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#happychildhood!au
mirkobloom77 · 2 months
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@im-fairly-whitty your AU,,,,,
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im-fairly-whitty · 3 years
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Queen of Crete overrules her husband and raises their new son normally, prince turns out real okay actually.
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im-fairly-whitty · 3 years
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I would like to learn more about the Minotaur and Icarus
Some HappyChildhood!au thoughts for u:
- Queen Pasiphae is understandably a bit shaken when her child is born half bull, but as the immortal daughter of the sun god Helios and a fairly proficient witch she recovers quickly and decides that she is going to raise her “monstrous” son to the best of her ability, despite the protests of her unfaithful husband the king, who as far as she is concerned forfeited his say in the matter when he started this whole mess in the first place.
A well placed insinuation of unpleasant potential curses that could come his way should he get involved prompts the king to drop his preposterous talk of labyrinths and ostraziation. The queen names her newborn son Asterion, “The starry one” and moves ahead with her plans to raise him to be as good a prince as any normal looking child.
- Any child raising experience is complicated, but Prince Asterion is of course an especially curious case. His bovine influenced biology affects his development, meaning he is walking unsteadily at three weeks of age to trail after his mother wherever she goes, though tiring easily and needing to be carried while he sleeps most of the day.
At only four months old he begins speaking in clumsy but coherent sentences. The fine motor skills in his hands take much longer to catch up, leaving him unable to reliably grasp things until about eight months of age which leads to much frustration, but the prince shows early on a very bright mind and a stubbornness to solving puzzles even when they exceed his current skill.
- The queen is unsure how long the happily babbling prince will take before becoming interested in solid foods, or even what diet would best suit him, but decides to ban all meat from the entire palace as a proactive measure. This serves to both prevent uncomfortable conversations about what beef is, as well as giving her more time to research what a Minotaur’s reaction to the consumption of meat might be.
She finds out later that this was an excellent guess on her part as the consumption of either cow or human meat or blood while growing up could have triggered monstrous cannibalistic cravings and behavior in the prince. As it is the vegetarian diet ensures he growth up perfectly well adjusted and even levelheaded as his shy personality matures in adulthood.
- When Prince Asterion is two years old he is functioning about as well as a six year old human, and he starts to show signs of loneliness since he has no peers. The queen tries to figure out what kind of child she could trust to treat the prince normally when the royal inventor Daedalus nervously confesses that he also has a “special looking” son who he has never mentioned before but who might be exactly what the queen is looking for.
Icarus as born with a set of bird wings (one crippled and malformed) and is now ten years old, having been kept at home for his own safety to assist his father with his inventions. The boy is brought to the palace at once, and after the queen determines that he indeed has a sweet (though rather boastful) temperament he is introduced to the prince as his new full time playmate who is to live at the palace permanently. Asterion is terribly shy at first but Icarus is so over the moon about finally being out of the house and given full reign across the entire royal palace that they warm up to each other quickly and become lifelong fast friends.
- Daedelous refuses to build Icarus a wing prosthetic until he’s old enough to have finished growing, both for the boy’s physical safety and the inventor’s sanity, hoping that his son will have become more level headed and less risk taking by then.
When he is in his early twenties his wings finally seem to be as big as they’ll ever be and he’s fitted with a wing prosthetic that finally gives him the balance and wing span to finally be able to learn to fly. It’s a messy an exhausting process that takes several months of low flying crashes and terrible landings, but with the help of Asterion’s patient encouragement he does end up getting the hang of it, although at his friend’s concerned pleadings Icarus curbs most of his more reckless impulses, becoming an efficient and safe flier.
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im-fairly-whitty · 3 years
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I would read an entire book about icarus and asterion/The Minotaur’s happy childhood /)
* pockets your kind words and slides these headcanons back across the table in return*
- Icarus is a very energetic and outgoing child, but since his father was afraid he might be targeted by the black market for the potential magical value of his feathers he was kept hidden at home until he was ten and they were moved to the palace. This means that despite his personality, Icarus got overwhelmed pretty easily when they first moved, even small crowds and busy open courtyards sending him into panic attacks if he wasn’t careful and pushed himself too hard.
