Day 14: Ambrose (Bede/Victor’s son)! As the eldest of 8 siblings, Ambrose developed a strong sense of responsibility growing up (also spurred on by the fact Opal frequently strong-armed him into doing heavy lifting work and chores for her “respect your elders! a strapping young … Continue reading
(Yes this ask is very very old but I’m doing my best to clear my ask box out!)
Hop and Gloria’s story follows pretty closely to the game’s plot, with the two being rivals and Hop often feeling unable to catch up to Gloria as a trainer. The two had a deeper rivalry than Hop had with Victor, which I think mainly stemmed from Gloria having a more obviously competitive personality, which then got Hop fired up too when he battled her, while Vic was (on the surface) more laid back and chill with battles so his and Hop’s rivalry was a bit less intense.
Of course, then the Champion Cup happened and Gloria defeated Hop only to be soundly demolished by Victor, who then went on to defeat Leon and become the new Galar Champion. This kind of blindsided the both of them, as Victor had kept just how seriously he was taking the League Challenge fairly secret. Prior to this however, Hop and Gloria were the ones who teamed up with the two Legendary Wolves to defeat Eternatus, and this experience changed things for Gloria, she felt something when fighting side-by-side with Zacian and wanted to explore that more, so when Hop announces he’s going to be working for Sonia as a researcher, Gloria decides to follow him. She had been ahead of him as a trainer, now she’ll be the one following him – they can leave the professional battling to Victor.
Romance followed pretty quickly for them afterwards and both were quite active in helping Bede when Ambrose was born (though not as much as Victor haha). All that babysitting led them to want to start a family of their own, so around when Victor and Bede announced they were going to be having a baby, Hop and Gloria started trying for one as well, wanting the cousins to be the same age. Things panned out nicely, with Robin born in November and Neil the following March. While Robin and Neil often played together growing up, their personalities never really meshed – Robin being quite shy while Neil was very outgoing. Neil was such a handful that he kept his parents busy from wanting any more kids for quite a bit, but seeing how large Victor and Bede’s family was becoming, they decided when Neil was five to have a second child, which ended up being Caelia. Tania followed quickly about a year and three months later, then finally they had their fourth and final child, Annie, three years after Tania.
Despite Victor and Gloria’s best efforts and dreams of their kids being best friends, none of the cousins are exceptionally close. Ambrose is quite a bit older than his cousins, so mostly sees them as (additional) younger siblings more than anything. Neil is close in age to Robin and Isidore but doesn’t really get along well with either of them, being a bit too pushy with Robin sometimes and then getting on Isidore’s bad side, the two often fighting. He does enjoy being a cool older cousin to the twins though, and will enable their pranks and stunts gleefully and even give them pointers (thus their parents don’t particularly like how close they are…). Caelia and Theo have a bit of a rivalry going on, where Theo often bossed Caelia around when they were little and now Caelia is determined to get back at her for it. Tania’s quite introverted, but unlike her older sister does get along pretty well with Theo (even if she does find her exhausting). Against all odds, Annie and Reynard are fairly good friends, and a lot of it is based on shared experiences of having so many older siblings with big personalities and feeling overshadowed by them sometimes. They like to go exploring together and other activities where it’s just the two of them being themselves. (Merlin is The Baby and too little to play with any of his cousins yet.)
Also since this is very long a quick breakdown of the Hopria fam under the cut!
Robert “Hop” Arjuna & Gloria Arjuna (née Ellington)
– The parents! Both are senior research assistants to Professor Sonia Magnolia, focusing on Pokémon Mythology like her. Hop focuses more on research in the lab, while Gloria prefers fieldwork. They live in Postwick (possibly in Hop’s family home?) and commute to the lab in Wedgehurst for work. They also regularly check in on Zacian and Zamazenta – the wolves also sometimes wandering to the village to visit their humans as well!
Neil Arjuna (Born March 20, 3024)
– The eldest and only son. He’s very outgoing and energetic and loves racing around the Wild Area on his Rotom Bike. He can often be reckless and has had plenty of accidents, though he always bounces back. He decides to take the Gym Challenge, traveling alongside his (paternal) cousin Charlie, but doesn’t really have any solid goals in mind about becoming Champion or anything. He just wants to have fun! His starter is a Bulbasaur who rides in his bike basket (and hasn’t evolved in order to remain able to fit in said bike basket).
