He hates his brothers. He realizes this is not right, he's not supposed to hate them, but he does, all twelve of them. Half of the dozen of them aren't even his full brothers. His father is a drunken, lecherous pig who likes to flaunt how much he dislikes his queen and makes it a mission to impregnate the youngest maids who are foolish enough to take employment in the castle.

And it is apparent that lascivious old men can still reproduce like dogs, for all the king can plant in a whore's belly is boys, and there are many of them. The king takes pride in this and also enjoys flouting custom; he legitimizes as many of the bastards he sires as he can and installs them in the royal castle.

The queen, Hans's mother, hates her husband as much as he hates her, so she makes it her own mission to brutalize the bastards in whatever subtle manner she can get away with.

Aside from outright maiming and murder, there is almost no limit to what she can do. Hans is lucky that he came out of her womb than some peasant girl's. He does not appreciate his fortune as much as he should—he is still the youngest and thirteenth in line. He won't even get some worthless ceremonial title or land because they'll all be distributed to the mongrel mix that makes up his pathetic family.

The real princes, the spawn that came out of the queen, take it upon themselves to torment the bastards. There is some advantage on their side because their father at least bred the first three heirs off the queen before turning his attentions elsewhere—the oldest three, who ignore Hans, are large, but they know who the real enemies are once they come of age, so any fight that occurs is always with one eye on a full brother and the other on some bastard.

Every day is miserable. While the queen prefers her sons and would like to decorate the throne room with the heads of the bastards she is forced to reside with, she reserves what little of her affections she is capable of for the crown prince, Nicholas. Nicholas is a spoilt brute and is only matched in his brawn by the next son, Harold, or Harry as he prefers to be called. Neither of them resemble their father much, but it's just as well since it's only the bastards that seem to have inherited the old man's looks. The queen hates them all the more for it, and prefers her own sons all the more for having the good sense to not share similar features with their father.

Whenever there is a fight, Hans is always thrown in. With thirteen boys, six of whom are bastards, the numbers are uneven, but since Hans is smaller than the smallest bastard, it is mutually agreed that the fight is fair. The fights never end until there is a clear winner or they are stopped by the castle guard, which is almost never. Sometimes the bastards win, sometimes they do not. Most of the time, they do not.

This pleases the queen and the king is indifferent. He has several spares to replace the crown prince should Nicholas die.

Hans's life consists of fights, wary glances over his shoulder, and finding new places to eat meals. The bastards often get tainted food in some way or another, and they like to steal the meals off the smaller princes. The servants are too terrified to lie, so they will tell if pressed that they saw Hans. It is difficult to find new hiding places while avoiding all attention, so Hans only manages to get safe places half the time.

The day he turns twelve is when he is visited by an angel.

Her name is Marie, she says, when he finds her in the castle gardens after another fight is done. The only females he has ever encountered are the maids, and they are much fewer now since some of the bastards and princes are now showing interest in girls—even the older ones are visibly nervous with over a dozen hardened and brutal animals roaming the castle. And he knows Nicholas and Harry enjoy making sport on which maid they can rape first.

"Your eye!" The angel exclaims when she lays eyes on him.

Hans touches his eye. It feels normal, but tender. Then he realizes that he has perpetual black eyes and this is not normal to people who are not aware of what happens in the castle.

"I'm fine," he answers stiffly. The angel is a lady if her attire is anything to go by. His tutor said gentlemen bow before ladies, but there are no gentlemen in the family. Hans doesn't bow.

"Who are you?" He asks. He tastes copper and touches his lip—it is split. Also a perpetual condition.

"My name is Marie," the angel says. She has golden hair, and white skin, and she looks clean, and lovely, and Hans can't look away from her. She looks at his mouth and fishes out a handkerchief. She holds it out to him. "I'm your sister."

Hans stares at the handkerchief and does not take it. He doesn't understand why she is offering it to him. Why would he want to stain that pretty piece of cloth with his filthy mongrel blood? How could something so pretty be related to him?

"Bastard?" He says. He doesn't mean it as an insult, but Marie gasps at the word.

"I meant, who is your mother?" He asks, uncertain now.

"Why, the queen," Marie says. "We have the same mother. I lived with my—our aunt for some time after Harold was born." Hans does a few quick calculations in his head: Nicholas is twenty—one and Harry is nineteen, almost twenty, so Marie was a little younger. Around eighteen, perhaps.

