Disclaimer: none of this franchise is owned by me.
Summary: To breathe some life, context, and meaning into the numerous teenage characters possibly inhabiting Auradon, these vignettes offer insight into the characters that appear in "let the shadows fall behind you."
Drawn from canon hints and contexts from the movie and books, incorporating author theorizing and/or ignoring other established parts of the canon universe.
Warning: life on the Isle is a life surrounded by villains, and not much about that could be pleasant.
Author's Notes: The Royals of Auradon, and what motivates their choices.
Title and content influenced by the song "Let Me Love" by Archis
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hear my whispers
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"We'll never get it back, but we'll try
Some things are best left behind
We'll replicate old days, they'll haunt us..."
"Let Me Love" by Archis
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The Royals
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rivalry :: Megan and Mervin, of Clan Dunbroch
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Their mother is a fierce spirit, independent and fully competent leading without a consort at her side. This has not stopped her from producing heirs, which is at the heart of the problem.
Auradon is not to progressive as Queen Merida would like for it to be. The ones who suffer the onslaught from their earliest years are the red-headed siblings who look at each other and see only their own differences. This is all the more infuriating for the fact that they look so alike, and so like their mother.
When Mervin was born, he had his sister at his side only a year later. The negligible age difference resulted in them knowing each other all their lives, no memory of not having the other somewhere in the castle, across from the dining table, running around the fields, and riding their horses.
They could have been friends, if not for their fathers being different.
Fathers hating each other as rivals for the queen's affections.
Fathers not being as discreet about this fact around their children's young ears, as they should have been.
Rivalries like these are not encouraged. Not exactly. It's just that each heard they were the illegitimate one, the spare, that the other was the heir. So both tried to prove their place. Both were egged on by jealous fathers in the process, covert and increasingly overt as the two grew.
Until Merida caught wind of that nonsense and booted both fathers from their lives—but by then, it was a little too late to uproot the habit.
What's made worse is how many people see their similarities before they see individuals. If Mervin likes archery, Megan is assumed to enjoy it as well, despite her not caring for the sport as much as she loves racing her horse against the wind. If Megan is a huge fan of exotic fruits like oranges and lemons, then Mervin must as well, despite his general dislike for anything tart or sour. It just makes it all…worse.
Space from each other might have helped, but they were royalty. Thus, training for royal duties for both consisted of home-schooling until they were of age to attend Auradon Preparatory, and then, in nearly the same class schedules, their freedom was limited to electives and extra-curricular activities.
The petty rivalry might have one day turned to the ruin of their kingdom…if not for the coronation, and the loss of everything they had come to take for granted.
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memory :: Aria, Princess of Atlantica and Tintagellon*
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Seashells carry memories. Ones with smooth edges, spiky edges, shining pale insides, bright rainbow rings—they shine, scattered across her bookshelves and desk, on her nightstand and window ledges. Far inland at her school, she surrounded herself with reminders of the sea.
Like her older sister Melody, she longs for it in her bones. There's less of her father guiding her heritage: a prince of the shore, but not the sea. She's never wanted to be anywhere or anything less—delicate ankles, long legs, toes. They feel wrong, nothing like the powerful muscles of her tale and the slippery slide of scales. The summers and winters she spends with Melody and Grandfather in the ocean are the only times she feels whole.
But there is unrest in the ocean. Less said, better for all: smooth sailing in Auradon, yes, that's the pretty lie that encapsulates them in the fragile seashell of priorities and expectations. Life under the sea is not as harmonious as the world above might choose to think.
That said, there's enough of the sea in her to lurk a dark-depths fear of the witches who crawl from rocky floor to prey upon her people. She's never wanted to risk being the prey of such a terrifying beast as that which threatened her mother's and sister's lives. Those sisters were abominations, and she, for one, thinks quite highly of the merpeople's hunt to remove the last of them from their wide waters.
Her mother's too soft-hearted, for that disagreement to cause a deeper rift between her and Grandfather. At least Grandfather's willing to do something about the vile infection in his waters. And, though troubled, Melody admits that she sleeps better in Atlantica without having to see any who are like the sea-witch sisters.
Besides, why should Auradon care? They dealt with their own versions of magical creatures readily enough, with that ban.
