Heaven's Blessings Upon Us
Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Warnings: Canon-compliant pairings with one exception-- herein lies Rennac/L'Arachel.
Dedicated to Writer Awakened, as the germ of this was a conversation we had regarding Ephraim as a "warrior king" in the mold of Henry V of England. Henry V was followed by Henry VI, and so this 'fic follows that conversation.
***
He very nearly made it to the council chamber without delay. But Seth never had been a favorite of Lady Luck, and she crossed him again that day. Just as Seth was within sight of the double doors of his destination, a shiver-inducing laugh sounded just behind him.
"General Seth! How do you fare on this most beautiful morning?"
"Well, Your Majesty, and thank you. How is Your Majesty this morn? I must say that you look especially radiant today."
Any other woman would have tolerated the flatly-delivered praise, taken it as the rote piece of filler speech-- half politesse and half flattery-- that it was. But the so-called Queen of Light reacted as though Seth's statement were an affirmation of divine truth.
"Naturally, my dear general. I am positively scintillating."
That was indeed a word that came to mind upon seeing the queen. L'Arachel, though a twice-married woman, still favored robes of virginal white trimmed in gilt or silver, and so resembled a statue from a winter festival procession come to life. Any woman might have qualified as "radiant" in snow-white satin with ropes of diamond and pearl interlaced in her hair, and the queen's lily-petal coloring just enhanced the effect. Even so, Seth found the costume somewhat inappropriate to a lady of Her Majesty's status-- and her current condition.
"Is Her Serene Highness the Princess of Rausten well this morning?" Seth again asked simply to fulfill his conversational role.
"She is kicking up a tempest," replied L'Arachel. The queen had an uncanny ability to predict the sex, appearance, and general temperament of each of her children, and so while the Princess of Rausten would not make her debut into the world for another two months, all were required to pay proper respect to a little girl who promised to be as beautiful and eccentric as her mother. It was not Seth's place to question any of this protocol, but on a deep level he still found it unnerving. He had nothing more to say to L'Arachel, and so they stood awkwardly for a moment-- she smiling, he impassive, and her attendant regarding them both with the look of a benevolent grandfather.
"Children are heaven's blessings upon us," chirped the queen, one hand resting on her mounded skirts in a manner as jaunty as it was maternal.
"Of course, Your Majesty," replied Seth, though inwardly he felt a hollow sort of pang. He was privately relieved when the queen was prodded by her aging, hirsute retainer toward her own destination-- the Rausten-style bath house the queen had added to Castle Renais. Queen L'Arachel was notorious for bathing every day, whether she required it or not.
*
By the time Seth broke free of the council chamber, it was well past noon and he sorely needed some refreshment. Still, he had another task on his agenda; the king would be disappointed if he didn't stop by, even if the conversation were brief. So, Seth went up to the place where His Majesty was certain to be. As Lord Protector of the land, Seth was the one man who did not need advance warning or permission to see the king; at his approach, the two attendants clad in the Renaitian royal colors stepped aside to grant Seth entry. Seth walked into the solarium that had been converted to a schoolroom for his sovereign's pleasure and bowed before the king of Renais.
"Good afternoon, Your Majesty. I trust today's lessons went well?"
"Very well, Uncle," the king replied in the piping voice of an eight-year-old. Sigsimund Maximilian Zacharias, Sovereign of Renais, Lord of Occupied Grado, and heir to the Theocracy of Rausten, already had absorbed the dignity of his position, and it lent his words a kind of pathetic charm. A pretty child, Sigsimund favored his mother, with fair curls tumbling around a pale, pointed face, but did not have the queen's effervescent sparkle. His eyes held a solemn, knowing look out of place in one so young; Seth thought that the boy's eyes, in color and shape, were remarkably like those of his own wife.
Those haunting blue eyes were focused directly on Seth at the moment.
"I have almost finished reading Founding Emperor Grado," said Sigsimund. "It's greatly inspiring, though I think I prefer the story of Saint Latona."
"The tale of the Saint is one we all should carry within our hearts," Seth agreed. "Still, we should never forget that five heroes, each walking a different path, all played their role in binding the Demon King. None was more important than any other."
