The Duel on the Steps was a duel that took place between William Lovie III. and Tristan Lovie following Tristan's Attack on Alice Lovie. The Duel on the steps would signal the end of any hope of a relationship between William and Tristan Lovie, and the beginning of the end for the peace in Lucerne. The Duel on the steps was the first stage of the conflict between Tristan and William, and before this moment the arguments and disagreements had always been handled calmly.
The duel happened because it came out that Tristan had attempted to rape Alice, and this flew William into a rage and only the interruption of James Lovie II. stopped William from killing Tristan before the duel. The duel would end with William easily defeating him and then embarrassing him among the gathered crowd. During the fight Tristan was beaten quite badly and would be in a near coma state for nearly two months before he was finally able to move around again, but by this point he had drifted completely into madness, and was beyond the reach of anyone.
The Duel on the Steps was told during the End of Darkness and was told in the POV of Alice Lovie at first but both she and William would make a point during their POV to rehash the event and the differences between the two telling of the story are significant.
Background[]
William and Tristan[]
The duel on the steps was an event that was caused by a lifetime of distance between William and Tristan Lovie. Originally William was very affectionate towards his brother, but once Tristan got older, it became clear to William that the shy, almost weird Tristan was harboring something truly evil inside him.
At this point he made the decision to make the protection of Alice his most important task. While William was deciding this Tristan was suffering extreme emotional abuse from Bill and this was causing a lot of resentment to his older brother William who he saw was being doted on by Bill.
Tristan and Alice[]
In the early days Tristan felt rejected by the lack of relationship with his brother William, and his father Bill. This resentment grew in his early days. The only relationship that seemed to have any balance was the one he shared with his sister Alice. This relationship would come to be the only true relationship that Tristan had.
While Tristan grew to love Alice in an entirely unbrotherly way, Alice was hiding a growing fear towards her brother. To the outside and even to Tristan the two appeared close, but for Alice she was hiding the fear deep within her.
Unfortunately as they both aged, many in the Kingdom began whispering about Tristan having unnatural feelings towards Alice.
Prelude[]
As the distance between Tristan, and William grew into a hatred their father Bill was attempting to remove Alice and finnally saw his chance.
Seeing the growing resentment between Tristan and William, and feeling his own resentment towards Alice, Bill began forming a plan to remove Alice. Bills only problem was that Tristan had a deep, and some whispered taboo love for Alice, and this meant that he had great difficulty in turning Tristan. Eventually bill progressed in magical power to such an extent that he formulated a potion to control Tristan's emotion. This potion would turn the unusal boy who already harbored some very dark thought's to become unhinged.
"I watched him carefully after I fed him the poison. I had to make sure in his madness he didn't try and harm William. I wanted him to kill Alice, but in his madness he filled his days with raping whores. After he had killed three of them I decided to lower the dose a bit."
- -Bill Lovie
Bill watched him the entire time that he basically lost himself in his madness. Tristan felt a massive pull to kill Alice, and eventually no matter how hard he tried the pull became too much.
It was late at night when Tristan saw Alice walking the balcony of her room in nothing but her nightgown. This sexualized position was too much for him and he charged through her door and attempted to rape her. The two scuffled for a time, and the noise they made during their fight woke William and he charged into the room.
Seeing the situation and now no longer able to pretend his brother wasn't a monster William started to kill Tristan. As he was strangling Tristan Alice put her hand on his shoulder and whispered for him to stop. Grudgingly William did stop and Tristan ran out of the room.
The Challenge[]
William knew that Tristan would just try this again so he decided that he needed to so greatly shame Tristan that he would leave the city. In order to do this he went to the town crier the next morning and sent out a decree for Tristan to duel him the next day. William never believed Tristan would show up considering how skilled with a blade that William was.
But when the day did come he stood on the steps of Lucerne surrounded by a massive crowd, and saw Tristan walking down the road towards him.
The Duel[]
As Tristan walked towards him Alice begged William to not give Tristan the gratification that this fight would give him. William wanted to listen to his sister but when he saw the scarf on her neck he remembered the fear he had that his sister was dead or raped and could not.
The Fight[]
The fight went basically as everyone had assumed it would. William and his vastly superior fighting skills brutalized Tristan throughout the fight. The fight though took a longer take when during the fight William begin taunting Tristan with his superior fighting skills by laughing at Tristan's attempts at defeating him.
Embarrassing him[]
Aftermath[]
In the aftermath of the fight Tristan would be in a bed tending his wounds for almost 7 months. During this time the hate, rage, and madness he had only became worse.
When Tristan got out of the bed he began his spree of killing, and raping women throughout the Kingdom, which would be a spree that would change the lives of many women throughout the Kingdom of Lucerne.