Caelia Arjuna (Born June 21, 3030)
– The second child and oldest daughter. An extrovert like her brother, Caelia wants everyone to know who she is and what she’s about. Loudly. She adored tagging along with her parents on their fieldwork excursions, deciding to follow in their footsteps as a researcher. She’s a very animated fan of any kind of ruin and gushes about them to anyone who happens to be within earshot (and then yells at people who she doesn’t think appreciate them enough). Cae also has latched onto Edmond as a mentor during the time he spends studying abroad in Galar, finding his study of ancient Pokémon Art fascinating. Her starter is a Scorbunny (same as her father’s!).
Tania Arjuna (Born September 23, 3031)
– The third child and second daughter. Very introverted, unlike her siblings, preferring the company of books to people. Strategy books about pokémon battling specifically. Tania travels with her older sister, and people often assume that not only is the quiet and mature Tania the older sister (her being taller doesn’t help), they also presume she’s the researcher and Cae is the trainer, when in fact it’s the opposite. Tania has her eyes set on the prize – becoming Champion! Her starter is a Sobble (same as her mother’s!)
Anemone “Annie” Arjuna (Born December 21, 3034)
– The fourth child and youngest daughter. Quiet like Tania, she’s happy to play by herself and finds her older siblings often quite tiring. She’s very close with her father’s Dubwool and often goes on walks with him around the rolling Postwick fields. Annie enjoys drawing, especially nature scenes she sees on her walks, and also sometimes writes little poems about her favorite moments in nature. She doesn’t think of it as more than a hobby though, despite her parents encouraging her to sigh up for art and poetry programs and/or classes. Annie is still too young to go on a journey, so isn’t thinking too hard yet about what she wants to do with her life. Her (eventual) starter is a Snom.
Saffron is Oleana and Rose’s child. Their design and name are loosely based on the character of Yellow Diamond from Houseki no Kuni, a manga series by Haruko Ichikawa, who designed both Rose and Oleana. I am a fan of the series, and YD is my favorite character from it, so it just seemed like it would be a fun idea to give this pairing a child inspired by HnK.
After turning himself in at the end of the SwSh plotline, Rose isn’t in jail for very long. Once he’s free, he and Oleana reconnect and also rekindle their sort of friends-with-benefits relationship (but it’s not really that since Rose had all the power from the beginning.) Oleana is still so used to being Rose’s right-hand at this point that going back to the way things were is just easiest for her, even if the two of them aren’t working together any more. However, once she discovers her pregnancy, it sort of forces her to really start reconsidering her life and where she wants to go from now on.
After a lot of deliberation, Oleana decides to make a clean break with Rose, cutting ties for the most part and raising their child on her own. I’m still working on what she does with her life at this point, though working with Leon at the Battle Tower is very likely – definitely something business related since that’s her area of expertise. Once Saffron is born, Oleana does her best to be a good mother, but she can also admit she’s not the best at being affectionate. All the same, Saffron respects her and appreciates how much Oleana has done for them as a single mother, even if she wasn’t always perfect (they could always count on Leon or his partners to be more traditionally parental to them anyways).
When Saffron is young, maybe 7-10 or so, Oleana and Rose sort-of begin talking again, but mostly this just involves Rose taking Saffron on day trips sometimes and offering to pay for Saffron’s schooling and the like, which Oleana always refuses. As a teenager, Saffron ends up becoming a model, mainly for high-end teen fashion. They really look up to Nessa and are always a bit starstruck when they get to meet her through Oleana’s League connections.
Saffron also has no idea that Ambrose exists or is their half-brother until the two are both teenagers and meet by chance (though Ambrose knows who Saffron is). What happens from there as well as their eventual big confrontation with Rose once and Ambrose start interacting is still something I’m working on!
As a bonus, under the cut I’ll include a pic of a concept design for Saffron I made in Picrew!
