WIP

a scene from a fic i’m currently working on set in may 1861, exploring british-american relations during the american civil war. cw for injury mention and real-life historical events. “maría” is mexico. 

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“Still a lying old bastard through and through, aren’t you?” Alfred hisses. “What comes next? Recognition of statehood, of course. Don’t think I’m oblivious to how some of your people are absolutely giddy at the thought of my undoing. Good riddance to the vulgar mob rule that goes by the name of American democracy, etcetera etcetera.”

“Unhand me at once,” Arthur hisses.  “Conduct yourself with some of the dignity I raised you to have, will you?”

“Glad to know you haven’t changed one bit, Lord Father. Good manners rank above morals, honour and any sense of integrity, as always, with you,” Alfred’s smile is dark and bitter, but he releases his grip, flings Arthur’s wrist aside. There’s something like sheer hatred now, in his face, but his voice is low, almost quiet. “And don’t talk about dignity, when you made me this way; you, and all your people’s bullshit. I didn’t have a choice when you claimed me at Jamestown—”

“I made you this way? It’s been almost a hundred years since you’ve thrown away my name, in case you’ve forgotten,” Arthur cuts in. There’s something simmering and furious boiling up—that Alfred always so easily drew out of him. Yorktown. A shot to the jaw, dead-on. He’d coughed out blood and teeth and bone in front of his men. “Do I make you do anything anymore? Did you not loudly and proudly announce yourself as a naval power? That huge uproar you created in the Far East? Bragging to me how you’d finally matched my feats, dragging another Old World nation out of isolation to rejoin the international community on the threat of war and glories of foreign commerce?”

The fingers of Arthur’s left hand curl inadvertently around his teacup. It’s burning hot. He continues. “And at Jamestown, I saved you. Gave you my name and my protection! When they would have cast you out! Left you to die—”

“Saved? I was a prize! For your ambition!” This now, from Alfred, is a shout, thunderous and furious. “Antonio had María, and you wanted to match that! Because being an insignificant, fuckin’ shitheap island with nothing else to your glorified name was too much for your overblown ego. It never is for you diseased, miserable Old World bastards. And I disappointed you at first, didn’t I? No gold, no riches, just famine and—”

“Ambition? Overblown ego? You certainly aren’t short of it yourself, Alfred,” Arthur sneers. His heart thunders in his breast, and he feels at once hot and icy cold. Oh, he’s just like me. Not at all in appearance—but in the soul. So much like me. All that hungry ambition, and always compulsively cruel in our vulnerability. He levels Alfred with a cool stare. “And speaking of María—” He doesn’t miss the way his eldest son flinches, that exact same way he did as a boy—“you chose to go to war with her, you alone—and now the land you seized from her in your victory has torn you asunder, isn’t that right?”

some indulgent 1600s nedpan: ‘lonely ex-warlord and lost castaway have a fling but end up catching feelings’ is how i see their relationship starting. nations are usually wary about emotional attachment, but imo mutual curiosity and attraction ends up overcoming that. here, there’s an entirely different language and culture to learn, but…when you’re otherwise surrounded by humans, there’s always an instinct to gravitate to another of their kind. after all, who else really understands the beauty, hardship, pain and transcendence of being a nation? 

Background-less version under “Keep Reading”

Keep reading

inspired by the idea that while maria (mexico) and alfred have a long, complicated relationship that’s often been difficult (especially after the mexican-american war)—they were young once. in the 18th century, before independence, before alfred became powerful—and their dynamic became more unequal, in a world where both their fathers’ shadows loomed tall—they got to know each other. dissected enlightenment literature, politics and philosophy—and maybe there was a very youthful love, with someone who seemed a kindred spirit. and now, even after things have changed, there are moments when alfred’s at his most relaxed, not commanding attention as a superpower, but just staring up at the stars—and it feels like there’s a glimpse of the boy she once knew. 

felt like doing a redraw of one of my older antonio pics! 

(Original)

🎃Thank you! I would like to do this again if I have the chance" (Himaruya)

(Original)

A composition I wanted to draw (Himaruya)

■Click here for the full story↓ shonenjumpplus.com/episode/316190...

my full piece for the @hwsrazzledazzle zine, and a collab with/based on an idea by @bubbleteahime

“Taiwan visits The Taiwan Exposition of 1935, a grand spectacle put on to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Japanese colonisation. In a series of encounters, she gets confronted with the realities of her nation’s peculiar situation as a prosperous colony in the years just before the outbreak of World War Two.”

…this particular encounter being with South Korea.

some closeups:

interregnum

(A snapshot, amidst the Battle of Britain. Arthur and Matthew-centric. Notes: Content warning-wise—injury mention. No explicit violence. “Jack” is AUS, and “Zee” is NZ. 800 words).