Coronation proves her fears lay in a foundation of stone, rather than beach sand. Even now on the Isle of the Lost, they shore up their hopes with seaweed and shells, foolishly forgetting. The refuse of society, removed for a reason, should never be trusted.
Her memory remains.
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swing :: Felix, Prince of Corona
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There's a swing tied with rough rope to the branch of a sturdy tree in the center of Corona. His mother placed it there with help from his vagabond father, a rascal who turned into a good-hearted leader. Consort in title, subject to a council of elders, every now and then itching to ride through the woods wildly without the trappings and trimmings of the kind of life he'd never led.
His maternal grandparents still sing Felix's praises. That's the entirety of his family, four familiar faces that smile at his excitements and frown at his bruised knees, sigh in exasperation when he follows his father on a romp through the kingdom that usually ends at the Duckling.
But sometimes, it ends at the swing, with a rotating circle of children eager for their turn to be pushed ever-higher toward the sky. Father and son alike take turns making their people happy in the simplest ways.
His mother always finds them. That, they can count on. No matter what: no matter how wildly the political tides swing from cooperation to conflict; no matter how difficult to even step outside of her room; no matter what nightmare came the night before that sent her screaming awake… Even then, when they argue about whether the Isle of the Lost should exist, caught between her too-strong compassion and his bull-headed sense of retribution, this won't keep them apart.
Felix brings them back together, most times. Either with an adventure and childish mediation in the form of obliviousness, or in their desire to make his life fuller. There's nothing quite like the independent studies his mother sets for him to accomplish—piles of books and visits from experts of various trades and even experiments in the kitchen supervised by the giggling staff. He's become a jack-of-all-trades, a conglomeration of broad and bizarre knowledge, scholar and artist and athlete and tradesman. And a prince—though, many days, he doesn't quite feel like one.
He swings between gratitude for all the opportunities he's granted and a grim sort of disappointment in himself for being just as unconventional a prospective ruler as his own parents. But then, the biggest lesson he's learned in his short years of life resurfaces: that there is no normal for royalty, not in Auradon. While most of his classmates are frantically trying to cover up inherited oddities, pretending, standing straight next to an imaginary yardstick, ultimately none of them meet their own standard.
Whatever their grandparents' generation thought, the reality of Auradon today is that it will not be like the ages past. Too much has transformed into something new.
He keeps this in mind when it seems like peace has swung violently back into war and unrest. When he has to leave behind people he loves to stay alive, he tries to remember that a transforming world is always full of possibility.
Even with the confinement of prison cells and an ocean between them, Felix has to believe this truth: that, when he leaves, he'll find his parents and they will be together again. There he'll be, pushing her higher. There she'll be, laughing, taking her turn on the swing.
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value :: Kristian, Prince of Arendelle
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Wilderness has a value that's hard to appreciate in the urbanized lifestyle most royalty enjoys. This is not to say everyone stays locked up in their castles all the time, or never ventures outside of their own borders. But few have the kind of wildness surrounding Arendelle, small sheltered land that it is, with mountains ringing the portside center of their lives.
His father's treks back into ice-harvesting territory were his first introduction to the beauty that can be found in a totally silent afternoon, crisp snow-scented wind puffing past one's nose. There's peace in those quiet woods. There's a thrill in walking on ice so thick that the blocks come up in chunks that a grown man can barely wrap his arms around—and that a boy can use as a seat.
His aunt's gift has altered his own perception of the value of ice. It's not just a danger, not just a necessity, not just their main export to the rest of Auradon. Ice is play, and fun, too. Even more, it is crystals springing into existence on fingertips—pure magic.
They're one of the kingdoms that contest the general Auradon disapproval of magic use—Agrabah being the other main contender, constantly an ally whenever the subject is brought up every five years. Queen Elsa's existence cannot be illegal: that Arendelle is haven for the displaced magical creatures of the realm is an open secret. Politically, the High King can only command other royalty so far in their own governance.
Kristian sees the value in his attendance at the school where magic is not allowed, sees the position he's achieved to continue these conversations when he takes the throne himself. If only more people saw the value in what he grew up adoring.
Instead, he's sure that the backlash of the barrier falling will have repercussions no one has yet anticipated. Who lives, who dies, who tells the next chapter of this story… He does know this for sure: the value his world will place on magic, afterwards, will rely on if it helps or hinders reclaiming the kingdoms.
