#sylvain gautier

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Sylvain expected things to be difficult for him, because of his bearing of a crest. Especially the one his mother had warned him ever since he was old enough to understand the words which were spoken to him. 

‘Your crest lays dangers on your feet, my child’, she had said. She once spoke so in regards to his brother, because she knew how cold his heart had grown with resentment for his own blood, but Sylvain can’t help but sourly laugh, forced to face how this warning applied to both his father and the nobility as a whole. 

Felix didn’t change. He would never have anyway, because Felix loathes his father and his father worries about him entertaining the company of the ‘likes of him’, so if anything, Felix makes it a point to visit him whenever he’s allowed to. Ingrid looks at him in awe demanding if it is true, and from the height of her young years she brilliantly laughs, recounting the story of a knight’s tale. She says they are both alike, discovering a powerful power hidden under their skin, and for the first time, Sylvain lets himself warm up to the crest he despised more ardently than his brother ever could.

Dimitri is too far gone in his grief to say anything about it. He only warns that prestigious crests bear responsibilities that weigh just as bitterly. Sylvain listens, especially the comforting words that follow, assuring him that no matter the noble’s vicious thoughts, Sylvain will always have the support of his one and only king.

So Sylvain knows the danger he bears. He knows yet grows to embrace it, attend tea parties and the grandest of balls as expected from his position as Gautier’s heir - because despise his fury his father still named him so, forced to witness his eldest’s rampages, and he does so with pride in his chest, or at least enough to conceal his own doubts. He does so because he is his mother’s son, and because if she faces the noblewomen head one despite the rumors about her, he will do no less.

It works, for quite a while. Until at one of these balls a man with hairs green as a forest greets him with a curtsy far too low for the son of a Margrave. He says he is Seteth, bearer of Cichol’s crest, aid to the holy Archbishop of Fódlan, and most surprising of all, claims he and Her both swear their undying support to him, Sylvain José Gautier, the heir of Macuil.

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