wolqotd #3
Today's wolqotd is from Zormar Rivaks on bluesky:
What is your WoL/OC perspective on having children? They want to be a parent someday or are they filled with dread and anxiety on the prospect?
With whom do they want to raise them?
So let's talk about Shiro again.
Shiro deliberately chose to not bear his own children. He's always going to reject the premise of "bearing heirs" due to his own personal trauma and the fear that pregnancy would cause life-threatening detriment to him. For the longest time he was afraid of being a parent at all — due to his own trauma from being abused by his father, Shiro was scared that he could never be a father himself (despite all of Doma already bearing witness to how kind and gentle he was with children).
At some point after Endwalker, however, he did end up finding and caring for an abandoned tiger auspice child who lost her parents during the Final Days. When Shiro realised he wasn't going to be able to only care for the child temporarily - and that no one except for him, being part auspice himself, is equipped to care for her, he was terrified at first. He ended up getting a lot of support, from both auspice and human communities alike, and eventually found that perhaps fatherhood wasn't so horrifying.
(Note: the following is all headcanon territory. This is inherently embarrassing please be nice)
I hesitated to write a little more in-depth about his second child, because his second daughter was born under quite a lot of pressure and dilemma (and weird clone bullshit); in the wake of Doma's liberation from Garlemald, many noble houses began vying for power and influence in the Emperor's court, and with the Takegane household being precarious as it is after the occupation, that soft war for power became more intense. The goal: whosoever gains Hien's hand in marriage will hold more sway and power in Doma's governance. By itself the task is impossible considering Hien already made his decision to make Shiro his partner, which thus already secured the Takegane clan's standing more firmly in a position of power.
However, the second challenge presents itself: Shiro doesn't want to bear any children. If the idea of caring for one is already daunting to him, the idea of carrying one to term terrifies him. Sex was already detrimental to Shiro, and he needed much care and medication after, every time. He was worried that pregnancy would put too much strain to his body that it would endanger himself and his theoretical baby - a fear not unfounded as there were meticulous records of members of his family with the same ailments as him, often dying of childbirth and sometimes together with the child inside them. And so it goes that the other noble houses and clans began scrambling to select daughters and sons willing to be surrogates to the next heir of Doma - by this, if Hien (or his court) chooses a suitable surrogate parent, then the surrogate and the clan they come from would hold considerable power in the Kienkan.
Once again Hien found himself at the crossroads of having to choose his heart or play along with the obvious political "war" at hand for the good of his country. The latter was more distressing to him, considering it would absolutely make a pariah out of Shiro and the Takegane clan at large, and he wasn't ignorant of how much some of the more influential noble clans resented them - some even holding that resentment for generations. It didn't help that on the Takegane family side, Shiro's older sister and former matriarch of the clan was pressuring him into just biting the bullet and bear an heir between them, both out of solidifying their position in the Emperor's court and because she didn't want Shiro to be humiliated any further by what was obviously an intricate effort to get rid of him specifically.
The solution came unexpectedly from a very unlikely source: the Intoners. In a private audience between Hien, Shiro and members of the Takegane clan, and his trusted advisors, all six of them explained that they could be the perfect surrogate that would retain Shiro's position as the Emperor's right hand and partner since they're all a genetic match to Shiro. Despite the strangeness of the circumstances (at this time, they were still trying to wrap their heads around the Intoners' existence), Shiro and Hien decided they'd go ahead with the plan. Sirius was the closest to Shiro in terms of behavior, manner of speaking and looks, so he gracefully took on Shiro's place for a time to keep up with appearances.
This feels like so much work just to get a bunch of nobles off their backs and allow Hien and Shiro the grace of being together in a way they want to — without Shiro risking his life to do so, but in the end it was worth it. Shiro loved his second child like his own, and turned out to be a great father to both girls anyway. It was still amusing to him that his second child was born in such strange circumstances.
(As for Sirius - he found the entire journey of pregnancy and childbirth rather enlightening, and extensively wrote about how he'd do it all over again, but perhaps with someone he would have cared about more.)