"Founding Emperor Grado does appear to promote the idea that Grado and his methods were more important than the rest," the king replied. "I cannot agree with it, Uncle. Had blessed Latona not been able to resist the Demon King, Emperor Grado's might would have been for naught."
And so Seth allowed Sigsimund to lead him into a spirited and thoughtful debate of the merits of the five legendary founders of Magvel. If either of the attendants at the door had chosen to look in on the scene, Seth knew they would have found it highly odd, and perhaps even amusing. Though the king was well past the age at which a boy might wear breeches, his royal mother continued to dress him in the long robes used by young children and old men. While L'Arachel did select clothes of exquisite taste and refinement, Sigsimund's bleu celeste gown embroidered with silver lilies heightened the boy's air of delicacy-- and perhaps gave some the impression they were dealing with an elderly sage or bishop in miniature.
"More suited to be a monk than a king," ran the conventional assessment of the child sovereign. Renais honored its warrior-princes, with Sigsimund's father Ephraim considered the pinnacle of the dynasty-- bold, fearless, tireless, without peer in battle, a man who could take an entire castle with a brace of loyal knights. That was the standard by which the little king was measured, and it would have been difficult for any son to try to emulate such a model. Already it looked at though Sigsimund would never master his father's lance; his small hands were more inclined to hold a healing staff. But he was the last flower of the royal house of Renais, and it was Seth's duty as Protector to mold his nephew into the best king possible.
At least the boy went willingly to his lessons. It made Seth's duty that much easier to bear.
*
While Seth shouldered the burdens of state inside Castle Renais, his wife carried the duties of the realm out into the air and the light. Eirika returned with wind-tossed hair and high color in her cheeks, and though it made her seem especially beautiful to Seth's grateful eyes, it was equally clear that Eirika was wearied from her work among the Renaitian people.
"I think I will go to New Lark tomorrow," she announced once they finished the light meal laid out for them in their own apartments. "It's so wonderful to see that village rise out of its ashes. Our people have such determination, Seth."
"It's a long ride to New Lark," he replied. Wondrous or not, the place was remote enough to make it a grueling day-trip.
"I must make myself accessible to the people," she replied. "For certain L'Arachel has other priorities...."
She sighed, but it was less a sigh of exasperation than one of resignation to fate; Queen L'Arachel could not be governed by any of them, any more than they might govern the wind. If was left to the rest of them to follow in her wake, and occasionally to set things in order after they had been thoroughly disrupted by Her Majesty.
Seth noted the speculative look in his wife's eyes, and so was prepared when she posed an unusual question to him.
"Seth, would it be possible for me to take Sigsimund with me to New Lark? It would benefit him to see how our people live, far beyond the castle walls-- and it would benefit him to see some fresh air and sunlight."
"I'll discuss the plan with his tutors. I'm sure we can arrange for some kind of outing, though perhaps not as soon as tomorrow."
"I wish I could take that boy away from his tutors entirely, if only for a week." Eirika's pretty mouth turned down as though her tea had too much lemon in it. "Somewhere like Caer Pelyn. Can you imagine Sigsimund in Caer Pelyn, Seth? He could learn from Ewan and Master Saleh, he could be friends with Myrrh... he would be happy there, Seth."
"I agree it would be a pleasant holiday for His Majesty."
"Seth." His wife's voice was suddenly sharp. "Please don't call him that. He's our nephew. He's my brother's little boy. Don't allow that... that bubble of ceremony to set him apart from us."
"I'm sorry, Eirika."
It would have been easier if L'Arachel could have been swayed regarding the boy's coronation. Seth, Eirika, and anyone else who dared had patiently explained to the queen that crowning a child was simply not done in Renais, that an anointed king was expected to be a grown man, able to fight and to marry for the good of his kingdom. But L'Arachel had blithely overruled the objections of every counselor in Rausten when she announced her plans to marry King Ephraim, and she likewise had her way over the coronation. An eight-month-old babe was held up before the populace of Renais as their heaven-sent king, and so Sigsimund was set apart from all others before he could speak.
