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charlottedabookworm:
Oddly enough, Amatus is really the only one of my OC’s that I can actually see joining the Glaive properly.
Because at 12, sitting alone in a refugee camp with nothing to his name but his school backpack and the clothes on his back, Mat is grieving. He’s terrified. He wants desperately to get stronger be able to protect himself and others. He blames himself a little (a lot). And, most of all, he’s angry.
Angry like Ravus is.
(Because, even after a decade of separation, Mat is still so alike to the big brother he once idolised)
But, unlike Ravus, Mat’s anger isn’t directed at Lucis. No, no, it’s directed at Niflheim. At the faceless monster who had murdered his mother, at the empire that had torn his home from him, at the MT’s who had murdered the people who had raised him.
Tenebrae was under occupation for years before he was even born, but there had always been hope, so long as Fenestala Manor held. And then Niflheim had taken even that from them.
Mat is so angry and all of that anger is directed at Niflheim which has taken everything from him - even his own name because it’s not safe to be Amatus Fitz-Tenebrae anymore, not when it may invite people to dig deeper, and that is a wound that digs deep - and that rage fades, over the years, but it never disappears
He’s a well-educated kid from Tenebrae, so he probably ends up in a decent group home near to Insomnia if not inside it and he looks at the Glaive and he sees them doing something
He signs up the moment he turns the minimum age and Mat knows that this isn’t what his mother would have wanted for him, that it isn’t what his foster parents would have wanted, it isn’t even what he would have wanted for himself before all of this, but he needs to do something, needs to fight back, and the glaive is a way to do that
Mat - Amatus - needs to do this
So, he does
(And he hopes, deep in his heart, that he never faces his Prince - his brother - on the battlefield)
And Mat. Mat finds a second home amongst the glaive. The Glaives who also fight for their lost homes, who know what it is to have Niflheim take all you love, who are broken in similar ways to himself. They’re his friends, who don’t look down on him for his youth, who understand, and that helps more than years of relative ‘peace’ in a foster home did
The Glaive becomes his family and so Amatus can never regret the choice he made at 16
(But also:
Imagine Mat, imagine Amatus, when it is revealed that Titus Drautos - the Captain, their Captain, who they all trust above all else, who he likes and respects - is General Glauca.
The Captain is his mother’s murderer. Amatus has spent years fighting under the man who killed his mother. Drautos had helped him train, had comforted him in his own way when he caught Amatus having a panic attack after a battle, had become some sort of quasi-parental figure, and all the while he had had the blood of Queen Sylva Via Fleuret staining his hands)
@charlottedabookworm
I love Amatus so much. Just - here, I see you’ve chosen to have him fully aware of his background, which - well, even if he didn’t know initially who ‘The White Lady’, his Momma, was - I think that the retired pair who all but raised him and who made sure he got the hell out of Tenebrae would have told them as they rushed to the border. He would have been old enough to know that he needed to keep this a secret, that he could never, never tell anyone - he would have been given the news of his mother’s true identity, his identity, and the news of his mother’s death in one breath, from the mouths of the only people in the world he really trusted anymore.
He probably didn’t lose his guardians to the malice of the Imperials. More likely to simple overcrowding - everyone was trying to leave Tenebrae, everyone who knew just what Fenestala Manor’s Fall, the death of the Oracle, portended. There just wasn’t enough room - Mat’s guardians put him on a boat, and they gave him whatever they had, and they wished the blessings of the Six on him and watched until the boat vanished into the distance.
Mat never saw them again. He doesn’t know what happened to them. He hopes that they lived - ‘Uncle’ and ‘Auntie’ were old, trusted retainers of the Family Fleuret, who had retired years before. Mat hopes that the Imperials left them alone, didn’t come after them. If he was ever to pray to the Six for anything, he would pray for them.
He doesn’t know. He just - doesn’t know.
(He knows that the news whispering around the camp is that there was a massacre across Tenebrae as the Empire openly took control, that civilians were gunned down in the street, that the port town they’d left from had been razed to the ground in order to prevent more refugees from fleeing the continent, and he mourns. But he doesn’t know. And that, in its own way, is so much worse.)
Mat Fitbrae has no memory of his brother. Of his sister. All he has is the stilted Imperial propaganda that comes from Tenebrae - all he has are pictures. And just. I love your comparison to Ravus; the same rage, the same burning anger flows through them both, and it is engendered by the same series of events. They both felt an anger that will never, never fully fade kindle at the death of their mother, the destruction of their home - but while Ravus, helpless to openly rebel against the Empire, turns all that hate on Lucis - Amatus turns it on Niflheim.
Mat is angry. So, so angry, and I love your description of him joining the glaives ASAP. Let him rage, let him hate - but let him direct it at the Empire, at the people who took his family from him. And the glaive - the glaive give him another family, a family who understand, who get him - in a way that so very few people in Insomnia, bright Insomnia so detached from the War, do.
