[ Claude hadn't expected Marianne to be cruel upon hearing about this. He hadn't expected her to be bigoted either; he knows her well enough to know that her reaction will be far beyond the snide, taunting voices he's so familiar with, that any betrayal and despair she'd feel would be due to his own deceit, or due to the long, violent conflict between their nations. It's worse in the Alliance than it is anywhere else. How could it not be? His classmates have spent their whole lives sending their men to fight at the border. Some, like Hilda, even saw their own family doing the same. But Marianne has always been civil to Cyril in a way that others weren't always, so he'd at least had some idea as to what to expect.
Perhaps he should have expected her turn towards compassion instead, but he didn't. For a moment he just blinks at her, astonished by that immediate takeaway. His immediate instinct is to swat it off, deflect with a smile, do you really think something like that could really bother me? They're not totally wrong, you know!
He bites it back. ]
That's right. Even though I was raised in Almyra, I belong to Fódlan as much as I belong to Almyra... or maybe I should say, they belong to me.
[ He doesn't belong. He's not sure if he would even if he was as full-blooded as the next person. It may be some part of his own character just as much as it's his upbringing and bloodline. ]
It doesn't get to me so much anymore, you know. More than anything else, it just stokes the fires of my motivation to change it. If everyone could just open their minds, I know things could be better.
[ He hesitates. There's one last thing. They're all-in now. This, of all things, is probably the greatest deception of all, a royal dipping his fingers into two separate plums. ]
And I'm in the position to change it, you see. I'm not just half Almyran. [ He clears his throat. ] I'm technically the Almyran prince. An Almyran prince. The youngest of many. [ He winces, hearing how trepidacious his own voice sounds in his throat, filled with strained jollity. ] My mother has never done anything by half-measures.
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Perhaps he should have expected her turn towards compassion instead, but he didn't. For a moment he just blinks at her, astonished by that immediate takeaway. His immediate instinct is to swat it off, deflect with a smile, do you really think something like that could really bother me? They're not totally wrong, you know!
He bites it back. ]
That's right. Even though I was raised in Almyra, I belong to Fódlan as much as I belong to Almyra... or maybe I should say, they belong to me.
[ He doesn't belong. He's not sure if he would even if he was as full-blooded as the next person. It may be some part of his own character just as much as it's his upbringing and bloodline. ]
It doesn't get to me so much anymore, you know. More than anything else, it just stokes the fires of my motivation to change it. If everyone could just open their minds, I know things could be better.
[ He hesitates. There's one last thing. They're all-in now. This, of all things, is probably the greatest deception of all, a royal dipping his fingers into two separate plums. ]
And I'm in the position to change it, you see. I'm not just half Almyran. [ He clears his throat. ] I'm technically the Almyran prince. An Almyran prince. The youngest of many. [ He winces, hearing how trepidacious his own voice sounds in his throat, filled with strained jollity. ] My mother has never done anything by half-measures.