This generally led to him hiding in a quiet corner until he could calm down and breathe normally again, something Asterion realizes very quickly about his new friend and that he tries to help with. Icarus is mostly just very frustrated whenever he gets overwhelmed because he wishes he could adjust faster, but Asterion’s patient and laid back personality goes a long way to both helping him calm down when things get to be too much and finding quieter two person adventures and games to play while he adjusts.
- Icarus’s crippled wing has been that way since birth, though they arent sure if he came out that way or if it was an injury sustained due to a shaken midwife’s mistake since Daedalus wasn’t in the room for the birth. Regardless it has always been smaller and a little misshapen his whole life, meaning he is unable to fly naturally. Despite that though he is able to soften a short fall to glide just a bit though not very well, he carries his balance differently than other people, and his wings have a body language all their own that end up telegraphing his emotions to those who know him well enough to read them.
While he is actually a bit vain about his wings they can be a pain to take care of, his annual molt in particular leaves him scruffy and irritable and tired for a couple weeks. Normally he doesn’t mind too much if people touch his wings as long as he has given them permission first, but during a molt his father and Asterion are the only two people allowed to touch his wings since they’re extra sensitive and the extra help keeping them groomed properly is worth the embarrassment of it. (Imagine the embarrassment you might feel at not being able to effectively do something like wash your hair yourself even when you’re a teenager.) He eventually minds Asterion’s help much less than his father’s, in true teenager fashion.
- One dreadful summer Icarus gets feather mites and swears he’s nearly decided to cut off his stupid wings entirely by the time the witchy queen kindly manages to concoct a potion to get rid of the pests . In return for a dose of the potion once a year he often brings her a bundle of his best molted feathers to show his thanks which do indeed have excellent magical properties to them that she appreciates very much.
- The biggest bother when he is finally fitted for a wing prosthetic as a young adult so he can finally learn to fly is that he has to learn to rebalance himself again while wearing it which is exhausting work.
- In the original myth it’s said that Asterion, because of his monstrous inter-species nature, can only eat the cannibalized meat of humans, generally slain by his own bloodthirsty rage. In HC!AU however his mother discovers through her occult studies that this is not actually a part of his nature, but actually a kind of magically imposed allergy for lack of a better term. When the prince is riled up by combat or exposed to blood or meat an animalistic and violent bloodlust is magically triggered that overwhelms him.
His mother concocts an elixir that is able to dissipate it and bring him back down to normal as a kind of antidote, so they end up learning to manage the curse by limiting his exposure to triggers and keeping the cure on hand at all times. In the end it kind of ends up being like a magical peanut allergy, except where if you have a reaction someone /else/ could die. (Also the antidote potion uses Icarus’ feathers as one of the main ingredients! The queen isn’t sure why they are so potent in helping that specific magical recipie, and if Daedalus knows why—or even why his son has wings in the first place—he’s certainly never told anyone. The queen suspects that Icarus’ wings have a tie to Posideon like Asterion does, but she can’t know for sure until either the god or the inventor spill the beans.)
- The queen had this allergy theory since Asterion was an infant, meaning she always kept Asterion away from anything that might trigger an attack. The thoery was first proven by his first episode when he was ten years old. Icarus and the prince had snuck off during a festival that was happening on the royal grounds and Icarus, upon them finding a foreign kebab vendor who apparently hadn’t gotten the strict no-meat-served-at-the-palace-memo, insisted Asterion try venison.
This of course very quickly devolved into an extremely dangerous situation that involved a hasty emergency evacuation, ten wounded royal guards, twenty damaged vendor stalls, and three weeks of a very distraught emotional recovery for both Icaurus and the prince after the queen was able to get close enough to intervene with the prepared antidote. The queen explains her now confirmed theory to them both, assuring them that it wasn’t either of their faults and noting curiously that even at the very worst of it Asterion never attempted to harm either Icarus or the queen during his rage, which provides all three of them a small comfort at least for future potential episodes, though all of them are shaken for a good while afterward.
