Chronicles of a Tired Soul
is a Twisted-Wonderland fanfic written on Archive of Our Own by Dragoness14.
Following his transmigration in a cat boy's body, the soul now called Leona Kingscholar just wants to rest peacefully. Unfortunately, he will have to deal with a country's worth of superstitious assholes, an ungodly cheerful brother and a bunch of Disney villains haunting his mindscape when he's trying to sleep.
Contains the following tropes
- Abhorrent Admirer: Rook succeeds in turning everyone of Savanaclaw against him courtesy of paying creepy attention to his dormmates and watching them in their sleep. Even Vil isn't too impressed by his behaviour, even if he does agree to the transfer to Pomefiore.
- Apocalypse Maiden: The Afterglow Savanna strongly suspects Leona from being the prophesied second prince who will unleash destruction upon the country. Said candidate is horrified to learn of the prophecy as he understands his survival is hanging on a thread.
- Bad Bedroom, Bad Life: Royal bodyguard Kadija is aghast when she sees the second prince's bedroom only has the bare necessities in furniture, pointing just how much Leona is neglected by his parents.
- Big Brother Instinct:
- Farena is deeply unhappy when he learns the criminal neglect faced by his younger brother and does his utmost to ensure Leona will be safe and educated. Unfortunately, his ability to provide this diminishes with time, and twenty years old Leona deems him more overbearing and annoying than a genuine help.
- Inverted with Yuu, who's younger than Leona in both his lives and actually was his half-sister before his reincarnation. She's furious to learn Savanaclaw is scheming to sabotage the Spelldrive tournament behind their housewarden's back, especially when he's too ill to notice anything out of the ordinary, and frets about the odds of Savanaclaw's antics hurting Leona.
- Blessed with Suck: Leona has been granted power by the Seven, gifting him magic potential truly off the charts. Thing is, that much power wrecked his health and causes people to be terrified of him as the likely destroyer sun meant to ruin the Savanna.
- Changeling Tale: Shades of this when Lilia enters the story — Farena does willingly offer preteen Leona to be fostered in Briar Valley, but he only did it under the assumption that it was a temporary agreement. As everyone familiar with The Fair Folk can tell you, fairies don't like to give the children back...
- Dangerous Drowsiness: According Jack, a beastman sleeping too much is very likely to be ill. It's confirmed with Leona having more and more trouble to remain awake and alert as his Power Incontinence is worsening.
- Delicate and Sickly:
- Courtesy of his extreme amount of magical potential, Leona is easily exhausted and suffering chronic pain. It becomes a plot point when Savanaclaw decides to cheat in the Spelldrive tournament, as their housewarden is too sick to rein them in or even notice their plan.
- This isn't a problem limited to his second life, as he used to have heart problems before his rebirth — and it's strongly hinted it killed him over several years. Though it's later revealed that he ultimately died by poison by his half family, with his heart problems being caused by poison.
- I Just Want to Be Free: Leona really wishes to leave the neglect he constantly faces in the Savanna as the second prince behind.
- Irony: When Jack is sorted in Savanaclaw, Leona grouses he will have to watch the wolf beastman and prevent him from causing trouble. The whole dormitory later engages in a campaign of sabotage to win the Spelldrive tournament, except for Jack who's disgusted by their behaviour.
- Lethal Chef: A collective case for the Savanaclaw dormitory, to the point that one of the students attempting to use the kitchen terrifies Ruggie. Jack later confesses his dormmates have weaponized their incompetence by causing a cooking incident to prevent the housewarden to notice they were sabotaging the Spelldrive tournament.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Leona remains fully unaware of his own dormitory engaging in blatant cheating to win the Spelldrive tournament — his students won't tell him because they know he would disagree with the plan, while Yuu and her friends fear his already delicate health will take a nosedive from learning the bad news.
- My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours: How Leona deals with Riddle. The Hearstlabyul housewarden is deeply irked by the strategy.
- Narnia Time: One year on Earth is a decade on Twisted Wonderland, as seen when Yuu is reunited with twenty years old Leona and reveals only a couple of years have passed for her.
- No Social Skills: How much of a disaster is Malleus? He's genuinely floored to learn you're supposed to say hello when meeting someone.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Yuu literally beat the blot out of the rampaging Riddle with a baseball bat.
- Overzealous Underling: Leona often finds himself reigning his fellow Savanaclaw students' enthusiasm in ensuring the dorm will be "worthy". It's Played for Drama when Ruggie hears Malleus challenging the lion beastman to give him a good Spelldrive match and decides to engage in sabotage to ensure Savanaclaw's victory, without even asking Leona's opinion.
- Parental Favouritism: The Ruling Couple of the Afterglow Savanna is very much guilty of this, which deeply upsets Farena. That's because the newborn Leona already having an Unique Magic and swiftly using that to wreck the birthing room has terrified them, pointing at Leona being the prophesied sun meant to destroy the kingdom.
- Parental Neglect: Leona's parents barely visit their second son and don't even care about giving him more than a room with a bed, to their firstborn's utter dismay. Leona isn't bothered too much and ignore them back.
- Parental Substitute: When Farena arranges for his younger brother to be fostered in Briar Valley, Lilia immediately takes up the role with gusto and later makes very clear to the first prince he has no intention whatsoever to relinquish his claim upon Leona.
- Parents as People:
- Farena is extremely upset by his parents doing their best to pretend Leona doesn't exist because they lovingly raised their firstborn, so he has evidence they can be Good Parents, but they just won't put the effort with their younger son.
- Farena himself grows to be a sibling variant. His wish to protect his baby brother doesn't lessen, but he cannot bring himself to acknowledge Leona has matured and isn't wholly dependent on him anymore, resulting in Farena being smothering and kind of an annoyance for the second prince.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Fae have the concept of Rarity — a mortal who will complete them on the intellectual and behavioural level, basically a friendly soulmate.
- Power Incontinence: From the very day of his birth, Leona has struggled with control issues regarding his magic. Being blessed by the Seven didn't help him with that.
- "Reborn as Villainess" Story: Leona quickly understands his new life is supposed to follow the same beats as The Lion King (1994) and immediately decides he would rather not be the bad guy in the story. Unfortunately, the Savannah really insists to treat him as such.
- Reincarnate in Another World: Leona isn't angsting too much about his rebirth in a magical dimension, likely because his previous life was less than ideal.
- Reluctant Ruler: Leona isn't interested in taking responsibility and only becomes the Savanaclaw housewarden because his dormmates literally begged him to do so, reasoning he couldn't botch the job worse than the previous holder of the title.
- Shout-Out: The previous captain to the Spelldrive team was a merman named Jones Davidson, whose body is slowly rejecting the potion allowing merpeople to walk on land — an homage to Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: It's historically seen as indicating a connection with the realm of the dead, or a mark of divine favour. Crowley having true gold eyes is quite suspicious as a consequence.
- Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Leona unlocks his Unique Magic on his sixth birthday, when an assassin attempts to kill toddler Kalim when he's playing with the little tyke. That's also how he gets his facial scar.
- Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Yuu and Malleus are utterly livid when they learn Ruggie went behind his housewarden's back to sabotage the Spelldrive tournament, calling him an Ungrateful Bastard who abused his patron's trust and bad health to get his way. Even worse, when the cheating is exposed for everyone to know, the stress and shock cause Leona to overblot.
