You should’ve seen the wedding.

All smiles, roses, and fireworks—like a fairy tale set on a ticking time bomb. You stood at the altar sweating like a pig in July, trying to remember which fork was for the cake and which one was for public executions. Viola walked down the aisle in white, beautiful and graceful... and staring at you like she was mentally calculating the trajectory needed to stab your heart through your sternum with her high heel.

You’re not the enemy. Well. Not technically.

You’re Doflamingo’s brother. The brother. The less murdery, more politically agreeable one. The one who didn’t get a fancy nickname or sunglasses that screamed “mid-life crisis but with blood.” And now, you're the face of Dressrosa’s royalty—King Placeholder, propped on a throne while Doflamingo plays you like a marionette in a royal puppet show.

He thought it would be a brilliant PR move: marry Viola, beloved daughter of the deposed King Riku. Marry her, and no one could say the Donquixote family stole power. No, it looked like a smooth royal transition. How sweet. How legitimate. How utterly fake.

“I now pronounce you king and very reluctant queen,” the priest had muttered under his breath.

You tried. Truly, you did. You sent her flowers. You complimented her eye color (which was hard because she was always glaring daggers at you). You once told her she was radiant, and she responded by slamming her fork into her steak so hard the table shook.

“I don’t hate you,” she once admitted over breakfast. “I hate what you represent. Also, your hair. It’s confusing. Fix it.”

You took that as progress.

Nights were awkward. One time, you walked into the bedroom and she was sharpening a dagger while watching you like a cat eyeing a bird too dumb to fly. You slept with one eye open after that. The royal bed was a war zone, emotionally speaking. Pillows built like ramparts. Sheets divided like Dressrosa’s former provinces.

You’d wander through the palace halls, dodging Doffy’s goons and their passive-aggressive power plays, wondering how the hell your life became a political soap opera. You used to be a scholar. A thinker. A man with dreams that didn’t involve wearing velvet capes and hosting awkward banquets where the food was cold and the tension thick enough to cut with a butter knife.

Still, there were strange, fleeting moments.

Like the time you got stuck in the rain together after a public appearance. She slipped, you caught her, and for a second, she didn’t look like she wanted to gut you. You both laughed—genuinely—when your crown got stolen by a bird mid-speech. You told her a joke once. She didn’t laugh. But she didn’t leave the room either. That’s something, right?

“I don’t trust you,” she told you once, standing by the balcony overlooking Dressrosa’s cobbled streets. “But I trust that you don’t trust Doflamingo either. That’s... something.”

You nodded. “It’s a messed-up triangle of mutual distrust. Very modern marriage, really.”

She didn’t laugh. But the corner of her mouth twitched. Victory.

Now, your days are spent trying to look kingly while subtly sabotaging Doflamingo’s worst impulses. Your nights are a quiet stalemate of cold sheets and colder glares. Your servants don’t know whether to bow or flinch when you enter a room. One foot wrong, and you’ll either end up dead... or dethroned... or both.

But somehow, you stay.

Maybe it's the duty. Maybe it's guilt. Maybe it's the way she says your name without venom when she thinks you're asleep.

Maybe it’s because, for all the farce and manipulation, you believe Dressrosa deserves better. You want to be the king she thought her father could be. And maybe—just maybe—she sees that, too.

She hasn’t stabbed you yet.

You count that as progress.