Doves and Peacocks
Being a royal
It was at the fairly young age of thirteen that Aleigh Luzerno became the Arcane Prince of Astra. It was learn to discover that, all at once, his face was known throughout the nation, as was his brother’s–but more disorienting to find himself burdened with more liabilities than a thirteen-year-old should ever have to shoulder.
The nature of Aleigh’s relationship with renown was entirely different from Aligon’s. Where the older brother was celebrated as the answer to Arcem’s cruelty, the younger was but image and symbol–the innocence to his brother’s magnanimity, an accessory to his royalhood.
They painted him as the ideal Astran son: well-behaved, well-bred, serene ahead of his years. He was the child every parent wished to have, rendered to shame the lowborn who refused to exert such control over their own.
For the most part, this was the sort of person Aleigh was in reality–except for the one detail no one ever mentioned: he loved to tell stories. He invented and elaborated and embellished, tales of fancy and fear, longer and more beautiful than anyone in his most esteemed household could bear to contemplate. Everyone took great care to hide and discourage this habit, and in time he, too, learned to suppress it.
Of course, Aleigh was not to be a child for very much longer, or to continue playing this part without question. He turned fourteen, then fifteen, and obedience became reticence. Suddenly aware of his brother’s subtle machinations, he began declining to make public appearances with increasing frequency.
His absence was noticed, and there were many shared fears among the more fanatical of the Luzerno family’s supporters that their sweet little Arcane Prince would lose his loveliness, both of character and of face, with maturity.
On the latter point, this was not to be the case. The next time Aleigh made a major public appearance–at his brother’s thirtieth birthday party, when he was himself sixteen–he was dressed for his stature, and caused a stir in doing so. Publications spilled over with adulation for his poise and grace: “swanlike” was a choice word, decidedly inaccurate considering the real nature of swans, but favourable because of the way it linked him to the patron god of Astra.
Youth all over Astra began to take interest in the Luzerno family for him alone. Instantly recognising the opportunity, Aligon immediately took measures to ensure that particular attention was paid to his brother’s attiring for any and all appearances.
In time, Aleigh found that imagery and pretence came to him as naturally as breathing. He understood symbols intimately, and recognised the subtlest connotations of his every action. He never did stop loving stories, although he took to enjoying them quietly, in the safety of his room or the palace library.
Anxiety and distrust came with his brother’s puppetry, and with learning that his public falseness attracted falseness in return, not one person ever speaking honestly to him unless they were an enraged New Town resident, spitting on his bodyguards.
Where Aligon conducted national politics alongside Hazen, Aleigh was merely an ambassador–or a casualty, one might say, of the Astran political game.