REELING AND WRITHING XXI: "KARMA COMMEDIA"

REELING AND WRITHING
or,
Miss Dermark's 2015 Advent Calendar

DAY TWENTY-ONE

"KARMA COMMEDIA"
or
MISHEARD LYRIC + GUNDAM WING + 30YW + COMMEDIA = GREAT IDEA

Quatre Winner's surname in this historical AU might as well have been Stark. To round up all of the relevant calamities that have happened in his short life:

• Lost his mother in childbirth, shortly after he was born
• All of his sisters left home to marry
• Had to flee his birthplace of France (to be more precise, their ancestral home, an estate on the Atlantic west coast) for being Protestant, persecuted by Richelieu (fortunately, he and his father found a new home thanks to one of the Winner sisters/daughters, who resided in Magdeburg with her spouse)
• Was homeschooled and more intelligent than any other lad in Magdeburg: had acquaintances galore, but no friends at all
• The year he, aged 14, finally was to leave for Leipzig University to meet his equals was 1631: the year of the siege and the storming of Magdeburg
• During the above-mentioned storming, his widowed father, older sister (also ravished), brother-in-law, twin sister (ostensibly), and all of his servants were killed... SPOILER ALERT: Well, actually his sister Iria was left for dead and survived, becoming a reputed healer, and guardian to Quatre's fraternal twin Catherine Winner (another Magdeburg survivor), and the young heir will reunite with both sisters...
• ...all of these misdeeds being caused by a backstabbing retainer to the household, a steward surnamed Iscariote (so short-lived during the storming that his agenda remains a secret for a long time)
• ...and the Winner townhouse burned to the ground, depriving Quatre of his home and fortune
• Furthermore, to be spared an unpleasant fate, he swapped clothes with his twin sister... and, in drag, was ravished by a drunken Croat, then by the rest of the unit (equally inebriated), and finally by Count Pappenheim himself (also intoxicated)
• Entered Leipzig not as a student, but as an occupying conqueror, against his will
• Received his baptism of fire at Breitenfeld, as a private pikeman, aged but 14
• Was made a POW of Sweden at the same battle of Breitenfeld, then appointed as orderly to an insufferable, conceited, and cold officer (Zechs, here a bastard son of Gustavus Adolphus)
• Lost his innocence due to all of these debacles piling up (and who wouldn't)?

Trowa and Catherine Barton-Bloom, two stateless orphans from a commedia dell'arte troupe, travel with the Swedish Army, as well as playing the tricky valet and the tricky maid on stage. When Quatre learns to know them, hope is rekindled. They've thought of adding a new character, a naive and trusting valet (who is also Trowa's rival on stage), to their plays, and the blond stripling fits all the requirements to play the part on stage.
Now add that, in between one play and another, the Austro-Swedish phase of the 30YW still rages on...

The title is a misheard titular lyric from Culture Club I misheard as a child: "Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma commedia..."
This AU is rather popular and equally painful, with loss of innocence as a central theme (the very Dickensian character arc of Quatre in this 'verse)... how can you play an innocent character on stage when you're bleeding within? And oodles of Othello quotes. And a diverse cast of OCs, historical characters, and Gundam Wing characters alike, coupled with echoes of Westeros...set against the backdrop of an epoch as stormy and riveting as the Thirty Years' War.