radu’s service are generic, docile creatures that lay out his clothing for the night, serve him tea, prepare his bath. They do not speak unless it is to acknowledge a command or relay information that they have been instructed to uncover. Radu prefers it this way: the Autodolls that wear his face offend him.
Ion has given vast sections of the palace over to him. Radu has no idea quite how much of the Empress’ former home is his but he suspects that it may be if over a third, just under half. He is confined to his own domain but his domain is vast. He can walk the length of it as if walking the length of the Boğazı. He wants for nothing here. He is like the proverbal djinn trapped by a particuarly clever mortal, in a fairytale where the prince who became a sultan fell in love with the djinn who aided him: the very same djinn who now despies his former master. Not that Radu has laid eyes on Ion for quite some time. He declines to acknowladge Ion’s visits and now, in testing his limits, has discovered that he may refuse to recieve Ion at all. Still, this is not enough to deter Ion’s devotion which is mapped out in jewels and silks, perfumes and books or wine and sweetmeats. Radu may demand anything, save for his freedom, and Ion will provide it.
Thus, he is unaware of the passage of time in its usual small increments by the time he starts to acquiesce. He doesn’t even remember, if he even had one, any dramatic reason why he suddenly gave in to Ion’s strange affections. He presumes that it may have been in the face of futility, an eternity of beautiful, high ceiling marble rooms with locks and bars to keep him in, that his resistance finally wore down. Yet still, strangely, as if by some perversion he remains untouched while Ion sports with Autodolls instead though he heaps yet more gifts upon Radu and sends poets and musicians for his entertainment. The young sultan it seems will not come to him so the languishing ifrit must make better use of his time.
The silks he has transformed into elegant robes, worked over with brocade and jewels. They will be the frame upon which he will cast his form. Long robes in the palest of blues, gathered tightly at his waist, long sleeves in gossamer layers that cover almost entirely his slim hands. He veils himself, the soft fabric falling about his face and across it. Those who come to him will only see his shrouded and indistinct form, the tips of long fingers covered by nailguards of wrought gold, deep eyes accented by long, painted lashes. Nobody will know the face beneath the veils, the identity of the one that the foolish sultan seeks to hide from the world.
He sends for tutors and advisors as well as entertainment and it is not long before his spies number equally against Ion’s. And by then the rumours have begun, the fable that the young sultan is not in fact sultan at all. Of course it will not suit Radu’s emerging purpose to be thought of as the sultan’s bride or mistress so the most obvious solution is to cast Ion as Oedipus and name himself Valide Sultan instead. For a mother’s right is God’s right after all and if he can undercut Ion’s authority in the process then all the better.
It does take Ion a few decades to realise that he is viewed merely as a prince serving at the foot of his mother’s throne but by then it is far too late for him to reverse the process. The people grow restless at their weak sultan’s hesitance to start a war and when the council chamber is thronged with nobles clamouring for war it is not the sultan’s permission that they call for. Radu for his part stands silently beside Ion’s throne, placing a long-nailed hand upon Ion’s shoulder as Ion is forced to declare a crusade against the infidel.
It is not a war that goes well but that too becomes the young sultan’s fault.
+++
Three hundred years later, strangely, the matter is settled and a silver-haired terran priest officiates at the Valide Sultan’s funeral. Her body is carried through the streets, her brier born aloft on the shoulders of Methuselah Inquisitors. She is, officially, the first Methuselah saint though there is still some debate if she may in fact be the second due to the death of her husband prior. There is also the issue of her step-daughter who gave her life trying to protect the Pope in István. That their entire family will be canonised is not the issue, the Holy Roman Empire celebrates saints days for them already even if they differ across regions.
If he were still alive it’s entirely likely that Dietrich von Lohengrin would laugh himself sick at the entire resolution. If he himself hadn’t been written into the story; the current Holy Roman Emperor claims descent from the Valide Sultan and her terran lover.