If Sigsimund hadn't been crowned so young, if Eirika had been made Queen Regent of Renais until her nephew came of age... Seth could have pondered the paths not taken, the paths denied, for hours. But the whims of L'Arachel set the kingdom topsy-turvy, and Seth found himself handed not just command of the Renaitian army, not just the onerous responsibilities of rebuilding Grado, but the care and well-being of his nephew and sovereign. L'Arachel said a loving uncle was the most suitable caretaker for a child bereft of his father; in this, she seemed to draw on her own experiences. Whatever process had molded L'Arachel into the model she was must of course be the ideal. Eirika's involvement was not quite so necessary-- after all, how could an aunt compare to a mother, when young Sigismund had the most perfect and enlightened mother in all of Magvel?
*
Seth did not enjoy nearly as much time with his wife as he would have liked, as a page of the queen's household arrived with the message that the queen's current husband wanted a word with him. Seth sensed this request was of sufficient priority to cut short his time with Eirika; the consort of L'Arachel did not enjoy having his own time wasted, and was unlikely in the extreme to occupy Seth's afternoon for no reason.
"My lord Rennac."
It was a courtesy title; of course the Divine Queen of Rausten could not be joined to anything less than a lord, and Seth was grateful that at least L'Arachel's Carcino-born consort didn't style himself a prince. Though Rennac's rise from merchant's son to the exalted husband of Queen L'Arachel might have qualified him to be the ultimate social climber, he showed no inclination to take on any trappings of royalty. Seth thought it stemmed in part from the ingrained Carcinese distrust of the titled classes, and in part from the same odd ethical boundaries that had made Rennac, even during his career as a thief, a loyal vassal to L'Arachel. And, in truth, Seth felt a certain kinship with the former "merchant" in spite of himself. They were, after all, both in the ranks of the New Men, those elevated to high status in the wake of the War of the Stones. Like the queens consort of Frelia and Jehanna, neither of whom came of royal blood, they owed their place to the chaos that accompanied the demise of the imperial line of Grado and the winnowing of old noble classes. The war allowed men and women to rise to greatness through their own merit, and if Seth scorned Rennac for his nationality and class, he would only make himself a hypocrite. What was the Lord Protector of Renais but a common knight of Jehan extraction who had reached far, far beyond his station?
"General," the other man replied in his characteristic drawl. Rennac greeted Seth from a typically nonchalant pose-- arms crossed in a manner that suggested he was at ease, head tipped back at an angle that gave his face an impudent cast. But one foot tapped on the floor in a staccato rhythm, and Seth took note of the sign that Rennac was indeed agitated.
"What news have you from Grado?"
"Nothing you'll want to hear," the other man said; he had a subtle and varied range of expressions, and the grimace he showed now was as eloquent as the foot-tapping. Seth kept his own face immobile as he waited for the ill news.
Though Rennac in his youth had deserved some reproach for overwhelming self-interest that manifested itself as laziness and greed, he proved a remarkably dedicated worker when the cause in question was L'Arachel. As Rennac was clever enough to see that the interests of L'Arachel were tied to the interests of Renais, he and Seth hammered together a functional relationship in which Seth bore the duties of state in public and Rennac did his work "underground," as they termed it. Rennac's network of contacts now rivaled the famed spies of Frelia, and he even had his own double agent within Frelian ranks, right under the nose of Princess Tana. So Seth knew that the "goods" that Rennac had on offer today would not be anything other than vital to the security of Grado, Renais, and possibly even Rausten.
"The Maid of Grado is on the march again. She's pushing northward from the Za'albul Marshes toward Renvall."
Seth felt the same queasy sensation that always overtook him when he heard mention of the rebel knight who styled herself The Girl in Rose Armor. Since her inexplicable capture of Taizel, the Maid had dealt the occupation force a string of humiliating defeats. Even when Seth's men scored a tactical victory, it all too often proved a strategic defeat, and the Maid saw steady increases in both her own forces and the territory she controlled. An attack on Renvall, if successful, would be devastating, and Seth couldn't dismiss the possibility out of hand. In the old days, seasoned knights might say that the marshes of Grado were impassable, that Renvall could never be captured except by overwhelming force. Seth knew better.