Hans stares at her, trying to find a resemblance to either of his parents in her. There is some similarity to his mother, but he cannot imagine Marie sharing the same blood as his cruel mother.

"Who is your father?" He asks.

Marie gives him a strange look. "The king. We have the same parents." She bends down to look him in the eye and all he can see is beautiful blue, like the sea. "And what is your name, little brother?"

"How do you know I'm your brother?" Hans says suspiciously.

Marie smiles and gestures to his shirt. "Even if you're a bit dirty, that shirt is made for a prince. Also, you resemble our mother and you're just how I would have imagined a little brother of mine would look like." She smiles and Hans temporarily forgets her comment about how he looks like their mother. He hates his mother almost as much as he hates his father, but he hates his brothers the most.

Marie stays in the castle with them. She gets her own room and the king ignores her as he ignores the entire royal brood of misbegotten curs. The queen is equally uncaring, only making a snide comment that her sister had the audacity to die before getting Marie married off.

He decides that he does not hate Marie. She is nothing like his family, sweet and gentle. She is the one who reads to him when his eyes are swollen shut, who tends to his bruises with sweet—smelling balms, and sneaks him food from the kitchens when his has been stolen. He is ashamed when she has to clean his face after a fight, and wishes she did not have to live in the castle and witness bastards and princes beating each other like fighting cocks in a ring. But if she did not live with them he would not have met her, so his feelings on her living arrangements are a bit confusing.

What terrifies him the most, though, are the looks Nicholas and Harry have when Marie is in the room or passes by. She is beautiful and Nicholas and Harry have inherited their father's appetites. Marie laughs off his clumsily voiced concerns and says her brothers (they're not her brothers, Hans wants to shout, they're monsters) would never hurt her. And she is right, to a certain point; she has not been accosted or harassed, but that is because the bastards swear off her because she is full—blooded and therefore filthy and beneath them, and the younger princes are not yet showing interest in the fairer sex.

Hans is very afraid. He once saw Nicholas and Harry attack a maid when he was hiding in a closet eating a stale roll. The girl was new and not particularly pretty, but Nicholas didn't care and made Harry hold her down while he rutted. The girl knew better than to scream for help because help would not come. Hans could see her face, defeated and ugly with streaming tears and blotchy cheeks, through the keyhole. The sight stayed with him long after Nicholas and Harry leave, long after the maid struggled to her feet and stumbled out of the room.

He despises the sight, how it churns his belly and makes his palms clammy. She couldn't even fight. She let them take and take and accepted it, because she was ultimately powerless, just the same way anybody who was not going to be king, who was not the largest, or the strongest, was powerless.

Hans knew he was barely above the maid in that regard and it infuriated him. And, when he thinks of Marie, his body goes entirely cold and numb with terror, because she is just as powerless. If Nicholas and Harry wanted her, they would take her because they could.

He cannot allow it. But in the very same instant, he remembers that he is a mere boy of twelve and the smallest in stature. He has no gold, no means to prevent Marie from ending up on that very same table like that maid.

His belly is a cold writhing ball of snakes and he is sick, so sick, that his stale roll comes up on the floor. He heaves and heaves until there is nothing left and Hans curses his weakness that he would be sick now when he needs to go to Marie and do something.

Hans is not able to warn Marie.

He does tell her his fears, but Marie does not believe him, no matter how much he begs. She is too trusting, and he both loves and is exasperated by it.

After a fight breaks out in the wine cellar, the king is furious at the loss of 40 year—old vintage wine and sends nearly all of them off to various boarding schools. Nicholas and Harry are already grown men, so they don't elder ones get the better schools and when the money trickles down to Hans, he gets a half—converted farm for the children of impoverished gentry. Also, there were a few bastards there as well, but Hans doesn't care. He is gripped by horrible imagination of what will happen to Marie. He does not sleep the entire trip to the school.

When he arrives, all the students have decided to hate him because he is neither impoverished or a bastard. He does not bother explaining that he will get nothing when he comes of age other than a useless "Prince" tacked to the front of his name. It is almost exactly like back home, only nobody was nearly as large as Nicholas and Harry and the students are considerably less practiced with their fists than any of the Southern Isles boys were. Hans has learned to be quick to make up for his lack of brawn and avoids most scuffles.

