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Book IV is now just over 34,000 words. At the moment, it seems to be settled into a more relaxed pace as I figure out some details I hadn’t needed to know before. I have Tsaian dukes figured out, pretty much, but not all the counts and barons. Um….that would be none of the counts and barons, except the names of the ones on the Royal Council. Who’s hot-tempered? Who’s phlegmatic? Who leaps to conclusions? Etc. Moreover, who has a marriageable daughter?
Can’t escape the reality that where titles are heritable, there’s a lot of concern about a ruler who isn’t married to the right person (however defined) and producing healthy, psychologically stable, reasonably intelligent offspring. Every potential spouse brings a baggage train of potential assets and problems, beyond just their personal qualities: family history, family resources, and also the reaction of those whose daughters or sons weren’t picked.
You can try to avoid intra-realm strife due to picking X’s child over Y’s by marrying out (which also refreshes the bloodline if you do it right) but this has its own difficulties. There are no paparazzi or tourists with cellphone cameras documenting everything every member of every royal family does, so if the potential spouse is up to no good…or has a couple of siblings showing clear signs of heritable problems…your eligible young king or queen may not find out until after the wedding.
Sofi Ganarrion (mercenary commander in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter) is connected in an unspecified way with the royal family of Kostandan and now connected with the Duke of Fall’s family in Aarenis. (Briefly mentioned by the ambassador from Kostandan in Oath of Fealty.) The Duke of Fall is scared spitless of Alured the Black who has now taken up the vacant title of Duke of Immer–and more. The Duke of Fall hoped Sofi would protect Fallo from Alured in exchange for a cut of a fairly rich pie, but Sofi may not be Alured’s match in the field.
Both Kostandan and Pargun have unmarried princesses at the start of Kings of the North. But though Tsaia is short of princesses, it has the daughters and sons of its peerage, some of whom consider their personal lives more important than any long-range plot. For the older ones, it’s not about love and marriage–it’s about power and policy, alliances and enmities.
So this is a period of carving out personalities in secondary and tertiary characters, including those who may never come onstage and certainly won’t be POV characters. I do a lot of that through conversations (most of which go poof! after I’m through with them.) Right now the newest members of the Tsaian Royal Council are my targets for testing. Count Kevre Tivarrn, newly appointed to the Council after Mikeli’s coronation at the end of Oath, has reacted to the situation by casting looks at Count Kostvan–who was on the Regency Council, an experienced person of his own rank. Kostvan, in turn, looks first to Duke Serrostin.
So what do I know about Serrostin, that might offer clues to how Kostvan and Tivarran might vote later on? Serrostin has the reputation of being the quieter, less flamboyant, more thoughtful duke. Rarely the first to speak, but often at the end others are nodding their heads to what he says because he makes sense. (He has not, however, studied formal logic. None of them have.) Staunch Girdsman; Serrostin was the second Tsaian noble (after Marrakai) to side with the Girdish in Gird’s War. He takes all his duties seriously, does what he can to help the recluse duke southwest of him. But once roused, he’s formidable foe and bull-dog stubborn.
Comment by tuppenny — January 24, 2011 @ 3:25 pm
Off topic: have you seen the movie of the Luttrell Psalter -its on youtube. The filmers relaay seem to have done their homework and produced a motion version of some of the psalter illustrations .. and the lovely local countryside.
Comment by Jim DeWitt — January 24, 2011 @ 4:20 pm
May I just say how much I admire someone who has the discipline and imagination to write to a schedule as you are doing. I have a modest blog, and try for 300-800 word substantive essays each day and it is very, very difficult. Something interesting enough to me, something important enough to write about, something that lends itself to the blog format.
All of which just makes me appreciate you production that much more. You have my admiration, Ms. Moon.
Comment by Kip Colegrove — January 24, 2011 @ 5:10 pm
Sofi Ganarrion has looked for a long time like he is going to dangerously overreach himself at some point. I enjoy tracking long-trajectory themes like that. Thanks for providing a rich mix of them.
Ganarrion seems also to be a given name in Paksworld, customarily shortened to Gan.
Comment by Anette — January 25, 2011 @ 1:45 am
At the end of book 1 you had two newly crowned and unmarried kings, Kieri and Mikeli. Now you’re talking mostly about Tsaian nobles. Have you married off Kieri in book 2 or 3? In that case, wouldn’t there have been some discussion of suitable young ladies or princesses that Kieri did not chose? Maybe someone that he thought was too young for him, but would be the right age for Mikeli. Or does Mikeli have to chose someone from Tsaia?
Comment by Margaret Middleton — January 25, 2011 @ 5:45 am
Tuppenny: if you go over to LiveJournal and look up “Stevieannie”, she and her husband [and possibly their children also] were performers in that Luttrell Psalter film project. She hasn’t mentioned it much since winter set-in, but she did several posts last summer while they were involved in filming some scenes.