London, 1940

The morning sun streams in, through the large, expansive windows of Arthur’s office, scattering diamond-shaped patches of light onto the antique carpet and the hardwood floor. On the glass itself—tape, placed in a methodical, diagonal crisscrossing pattern, accompanied by dark curtains. The standard precautions for nightfall nowadays.

Thus far, the air raid sirens had been silent today. 

“Well then, what does it say, lad?” Arthur’s right arm is ensconced in a sling—but as always, his father is no less imposing, in the sharp and neat lines of his olive-coloured dress uniform, the gold of his buttons gleaming and polished. “Go on. Read it out.”

“It’s postmarked from New York.” Matthew slices open the letter. 

Alfred’s handwriting is bold and hurried, his tone casual and light-hearted. Yo old fart—A whole colourful paragraph on how Billie Holiday and Gregory Peck— a new but apparently promising actor—had been in town. The latest jazz concerts he’d attended. The nice cut of sirloin he’d had last night, at the Waldorf-Astoria.

“He says…” Matthew skims his brother’s letter. He jumps to the second last paragraph, “…that he’ll be in San Francisco. At the naval facility and shipyard there. Keeping an eye on the Pacific. And that Congress will probably widen the cash-and-carry scheme to include war materiel. He wishes you good luck, and says that there’s a box of genuine Cuban cigars for you in the mail.”

“Well, I certainly never would turn down a good cigar but—Good luck? Cash and carry?” Father snorts, his tone derisive. “Does that wretched lad think my gold reserves are unlimited, to pay him for all that?” He turns away from Matthew, the slope of his shoulders tense. “So, he’s not coming, is he?”

He’s angry now, Matthew knows. Not the sort of turbulent rage that was a prelude to the sorts of shouting matches Father had with Alfred, but something simmering, like a kettle slowly boiling over on a stove. Anger was what Father preferred to show, over disappointment—whenever it came to Alfred.

Matthew resented them both for it, at times. How often had he been the bedraggled mediator and go-between for Father and Alfred? For his brother, the ocean that lay between them and Father was actually a barrier the way it wasn’t for Matthew. His brother had always done whatever the hell he wanted, his will as forceful and indomitable as trying to bottle a hurricane. 

Father had fumed for three decades after he’d burned Alfred’s name off the family tree. But then, as the years went by—he’d mellowed on his brother. Turned back to regarding his eldest son with the sort of grudging respect and recognition he bestowed on an equal—and no one else. Not Matthew, nor Jack and Zee, not even Father’s own siblings, let alone anyone else across the rest of his vast empire, no matter how much they’d bled for King and Country. 

But Matthew squashes those feelings down for now. It wasn’t the time.

“No. He isn’t.” Matthew replies carefully. “He says his hands are tied by the Neutrality Acts.”

“Is that what he said?” Father laughs, sharp and loud. His green eyes glint as he turns to face Matthew. “Steel bars and the Almighty himself couldn’t tie that wretch’s hands, not unless he allowed them to.”

The New World, with all its power and might, Churchill had anointed, waxing lyrical. Alfred, Matthew knew, would squeeze something more through the legal loopholes, sooner or later.  It wouldn’t be nothing, it would help—but it would be far short of what Father really wanted. His brother was that way. All those tangled up threads about family that Alfred preferred to avoid upfront, to bury under cheerful irreverence or, on other occasions, spiteful snippiness towards their father. 

You have me, Dad, is what he wants to say. But he doesn’t. “I’ll write back to him.” 

“You do that. Maybe he’ll listen, if it’s coming from you.” Arthur’s nod is curt. The line of his mouth is thin. His nostrils flare. “Goodness. When I said ‘in God’s good time’, I meant hurry the bloody hell up, not sit there twiddling your thumbs.”

This, Father says with casual, dismissive annoyance. As though he’s dealing with something no more inconvenient than a tailcoat not being mended on time or being short on his favourite Earl Grey. As though it were something displeasing but ultimately of little import to him and his plans, old and confident as he was in his power—but it’s obvious.

How much Arthur really looked— in the face of the unfolding disaster before them, with bated breath and carefully-concealed hope—to his estranged son and Matthew’s older brother. How much he longed to have Alfred by his side. 

as i see it, arthur and a lot of people may have naturally looked to alfred—his eldest son, the heir, the industrial colossus—for deliverance. but it’s matthew who is by his side from the start. matt’s the second prince; the one at times overlooked and taken for granted by arthur. but it’s matt who steps into the breach in 1940; sending men and women and food and weaponry, so disaster doesn’t turn into annihilation. matt, reliable and grimly prepared to do the crucial job of holding the line, whilst america’s interventionists contended with its isolationists. in my headcanon, he’s quieter and cuts a seemingly less bold figure than his brother—but when the time calls for it, he’s icily steadfast and ruthless. the new world stepping forth to the rescue and liberation of the old? yes, but in more ways than one. 

the creature with a love for shiny things, a proclivity for stealing them too