- After that Asterion steers clear of any accidental snacks and doesn’t have another episode of note of real note until he’s in his twenties since as he gets older he gets better at controlling himself when he feels an episode coming and is generally able to remove himself from the situation. Instead of learning to fight like most royalty would (and after seriously accidentally injuring a wrestling instructor with his inhuman strength) Asterion instead does solo exercise training like running and weightlifting, getting safe practice at controlling and settling himself whenever his adrenaline starts to spike so that he doesn’t need the cure every time. He also never learns to ride since no horse has ever let him closer than the seat of a chariot, understandably spooked by his appearance.
- Aforementioned second largest episode occurs when a disastrously brave/foolish sell sword accepts a contract to kidnap the prince’s royal companion either dead or alive for a magically inclined client willing to pay a fortune for his feathers. When Asterion is woken in the middle of the night to find a struggling and injured Icarus being dragged out a window by a hooded stranger, the prince loses it completely and absolutely slaughters the assassin. Like, as in no one ever discovers who the man was since later what’s left of him is far beyond a state even resembling recognizable.
Asterion is so far gone in his rage that not even the queen is able to get close for hours afterward since the distraught Asterion won’t let anyone near the wounded and unconscious Icarus, trying to rip apart anyone or anything who gets too close. The situation is only diffused once the drugged Icarus is able to shakily regain consciousness enough to gently talk the prince down enough to take the antidote.
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im-fairly-whitty · 3 years
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In the happy childhood au with Icarus and Asterion, is the prince at all close to his siblings, like his older sister Ariadne?
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I like to think so! It’s hard to find a clear family tree for the family as it stands in the original myths, so I’m not exactly sure who’s supposed to be older or younger in the sibling line up but since there’s nine of them all told that’s a lot of kids no matter how you slice it. 
My headcanon for the Happy Childhood AU kind of throws a spanner in the works a bit since I think in my version the queen standing up to the king and of taking over the palace once Asterion is born means the royal bed isn’t used anymore between them, meaning Asterion is the last royal child and thus the youngest. (Being bewitched into having a kid with a bull because of your husband’s hubris is not very conducive to an ongoing marriage and in my au the king is solidly put in the backseat with most of his ruling privileges revoked as punishment, as it should be. You were rude so now you get no more children.)
I’m not sure how many of the nine royal kids that cuts off from being born since I can’t find a chart that lists the kids in order, but it probably means a smaller family and less siblings for him which is probably for the best since the queen spends a lot of time and effort caring for his special needs both physical and magical to make sure he grows up healthy and well rounded. 
As for how Asterion gets along with his half-siblings I think things would actually start out pretty rocky with any siblings he has who are much older than him since if there were teenage princes around the castle already (like Androgeus who I do know is the eldest) I can’t see them taking to their monstrous half sibling very easily, but as Asterion got older I think they’d be grudgingly won over by his sweetness and eventually protective of him. This does explain though why Icarus was brought in as his full time playmate in those first few years when he was still being largely ignored by most of his older half-siblings, especially the brothers.
I do imagine Ariadne in particular only being a year or two older than him and thus being his closest sibling that he can actually bond with from the start and who can go on adventures with him and Icarus. He ends up becoming protective of her in return as they get older, especially when royal suitors come courting and Asterion takes it upon himself to vet them thoroughly and scare off any he doesn’t think are suitable for his favorite sister’s hand in marriage. (Which is most of them.)
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im-fairly-whitty · 3 years
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Does the minotaur also like fruits? Idk why but the thought of him going around eating dainty little fruits like cherries or berries really amuses me (bonus, he invents a game with Icarus on who can balance cherries on their noses, which Icarus finds extremely unfair cuz he doesn't have a perfectly flat cherry balancing muzzle like Asterion)
I am in full support of these proposed childhood shenanigans. 
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im-fairly-whitty · 3 years
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LOVE the baby minotaur. What's his relationship like with his little sister Ariadne?
So glad you liked it! I answered this one a bit ago, you can find all things pertaining to the au under the #happychildhood!au tag on my blog! :)
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im-fairly-whitty · 3 years
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The happychildhood!au is amazing!
It’s a fun one! If anyone needs a fix it au, the Minotaur and Icarus certainly qualify haha.
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