Rose is one of those characters I find interesting since he’s morally ambiguous. While I agree the game does lean towards him ultimately being a good, if misguided person, his treatment of Bede stands out as offering a different interpretation of his character. That he actually is manipulative and isn’t a completely kind person. I stand by the mural scene at Stow-on-Side being a setup by Rose to get rid of a Bede, after he decided Bede had become more trouble than he was worth (sure, Bede blames Oleana during postgame, but who’s the one Oleana is doing the bidding of throughout the entire game).
Basically though, for this verse, I decided to go with the corrupt interpretation of Rose’s character. He picks up Bede from the orphanage partly because he sees potential in him as a trainer (thus useful to him in the future, especially if he were to become his puppet Champion) but also because he sees a cute, vulnerable boy who will be easy to manipulate into fulfilling his urges. He grooms Bede into thinking the things they do together behind closed doors are done out of love. Bede already admires Rose and feels indebted to him, so thinking that Rose loves him as well just further fuels his loyalty towards the man, being willing to do anything for him. A lot of my headcanons for this are actually based on art and fics I’ve seen that take this interpretation of Rose. Since this actually isn’t an uncommon interpretation of Rose and Bede’s relationship if you know where to look.
The events of the game plays out as in canon, Rose disowns Bede after the Stow-on-Side incident (nonsense happens in Hammerlocke with Bede trying to win back Rose’s favor), Opal rescues/abducts Bede to become her protege, and the Eternatus incident plays out as normal. Bede’s son with Rose, Roan, is actually conceived right before the Eternatus incident, during the Championship tournament.
Bede, after crashing the tournament and losing to Victor, remains in Wyndon. Unfortunately for him, his heat starts very shortly after this. In a moment of weakness, he goes to Rose Tower to seek out Rose, the man who he’d spent all his previous heats with. He’s both not entirely thinking straight, but he also isn’t over Rose at this point, even asking for Rose to take him back at some point during the encounter. Rose isn’t having any of that though, and isn’t even particularly kind to Bede during the incident. A big part of the reason Leon misses dinner with the protag and Hop isn’t because he was talking with Rose for hours, but rather because Rose made Leon wait hours to talk with him because he was busy having sex with Bede.
Rose turns himself in following the Eternatus incident and Bede eventually discovers that he’s pregnant. He knows right away who the father is, but for obvious reasons doesn’t tell anyone. As he spends more and more time with Opal, he also slowly comes to terms with just how wrong what Rose did to him was. Opal does find out who the father of Bede’s child is (she suspected all along, but Bede end up telling her the truth). Victor also finds out years later once he and Bede get together and Bede shares some of his past with him.
As for Rose, while he doesn’t care about Bede enough to keep tabs on him, he does make the connection that Bede’s son with the mystery father is his son. But for obvious reasons, he doesn’t do anything about it. Sends the occasional “anonymous” gift that Bede promptly throws away (rose seal on the letters is a dead giveaway). Roan doesn’t find out who his biological father is until he’s in his teens, which is the point Rose decides to personally enter the picture and tell Roan himself (leaving out many details of his and Bede’s past together, of course).
Syd and I came up with a fair chunk of this together, so the way things play out is basically the same in this verse. Just replace Roan’s name with Ambrose.
Fankid Week Day 7: Free Day I mentioned in my Day 5 post that Ambrose was the oldest of seven kids – well, here’s all seven of them! This is just a rough sketch, but I’ve been meaning to draw the Bede/Victor fam for a … Continue reading
Fankid Week Day 4: Rivalries Featuring Ambrose and the terrible twins, Chelsea & Merrill! aka Rivals who are taller than you are twice as annoying. Ambrose is Bede’s son and Victor’s stepson and the oldest of seven siblings. He’s a fairy-type trainer who wants to take … Continue reading
I gave Bede/Victor another kid because I just felt like they need a big family. So there’s a baby son called Reynard who’s born around when Ambrose is setting out on his journey. So he’s just the cute baby for the most part during any plot significant events.
His starter, when he gets one, is a Nickit, obviously.
