Work Text:
It had been a while since Edgar last had his portrait painted so his advisors agreed it was time for something new. At the very least, the king of Britain should have a painting of himself without the baby fat and the eager glow of youth.
He sat by the window per request of the painter he had commissioned - an aging man with gnarled, bony fingers that wrapped around his wooden brush as if they had been carved together - and remained stoically watching the candles on the wall burn themselves down. On occasion, the painter would request he tilt his head slightly or adjust his hands. Otherwise, Edgar was perfectly still.
When the painter was done, he simply stepped back and bid Edgar to judge the piece at his leisure.
The king was surprised to find his bearings, indeed, appeared to be that of a king. Golden light streamed in from the window, illuminating his wavy hair in the manner resembling a halo without turning blasphemous. With one hand, he gripped a fine silver dueling sword, with the other, a thick brown textbook. His cheeks were high, full and rosy, the sign of a young, healthy lad. Not a smudge of dirt to be found. His eyes reflected the candlelight. They were not sunken in from many sleepless nights, hollow for fear of seeing the ghosts of the kingdom’s past or raw red from a very private grief.
Edgar wanted the portrait hung next to the first, which prior had been hung in the castle in Gloucester. The old earl seated, with the new earl and the current earl/king standing on his left and right, all in the throws of youth and staring intently as if each had just been told their childhood pet had been drowned.
His father had been the type of man to keep many portraits of himself, some more fanciful than others. The one he had commissioned off a poorer artist, where his eyes were wide and wild and he leaned against a desk where a bust of Socrates was propped up, was moved from the musty library and hung in the hall near the king’s chambers. Amidst a sea of gold and gloom, that one in particular best captured his father’s unconventional spirit, at least to the best of Edgar’s memory. The reds, greens and golds did their best to brighten the dreary gray stones in the wintertime. Even the old earl of Gloucester’s eyes appeared less deep brown and more light amber. The more Edgar saw the painting, the more it superseded his memories. Brown? Amber? The color didn’t matter, but the delight did.
Edmund, on the other hand, had only one portrait of himself and just himself. If Edgar remembered properly, it had been painted around the time of Edmund’s birthday and shipped back home to Britain per the request of their father as a way of seeing how the boy’s studies had affected him. In hindsight, the details that had once made his younger brother appear elegant and refined now twisted to seem cruel and cold. One gloved hand rested upon the pommel of the silver rapier at his waist (he had reportedly been a master of fencing back in college), the other on his hip. His dark hair fell across his pale face and hung loosely around his shoulders, like the mane of some shadowy creature. His narrowed eyes remained the same, though, and gleamed with a wicked intellect. The corners of his mouth appeared ever so slightly upturned, and what Edgar had initially mistaken for a playful gentleness he now saw as the smirk of a cunning schemer. There were even parts of a chessboard scattered on a desk in the background. Edgar couldn’t in conscience destroy or sell off the painting, but he didn’t want to ever see it again either. He truly hoped his brother’s soul had earned a place in heaven with a dying act of goodness (no matter how futile it had turned out), but every time he saw those eyes and that smile, his doubts returned.
Both of their mothers had paintings, although they were very different in quality. The wife of the Earl of Gloucester had her wavy brown hair done up with flowers. Her lips seemed as if they were about to break intona warm grin. She was feminine, charming and surrounded with just enough luxury to hint at a great amount of wealth. Her painting was located in the former earl’s study between a wooden image of the cross and a marble statuette of Bacchus and his satyrs. The mistress of Gloucester had a small painting of just her face which had been hung in the corner of that same study. She was plain and maybe a bit unkempt, yet undeniably attractive by most sensibilities. Edgar sent the first picture to be hung next to the painting of his father atop a brown stallion (which went by the name of Chestnut and had died a week after the painting was completed) and the second picture to be put in that unconventional place he had sent the portrait of Edmund.
He wanted the second picture destroyed and did not know why he hesitated. Perhaps it was like his father had repeated to unwilling listeners: the whoreson must be acknowledged. Logic follows the whore the son is a son of must also be acknowledged. Edgar wished he had a portrait of his brother, but as it stood he only had one of the bastard who had broken their father’s heart.
So Edgar took his new portrait of his old self and put it in some hall of the castle where he would not have to think about it and truly consider what he had lost. He took the one of his child self, standing to the right of his beaming father with his wild gray whiskers and to the left of what might have once been his brother, scowling and gloomy, and had it hung in a hallway that led to the gardens.
Every morning, he passed by a picture of the old king and his three daughters. The king sat on a grand wooden chair and the three girls stood to either side (the elder two, the brunette and the redhead, on the left and the youngest, the blonde, on his right). The king was stony and imposing, a far cry from the rambling, pitiful madman who wept greatly and cursed profusely. Edgar wondered if he should leave it up out of respect for the dead (the whole family, dead within the week). And if the earl of Gloucester, his bastard, his whore, his wife and the joyous parts of his firstborn were allowed to live through oil on canvas, shouldn’t they all?