The thought of Amelia/Alfred declaring independence and then being immediately thrust into parenthood appeals to me. Imagine if you will shortly after the Revolution the emergence of State Personifications coming about with each admission to the Union (Delaware was the first one). Whether they appear miraculously or are birthed via (unwilling) parthenogenesis (which I prefer) the bottom line is that suddenly America has all these kids to take care of, all of who grow up just as fast as America did. Regardless of how they came to be or how fast they grow, America loves them with his/her whole being and creates a system in which they are always protected and accounted for by the larger government. America promises to be there for them the way England never was.
Then fast forward to the Civil War, and America is waging a bloody war against half of her/his children that see hundreds of thousands of their people dead. Brother against brother, father against son, cousin against cousin. And each secession feels like a small death because they are part of America just as much as America is a part of them, practically inseparable, or at least America thought so. To add even more complexity, not all of America's children were white or white-passing. America being neglected because s/he was to far away or denied certain rights for not being British enough was bad on its own, but imagine your parent not being able to claim you or fully protect you or give you basic human rights without public/social/political backlash because your skin is darker and you're legal property in half the country. Or imagine having powerful politicians who want to keep people who look like your children in bondage and you have to compromise with them to keep the Union whole, knowing the opinions they would have if they even knew you had children who were black (some of them do know and make sure their opinions are known). Or your other children starting a war to selfishly keep this system in place at the expense of their black siblings. The relationship between America and his/her children, with America acting as both the federal government that protects the states as well as the greater whole that represents the Union and the states as the children, each an extension of America, an integral part of America's being, pushing back against the sometimes overbearing hovering of their parent, impeding on states rights (whether they believe America is in the right or not) and protecting others and sometimes America will helplessly throw his/her hands in the air and say "fine, ill let YOU decide on this issue because I am not a dictator, despite what some of you like to think, but if you fuck up im stepping in" because America doesn't want to make the same mistakes England made in the past but then America has to deal with the negative consequences of her/his children's actions when they do something unbelievably stupid while trying not to seem like a fire-breathing tyrant. Which, they end up thinking anyway, regardless if America wasn't entirely in the wrong about butting in and taking hold of the situation before it escalated. The negative reaction only serves to make America step away AGAIN so as to not seem completely authoritarian in their eyes. It's a never-ending cycle. Not to mention the complex relationships the states have with each other, especially the southern states among themselves and the southern vs northern states rivalry.
Edit:
also whenever America takes his/her eyes off the states for 1mili second to see what the rest of the world is up to (hopefully not another world war) while usually being like 'back off, geeze! 🤬' America's children immediately switch to 'how come you're not paying attention to ME instead 🥺 you always focus on the world instead of ME 😢'
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bella and mortimer weren't super young parents to begin with to me. i feel like they both had careers and did crazy young rich people shit for a while. popping bottles on yachts and travelling around to explore the world. amassing a collection of Oddities. and finally had cassandra at like 30 at the earliest. bella's gotta be like mid 40s at the youngest. you can even go with 'she had some work done, she does botox' to get away with Looking younger and i guess i'd be able to follow that logic but it is still the coward's way out. let her be old!!!
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This is 100% Bitter Eldest Daughter speaking but god my parents really spent all 21 years of my sister's life pandering to her and are only now surprised pikachu face about the whole thing (disclaimer- we are actually very close, this is a criticism of them rather than her)
Growing up she was one of those kids who did a million and one hobbies (dance, swimming, karate as well as school clubs) and genuinely for the majority of our childhoods our family's entire schedule revolved around her- she did stuff both days of the weekend so we could rarely do things all together, we could only go on holiday when the dance school was on break etc etc
And I really do believe that this is why she can be so inconsiderate- she's almost always late, if she doesn't want to do things she won't say until it's too late for you to make other plans, and so on. I don't think it's malicious, more that she's just so used to having people run around after her fixing her mess that it genuinely doesn't occur to her that you need to be considerate of other people and their time...
She's home from uni at the moment and is meant to be going back in the next few days, and has she made any actual plans? No. The trains are screwed up at the moment and it's entirely possible/likely that my parents are going to have to spend New Year's Day doing a 5-6 hour round trip to take her back- and yet she is still refusing to commit to a plan
My mum is super frustrated (understandably) but this is really a situation of her and my dad's own making- funnily enough I never pulled this kind of shit and yet my dad essentially treats me as an inconvenience anyway 🙄 I am definitely not the only eldest sibling who feels like this lol
There's more to it than her being unorganised but this is the way it shows the most, and it happens so often... seriously the amount of times my mum has been like 'we need to leave at 12, we will go with or without you' and never once has she actually done it, there's always an extra hour magically found from somewhere. They're so afraid of upsetting her (i.e. making her aware of her own behaviour and how it impacts others) but my feelings are seemingly fair game
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