Ferris Castenie

Older brother to Viv Castenie. Ferris Vivaldi Castenie is heir to the Castenie duchy and inherited it after his mother's death (that he may or may not have been directly responsible for).

let me copy and paste my brainstorming from discord

Ferris really starts to spiral after Viv gets married off to Lazuli. He's stuck at home with his mother. Despite them not having the most healthy relationship Viv was really his emotional anchor
His mother is trying to prepare him to take over the duchy and her abuse has kind of gotten worse. Her plan is to hand the duchy to him soon but puppet him from behind the scenes
Ohh!! Maybe the noble I wanted to base off Choke by IDKHow could be their mom. That might fit
Ferris and Viv were kind of awful to other people and sometimes to each other but they were all the other had, you know? They had the mutual experience of having to live under their mother's tyranny and that united them in a way
So when Viv was booted out Ferris took it really hard. Got far more angry, and more prone to hurting others. His anger was usually much quieter than Viv's, and came and went, but after she left he basically was silently angry constantly.
He also started seeing everyone as his enemy. Viv wasn't there to have his back anymore and he felt completely alone. He lashed out a lot more, even and especially at the people who were actually trying to help him
Viv stayed away from home for a long while after getting married to Lazuli, but she finally comes home to visit Ferris one day. She's changed a good bit, being in a home that's you know, not run by someone with a villain theme song. She's scared of Ferris and is trying to talk to him but all he sees is that she's different and gets it into his head that "she's against him too"
Wait- I think what happens is Viv comes to visit Ferris every so often and their meetings go fairly well. Though each one Ferris is worse and worse and Viv is better and better, and Ferris doesn't like that.

So then Ferris gets in the duel with Aurelia, and gets his ear chopped off. His mother is swell at him for picking a fight for no good reason and then losing, "being a disgrace to the house".
So Viv hears what happened and instantly comes to check on Ferris. She's very worried about him overall but especially thAT HE GOT His eAR cuT OFf, but when talking to him she admits that she also thinks he was in the wrong, and this totally sets him off
"NOW YOU'RE AGAINST ME TOO?? ITS JUST BECAUSE IT WAS AURELIA ISN'T IT? YOU explative, YOU STILL WANT HIM EVEN AFTER WHAT HE DID TO YOU. YOU'D CHOSE THAT explative PRINCE OVER YOUR OWN BROTHER! "
And Viv is very hurt by this because, well obviously, and she'd actually gotten over Aurelia for a long time by now. And when she tries to protest Ferris interrupts her and swears at her some more. And insults Lazuli a bunch for "turning her against him" etc.
And it comes to a peak when Ferris actually throws a very sharp letter opener on the table at her, which barely misses her head. Viv realizes she is not safe at all here and runs

Ferris basically snaps almost completely after this duel. He ends up killing his mother. I think he tries to cover it up but it's well known by his staff that he did it. Idk where their dad is at this point, maybe he ran away a long time ago,

_{(about an inter-duchy conflict)
-Unsure exactly how it started but when Ferris's mother and head of the duchy at the time died it would have passed to Ferris and not everyone would be to happy about that. Especially Lazuli because he knows Ferris is unstable and "also tried to kill my wife, his own sister! Who does that?? Psychos that's who"
Not sure if Lazuli or Ferris incited the conflict, it could go either way honestly. But once they did start actually fighting Ferris was totally cutthroat, cruel, and inhumane about it
I'm thinking that maybe some nobles originally were on his side because they didn't want the balance of power in the region to be upset and have Lazuli conquer and assimilate Ferris's territory because that would mean they'd have a neighbor that was much bigger and more united than before. I'm sure there's economic and other reasons for them to want that but I don't really know how to go about figuring those out
I'm sure there's also ample economic and political reasons the conflict happened too. Not just personal bad blood. I mean, I political marriage between Viv and Lazuli had been needed to strengthen relations so there was probably already some tension there before}
I think Ferris would get to a point of just wanting a deal as much damage to Lazuli and the stuff he cares about as possible. The stuff he cares about being his lands and people. I don't know if he'd actively want to hurt Viv. Him narrowly missed killing her with that basically knife had been an accident really, he wasn't thinking, he didn't actually want Viv dead. Especially by his own hands. But Lazuli heard he threw a knife at Viv's head and that's all he needed to hear

Lazuli doesn't want to turn it into a larger war. His beef is with Ferris. But it be honest, his family has been wanting to take over Ferris's family's territory for a long time now, and so there's a little bit of that in there(edited)
I think Ferris ends up doing something pretty much universally agreed upon as horrific and the duchies that were neutral or on his side turn against him

I think Lazuli avoids costing lives as much as possible. Some other members of his family might be more whatever about it, and just want to take the territory but Lazuli is like "excuse me, these troops we're talking about are people and also last I checked I was the head of the duchy?"
It'd be a lie to say Lazuli wasn't in it for the political gains but he also was in it because Ferris was unstable and couldn't be allowed to run amok
And also because he was mad at him and his family for hurting Viv
[3:40 AM]
Also side note. But I think the reason Ferris hated Aurelia so much originally was because he had a crush on him as a kid. And he didn't know how to deal with having feelings for someone so he went to his default which is "be angry and hate them"
And that whole thing must have made Viv being in a relationship with him about 10 times more awkward
Aurelia waves at Ferris
Ferris internally: doki doki "gosh he's so stupid I hate his stupid face. And his stupid stupid smile"
Tfw you insult your childhood crush's wife and he challenges you to a duel and cuts off your ear