Daughter of a Conquered House

[persephone_kore]

"One of these vicious Heterodynes took to wife the daughter of a conquered house. Her good behavior was bought with the continued health of her family. She proved to be an extraordinary woman who, when her children were born, saw to their education with a strength of purpose that defied all of her husband’s efforts to pass on family tradition." --

Comments

[sturzkampf]

Nice connect between two parts of the Canon. Are we going to get what happens next?

[persephone_kore]

Thanks. The idea had been floating around my mind for a while that the propensity for death rays didn't have to all come from one side of the family.

I don't have any definite plans for sequels to this one, although thanks for asking. :) Actually, nothing happens immediately next, in my mind. There's a very valid psychological case for Bill and Barry breaking through after their parents' deaths, but I tend to imagine their mother planning to hang on until after Bill's breakthrough because the town and Castle seem to emphasize requiring not only a Heterodyne but a Spark. In which case they've probably got at minimum a few months to go, given inexperience and the timeframe shown for reconstructing Olga, Adam, and Lilith.

[geekhyena]

Oh, -brilliant-. I love her interaction with her sons, and the way you described her inner monologue. Headcanon 10000% accepted. Why did the Jager ask if she had nephews/nieces, though?

[attilathepbnun]

Wondering what they'd have to deal with in a few years, maybe?
Or possibly just curious?

[persephone_kore]

Sorry about that. It was meant to be taking her example threat about grandchildren and implying it should be used on her own parents and any grandchildren they had who weren't Heterodynes.

[persephone_kore]

Thank you! I kind of wanted to go with "even the nice ones are scary" with her -- it occurs to me that "Her good behavior was bought with the continued health of her family" may suggest she was acknowledged to be capable of at least inconveniencing the Heterodyne on his own turf. And then there's what she actually ended up accomplishing. I'm glad you liked her scenes with the boys! I didn't want to just leave it at the toaster, exactly.

Ah, perhaps that came out a bit convoluted. Her "sample threat" mentioned grandchildren, so he was supposed to be implying that it would be a good one to use on her parents, but of course her own children are Heterodynes and in no danger from him, so... nephews and nieces. Which was supposed to be part of why she was angry enough to threaten him with the shrimp deveiner. Maybe that needed a little more inner monologue....

[vallylilly]

Very strong and moving piece.

Headcanon with the toster totally accepted XD.

I like how you showed her interactions first with the Jager and then with her sons. It really stands in such opposition to Lucrezia, another Heterodyne wife, who was apparently allowed by the Jagers to treat them like "pets", because Lord Heterodyne was head-over-heels in love with her, but who we know doesn't give a damn about her children.

It was also a nice way to remind us that Jagers are Jagermonsters and that the Old Heterodynes were very cuddly either. It's hard sometimes to remember this and only think of them in a category of comedic sociopathy. I guess it kind of plays in into the latest page of the comics as well. It's not that the Old Heterodynes were monsters incapable of love, but they were monsters regardless of their capacity to love, or maybe rather monsters loving, but in their own, twisted, mad, Sparky way.

[persephone_kore]

Thank you!

I'm pretty sure the toaster is meant to have been built by a Heterodyne, but... well, taking Agatha literally, who's really likely to have wanted to "toast the whole town"?

The Jäger turned up largely because the build-up worked better if somebody was around to be provoking and because... as Khilari pointed out, while the Jägers are fun, we've also seen the way they pick at people they don't respect. I hadn't actually thought about it, but you're right, it does wind up making a stronger anti-parallel with Lu. :) It was interesting to do something with how she and Bill and Barry interact -- I feel like she'd have been honest with them but not harsher than she had to be about the situation, which really isn't of their making. And there are some (possible) hints that Bill might have been the more proactive and confrontational brother, which I kind of tried to follow out a little bit.

It's easy not to take some of the history as seriously -- of the town, of the Castle, of the monsters -- because the dark humor is funny and

[kalina50]

Loved it! Very plausible. Great inter-play with the characters.

"But for less drastic situations, maybe you should stick to something that's easier to aim than a toaster."
A line to remember!

[persephone_kore]

Whoops, I did not mean to ignore this comment. Thank you! It's nice to hear the interactions work; I tried to ground them in what we have to go on, but that's a bit scant.

Toasters are just not designed for aiming. :)

[writtenember]

Oh, excellent! I love to see a fic exploring the story around Bill and Barry's mom. It's easy to forget how very big a difference there is between the boys and their father; their mother truly affected an incredible degree of change. I suspect Mechanicsburg believes in the "it takes a village to raise a child" mentality when it comes to their Heterodyne youngsters; no doubt everyone was offering plenty of encouragement in traditionally Old Heterodyne directions. There really would have been a lot of social conditioning aimed at the kids that she had to work against.

I had not thought about that passage implying that they needed to threaten her family to keep her there. It really does sound like she couldn't have been contained otherwise, which means she must have been quite formidable, Spark or not. And it does make her being a Spark seem that much more likely. (I like to think of her as a Spark anyways. She's a lot like Agatha in my mind; a smart, energetic, well-intentioned Spark who none-the-less gets carried away from time to time

[persephone_kore]

Thank you