q for when you get power back - what do you think would have happened to Trucy if she stayed with the Gramaryes (ie Magnifi didn’t die)? At what point does she start performing? Does Magnifi start to favor her over her father? (canon or fAeU as applicable)

Oooh. Let’s think about canon because I think a lot about how fucked up the Gramaryes are just in canon basis.

Trucy’s a magician prodigy even at age eight, that she’s confident enough in a “talent agency” and in her ability to provide for her new father. Imagine if she could still have tutelage from other magicians at that point, instead of having to figure it all out on her own. I sort of feel like by the time she’s...10, or maybe 12, somewhere in that area, she’d be in the show - maybe only a few tricks, or as an assistant to start. I doubt Magnifi would use her as an assistant to the dangerous tricks - she’s too valuable an asset to lose the way he lost Thalassa - but she still might be up there, because having a cute kid is another stage asset, you know? Look at her, she’s adorable!

It’s definitely inevitable that she crosses paths with Phoenix and/or Apollo - actually, without Magnifi’s death like that, without Kristoph and Phoenix clashing over that case, Phoenix stays a lawyer, and Apollo, who really admires him, maybe comes to work with him as a junior lawyer from the start. But I think she’s going to come to know Phoenix and Apollo pretty well, inevitably, just because of the way the Gramaryes are.

I’m positive Magnifi would come to favor her over her father. Zak is the favorite over Valant, as the more talented, but Trucy is Magnifi’s own blood, and she has his same powers of observation. She doesn’t have the bracelets, of course - amnesiac Thalassa has one and Apollo has the other - but she’s still capable without them, and with Magnifi to tutor her from age eight or so, I imagine she would still be very, very good at consciously perceiving, as opposed to the more unconscious way she knows in canon. So Trucy is young with her whole career ahead of her, cute and appealing to an audience, perceptive in the way of the Gramarye bloodline, talented and prodigious as fuck, and she has none of the baggage that Zak does of “maybe killed Thalassa.” Trucy is the perfect heir compared to Zak and Valant. As she gets older, she’s going to be the one that Magnifi favors and holds dearest, while Zak gets pushed more aside in the way that Valant could start to feel himself being pushed aside.

Now: Valant was willing to frame Zak for a murder that didn’t happen and Valant didn’t care what happened to Trucy in the aftermath. She took a long time to recognize him when they met seven years later. She hadn’t seen him for seven years. He never checked in on her personally - I suspect he didn’t check in on her from a distance. He was just waiting for Zak to legally die. 

Magnifi meanwhile, reading between the lines of Thalassa’s fate, was willing to throw his daughter aside because she was more useful to him as “dead” blackmail to hang over Zak and Valant’s heads, to keep them under his thumb so they can never strike out on their own and overshadow him, than alive as his daughter and Trucy’s mother. Amnesia would mean she has to be retrained for all of the magic tricks that she knows - that’s just not worth the investment again, you know, not when Magnifi still has Trucy and will keep her with him by always keeping Zak with him by hanging Thalassa’s “death” over his head. Magnifi was canonically willing to make his deathbed into a stage and he killed himself without caring how suspicious that would look to his proteges - even if Valant didn’t tamper with the scene, there would still be a hell of an investigation that Zak and Valant would be caught up in. Valant especially, given the timing. Magnifi didn’t give a shit if Valant fell under suspicion of murder. Valant, like Thalassa once she was injured and amnesiac, was another piece to be thrown aside when Magnifi was done with him.

And Zak was willing to run out on his daughter and leave her in the hands of a stranger. He never checked in on her either. He reappeared to hand her an inheritance - not even give it to her directly - and then fully intended to fuck right off again. And he didn’t even, in fact, leave Trucy in Phoenix’s hands. He told Trucy that she could trust Phoenix, but he did not tell her to go to Phoenix or drop her off with Phoenix. Phoenix had to go find her and of the kindness of his heart offer her a place to stay. Zak didn’t know Phoenix well enough to know he would do that - Zak was just...hoping, if anything. He was fully comfortable turning Trucy loose without supervision or a prayer.

That’s what Trucy is in the midst of. And maybe she can manage to hold onto the sunshine that she is, maybe she doesn’t become jaded by being raised by these people. Maybe she remains a good, not-petty person despite the way that the other three are not good people (I’ve given some sympathy to Valant, in the end, because in the end he realizes he is not a good person, but I feel no such inclination to afford it to the other two.)

But the Gramaryes are not a good, healthy environment, and Trucy is in the center of them. Valant is the least-favorite twice over, shunted aside for Zak and then pushed even further into the wings as Zak is pushed aside for Trucy. Valant is jealous and petty when driven to it, and this would drive him to it. Zak disappears and never returns for his daughter and does nothing to see that she’ll be looked after. He’s willing to leave her on her own once he enlists her help to make his grand escape. And we see how Magnifi turns his death into a show, complete with props and danger, because it’s all about him. 

Whenever Magnifi dies in this setting - I’m picturing when Trucy is like, 15 to 17, that AA4-6 age range - he’s going to leave everything to Trucy, and he’s not going to care what fireworks follow. He still might make a damn show of the will, except with three people instead of two. Or even if without showmanship he leaves it straight to Trucy, well - if she can’t legally inherit it because she’s convicted of murder....

Valant might. Valant did, against her father, in canon. And I don’t want to say that Zak would be capable of framing his daughter for murder, but...maybe. I can’t truly say. (Whether Magnifi actually shot himself again this time, or whether these extra years of being strung along and used and tossed aside finally made the bitterness inside of them fester into resentment that was strong enough to actually kill Magnifi and not just set up the scene after his suicide, I’ll leave that open for now.)

Alternate AA4 where Phoenix, still a lawyer, and his new junior partner Apollo, take up the defense of famous teenage magician Trucy Gramarye, who has been accused of the murder of her grandfather. And Phoenix and his protective streak towards all teenage girls very quickly realizes something very, very horrible about this case - if it’s not Trucy who committed the crime, and he will place his faith in her that she didn’t, then the only options are her father or her uncle. And they aren’t just the only options for who murdered her grandfather, but they’re also the only options for who could have set up the scene to frame Trucy for the murder of her grandfather.

Phoenix has seen a lot of ugly family dramas before - he knew the Feys, he had an active role in all that played out - and he knows that family can be capable of this. But that doesn’t make it any easier to see it again. Not when there’s a very perceptive 15-year-old in a holding cell, a teenage girl who’s realizes this same fact - that one of the dearest people in the world to her, did this to her.