The thing about Persuasion that just kills me is that the central premise— “I hope the person who broke my heart has a miserable life and I get to watch them be humiliated while I get everything I ever wanted” is so universal.
But Wentworth is only able to fully enjoy it for like A DAY before he starts realizing how terrible it is. He watches Anne suffer in silence and he hates it. He watches her being treated like an inconvenience and a joke and a piece of furniture and he hates it. He hears sneering comments at her expense and he hates it. He spends evening after evening in her company, where he is celebrated as a handsome, dashing hero while she is shoved to the side and ignored and he hates it.
He probably spent a lot of heartbroken hours out on the sea wishing revenge on her (like ten years’ worth), but then he gets to see it happening and revenge turns out not to be that sweet after all. He probably thought “I hope she never gets married to anyone else and she has to spend the rest of her miserable life with her miserable family, listening to them talk about nothing and regretting ever letting me go.” But then he has to watch her live through it, and it is just excruciating. Watching her bite her tongue. Watching her keep her eyes down on her clasped hands. Watching her silently accept everything as if she deserves it.
He’s like, “YES, it’s all HAPPENING! She’s all ALONE and PALE and OLD and…sad. And her family treats her terribly, and she’s— no one is talking to her. No one even knows that she’s funny and smart, they just— they just make her sit in the corner. She’s hardly eating anything. And she really isn’t that old, but they are acting like she’s dead? Her family is even worse than they used to be, how is that even possible? Why isn’t anyone helping her? Why is she the only person taking care of anyone? Why isn’t anyone taking care of her?”
And his nasty “she’s so altered I should not have known her again” comment that he KNOWS got back to her starts ringing in his ears. And his cocky “yeah I’m just here to find a YOUNG, HOT girl to marry now that I’m SUCH A CATCH, whatevs” approach starts to make him feel queasy, because she’s HELPING, she’s trying to stay out of his way and help him pick a young wife, and she hardly ever smiles anymore, not really. He watches her slip out of rooms when he enters them and he hears her laughing with her nephew sometimes but then go quiet when anyone else approaches, and he doesn’t know what to do.
Anyway, every fandom has a bunch of Pride and Prejudice AUs, but I WANT PERSUASION AUS. I NEED THEM. I NEED THEM.
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am
too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself
to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke
it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner
than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but
you.
A Persuasion AU would work really well in Raksuran court, you guys. I’m just saying.
oh my god why would you SAY THAT
[whispers in trembling raksura fangeek voice] okay but Raksura AU where the question of Moon mating with Jade gets forced WAY too early and, even though they’ve been getting along and she’s seen how awesome he is (as has Chime), he refuses her, freaks out and leaves the court, which absolutely humiliates and infuriates Jade in a way Moon can’t even comprehend, because he still doesn’t get what it means to be a feral solitary. So the Indigo Cloud court goes through all the travails from the first three books alone, with Jade the one who gets all the glory for almost singlehandedly pulling her court back from the brink of disaster, which means that, by the end of it, all these other courts want to make an alliance with her. (She still has the vaunted alliance with Malachite, but without the complications: it’s because they killed Fell together and Malachite likes her.)
Meanwhile, Moon has been picked up by another colony on a whim - one that’s small enough not to turn him away, but proud enough for none of the queens to want to mate him themselves; he’s there to maybe be traded at some point in the future, or possibly for some future daughter queen to have - and has settled there largely because being alone makes him want to die, and he’s more or less resigned himself to being mistreated forever, and at least here he knows he’s not going to be driven off for being a shapeshifter.
So he just kind of settles in (and takes his only delight in escaping to the nurseries, where the babies all love him) until, after a couple of years, word of Jade’s exploits means even his obscure colony wants to ally with Indigo Cloud, and Jade is enticed for a visit on her way to somewhere else.
Jade ordinarily wouldn’t have gone to such a small colony, mind. But she knows Moon ended up there - the daughter queen who came with the delegation let slip about him, hoping it might prove an inducement - and she wants to see what’s happened to him, because she’s still so angry that he refused her. (She wants Chime to be angry that Moon ran out on both of them, but Chime just wants to see Moon again, and they’ve been through too much for Jade to deny him the opportunity.)
And then they arrive, and she has a whole day of satisfaction at seeing Moon still treated like a feral solitary before it hits her that this is meant to be his home, now, but they’re still treating him like a stranger. And he’s so quiet, all this leashed fury turned inwards, letting the other consorts mock his scars and his lack of manners, flinching whenever the queens talk to him but going still when they’re talking about him, and Chime… Jade can see in a heartbeat that Chime is heartbroken, and she tries to pretend she isn’t, either, until she sees Moon unceremoniously vanished to look after the fledglings.
She wants to steal him. It would be very satisfying on all counts to steal him, but that probably isn’t what Moon wants, and Jade finally realises - with Chime’s help - that this sort of treatment is what Moon expected from Indigo Cloud all along, and was in fairness receiving from Pearl and Rain. And she doesn’t know what to do. She readily encourages Chime in talking to Moon, drawing him out, finds excuses for Chime to visit the colony and act as intermediary so she can secretly talk to Moon through him, with him, but she doesn’t want to be allied to any court that’s treated him so badly, and she wants to know where he came from.
So, obviously, she asks Malachite for help. She even describes him to her, and when Malachite gets the missive - hears about what sounds like her beloved, lost child being grievously mistreated… well, Malachite has flown further and done worse on far less hope. She goes straight to Moon’s awful court, nearly roars the place down in fury when she sees what’s been happening, and claims Moon as her offspring. Which… Moon thought he was all out of surprise, at this point, and naturally he’s sceptical as hell of a terrifying queen showing up out of nowhere, but Malachite and Moon’s sister - he has a sister - get him out, and away, and other than the fledglings there’s nothing to stay for, so why not go with them?
And then they take him back to Indigo Cloud, because Malachite is very happy with Jade as a prospective match for her consort son, and Raksura courting happens and eventually Moon ends up with Jade, and also Chime, because that’s how things are Meant To Be.