++++++++++
Valide Sultan is the title given to the Sultan’s mother.
Considering that they had an Empress called ‘Seth’ it’s possible that Radu kept his own name, though if he didn’t he may well have gone by ‘Hürrem’ instead.
At a tangent to the above in drabble format. What if Seth had let her children simply fight it out?
Will
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
+++++++++++
There are two principles that the Empress believes in: natural selection and the will to power. Those who embrace both are lauded by her state.
Mirka believed in the supremacy of the Methuselah race: that earned her Imperial favour.
Süleyman believed in his own ambition: that strength raised him up.
Ion neither believed nor succeeded in either. Thus he became unnecessary, disposable. The only reason he has not been disposed of lies with his puppeteer.
Radu believes in both. He even, charmingly, says it in German: der Wille zur Macht, which the Empress admits is the nature of her model.
++++++++++
It doesn’t get much more obvious than Nietzsche.
525 words. AU. Based on theorising here.
The last of the Nightlords: the brightest and the best.
Destiny
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
+++++++++++
“The last will be the brightest and the best.”
The words echo through her dreams, always rousing her from sleep just before she can identify that voice.
She, the last of the Nightlords, the smallest, the weakest. That voice is speaking of her. Lauding her as the finest of creation. It doesn’t make sense. She was the last, the afterthought, the unfinished one not even fully grown.
“She will be their goddess.”
The voice is always so certain, so determined that she of all the siblings will be their brightest star. A voice lost in her memory, if she ever even heard it at all. I doesn’t seem right at all.
“I will teach her.”
Who will? She doesn’t know. It’s just an odd voice, a fragment that echoes through her dreams. Maybe she’s just making it up? Playing at make-believe? She isn’t a goddess after all.
“This is my duty.”
A warm voice, smooth and polished in its timber. Matched perfectly by a face as white as chalk, as artificial skin. In the mists of her memory she sees, as if through opaque glass, a mechanical hand placed solemnly over the speaker’s heart as if in holy vow.
It is easy to push the thought? memory? aside in her waking hours, to laugh at its absurdity. She? A Goddess? A goddess with a mentor no less. What nonsense.
But when the dawn breaks and the world falls silent it is harder for her to ignore the prickling fingers of long submerged memory. Perhaps she was lying in a capsule of some kind, the stasis tube in which she was grown. Perhaps, because she was unfinished, she was given a mentor. A machine to direct her growth. But if that is the case then where is he? Where is this mechanical adjunct to help guide her steps?
Perhaps she supposes he was never sent to Mars. Perhaps they thought her complete already. Perhaps says the nagging voice in her head that she knows is nothing more sinister than common sense, there were budget cuts. It sounds right to her, fitting that the glorified colonisation project was undercut by that sort of pettiness. The machine created to instruct a goddess left behind simply due to cost. Which still doesn’t answer the question of where he is now. If he even exists and she isn’t just making up comforting fairytales again.
She’s almost convinced herself that she dreamed it all when they finally do meet. When that white face smiles up at her, dying.
“You were… it was you.”
He reaches up, hand cupping her face just as someone else has done before.
“Don’t die. Please, stay with me.”
Perhaps in the end it is his death rather than her brother’s actions that are her undoing. This thing, her brother, this monster that he’s become has slain both her lover and father. She will not forgive him: she will not forgive herself.
When she falls headfirst into the darkness of death it is that familiar voice that haunts her on the way down.
“The last will be the brightest and the best.”
She has failed the world.
++++++++++
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-04 06:50 am (UTC)And Will is simplily lovely.