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relief :: Nakul, Prince of Maldonia
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In his mama's house, they're up from sunrise to sunset without rest, and the relief of luxurious lounging in the evenings is all the sweeter for a day of constant action. From court to study, from library to kitchens, from the accounting to the sweeping, he's never known a day of total rest that wasn't fought for with every extra hour of work.
Childhood habits. Just like her, he learned fast that having grandparents' favor did not automatically result in all the privilege of his papa's side. His papa nursed a broken bond with them back into a stumbling sort of health, one that occasionally ebbs back into cool distance.
None of this bothers Nakul overly much: his mama's taught him enough about responsibility to know his influence is limited in this situation.
He'd like to think he can make a change in the world—perhaps with his art, or the band's music, with tools of creation rather than weapons of destruction. He's just cynical enough to think most of the social rules are less about bringing them together than about creating more fake boundaries between those with and those without. And that's not just his mama's words in his voice, that's also papa's dreams of joy in every part of life combined with the struggles Janet carries on her slim shoulders and the stoic hold that Kristian keeps on his convictions.
When the world wasn't flipped upside down, Nakul did his sketches and rarely spent a night without pastels, oils, or guitar strings under his fingertips. The summer daylight shone on his scrubbing knuckles in a deep cooking pot, and the school year sunlight slanted through windows on his fingers wrapped around pencils and textbooks. These hands have no relief from hard work under either sun or moon, though fewer think his artistic pursuits are as challenging as the rest.
But he has to create, because that's all he can give back to the world. A painting here, a sculpted relief there, a song sighing along the strings: small offerings for a world that seems not to know what it wants, seems not to know what it wasn't and what is was in the past. None of these works are the best, and none are ones that will last. How can he be so sure in the constant movement of work through all his waking hours, yet not know for sure what path will let him create a better future?
Losing the barrier between evil and good is disorienting enough, but the expression on those faces that stare back at him are shocking in their vulnerability. All the more shocking is that they don't realize that their displays are not strength at all. As he works in a child-created hospital, and all he can do to bring a little relief from pain is approach with steady hands and a kind smile… well, then: he's finally creating something that will last.
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silence :: Seth White, Prince of the Enchanted Forest**
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Sweet as a nightingale's song. Restful to the weary ear. Blocking out the unnecessary when racing down the pitch. Welcome in the constant march towards an ever-better future.
Yes, silence is a comfort to him.
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observe :: Alim, Crown Prince of Sultanate Agrabah
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Observation gleans more knowledge than the belligerent expect. He watches and remembers.
When he was a young boy, his father dressed them both in dirty, ragged, common clothes and took him outside of the palace. Rather than remaining aloft, carried above the crowd as they do in parades, this time they walked. Once they reached a marketplace corner in a dingier part of the city, his father sat on the ground against a wall. Alim followed. They sat there for hours, watching and hearing and even being stepped on once, as the people moved through their everyday lives. That was the first time they ventured outside of the palace, but hardly the last.
It's not every week, or even every month. Alim can't imagine a time he wouldn't follow his father through his old stomping grounds.
He'll never forget what it's like to hear raw, unvarnished public opinions and see the effects of law and order. He'll never forget the feel of homespun cloth rough against his fingertips and how the contrast to the court's clothing emphasizes imbalance. He'll never forget playing with other children, their small ball scraped from years of play and passing-down through siblings, being bruised and barefoot in the mud, realizing that this was the reality he needed to remember once clean and robed and standing on the palace floor with well-fitting shoes on his feet.
His mother neither approves nor disapproves. Much as she loves her husband, she never had to live that kind of life. And her own explorations into the city are shorter, more restrained, barely merging into the crowd of the marketplace. She stands back to watch more than she steps in to lift a basket or go elbow-to-elbow through the spices.
The eyes alone cannot see all that is: the heart can only know when close enough to feel. He observes enough on his own city's streets to know that, by now.
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light :: Eileen, Princess of Llyr
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They think she's nothing but air and fluff.
They forget her mother faced down a cauldron and a horned king. Evil incarnate leaves its touch, even a generation later. One bears the wounds and memories of their ancestors underneath their skin.
Memories of evil run in her veins. She will never let it return.