Comment by elizabeth — January 25, 2011 @ 7:51 am
No…haven’t seen that. Sounds very interesting.
Comment by elizabeth — January 25, 2011 @ 7:59 am
It’s probably harder to write a blog entry a day–especially if you’re going for substantive and you have a tight word/length limit. Unless the essay topics are pretty tightly linked, it means changing gears every day, as well as going from conception to polished-ready-for-publication every day.
A book develops its own momentum that–unless you hit a serious snag–pulls the writer along. You know what you’re going to write about when you start out each day. Not in detail, if you’re a discovery writer like me, but you know it’s going to be “that book,” and you know it’s the whole book, once finished, that “counts”–not each day’s chunk of words. You have to get those daily chunks of work done, but you don’t have to get each one perfectly done right then.
It takes discipline to write a finished blog entry each day–and it takes discipline to write parts of a longer project each day. So…good for you.
Comment by elizabeth — January 25, 2011 @ 8:05 am
Sofi refuses to come in from the cold, sit down with me, and explain himself. He’s always out there on the margins…he didn’t have the best reputation in the Deed, but he wasn’t the worst. I was surprised, actually, when the Kostandanyan ambassador talked to Kieri about him…because, rather like Kieri, I’d assumed Sofi’s hints of a royal connection were just boasting. Far enough from home, and without the internet or even regular mail for checking on references, how could the Duke of Fall (for instance) know whether Sofi was really a Somebody in Kostandan or not? People embellish their pasts.
I’m realizing now that I will need to keep an eye on what Alured thinks about Sofi…I know what he thinks about the Duke of Fall. If Alured believes Sofi’s really royally connected….
Comment by elizabeth — January 25, 2011 @ 8:20 am
I’m talking about Tsaian nobles right now because I haven’t given much background on that court in Oath, where the focus is on the young king and his friends, or on Arcolin and Dorrin interacting with the court at ceremonial functions. It was feeling unbalanced to me (and I’d been working on scenes set in Tsaia, where the interactions of Tsaian nobles are significant.)
It’s not spoilerish (I don’t think) to discuss the family and political dynamics of some of the Tsaian nobles, while it would be spoilerish to discuss their doings in detail. Nor is it spoilerish to discuss dynastic situations in general, or the difference between customs in different realms, though it would be to answer any questions about who is or isn’t getting married in which book. I’m tiptoeing through the spoiler minefield here…questions that some of you would love to have answered in advance of publication are the very ones other readers do not want answered yet. Things I talk about with a few friends and some of you (again) would be glad to read are things that others do not want to know yet.
Comment by Leo — January 25, 2011 @ 9:43 am
If i may remind (if you haven’t already) from the original Deed – Kieri’s Squires – including the one that was dismissed because he was critical of Paksennarion after her return from Dwarfwatch with warning. We know of in Oath the happening of the latest squire who was the younger Captain to Dorrin, but – no mention of the other squires in oath or the previous Deed. It might be worth exploring some of their background if you haven’t already and how it affects the political dynamics in Tsaia and the assorted relationships.
Comment by Genko — January 25, 2011 @ 11:08 am
We don’t know that the squire Jostin was dismissed *because* he was critical of Paks, only that the Duke sent him home some time between then and when Paks talked with Stammel after Dwarfwatch. It may be that this comment was one of many inadvisable comments. Though the implication is there that this may have tipped the balance. My guess is that he may have been unsuitable as a squire in any case.
Comment by elizabeth — January 25, 2011 @ 11:58 am
Every character has a backstory and a story arc; every character has some influence on others and on events…but they can’t all be spelled out in the book or the story would collapse under the weight. If a former squire from the Deed becomes significant in the new books, then the connection will be obvious. Not all Kieri’s squires were from Tsaian noble families, either.
Comment by Leo — January 25, 2011 @ 3:25 pm
I understand, i just wanted to make sure you were re-aware of those squires from deed as you were playing around with the barons, counts, and other nobility and that this might stimulate the Plot Daemon and toss it some red meat. 🙂
Comment by boballab — January 26, 2011 @ 4:27 am
It might have been just a throw away line in the Prologue to Liar’s Oath, but Kieri mentions that it is not just a single Sofi heir causing problems in Aerenis.
“And now with Sofi Ganarrion’s heirs loose in Aerenis, with Fallo and Andressat at odds-”
I’m guessing Fallo is meant to be the Duke of Fall, but as clearly shown there is more then one heir mixed up in the problems in Aerenis. That means it is more then just the Duke of Fall that believes there is something to Sofi’s claims.
Comment by Jenn — January 26, 2011 @ 2:27 pm
The more I learn the more I want to read. I love back stories. This is just a tantalizing taste of things to come that really borders on cruel;) Especially since book four isn’t scheduled until when?