#king cobras have this thing that they look fucking menacing but on certain angles they have such a Dumb Noodle Face lol

[regina-del-cielo]

“The Old Guard” Daemon AU: Quynh and the king cobra

Since we don’t separate couples in this house, after Andy here comes Quynh. She’s just as badass as her axe-wielding wife, so she has a similarly Iconique daemon

the king cobra is the longest venomous snake in the world; adults range between 3,75 and 5 m, and weigh up to 10 kg, and males are bigger than females. Quynh is terrifying (affectionate), so her having a Big Murder Noodle as daemon is on par with her

king cobras are apex predators, snakes that eat other snakes; their only natural predators are humans. Quynh, like Andy, is a force of nature, so she deserves to stay on top of the food chain

like most venomous snakes, king cobras kill their prey by biting them, injecting a high dose of venom, and then eat it. Quynh, that Joe described as a pit viper in a fight, seems to be a “one strike and you’re dead” type of warrior, especially being an archer

on that same note, a group of king cobras is called a quiver, and a quiver is also the pouch where archers keep their arrows. So. Sounds like destiny

king cobras are diurnal, so they possess a good eyesight, together with a strong sense of smell; they also spend a lot of time on tree branches, from which they lean down to hunt – sniper Quynh my beloved

while they usually prefer avoidance to confrontation, king cobras tend to take an aggressive stance when disturbed – raising up to the chest, opening the hood, and hissing. Since they’re also much larger than many snakes, they can also attack from a certain distance if bothered. I think Quynh has the spirit of an observant (she was the sniper before Nicky and I will die on this hill), and she doesn’t start fights if she doesn’t need to; but she won’t take any bullshit from anyone, and those that test her don’t live long enough to regret it

king cobras are long-lived snakes (20 years on average) and although they’re solitary during the year, they tend to stay with the same partner for the mating season, and it’s the only snake species that actively builds a nest for its eggs, which the female guards ferociously. 🎶 ~ Found Family Vibes Babe ~ 🎶

a king cobra’s scales are usually a mix of green, brown, black and yellow, with the yellow scales forming very slight stripes on the top portion of the body. It’s not the flashiest coloring among snakes, but it’s surely elegant, and Quynh is obviously a fashion icon, and her daemon’s coloring goes with all her outfits – what do they say, black goes with everything?

The habitat of the king cobra spans from southern India to most of Southeast Asia, from lowlands up to an elevation of 2000 m. They live in forests, swamps, bamboo thickets, grasslands, and rivers – they are good swimmers. Coincidentally, Vietnam has declared the king cobra a protected species (go Vietnam!); so it’s an animal that Quynh would have been familiar with

according to the Netflix featurette video, Andy found Quynh around 1000 BCE – take away the century that it took her to actually find Quynh, and assuming that Andy started looking for her as soon as the dreams started (which I think she would have, desperate for company as she was), we could place Quynh’s death around 1100 BCE – give or take the thirty/forty years Quynh actually lived

I am assuming that Quynh lived in the Red River delta area in northern Vietnam; this date would place her at the tail end of the Dong Dau archaeological period of the Hong Bang dynasty (the predecessor of the Dong Son culture), and she would have been a Lac Viet

the Lac Viet were an agricultural society with a sort of feudal system, where inheritance was passed through both the paternal and maternal line; also, when someone got married, they became a member of the wife’s family instead of the husband’s

in most Asian cultures snakes have a neutral or positive depiction, from symbols of rebirth (due to their periodical shedding of the skin) and immortality (think of the ourobouros), to fertility (humans will see an elongated anything with a differentiated head and go ‘is this a phallic reference?’) to guardians of temples or divine figures (especially cobras, for their defensive positions); the Vietnamese dragon itself is a combination of various animals, including the snake

one of the legends about the origin of the Vietnamese people is that of Lac Long Quan, legendary founder of the Hung dynasty, whose mother was a dragon goddess, and Au Co, an immortal fairy of the mountains who could turn into a bird. She bore him 100 children, and when they separated (he to the seas, she to the mountains) the children also split between their parents

in Vietnam’s folk religion, the snake, as an amphibious animal, is meant to possess the linh, the “spirit”, a power of mediation between âm (yin, the disorder) and duong (yang, the order). It lives on the threshold of water and land, and thus is associated with divine figures with luminal powers between order and disorder, especially goddesses

the neighbouring Cambodians also believe to be descended from nagas, the snake gods also present in Hindu and Buddhist mythology

this would mean that Quynh having a snake daemon, in her original culture, would have been considered positively, even reverently – and in her travels through Asia, said snake being a cobra probably was looked at even more benevolently

(imagine how pissed off she must have been that the onset of Christianity would make people recoil away from her and her daemon)

After. A painful search. I have settled for Thang for the daemon’s name. It means “victory” (or “victorious”, depending on the sources), and it feels like a good thing to name a person’s daemon, especially if we assume that Quynh had a warrior training in her first life too

(there is One (1) Thing I know of him. He has a Deep Sexy Voice, like. Imagine James Earl Jones. That’s how I can imagine him speaking. A soothing deep bass that makes you feel instantly at ease – haters will say it’s manipulative. Quynh regularly goes “if Thang was a tiger you wouldn’t say that, you cowards”)

Fun fact: in almost all legends and mythologies snakes and eagles (or snake-like and eagle-like entities) are mortal enemies since, you know, snakes represent the chthonic world and eagles represent the skies. And yet Andy and Quynh looked at each other and went ‘fuck it, that’s my wife now’ and that’s Very Sexy of them

(I can see Diokles sleeping on the closest tree branch above Andy and Quynh with Thang gently coiled around him so he can also Keep Warm)

References outside of Wikipedia and directly linked sites:

 Đõ̂, Thiện (2003): Vietnamese Supernaturalism: Views from the Southern Region. Psychology Press, 300 pages

Dutton G.E., Werner S.J., Whitmore J.K. (2012): Sources of Vietnamese Traditions. Columbia University Press, 622 pages;

McLeod M.W., Nguyen T.D. (2001): Culture and Customs of Vietnam. Greenwood Press, 198 pages;

National Geographic’s Photo Ark – King Cobra;

Taylor, K.W. (1983): The Birth of Vietnam. University of California Press, 397 pages;

Taylor, K.W. (2013): A History of the Vietnamese. Cambridge University Press, 696 pages.

#the old guard #my ponderings #daemon AU #quynh #nature #animals #king cobra #the fact that I don't have a Quynh descriptive tag is a shame hope the sequel fixes that #THIS WAS. A PAIN. #and it's also considerably shorter than the other four I'm sorry #problem is - if we go back to canon we have SO LITTLE MATERIAL on Quynh to work on #most of my characterization for her is Unexplainable Vibes #and there's also very little info on king cobras I found out #for all the other animals I found monographies but for the cobra? Not a thing #also most of Vietnam's history for her time period is like #'yeah Chinese historians in the 14th century talked about this society and their mythological kingdoms and that's all we know' #so even though I listed multiple resources they're all repeating the same three things about pre-Han invasion northern Vietnam sorry #I didn't put any diacritic accents on names hope it's not too much of a problem #king cobras have this thing that they look fucking menacing but on certain angles they have such a Dumb Noodle Face lol