Summer challenge: Women of Summer: Relena
Title: Gratia Plena
Author: ingvild
Characters: Relena
Rating/Word Count: G, 709 words
Summary: Set during the series when Relena was spreading the message of peace around. An exploration of her thoughts and motives.
A/N: The problem with getting a prompt that consists of nothing more than your favourite character’s name is that there are too many things you want to write. I had to pick one. (I think character thought/motive exploration might become my theme for this summer’s challenges.)
“Your father would have been proud of you.”
Relena nods her acceptance of the compliment to the middle-aged state leader she has spent the last few hours in discussion with, and gets up to leave. The white coat which is a sign of a high-ranking member of the Peacecraft royal house is surprisingly cool in the summer heat, but the collar is a little too high and feels constrictive around her throat.
It doesn’t affect her ability to speak, so she has refrained from commenting on it. Still, the coat has become symbolic of her position these days. It is not meant to be an inconvenience to her, and it aids her in her work (her position, because it encourages people to listen, and the coat, because it makes her look professional and poised and not out of her place). Relena is all too aware that she is thirty years younger than the youngest government officials that she has been talking to, and that she is one of very few females, so she uses what authority she can get in order to make her way into these talks. Little after little, her name is being spread, and getting people to listen is getting easier.
Still, she feels constrained, trapped. This is the only thing she can do to make the world better, the only thing she can do to make the world a more peaceful place. But it is slow and cumbersome work, and she cannot in good conscience convince people that she knows what is best, because the only thing she is sure of these days is that peace is and must be a group effort, and if there is one thing she has learned over her short years it is that people are more likely to fight for something (however non-violent that fighting might be) if they have had an active role in creating it.
So she admits that she is still trying to find her own way, and that the path she is taking is dangerous and may not succeed, and she makes her plea to the world leaders who are willing to listen: help me. We can only find the right road to take if we all work together.
She makes the same entreaty to the students at her school. Somehow, only the daughters of the world leaders and other important people have come to attend. She wonders if the reason the sons are being held back is that their parents and sponsors want to have an ace up their sleeves in case pacifism doesn’t work this time either. She cannot quite blame them, not when she has turned a blind eye to Miss Noin’s building of an underground mobile suit army. She hopes that it will never come to the point where these suits are necessary, but Relena has accepted responsibility for the people of Sank and the students at her Academy.
Her biological father, King Peacecraft, would probably not approve. But Relena was three years old when the Sank Kingdom was destroyed the first time, and everything she knows of it comes from Pagan’s stories and the documents stored away in the attic or hidden in between the poetry books in the library, and she believes there is one large difference between herself and her late father:
Relena is practical.
She knows the importance of getting personally involved, of offering sanctuary to the people who need it, of building bridges between people and of moving their hearts. She knows the importance of becoming expendable.
When Relena is finished, she will no longer be necessary for peace; she will be only one person among many working towards a goal that they all share. She hopes that the day may come when the Sank Kingdom could be destroyed again and it would not matter. Perhaps then, she can shed this coat and this name and go back to being Relena Darlian. She will never be the naive, sheltered schoolgirl she once was, but she will not be this person either.
“Your father would have been proud of you.” She wonders what the man who offered her the compliment would think if he knew that the father whose pride she wishes for is not King Peacecraft.
Author: ingvild
Characters: Relena
Rating/Word Count: G, 709 words
Summary: Set during the series when Relena was spreading the message of peace around. An exploration of her thoughts and motives.
A/N: The problem with getting a prompt that consists of nothing more than your favourite character’s name is that there are too many things you want to write. I had to pick one. (I think character thought/motive exploration might become my theme for this summer’s challenges.)
“Your father would have been proud of you.”
Relena nods her acceptance of the compliment to the middle-aged state leader she has spent the last few hours in discussion with, and gets up to leave. The white coat which is a sign of a high-ranking member of the Peacecraft royal house is surprisingly cool in the summer heat, but the collar is a little too high and feels constrictive around her throat.
It doesn’t affect her ability to speak, so she has refrained from commenting on it. Still, the coat has become symbolic of her position these days. It is not meant to be an inconvenience to her, and it aids her in her work (her position, because it encourages people to listen, and the coat, because it makes her look professional and poised and not out of her place). Relena is all too aware that she is thirty years younger than the youngest government officials that she has been talking to, and that she is one of very few females, so she uses what authority she can get in order to make her way into these talks. Little after little, her name is being spread, and getting people to listen is getting easier.
Still, she feels constrained, trapped. This is the only thing she can do to make the world better, the only thing she can do to make the world a more peaceful place. But it is slow and cumbersome work, and she cannot in good conscience convince people that she knows what is best, because the only thing she is sure of these days is that peace is and must be a group effort, and if there is one thing she has learned over her short years it is that people are more likely to fight for something (however non-violent that fighting might be) if they have had an active role in creating it.
So she admits that she is still trying to find her own way, and that the path she is taking is dangerous and may not succeed, and she makes her plea to the world leaders who are willing to listen: help me. We can only find the right road to take if we all work together.
She makes the same entreaty to the students at her school. Somehow, only the daughters of the world leaders and other important people have come to attend. She wonders if the reason the sons are being held back is that their parents and sponsors want to have an ace up their sleeves in case pacifism doesn’t work this time either. She cannot quite blame them, not when she has turned a blind eye to Miss Noin’s building of an underground mobile suit army. She hopes that it will never come to the point where these suits are necessary, but Relena has accepted responsibility for the people of Sank and the students at her Academy.
Her biological father, King Peacecraft, would probably not approve. But Relena was three years old when the Sank Kingdom was destroyed the first time, and everything she knows of it comes from Pagan’s stories and the documents stored away in the attic or hidden in between the poetry books in the library, and she believes there is one large difference between herself and her late father:
Relena is practical.
She knows the importance of getting personally involved, of offering sanctuary to the people who need it, of building bridges between people and of moving their hearts. She knows the importance of becoming expendable.
When Relena is finished, she will no longer be necessary for peace; she will be only one person among many working towards a goal that they all share. She hopes that the day may come when the Sank Kingdom could be destroyed again and it would not matter. Perhaps then, she can shed this coat and this name and go back to being Relena Darlian. She will never be the naive, sheltered schoolgirl she once was, but she will not be this person either.
“Your father would have been proud of you.” She wonders what the man who offered her the compliment would think if he knew that the father whose pride she wishes for is not King Peacecraft.