And - well. The discrimination against immigrants? For Mat, it might be even worse - the Galahdians are least still Lucians. Mat? He is a true immigrant, from Tenebrae, and he - he has no such shield. He probably started dying his hair not only because he did not want to be connected to Amatus Fitz Fleuret, but because fuck everyone in Insomnia who saw his hair and heard the traces of an accent and spat on him as ‘Nif scum’.
And I think - well.
I think that Mat hates, hates so much and is so angry, that Titus et al - well. That Titus, who has all but helped raise this kid, might think that he is a suitable candidate to try and subvert. Because Mat might hate - but hate can be channeled, can be redirected, and it might be so very, very easy to make him fall.
Except. Well.
Amatus Fitz Fleuret’s reaction to learning that Titus Drautos = Niflheim Agent = General Glauca, aka The Fucker Who Killed His Mom, is going to be bloody-minded murder. It’s going to be public. It’s going to be very messy. And it’s going to draw attention.
And Mat’s not female, he doesn’t have the powers of an Oracle at his command, but he has - something. A fire-flicker of potential, an innate sense of other, a connection to haven runes that makes him bask like a cat in the presence of white magic. And it’s that sense of something that shocks everyone enough to let him get the upper hand.
…although. Now? Now I have the mental image of Mat accidentally forcing Titus into his armor. Because he goes for Titus’ throat, and normally - normally Captain Drautos would just kill him, or arrange an ‘accident’, but it’s that fire-flicker of something, that not-Oracular-healing-but-almost, that accidentally triggers the activation of his armor.
Mat tackling General Glauca into the main Glaive breakroom is going to result in a drastically different reaction then him tackling (and trying to kill) Captain Drautos. (For one, someone is going to slam the ‘Emergency’ button ASAP with pretty much all the Glaives joining in in trying to kill the motherfucker how the fuck did he get into the Citadel how the fuck is Mat still alive what the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK?!)
…the debriefing, for one, is going to be hell.
(Also, somewhat unrelated: I can just picture Mat complaining because the voices of the Astrals are so damn loud. He likes it in Lestallum, Titan is - Titan is quiet, is the sense of slow, sure strength and timeless patience. He likes it by the sea-side, where he can hear Leviathan whispering endlessly, soft songs of freedom and no chains, no masters. He likes it by Nyx - sometimes, if he settles near Nyx and he’s quiet, he can hear the Storm, booming an endless cantos of family-protection-amusement-love.)
(Your picture was not posted)
charlottedabookworm:
Oddly enough, Amatus is really the only one of my OC’s that I can actually see joining the Glaive properly.
Because at 12, sitting alone in a refugee camp with nothing to his name but his school backpack and the clothes on his back, Mat is grieving. He’s terrified. He wants desperately to get stronger be able to protect himself and others. He blames himself a little (a lot). And, most of all, he’s angry.
Angry like Ravus is.
(Because, even after a decade of separation, Mat is still so alike to the big brother he once idolised)
But, unlike Ravus, Mat’s anger isn’t directed at Lucis. No, no, it’s directed at Niflheim. At the faceless monster who had murdered his mother, at the empire that had torn his home from him, at the MT’s who had murdered the people who had raised him.
Tenebrae was under occupation for years before he was even born, but there had always been hope, so long as Fenestala Manor held. And then Niflheim had taken even that from them.
Mat is so angry and all of that anger is directed at Niflheim which has taken everything from him - even his own name because it’s not safe to be Amatus Fitz-Tenebrae anymore, not when it may invite people to dig deeper, and that is a wound that digs deep - and that rage fades, over the years, but it never disappears
He’s a well-educated kid from Tenebrae, so he probably ends up in a decent group home near to Insomnia if not inside it and he looks at the Glaive and he sees them doing something
He signs up the moment he turns the minimum age and Mat knows that this isn’t what his mother would have wanted for him, that it isn’t what his foster parents would have wanted, it isn’t even what he would have wanted for himself before all of this, but he needs to do something, needs to fight back, and the glaive is a way to do that
Mat - Amatus - needs to do this
So, he does
(And he hopes, deep in his heart, that he never faces his Prince - his brother - on the battlefield)
And Mat. Mat finds a second home amongst the glaive. The Glaives who also fight for their lost homes, who know what it is to have Niflheim take all you love, who are broken in similar ways to himself. They’re his friends, who don’t look down on him for his youth, who understand, and that helps more than years of relative ‘peace’ in a foster home did
The Glaive becomes his family and so Amatus can never regret the choice he made at 16
(But also:
Imagine Mat, imagine Amatus, when it is revealed that Titus Drautos - the Captain, their Captain, who they all trust above all else, who he likes and respects - is General Glauca.
