coprime_recs | Entries tagged with goblin emperor

Fair winds and sunny skies (Maia, Shaleän/Shaleän's wife | PG | 649 words): Shaleän writes to Maia about visiting. This is a fun little epistolary fic with a supernatural twist on the characters.

Excerpt:
To Maia Drazhar,

Greetings, nephew!

My wife and I propose to visit the Untheileneise Court in the new year, having a great desire to meet you. However, I write to prepare you for our particular circumstances, which are somewhat delicate, and which require a little more than ordinary forbearance.

Thou, who art victory and law (Csethiro/Maia | G | 7,739 words): The Goblin Emperor from Csethiro's perspective. I love this because we know Maia's side of their courtship from canon, so reading Csethiro's and how she comes to care for Maia is so satisfying.

Excerpt:
Csethiro had only seen Edrehasivar twice before, both times at a distance, and for one of them he had been so heavily veiled it was impossible to see his face. This meeting, where he formally petitioned for her hand, was her first chance to get a closer look at him.

He looked awkward beneath all the jewels and layers of silk, like a boy trying on his father's wardrobe. She managed to pull his age out of a dusty corner of her memory: eighteen, almost nineteen. His hands, resting languidly on his armrests, were slender and had knobby knuckles. His features reminded her of Varenechibel's, despite the different coloring. His eyes were startling; two pale moons, sharply contrasted with his slate gray skin and black lashes. They were lovely, but eerie, too.

His posture was good, but his speech was stilted and unoriginal, his final question— "Dach'osmin Ceredin, are you content with this marriage?"—as foolish as it was empty. Did he really think it would change anything if she said no, she wasn't? She left the meeting with a fresh pit in her stomach.

News Flies to Edonomee (Csevet | G | 10,281 words): The beginning of The Goblin Emperor from Csevet's point of view. This does such a good job of showing why Csevet makes the decision to help Maia and how Maia inspires such devotion in the characters loyal to him. The world-building is also top-notch, this very much feels another bit of canon.

Excerpt:
"I…we must speak with our cousin." Maia was clearly unaccustomed to the formal first person; Csevet did not expect anything else after having spoken to Nelar. He bowed his head slightly, accepting the dismissal, but Maia went on. "Do you…that is, you must be tired. Let us summon a manservant to tend to your needs."

"Your Serenity is very kind."

Csevet almost choked on the words: he only was able to utter them more or less smoothly because of the years in a service where formality and manners sometimes meant the difference between life and death. It was not as if he needed to be tended to: it was the fact that Maia Drazhar, knowing himself emperor, recognized him not only as someone to be asked, then thanked, but also someone with probable needs.

Maia rang the bell and a small, delicately built boy entered so soon that he must have been listening at the door – by no means a manservant, but Csevet suspected he was the only one around. The boy smiled openly at him, probably eager for anything to break the bleak routine he must lead.

Come, for Life is a Frail Moth Flying (Csevet/Maia | R | 11,194 words): Csevet hires a new undersecretary. This feels like an extension of canon that's focused on Csevet, with all the care for the characters (including original characters) and worldbuilding and sweet romance that I could hope for, all wrapped up with a lovely bit of plot.

Excerpt:
On the third day, she delivers a folder to Mer Aisava while he's meeting with the Emperor. Just outside the door, Rosharo runs into a young woman, goblin-dark and graceful, with delicate features and long eyelashes. Her name is Isheian, Rosharo learns. Despite the time she's spent honing her manners to something which doesn't give away her humble beginnings, Rosharo feels downright ungraceful as she stutters out her own name. Isheian doesn't seem to mind, taking her leave with a sweet smile that crinkles the corners of her eyes.

Curiously, Mer Aisava is blushing when she walks into the dining room, but far more distracting is the Emperor himself. His Serenity is goblin-dark like Rosharo's late half-brother, though his eyes are grey like Rosharo's own. Arrayed in yards upon yards of snowy imperial white, he's practically dripping with jewels. Opals on his fingers, gold and emerald rings in his ears. Amethysts and something red, garnets or rubies, glittering in his hair. His dark curls are braided and arranged in an up-do that almost looks like it shouldn't stay up, but does nonetheless. Rosharo knows little of what the edocharei do, but she decides she admires them then and there. Even the jacket His Serenity is wearing to breakfast is a work of art, silk brocade embroidered in forest green and gold, with stitches so fine the designs almost appear painted.

This is Edrehasivar VII. The Emperor. A living legend.

Still, Rosharo's prepared. She knows the rules of how to behave around the nobility, deferential and silent, and—

And then it feels like all her preparation goes straight out the window. Because instead of treating her like part of the furniture, the Emperor proceeds to do the one thing she didn't expect:

His Serenity smiles and asks Mer Aisava to introduce her.

But I will hold as long as you like (Csethiro/Maia | PG13 | 1,726 words): Maia and Csethiro have their first fight. This is a serious look at what form strife between Maia and Csethiro might take, and it's such a good potential extension of the canon.

Excerpt:
"We are not a child," Csethiro bites out. "We refuse to be treated as one."

"Yes, we know," Maia snaps back, tired, angry, drawing to his full Drazhada height to stand over her, "and so we wonder as to why you are acting like one—"

Csethiro slaps him. The step forward, the open palm, the ringing crack of it: she has seen the maneuver performed countless times, by countless women, for countless reasons. Even in this does the court have a tradition, a proper way, even in this is her disapproval circumscribed. An openhand slap shocks, it humiliates, it draws the attention. It does not injure.

Maia, however, is not of the court. He does not step back. He does not touch his white fingers to the livid red bloom— the strife-blossom, as bad poets liked to call the thing, discord's rose— laid high on his pale cheek, he does not turn on his heel to recover his dignity in private.

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Goblin Emperor: Fair winds and sunny skies by twigofwillow

Goblin Emperor: Thou, who art victory and law by The_Apocryphal_One

Goblin Emperor: News Flies to Edonomee by Zhisanin

Goblin Emperor: Come, for Life is a Frail Moth Flying by manekimi

Goblin Emperor: But I will hold as long as you like by roachpatrol