I really like that Seth's ideas of being a Goddess are all Issak's doing. I must say that Isaak being Lost Technology is a rather facinating theory. This probably explains how he's able to fix Cain's body to a certain degree after than drop from the space, him having been created to be a mentor to Seth would have knowledge on the subject.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-06 09:53 pm (UTC)Of course that’s all highly convoluted as well as involving huge gaps in the details. After all, if Ion is Radu’s son then where’s the former sultan because it obviously wasn’t Süleyman? And if Süleyman was Radu’s husband then was Radu an Imperial concubine? When did Radu become the former sultan’s concubine after all? Was Süleyman forced to hand over his wife? Was he killed off because he wouldn’t? Or did Radu somehow gain the sultan’s affections after he’d been made a widow? If Süleyman was martyred for his faith and Radu was forcibly made a concubine, and this was normal practice, was Radu seriously the only fertile woman in the sultan’s harem? Were there other sons of the sultan? If so, what happened to them and their mothers? What about Imperial daughters? Was Šahrzād really just Radu’s step-daughter or was she actually Süleyman & Radu’s legitimate daughter relegated to step-daughter status to avoid being targeted by royal enemies or because Radu had to pretend that his marriage had never been consummated so as to gain the sultan’s favour? Was Šahrzād in fact the product of a previous marriage of Süleyman’s or a child born to a concubine, hastily sent off to Timişoara when Süleyman married the much younger Radu? Was Radu in fact a concubine who felt out of favour with the sultan so was palmed off onto a favoured noble as a wife until said noble converted to Catholicism, losing favour, and was killed, after which Radu managed to find his way back into the sultan’s favour and deliver a royal son? And if Radu was a typical Ottoman noblewoman when did he have the time to pick up a terran lover from the Outer? Did he in fact deliver a child fathered by Dietrich and then engineer Süleyman’s death because Süleyman was beginning to suspect that the child wasn’t his?
The whole setup opens itself up to rival claims to the throne from those claming that Radu’s legal marriage to Süleyman legitimates their claim to those claiming that there were other children of the previous sultan besides Ion from whom they’re descended, to those claiming that even Ion may have been fathered by Dietrich and that Radu never actually bore children to anyone else. And somewhere in the background there’ll be a Barvon heir who’s dying to point out that his great, great, great uncle was actually a man.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-06 09:53 pm (UTC)possibly because Süleyman’s beloved is just an angry teenager and Isaak’s seems to actively dislike him if you want to pair him with Dietrich by way of parallels. In that sort of comparison people like Caterina and Mirka aren’t any less flawed but they are in, and may have deliberately manoeuvred themselves into, positions where either their flaws become strengths or are mitigated by their surroundings. Then again both Caterina and Mirka are trying to build stability: Süleyman and Isaak aren’t, and are prepared to sacrifice themselves in the undertaking(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-09 03:41 pm (UTC)This one opens up a whole load of possiblities doesn't it.
And somewhere in the background there’ll be a Barvon heir who’s dying to point out that his great, great, great uncle was actually a man.
Which he would, but doesn't because he would much rather some one else take the throne, so that he using this infomation as leverage can rule the Empire in the same manner as his ancestor, I should think.
It took me a long time of staring and re-reading for me to see the gender stereotyping part, and I actually did head>desk. You'll have to excuse me having nothing more intelligent to say, apparently after a week of exams my bain has decided to shut itself down temporarly.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-11 10:07 am (UTC)And with your permission I would like to try writing a drabble concerning how it went
Please do. This scenario really is fascinating as a whole and really does deserve expanding upon.
The gender stereotyping took me quite some time to notice. I only even realised that there was something of a skewed view on things in the story because at one point fandom was having a good deal of ‘shock and awe’ at the fact that Sunao Yoshida was a man who was writing female heroes. People were asking all sorts of daft questions about why a man would write female characters when it’s really WoW principle: straight male player has a female character because he’d rather look at a woman’s behind for the duration of the game instead of a man’s. I don’t know if they were confusing themselves with comparisons to the tradition of heroic fantasy where the male lead is a glorified male who is described as being handsome, wise, a good swordfighter etc or if they were just thinking about the Sues they’d write given half a chance though.
And thank you. It may even sink in at some point this week that I’m now just that little bit older.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-09 03:42 pm (UTC)