EDIT: Because 4 kids still didn’t feel like enough they got MORE. They’re going to be the biggest family it’s what they deserve. There’s now three more kids hahahaha. Edwin & Oswald are twins born about three years after Robin. And then Cordelia is adopted as a baby about two years after the twins are born. (And then Isidore is adopted another two years after that.)
There’s also probably an 8th baby born after Reynard but that’s post-Main Plot so not going to think about that yet.
Small Galar fankids change but I gave Victor/Bede another kid and flip-flopped their names so the kid formerly called Ambrose (who I drew) is now called Robin and the one called Ambrose now is his older brother who’s a new character.
As of right now, my Galar fankids are fairly set in stone. I think I’ve got a good number of them and a good idea of who they are. They’re not on the family page yet since I need to come up with surnames for all of them, but as soon as I do that they’ll be posted. That said, I figured I should share what I have so far!
Gloria/Hop: They’ve got two kids, an older boy named Neil and a younger girl named Caelia. Amusingly, despite being the protagonists, their children have the least development. I know more about their relationships with other fankids than I do about their personalities. I’m sure I’ll know more about them eventually though, since these things take time.
Victor/Bede: Two boys, named Ambrose and Robin. Both were accidents and born before the two really properly started dating, Ambrose being born sooner after the game timeline ends (since dumb teens, but Victor was really committed to helping his friend out once Bede found out he was expecting even if the two weren’t dating at the time) and Robin about 5 years after. They grow closer as a result of having a kid though and probably end up marrying when Robin is a toddler or something, though I’m not sure yet. Ambrose was a sickly child but he grows up to be kind of really annoying and pretentious and dresses like a 18th century period romance hero. He’s rivals with Chelsea and Merrill (mentioned down below). Robin is a sensitive boy and a bit of a crybaby, but he’s also able to take care of himself and anyone who makes him cry is going to regret it. He’s only a year or so older than Neil and Bede and Hop wanted them to be rivals but the cousins are best friends instead. They travel together.
Marnie/Allister: My one rarepair/crackship so far. I just thought they’d get along and paired them moreso since I wanted to explore Allister rather than Marnie, who I would have been happy keeping single. They have a son named Damian who’s Very Goth (but like, refined Victorian goth). He starts out as a trainer but eventually realizes he’d rather be a coordinator. He’s rivals with Caelia and around the same age as her (so his parents take longer than other couples to get together.)
Milo: He’s a single dad. His daughter, Marigold, was originally actually a grandkid and I made a post about her a while back, but I’ve decided to scrap that angle. So she’s his bio daughter rather than adopted. Milo just has such dad energy I couldn’t not give him a kid, but him staying single was planned from very early on.
Nessa/Sonia: They’ve got a daughter named Susanna. She’s a scientist like her mother and great-grandmother, though she’s more interested in ecology rather than legends like Sonia is. She’s beautiful (of course) and has many admirers, but she’s got no time for any of that. Science is the only thing on her mind. So she’s got a bit of a reputation for being aloof as a result.
Raihan/Piers: Friends-with-benefits turned boyfriends. Their twins, Chelsea & Merrill (or Chell & Rill as they often go by), were accidents and are initially raised mostly by Piers, since he and Raihan weren’t living together at the time, but they visited Raihan and Leon a lot as well, coming to stay more permanently when they’re around 10 and Piers gets a big break as a musician, leading to him traveling more. They’re hellions, basically, and love to cause trouble and just shake things up. They’re also the oldest fankids for the region and were in the year after the game events.
Raihan/Leon: Raihan and Piers got together first, but Leon ended up fitting in nicely with their relationship (there was a bit of drama sorting things out at first but it all works out fine in the end and they’re all happy together.) He and Raihan live in Hammerlocke together and they’ve got a daughter named Nasrin who’s maybe a couple years younger than her half-siblings. She’s very much a celebrity trainer and probably like an Instagram model or something. Very concerned with her appearance and skills as a trainer. She wants to beat Champion Victor one day to “win back Leon’s honor”… or something. Chell & Rill tease her relentlessly and she’s very fed up with them and pretends they don’t exist which just spurs them on.
Pokémon Legends & Legacies 