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sbcw2.1: prince

When Callum is thirteen, he is told he has to study philosophy.

"You're not just a prince," King Harrow—his stepdad, he supposes—says. "You'll be one of Ezran's closest advisors one day, and knowing how to think, and how to argue, and how to weigh decisions are important skills."

Callum looks up at him sceptically, because philosophy is not interesting, and no amount of debate has made it interesting so far, but Harrow only chuckles and claps his shoulder. "Your mom would have wanted you to know it," he says gently.

And because it's what his mom would have wanted, Callum does it, and he learns about truth and happiness and Justice; about people with long names and the basis of morality; about theoretical ethical dilemmas that he expects he will never have to think about beyond these lessons.

"It's not about the right answer, my prince," his tutor says. "It's about justifying the choices you make and living with the consequences that follow. That is the burden of being a prince."

Four years later, his choices are laid bare: it is one, or it is many; a single elf, or the fate of the world; love, or the loss of everything else he holds dear.

It is the cube, and the release of the most dangerous elf in the world, or it is Rayla.

Callum wishes he could say the choice is harder than it is, but what it comes down to is what he can and can't do—and he can't lose Rayla. Not again. Not ever.

It's not about the right answer, he remembers vaguely. It's about justifying the choices you make and living with the consequences that follow. That is the burden of being a prince.

Well, thinks Callum, surrendering the cube to the elf in the void. He was never very good at being a prince to begin with, and if it's about living with the consequences, then he knows in his heart the one thing he cannot live without.

If the rest of the world burns, so be it.

Callum receives a book of princely etiquette on his eleventh birthday.

It's an old tome, wrapped in a bow and presented to him by Harrow alongside an awkward hug and well-meaning smile. "It was my copy once," his stepfather tells him.

Harrow has even left notes in the margins, tiny annotations scrawled in ink. Callum reads the book as well as he reads anything else, but it is rather dull. It's a lot of rules about forks and knives and bows that he's not entirely sure he'll keep straight, and even King Harrow's notes and adjustments aren't enough to keep it interesting.

Most of them are modelled after a prince becoming a king, after all, and Ez is just learning how to tie his own boot laces now so that Callum doesn't have to do them for him all the time.

Still... if he learns more about being a prince—other princely etiquette books have to exist, right?—maybe he can be a better one. He heads to the library, dodging the bothersome old lady who oversees it, and only gets distracted a couple of times on his way to the right section.

He bypasses the ones that are just about social etiquette (he's had enough of that already) or linguistics (he's plenty fluent in courtly Neolandian thank you very much) and history (the battles have funny names, but the Mage Wars don't affect things too much these days) in favour of something a bit fresher.

The Social Politics of Ruling stands out to him, and Callum pulls it down from the shelf. This might be useful as a prince, and barring that, as Ezran's future advisor someday.

He sinks to the floor and opens it, eyes scanning the chapters, then the pages. It's certainly an easier read than the one Harrow had given him, but with every sentence, the uneasy feeling in his stomach increases.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot have both... That couldn't be right. Callum wrinkles his nose, thinking of Prince Kasef at the summer ball last year, older and swaggering and smug. He'd liked the way his servants had trembled. Callum can't fathom wanting fear over love if you had a choice.

And yet...

How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.

("You shouldn't have done it," Rayla says, later. There's a tremor in her voice and tears in her eyes. "You should've—"

"Let you die?" he snaps. He takes her by the shoulders. "How can you ask that of me?"

"But now we're all in danger, and—"

"Yes, we're in danger, not dead! You're not dead." Sighing, Callum rests his forehead against hers, relieved when she lets him. "I know what I 'should've done'... the same way I knew in the rain when we were kids, and on Finnegrin's ship. But I—I can't live without you, Rayla. I just can't.")

Maybe there's something to this book after all, just a little.

me reminding myself that just because elarion is routinely referred to / metaphorically painted as a flower in the midnight star poem it doesn't mean that the flowers of elarion story from tales of xadia is going to be foreshadowing / setup or come back around in the show in any way

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What is she saying? 🤔

Variations under the cut because once again I can’t choose. Do you have a favourite?