Based on a lovely conversation with @baby-prince-oppa.
Seriously. These two are related, and judging from his brief appearance in the book series, he’s actually a pretty stylish, pretty cool, pretty confident guy.
Imagine what happens when Anthony makes it to Auradon. And Chad only finds out that he’s there and he’s his cousin when all of the girls mysteriously stop talking about him and the new hot guy on campus. And when the two of them meet, they immediately hate each other on sight.
Chad’s got his usual charms, his knight in shining armour attitude, and of course he looks like he could be on the cover of GQ.
But Anthony’s got the dark, brooding, and troubled look down pat, and the girls go crazy for him because he’s the penultimate bad boy of Auradon, beating even Jay when he finally gets a new suit and, at his suggestion, gets himself a leather jacket.
A fierce rivalry erupts between the fanbases of both, made up of Chad’s original fans and Anthony’s fanbase mostly made up of former Chad fans, with those that like both ducking for cover. There’s constant, heated, never-ending arguments about who’s hotter, constant character attacks against both of them and the people attacking them, along with an endless stream of content on every social media platform ever with fangirls gushing and retweeting/reblogging every single mundane thing they do, Chad because he can’t stop taking selfies, Anthony because the guy seriously can’t help it that he looks awesome doing anything.
The key argument the Charmed use is that Anthony is Villain Kid, and that he’s probably still evil–especially after meeting Chad and probably reigniting the cycle of Cinderella as we speak.
But guess what? Anthony isn’t evil. At all. Even back on the Isle of the Lost, he was more apathetic than intentionally cruel, just trying to get by and unintentionally breaking hearts, plus watching over his siblings, the new generation of nameless step-daughters because those girls get into trouble like you wouldn’t believe.
And here on Auradon, he’s well on his way to becoming heroic. He takes up swordfighting as his elective, gets drilled on the fact that it is more about training the mind and imbuing yourself with heroic will and the desire to do good and protect at all times, rather than learning how best to beat the other guy. Thanks to Ben’s influence and him seeing how Auradon courts react to ANYTHING Isle of the Lost–badly, that is–he decides to become a lawyer so he can help fight and make things fair for everyone.
And in the midst of all the fangirls declaring undying love to him, there’s one face in the crowd, someone who’s too shy to speak up and too afraid to go near him that’s actually caught his eye and maybe his heart.
(Notice how I didn’t specify what gender they are? *wink*)
But he’ll never admit to any of that. He keeps lying and intentionally twisting all reports on him to make him seem like a bad guy. Not because he likes being thought of as evil, but because so many years on the Isle and Drizella’s teachings have taught him that there’s no one you can trust, no real friends out there, and family–especially step-family–are just waiting for an opportunity to betray you.
And the thought of anyone seeing him as anything less than the aloof, cold, unapproachable badass–someone just like them, who does feel, who gets hurt by the rumours, who actually just wants some friends–is terrifying.
Meanwhile, Chad is all too happy to plot and scheme to ruin his reputation from the point of Bad Boy to full on Villain, using all manner of means available to him to do so, not the least of which is manipulating his new personal army…