Did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.
[dialogue is © canon]
"That's- none of that matters, it's not who I am." Frustrated, blind, he had taunted the lion.
"Oh, if only it was. What would I give for for a playboy who couldn't keep it in his pants and who runs through women. But what I have is a son who shows no interest in them."
The bottom dropped out of his stomach.
"Oh, you thought I didn't know?"
Jack had grown thick-skinned to his father's barbs long ago. If ever the man had shown affection for him, it was too far gone for memory to retrieve. Maybe he had always been in a disappointment. Silas had treated him as one since before he was old enough to do anything but worship the ground his father walked on. It was as if the king had always known what he was. What he would become. Even before Jack knew it himself. But in all his meticulously-planned deceptions, Jack had never prepared to hear these words from his father's lips.
"What you do, at night with your boys," more a hiss than a syllable, "After your show of skirt-chasing, is a disgrace."
Silas had found soft flesh and he tore. Jack couldn't meet his gaze. Wouldn't. I will not break, I will not break, he will not break me.
"If you were my second son, I wouldn't care, but for a king it's not possible. Not possible."
Of course it wasn't. Of course. He was just an actor in the masquerade, there had never been any more to him than a mask. How had he been so foolish as to imagine there could be?
"We give up what we want when we want power. Believe me. Now you want to show me you have the heart of the king, show me you can control it. Wrestle it to the ground, numb it with ice, but you cannot be what God made you, not if you mean to take my place."
So this is where it ends.
And control it he would. Cut it out of himself. Dig a hole and bury it alive if he had to. As his father walked away, Jack wiped every sign of weakness from his bloodshot eyes with shaking hands and promised he would be stronger than Silas had ever dreamed he could be.
Silas went home, but not to his throne. To his mistress. To their lovechild. To that place that held the last vestiges of a king's sanity when all the world seemed to great a burden for one man to bear. And never once did he imagine what he had asked of his son was akin to God commanding their blood on the alter.
No angel would stay this hand.