"Serious news, indeed," Seth replied, and to his own ears he sounded perfectly calm. "Have you anything else?"
Rennac smoothed back a strand of hair in a gesture that seemed careless, but this time his lips pursed in a way that made his face suddenly hard.
"The word is that Sir Franz isn't pursuing the Maid with sufficient zeal. If you want her taken, get Franz off the assignment and put someone like Sir Kyle in his place."
"Franz is conducting himself with appropriate caution," Seth replied after only a moment's hesitation. "Harsh pursuit of the Maid would spur Gradan citizens currently neutral towards her cause to her defense."
"Forgive me, General, but if harsh pursuit is unacceptable, and a less harsh course loses us Renvall, what on earth have we gained?"
"We have nothing to gain; it's a matter of how much we lose in the attempt to contain the Maid. We can lose territory, we can lose the hearts of the Gradan people, or perhaps we'll suffer the loss of both." The could also lose their own righteousness in the process, a thought that Seth kept ever in the back of his mind. "The last thing we should do is give her martyrdom. To kill the Maid in battle would end one threat and spawn another. To take her alive and bring her to the capital in chains would perhaps be even harder for the public to stomach."
Rennac's feet were both still; he looked at Seth through half-closed eyes.
"All right, I get it. It's a war of public opinion. I'll see what I can do on that front."
Seth did not ask what Rennac intended; he didn't have to know just then, and in truth he didn't want to know. He was glad to leave the details to Rennac-- glad, even, that L'Arachel had taken to a man who could handle that sort of business on his own. Once Rennac had left him, Seth took out the packet of memoranda that he had compiled on Grado's new heroine; in particular, he looked at the portrait that Court Painter Forde had done of the Maid based on the tales of those lucky enough to survive an encounter with her. A young woman with short golden hair gazed back at him from the canvas; Forde had captured the infamous light the witnesses all claimed to have seen in her eyes, an emerald fire of pure idealism. It wasn't all that different, thought Seth, from the divine spark in Queen L'Arachel. L'Arachel made the unlikely a solid reality through the grace of the Everlasting and sheer force of will, and the success the Maid achieved in battle with her small band of followers seemed to hint at that same brand of providence.
Deep within Seth's heart, he felt a stubborn resentment that Magvel looked to him to "do something" about the Maid and her insurgency. Why should he send Franz, or Kyle, or anyone else against the Maid? Why did Renais still bear any responsibility for Grado or its people-- especially when Grado bore the blame for initiating the War of the Stones? How had Grado been in any position to help Renais with its own restoration? King Ephraim had done wonders in a brief time, both after the war's end and after the first terrible earthquake, but the Everlasting had apparently decided to not allow Ephraim to finish the task.
Seth was not a miracle worker. To make Grado whole now-- now that the earth routinely heaved and broke and brought new grief to the Gradan people-- was plainly out of his hands. If the Girl in Rose Armor bore some blessing of heaven, who was Seth to lay obstacles in her way?
*
At dinner, the whole family was finally assembled-- Seth with his wife, Queen L'Arachel with her current husband and all three of her children. Four, if one counted the not-yet-born princess. L'Arachel made a great show of her eldest son, as she always did, even to cutting her precious boy's meat as though he were unable to handle his own knife. Sigismund seemed glad enough to see his mother that he did not protest this, though surely he would before he was much older. As it was, Seth looked away from the scene and decided to spend some time with the queen's two sons by Rennac. They made a handsome pair, both with their father's smooth brown hair and Carcinese features. Seth noted a shrewd look in the eyes of the younger boy, one wholly unsettling in a child of four. He turned then from little Gaspar and chose to engage Raimund, the elder boy, in conversation. Raimund spoke eagerly of his desire to be a noble knight and crusader for justice when he was of age.
"Like you, Uncle Seth."
And Seth, seasoned general by vocation and skilled politician by necessity, felt his cheeks grow a little warm at the unabashed adoration of this boy who was no connection to him through blood or marriage. He was happily telling both Raimund and sharp-eared Gaspar of his own training days when three words from the lips of L'Arachel stopped all conversation cold.
