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Claudius was more like Emmanellain than he cared to admit. Emmanellain, at least, enjoyed his lot as the little brother, free to promenade and flirt and fritter away his days without the yoke of heading a noble house to hold him back.
Claudius should be grateful, too: the gods saw fit to send him into the world as a second-born son, with no expectations for him until the day he melted back into the aether. He and Emmanellain might have gone to the same balls, once — up until Claudius busied himself with the study of alchemy, growing hellebore in the garden beds and crafting arrows to coat with poison. He found errands to run, vilekin he could kill, while his brother did the nobler work of waging war against the dragons.
And he tried not to think of his errands as tests.
You see, he wasn't grateful to the gods. He never had been — when he tried to pray to Halone, his prayers withered up, wordless. If he forced himself, he could find thanks for Thaliak, for the waters of wisdom he used to distill toxins. Halone, goddess of slow, inexorable glaciers, gave him nothing but the Enchiridion, the law that Ishgard lived by. As uncompromising as the ice face of Snowcloak.
As a young man, Claudius still feared heresy. He heard voices that weren't his own, whispers at the edge of his awareness. Feel, Think, those voices would say to him, when he wasn’t allowed to do either. His head ached, his vision haloed, and he saw Ishgard not as it was, but as it might have been, many years ago.
No one could tell him what an Echo was, but he'd heard well enough of the seductions of dragons, of men gone mad who abandoned Ishgard and joined with her enemies. Claudius didn't want to go their way, but he knew even then that he wanted to leave. So how could he know? How did you know if you were corrupted?
Back then, he thought too many things he wasn't supposed to think. Yes, he was fortunate to be second-born to a storied house of dragon-slayers, the House of Helsingore. He was born too late to ever compete with his brother, who'd borne the duty faithfully of bringing their family greater and greater honors, and only snapped when the duty weighed too heavily. (Only lashed out when his little brother made an easy target)
Claudius never cared about the family honor. He feared and loathed his brother, and resented everything the gods saw fit to give him — his status, his ambition, a loving wife who deserved better than a tyrant for a husband — but was it Claudius thinking those things, or the wickedness inside of him?
Was it some dragon hissing in his ear, tempting him to fall?
Or, he thought bitterly, he was simply born evil. With every arrow in the neck of a vilekin, Claudius wondered how much poison it would take to kill a man.
Emmanellain had what Claudius wished for, once. He had a chance to step into a role newly vacated for him, brought about by the death of a brother. But it wasn't the same — Claudius felt a pang of pity for him. They were both in mourning.
Maybe it wasn't too late to go to a ball.
But instead, there was to be a grand melee. Claudius hated the thought of it, at first — Ishgardians were warriors, and that’s why he never belonged among them, why he chose to leave the life of a little brother for the life of an adventurer. But Aymeric knew his people. Ishgardians fought to prove themselves — it’s all they knew how to do — and with the war ending there was no new way to trade up for social cachet by way of a wyvern’s-head trophy. Or course the lowborn would riot, and the highborn cling to whatever power they had. So why not fight to prove themselves among the people of Eorzea, no longer locked in their private war, their private pride, but united in contests and pageantry?
For a ball, Claudius’s family might’ve spared him a few thousand gil for a new suit, but now he had a better grasp of the value of goods and glamours, and how much more economical it was to wear the best armor and magic it to your fancy.
For a grand melee, Claudius didn’t expect to wear anything out of the ordinary. It surprised him, therefore, when Emmanellain fumbled for a prism. “By the fury, how could I forget? Father bid me present this to you.” He pressed the glamour into Claudius’s hand, and Claudius felt the aether flowing off it, passed between their fingers.
The colors of House Fortemps. If Claudius’s family cared for him at all, they’d be shocked by the scandal of it — wearing another House’s glamour, as if to replace one home with another. But Claudius felt far more at home in Haurchefant’s house than he had as a little boy in the cold stone estate across the street. Even the tapestries felt warmer.
Emmanellain had been allowed to grow up a foolish lordling — and he suffered for it, in the end, grew careless with the power thrust upon him and abused it in a moment of panic. But his flaws could be amended; he still had growing to do.
And Claudius was the same.
“I know it may be sudden,” Emmanellain was saying, “but we believe the men would find it inspiring if you bore the colors of House Fortemps into battle. Pray do us this honor.”
They’d look horrible. They wouldn’t flatter the silver of Claudius’s skin at all — but he smiled and closed his hand on the prism. “The honor would be mine.”