✦||Prince Lionel||✦ (He/Him) For a long as Lionel could remember, he had loved to read. Books and stories are a very large part of his life, although despite the vast amounts of time he is spent sprawled over dusty old books of history and mapping his own charts of the night sky above, his love for reading did not start with non-fiction. With his mother, no matter how hard she tried, was always busy with her work as Crown Queen, and his father having to divide his attention amongst all of his many children, Lionel's main source of upbringing came from his eldest sister (that he knew of), Minerva. The Heir herself already had a love for reading, but as romance novels were a bit too much for a mature subject for a child, Lionel's earliest memories were of his sister reading him whatever fairytales and fantasy stories that she could find in the Aesirithian palace's library, which was a lot of them, and Lionel loved each and every one. Even after he himself was taught how to read (which was at a fairly young age considering how Minerva eventually also got too busy as Heir to constantly entertain the young pup with the tales, and taught him how to read to entertain himself), his love for those stories did not wane. He spent hours reading and rereading those stories, committing each and every one of them to memory. His favorite, however, was a story of a Prince who was captured by a mighty beast, and when taken away to the mythical continent of Idradus (Which he soon found out to be real at about 8 years old when the war started), only for the beast to be slain by another Prince, hailing from a kingdom on that far-away land, and they lived happily ever after. Stories like that always ended in a happily ever after, and for lots of his puphood, he dreamed about what HIS happily ever after would be, or if he would find the prince of his dreams. Gradually his hype fixation shifted into a love for theatre, though one performance that was based around a main character who was an Astronomer who proposed that the world of Etari was round rather than flat got him curious, and after a few nights of reading literally every book on Astronomy he could find, a new passion was born. By the time he was in his teens, Lionel was an avid scholar in any subject he could get his claws on, his hunger for knowledge never being satisfied, just shifting from one subject to the next. He researched and charted the patterns and trajectories of stars and other celestial beings in elaborate "star-charts", he wrote a couple of scripts for theatrical productions (though they were very cliché and self-indulgent), and devoted uncounted hours in a broad range of book subjects, from mathematics and sciences to histories and literature. He even gained an early mastery in the Occult, from runes to spells and even his own element. When the books in the library no longer satisfied his thirsts, his parents sent him to a very prestigious school, where he excelled and graduated top of his class. Despite his prowess, however, he never stopped searching for his own fairytale story, and where his own happily ever after would begin. Well, upon his 17th birthday, it seemed that it never would come. The biggest thing on Lionel's mind at the time was what University, out of the several he got accepted into, he wanted to attend most when one of the Chamberlains of the Aesirithian Council pulled him aside, and let him know that he had been selected to be betrothed to a Noblewoman by the name of Appia Atticus, with the intention of creating extra Felnines to add to the royal lineage and line for the throne, which Lionel saw as absolutely useless considering the sheer amount of siblings he had. Lionel, obviously, was badly stunned, though his attempts at arguments fell on deaf ears. The Aesirithian council held a high power in the Kingdom, after all. A power so great that not even the Crown Monarch can overturn their decisions, and Lionel knew this. So Lionel, for an entire year, waited in apprehension for the day he would be wedded to a Felnine he wouldn't even be given the decency to introduce himself to till the day of his union. Thankfully when he did meet Appia Atticus (or Appia Leos, as they were wedded the same day they first met), she was also equally as rueful of the arrangement as he was. Instead of forming a hatred or anger for one another, they bonded over the shared experience that was out of their control, and though they never felt a lick of romantic attraction towards one another, they ended up becoming each other's closest friends, which also worked out in their favor, as it fooled mostly everyone (aside from his parents, siblings and few others that saw through it) that they were in love.
(cont) As Lionel did graduate from the University of his choice, one of the few things that he was able to control after the betrothal, he and Appia ended up pleasing the Court with a clutch of eggs that hatched 4 pups, and fulfilling the terms of their union, though Lionel and Appia ended up staying together afterwards for the sake of their children of growing up in a somewhat normal family dynamic. Lionel even eventually found love in the most unexpected of places, Idradus. More specifically, in one of the allied Kingdoms, and none other than with Prince Sven, heir of Zanaitia himself. Lionel, though it was a bit unconventional and nothing like the stories he had read in his youth, felt like he had begun to found his happy ever after. Too bad a certain gala had to remind him that happy endings existed only in fairytales for a reason. Though only a year ago, Lionel remembers the nigh vividly. For that night, he lost siblings. He lost cousins. He lost his parents. He lost his best friend. Yes, Appia was amongst those slain in the Massacre, right in front of Lionel's eyes. Though he had tried to save her, to get her the help she needed, she succumbed to her wounds, and passed away that same night alongside many of the other royals. Though Appia was not his lover, his grief for her was immeasurable. His best friend, mother of his pups, gone in an instant, and Lionel was helpless to save her. What's worse, Minerva completely closed off communications with Idradus, and has yet to re-open them, leaving him an entire ocean away from his lover. In the aftermath of the Gala, many things changed. The death of so many loved ones caused the Prince to loose his spark, and has since fallen into a bit of a pit of despair, only keeping himself barely afloat for his children, Minerva and Jay. Lionel barely has any energy or will to pick up the books and charts that once brought him so much joy, and rarely leaves his manor, aside from the occasional times he is summoned to the Palace. Hardly the close to his tale the prince once dreamed of, but as great minds have said before, there is darkness before the light. Although Lionel does not see it as possible, perhaps his happily ever after is not impossible after all.