"My little Selena...."
Seth forced his facial muscles into what he hoped was an expression of utter blankness. Rennac raised an eyebrow at his wife, but said nothing. It was Eirika who, after a delicate cough into her napkin, asked the question they all must have on their tongues.
"L'Arachel, don't you feel that's a name with some... unfortunate associations?"
"You mistake me, my dear. I said Celina with a C, which is of course a different name entirely." The queen used the indulgent tone she took with those who had the temerity to misunderstand her.
"Yes, of course," Eirika replied. "It's a lovely name, L'Arachel."
Seth and Eirika left the issue to rest until they were securely in their own chambers that night.
"It's no use, Seth. She simply doesn't think as we do. Her mind is off on some different level of reality."
"The idea of a Princess Selena-- Celina, rather-- isn't at all bad. It might convince a portion of the Gradan people that Renais and Rausten remain sympathetic to their plight."
The figure of the Gradan general called the Fluorspar-- brave, innocent of her country's crimes, and doomed-- resonated strongly with the people of southern Magvel. Like her fellow martyr Glen the Sunstone, Selena was a symbol of the true essence of Grado, its courage and its virtue. If the Gradan people held anything against King Ephraim, it was his role in Selena's death. Had Ephraim only been able to recruit her, or if Eirika had been able to join forces with General Glen in Carcino instead of being framed for his murder, how much better would Seth's position now be? Though it was a fool's game, Seth's mind whirled with a tired procession of "what ifs" and "had nots." Had King Ephraim not waited several years before taking a wife, had he settled down immediately after the war with Tana of Frelia, who would have been so much more amenable to Renaitian custom....
"Let me go to Grado, Seth. I can speak with Am-- with the Maid, and convince her that this is not the road to stability for her people...."
"The official position of Renais and Rausten is that Grado has no head of state beyond King Sigsimund. We cannot allow the Princess of Renais to enter into negotiations with rebels."
"Even if it saves lives?"
Seth closed his eyes for a moment; it seemed a great pressure was building up behind them.
"It is not possible, Eirika. My-- our-- hands are tied."
He looked to Eirika again and saw she stared ceiling-ward with narrowed eyes; her quicksilver mind was at work, and Seth could almost hear the machinations going on within her head.
"If a third party-- Jehanna, perhaps, or Frelia-- were to recognize the Maid's regime in Taizel, would it be possible then to send in someone as a mediator?"
Seth silently thanked the Everlasting for his wife. As terrible a blow as Ephraim's loss had been to the continent, at least they still had Ephraim's other half, the twin who embodied careful thought rather than vigorous action.
"Perhaps a visit to Frelia is in order, Eirika. King Innes has been quiet on the subject of the Maid, but you might be able to tease a position out of him."
In the low light, he saw her smile briefly, but her next words were grave.
"Forgive me if I say a prayer for the safe keeping of the Maid of Grado."
Seth held his silence; there were things the Lord Protector of Renais could not say, even to his own wife and princess. He could let Eirika say her prayers for the Maid, though, and he in turn would pray that Queen L'Arachel was right in believing that a blessed hand guided them to the best of all possible fates.
*The End*
Author's Notes: This was supposed to be humorous. I wanted sparkling interaction between hangdog Seth and oblivious L'Arachel, and instead I got this. Inspiration comes from the Hundred Years' War circa Henry VI-- Sigismund as little King Henry, Seth as a much nicer version of the Duke of Bedford, L'Arachel as Catherine of France, and Rennac as Owen Tudor. Amelia, of course, is the Joan of Arc figure here. In case it wasn't obvious, Eirika and Seth have no children, making poor little Sigsimund the last hope of Renais. As for Ephraim-- oh, PM me if you really want to know.
I don't know if "Gradan" and so forth are official demonyns (FE is terrible about that sort of thing), but I saw them in other 'fics and liked them. So, Gradan, Renaitian, Jehannan (for objects), and Jehan (for the people) are NOT my own invention. Neither is Seth's "Jehan" background-- I've seen it elsewhere and it does make sense.