[There's so much fantastical bullshit that he has no personal context for other than fiction. He's never met royalty, and except in the most traditional of aspects, royalty isn't really a thing on Earth anymore. He doesn't know what Ardyn should do, either, and none of this really...answers the question, but maybe it answers ones that Ardyn hadn't been willing to ask.
Ardyn is no king, and Church is no knight. He might, by the grace only of being just attached enough to have given meaning to the word, be the King's Shield, but he's no mere loyal subject of a shadow of a man who once was. He insists that their dynamic is that of equals in a real fucked up situation. That's still true.
But the ring of the line of Lucis, the shard of crystal that had made Ardyn Chosen--to be exalted or damned or both--it has meaning. It has meaning deep enough that he doesn't care to take it off, and it's a connection, then, to Lucis Caelum. If Izunia was really all that was left, why not get rid of it? Why not crush it beneath a boot with a sneer and a scoff and be done with it?
No matter the decisions any version of Ardyn has made, no matter what anyone else thinks, he's determined to reach out and keep Lucis Caelum in the light, even if there's just a sliver of him left. For whatever time they have left. He has to.
Church lowers the hand and, in a mimic of something he's sure he'd seen in tv or movies or books a few dozen times, bows over it, pressing his lips to the ring.
In deference to the king, the healer, the man who was.
He straightens then.] I'd say it's a pretty safe bet.
no subject
Ardyn is no king, and Church is no knight. He might, by the grace only of being just attached enough to have given meaning to the word, be the King's Shield, but he's no mere loyal subject of a shadow of a man who once was. He insists that their dynamic is that of equals in a real fucked up situation. That's still true.
But the ring of the line of Lucis, the shard of crystal that had made Ardyn Chosen--to be exalted or damned or both--it has meaning. It has meaning deep enough that he doesn't care to take it off, and it's a connection, then, to Lucis Caelum. If Izunia was really all that was left, why not get rid of it? Why not crush it beneath a boot with a sneer and a scoff and be done with it?
No matter the decisions any version of Ardyn has made, no matter what anyone else thinks, he's determined to reach out and keep Lucis Caelum in the light, even if there's just a sliver of him left. For whatever time they have left. He has to.
Church lowers the hand and, in a mimic of something he's sure he'd seen in tv or movies or books a few dozen times, bows over it, pressing his lips to the ring.
In deference to the king, the healer, the man who was.
He straightens then.] I'd say it's a pretty safe bet.