The food is bad and often riddled with weevils. When he cannot avoid confrontation, he gets beaten badly. And in the evenings, he has terrible dreams about Marie being violated like the maid. There is almost no peace for Hans, and he considers running away to save Marie. But again, he will remember he is nothing but a boy with no pocket money and powerless.

So he does not run away. He stays in that school for the next six years, never going home even for visits because his father doesn't care and his mother has Nicholas and Harry and Hans is too much a coward to change anything. He learns the things that a prince needs to learn, like manners and civility and how to pretend and survives the beatings until they eventually stop when he becomes larger and new boys come to the school.

When he becomes a man at eighteen, he finally leaves the school and goes home. In all six years, he has not heard a single shred of news or letter. The only thing that arrives is the meagre quarterly allowance to pay for tuition, which goes straight to the headmaster anyway.

Hans has not forgotten Marie, not when she visits him almost nightly. He is terrified of what he will find.

When he arrives at the castle, he finds his father unrecognizable and in a drunken stupor. The steward tells him that his mother finally won and none of the bastards are allowed to stay in the castle anymore, especially given that his father was never sober enough to countermand her orders. Only Nicholas is in residence and his other brothers are away. The steward does not mention Marie.

Hans thinks he will be sick again, and runs to her room.

She is not there. Her room, which he remembered smelled of roses, smells stale and dead. Her books are not there. Her wardrobe is bereft of dresses. He searches frantically for a sign, any sign, until he hears the door open and his brother's lumbering shadow fall over him.

"Looking for something, you little cunt?" Nicholas says, his words slurring slightly.

Hans stands up slowly and turns.

Nicholas has taken up drink, he notes. He is leaning against the door frame with his shoulder, his broken nose, bloodshot eyes and red cheeks marring otherwise handsome features. And, surprisingly, Nicholas is not that much taller than Hans, though Nicholas's midsection is considerably thicker.

"Where is she?" Hans says.

"Who?"

Hans stares at him, wonders if he is toying with him. But Nicholas does not smirk at him knowingly, just stands there lazily.

"Marie. My—our sister."

Nicholas blinks, then smiles, slowly. "That little bitch?"

Rage fills Hans's head and he must clench his fist and teeth to keep from attacking Nicholas.

"Where is she?" Hans grounds out.

Nicholas shrugs. "Haven't the faintest. Somewhere." He smirks again, ugly and satisfied, because he knows. He knows. "Sweet little piece, that trollop. Did you want to have a go at her—"

Hans does not allow him to finish it. He lunges across the room, blinded by six years of suppressed anger and hate and fear, all his control gone.

Nicholas's reflexes are stagnant from years of excess and complacency, so Hans lands a punch to his jaw. Only Nicholas's hand to the doorframe keeps him from falling backward. There is a monster roaring inside him, a monster that is shaking with bloodlust and fury, a monster that Marie had not seen in him or any of his brothers. Hans hits him again and again, until his arms are weak and Nicholas's face is covered in gore, his nose broken again.

Hans stands up and sees his mother.

She is glaring at him. She opens her mouth to scream at him, but he snarls and takes a step towards her.

She shuts her mouth and steps back, silent.

"He's not dead," Hans says. "He's still breathing. Maybe not for long. Call a doctor." Hans strips off his bloodied gloves and throws them on Nicholas's prone form. Then he goes to Nicholas's room and finds Nicholas's pretty white prince's uniform. It is too large, but that can be fixed.

Hans goes to Nicholas's desk and empties it, every single hidden gold coin that he can find, he takes. Nicholas has been stealing from the royal treasury again, so when Hans is through and weighs the bag of gold in his hand, he knows he will be able to live on this for several years. He knows how to live poorly, now, and stretch the gold. He will not be welcome back here, so he needs to take as much as he can find. Hans knows the uniform and polished manners will open doors and his mother will say nothing about what has occurred.

Then Hans leaves the way he came, past the gaping steward and his drunk father, and away from the Southern Isles.

A/N: I forgot to add the page breaks after publishing this, so this has been corrected. This is also my first attempt at present—tense use, so my apologies if there were some slip ups. As for the story itself, this has sort of been rolling around in my head for some time and I wanted to explore Hans's background a bit. I wrote this in a single sitting and this is also unbeta'd, so I really do apologize if there's anything wrong that readers find!

As always, constructive criticism is appreciated. I may revisit this version of Hans at a later point, perhaps his perspective during the movie, but for now, this will be complete.