The Captain is his mother’s murderer. Amatus has spent years fighting under the man who killed his mother. Drautos had helped him train, had comforted him in his own way when he caught Amatus having a panic attack after a battle, had become some sort of quasi-parental figure, and all the while he had had the blood of Queen Sylva Via Fleuret staining his hands)
@charlottedabookworm
I love Amatus so much. Just - here, I see you’ve chosen to have him fully aware of his background, which - well, even if he didn’t know initially who ‘The White Lady’, his Momma, was - I think that the retired pair who all but raised him and who made sure he got the hell out of Tenebrae would have told them as they rushed to the border. He would have been old enough to know that he needed to keep this a secret, that he could never, never tell anyone - he would have been given the news of his mother’s true identity, his identity, and the news of his mother’s death in one breath, from the mouths of the only people in the world he really trusted anymore.
He probably didn’t lose his guardians to the malice of the Imperials. More likely to simple overcrowding - everyone was trying to leave Tenebrae, everyone who knew just what Fenestala Manor’s Fall, the death of the Oracle, portended. There just wasn’t enough room - Mat’s guardians put him on a boat, and they gave him whatever they had, and they wished the blessings of the Six on him and watched until the boat vanished into the distance.
Mat never saw them again. He doesn’t know what happened to them. He hopes that they lived - ‘Uncle’ and ‘Auntie’ were old, trusted retainers of the Family Fleuret, who had retired years before. Mat hopes that the Imperials left them alone, didn’t come after them. If he was ever to pray to the Six for anything, he would pray for them.
He doesn’t know. He just - doesn’t know.
(He knows that the news whispering around the camp is that there was a massacre across Tenebrae as the Empire openly took control, that civilians were gunned down in the street, that the port town they’d left from had been razed to the ground in order to prevent more refugees from fleeing the continent, and he mourns. But he doesn’t know. And that, in its own way, is so much worse.)
Mat Fitbrae has no memory of his brother. Of his sister. All he has is the stilted Imperial propaganda that comes from Tenebrae - all he has are pictures. And just. I love your comparison to Ravus; the same rage, the same burning anger flows through them both, and it is engendered by the same series of events. They both felt an anger that will never, never fully fade kindle at the death of their mother, the destruction of their home - but while Ravus, helpless to openly rebel against the Empire, turns all that hate on Lucis - Amatus turns it on Niflheim.
Mat is angry. So, so angry, and I love your description of him joining the glaives ASAP. Let him rage, let him hate - but let him direct it at the Empire, at the people who took his family from him. And the glaive - the glaive give him another family, a family who understand, who get him - in a way that so very few people in Insomnia, bright Insomnia so detached from the War, do.
And - well. The discrimination against immigrants? For Mat, it might be even worse - the Galahdians are least still Lucians. Mat? He is a true immigrant, from Tenebrae, and he - he has no such shield. He probably started dying his hair not only because he did not want to be connected to Amatus Fitz Fleuret, but because fuck everyone in Insomnia who saw his hair and heard the traces of an accent and spat on him as ‘Nif scum’.
And I think - well.
I think that Mat hates, hates so much and is so angry, that Titus et al - well. That Titus, who has all but helped raise this kid, might think that he is a suitable candidate to try and subvert. Because Mat might hate - but hate can be channeled, can be redirected, and it might be so very, very easy to make him fall.
Except. Well.
Amatus Fitz Fleuret’s reaction to learning that Titus Drautos = Niflheim Agent = General Glauca, aka The Fucker Who Killed His Mom, is going to be bloody-minded murder. It’s going to be public. It’s going to be very messy. And it’s going to draw attention.
And Mat’s not female, he doesn’t have the powers of an Oracle at his command, but he has - something. A fire-flicker of potential, an innate sense of other, a connection to haven runes that makes him bask like a cat in the presence of white magic. And it’s that sense of something that shocks everyone enough to let him get the upper hand.
…although. Now? Now I have the mental image of Mat accidentally forcing Titus into his armor. Because he goes for Titus’ throat, and normally - normally Captain Drautos would just kill him, or arrange an ‘accident’, but it’s that fire-flicker of something, that not-Oracular-healing-but-almost, that accidentally triggers the activation of his armor.
Mat tackling General Glauca into the main Glaive breakroom is going to result in a drastically different reaction then him tackling (and trying to kill) Captain Drautos. (For one, someone is going to slam the ‘Emergency’ button ASAP with pretty much all the Glaives joining in in trying to kill the motherfucker how the fuck did he get into the Citadel how the fuck is Mat still alive what the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK?!)
…the debriefing, for one, is going to be hell.
(Also, somewhat unrelated: I can just picture Mat complaining because the voices of the Astrals are so damn loud. He likes it in Lestallum, Titan is - Titan is quiet, is the sense of slow, sure strength and timeless patience. He likes it by the sea-side, where he can hear Leviathan whispering endlessly, soft songs of freedom and no chains, no masters. He likes it by Nyx - sometimes, if he settles near Nyx and he’s quiet, he can hear the Storm, booming an endless cantos of family-protection-amusement-love.)
(Your picture was not posted)
