Spawn

@Thoth

"Yes, she is." More than just any one of them, though. The queen, damn it. She just had to be the damn Queen of the Northern Seas, empress of the deep levels, whatever other titles her and her court gave her... Augh, this was terribly troublesome, and he knew it was basically all his fault. Her's, too, so they were in on this together but he hated it all the same.

"Yes, Luca is my child." But Ulrich frowned a little at the second statement with a bit of a huff. "And I have been raising him to the best of my ability, thank you." Which meant running a kingdom while he was away, dealing with his son's angry mother and dealing with his son himself. Emma was always saying Luca missed him, he needed to come more often, etc...

"It is a very complicated story." So much politics involved that he wouldn't even begin to scratch the surface before Nicolas had to retire. "But the long and the short of it is that Emma is the Queen of the Northern Seas. If you've been listening, that would be the faction I am currently at war with."

@Thoth

Ulrich heaved another deep, wary sigh. This was one of the many reasons why he'd have preferred to keep politics and personal things separate, especially to the humans. "You were hired for the political matters, not the personal ones. I see my child on my own time, when his mother and I agree." It happened. Sometimes. Usually Emma was the one nagging him to come more often and Ulrich was the one who had his hands full.

"You don't need to worry about the Northern Panthalassians being on the island for the same reason that you haven't seen any Southern. There was a contract drawn up. The only ones setting foot or fin on this island is myself, the Queen and Luca." If one side were to invade, then the other may come, but that hadn't happened and he highly doubted the Queen would allow it if Luca were involved.

"And things are quite a bit more convoluted than that." Namely the fact that they were technically distantly related, and that genetic memory never let them forget what one branch had done to the other. They weren't eagerly scrambling for peace; they were a warmongering species, after all. "We may come upon peace, but likely not for a long time. It is one of the reasons I'm on this island at all, really."

@Thoth

Ulrich's expression remained as stoic as ever, unflinching even when Nicolas gave an exasperated sigh and rolled his eyes. His pride told him, repeatedly, that he'd been king for longer than Nicolas, his parents and likely his grandparents had been alive. He knew what he was doing, especially when it came down to his own child and the finicky issue that was the mother.

"She is not my wife." The notion of 'marriage' wasn't entirely lost on Ulrich, but Panthalassians didn't really have anything similar. Even among royalty, there was no marriage; heritage was a little more important, acknowledgement even more so. It didn't matter if Ulrich had dozens upon dozens of children, only the one he acknowledged as heir, no matter who the mother was, really counted towards anything. If the mother was the lowest of mud suckers and he liked the child enough to count him, then said child was instantly more important than any 'royal blooded' he'd sired but didn't want to acknowledge.

However, he liked Luca, even if he didn't like the mother.

"Anything else you'd like to harass me on, considering you were determined enough to snoop in on my conversation?"