Chapter Text
To the left of the doorway to the Adrestian Emperor’s bedchambers hangs a large Hresvelg family portrait, commissioned by Ionius IX in early 1170.
Edelgard doesn’t like how she looks in it. She wouldn’t come out until a few years after its completion; her hair is still short and masculine, and her clothes are those of a prince. She’s seated on the right side of the emperor, between two of her older brothers. Like most of her siblings, she is not smiling.
The painting will never come down from the wall.
Certainly not so long as Edelgard decides the palace decor, at any rate - and hopefully, much longer thereafter. It’s one of the few remaining portraits of the full Hresvelg family - her and all ten siblings. To order it removed in slight disdain for her appearance would be an act so thoughtless, so disrespectful, so unbelievably egotistical, that she dares not even entertain the notion.
Still, she can't help but avert her eyes from a certain face whenever she passes.
“Y’know, Edie,” comes a voice as she’s standing beneath it, “I don't even think you look that bad.”
She sighs. “Complimentary as ever, Thea.”
Dorothea puts a hand on her shoulder, and looks at the painting alongside her. “I mean, I couldn’ta been any better back then. I just don’t have the regal portraits to prove it.”
Edelgard smiles. “There’s... little to be done about it, anyway. That was simply how I looked at the time.”
“You could always have it repainted, you know. Have the artist make you look like a girl this time around. More like you.”
She shakes her head. “Never. It would be inauthentic.”
“Which part?” Dorothea turns to walk down the hallway as she talks, and Edelgard follows. “Getting it repainted, or making you look right?”
“...Both, I suppose.” She folds her hands behind her back. “It would be too detached from the source material, for one thing. It would be an imitation.”
“Hm.”
“A painting of a painting, rather than a painting of my family.”
“You sound like you’ve thought about this before, Edie.”
She sighs again. “It has crossed my mind at times, and I have no desire to repaint it. It would be... an insult to my siblings, I feel.”
Dorothea nods. “I understand.”
“Besides,” she continues, “it would be dishonest. I would sooner paint myself with bright blue hair and a Bergliez coat-of-arms.”
“You think so? Dishonest to paint it as your true self?” Dorothea gestures dramatically on “true” to play it up.
“I do. ‘True self’ or not”—Edelgard mimics her hand movements—“it remains a part of me, and a part of my history. Even if I could, I would not change or erase it.”
“Hm.” Dorothea shrugs. “Fair enough.”
The pair continue navigating the twisting palace halls in silence for a minute, passing countless grand portraits of emperors past on their way. They are intricate, ostentatious, and quite literally larger-than-life - many are several feet taller than the Emperor or her wife, and some nearly as tall as both of them combined.
“Do you ever wish you did?” Edelgard asks after a while.
“Did what?”
“Have portraits from back then,” she explains. “...Apologies, my mind was drifting.”
“No need to apologize, Edie.” Dorothea smiles. “Sometimes I do, but other times I think it’s... better that I don’t. Like, it’s a shame, ‘cause there’s not a single picture of me until I debuted at Mittelfrank, but at the same time, I kinda don’t... want there to be any?”
“Oh?”
“I’m just very protective, I guess. Of my image. And a portrait of a nine-year-old me who still thinks she’s a boy wouldn’t match the image that I want to put out. It wouldn’t be me.”
“...I suppose so.”
There was a time before Edelgard knew she was a woman. Many years, in fact; the painting beside her bedroom door speaks loud and clear to this. There was a time when she naively thought herself a boy - when the path of least resistance was simply to accept that which everyone said of her. There was a time before she learned to fight.
She abhors those years.
She wasn’t happy. She wasn’t herself. She was stuck, putting on a charade of masculinity, dancing the only dance she had been taught, never bothering to seek out something more, something better. Never questioning what she’d been told. Never considering other possibilities. She lived as others thought she should.
She wants nothing more than to reach back into her past and take that poor girl’s hand. To cut through all the layers of repression and adherence to societal expectations that suffocated her, and to show her the way forward to a better future. To a better self. To Edelgard.
...But she can't. In her past self’s place, she takes Dorothea’s.
“If you could,” she asks, “would you change it? To make yourself ‘born a woman’?”
Dorothea scoffs. “Are you kidding? Not for the world.”
She smiles. “Hm.”
“Though, I might go back and slap myself for not figuring it out sooner.”
Edelgard chuckles. She might, too.
Before much longer, they arrive at a grandiose set of double doors. Edelgard nods to the attendant stationed outside, and slowly pushes them open, squinting at the bright light coming from inside. She's barely stepped into the room, though, when a voice cries out-
“There she is!!”
The sounds of revelry and merriment quickly fill the hall as she and Dorothea take their seats at the dining table. It's a warm and welcoming sound, one which falls light on Edelgard’s ears after a long day of lonesome imperial busy work. Now, all at once, she's surrounded by vibrant, beaming faces - many talking over each other to ask about her day, or compliment her hair, or any number of wonderful little nothings. She smiles back, and does her best to answer all that she can hear.
To the right of the doorway to the Adrestian Emperor’s bedchambers hangs a portrait of the Black Eagle Strike Force, commissioned by Edelgard I in late 1186.
She's quite fond of her dress in that one.