{"id":1021,"date":"2011-01-24T12:47:44","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T18:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2011-01-24T12:47:44","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T18:47:44","slug":"starting-week-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1021","title":{"rendered":"Starting Week 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Book IV is now just over 34,000 words. \u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have Tsaian dukes figured out, pretty much, but not all the counts and barons.\u00a0 Um….that would be none<\/em> of the counts and barons, except the names of the ones on the Royal Council.\u00a0 Who’s hot-tempered?\u00a0 Who’s phlegmatic?\u00a0 Who leaps to conclusions?\u00a0 Etc.\u00a0 Moreover, who has a marriageable daughter?<\/p>\n

Can’t escape the reality that where titles are heritable,\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Every potential spouse brings a baggage train of potential assets and problems, beyond just their personal qualities:\u00a0 family history, family resources, and also the reaction of those whose daughters or sons weren’t picked.<\/p>\n

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)\u00a0 but this has its own difficulties.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are no paparazzi or tourists with cellphone cameras documenting everything every member of every royal family does, so if\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Sofi Ganarrion (mercenary commander in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter<\/em>) is connected in an unspecified way with the royal family of Kostandan and now connected with the Duke of Fall’s family in Aarenis.\u00a0\u00a0 (Briefly mentioned by the ambassador from Kostandan in Oath of Fealty<\/em>.)\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 The Duke of Fall\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Both Kostandan and Pargun have unmarried princesses at the start of Kings of the North<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For the older ones,\u00a0 it’s not about love and marriage–it’s about power and policy, alliances and enmities.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0 I do a lot of that through conversations (most of which go poof! <\/em>after I’m through with them.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Right now the newest members of the Tsaian Royal Council are my targets for testing.\u00a0 Count Kevre Tivarrn, newly appointed to the Council after Mikeli’s coronation at the end of Oath<\/em>,\u00a0 has reacted to the situation by casting looks at Count Kostvan–who was on the Regency Council, an experienced person of his own rank.\u00a0 Kostvan, in turn, looks first to Duke Serrostin.<\/p>\n

So what do I know about Serrostin, that might offer clues to how Kostvan and Tivarran might vote later on?\u00a0\u00a0 Serrostin has the reputation of being the quieter, less flamboyant,\u00a0 more thoughtful duke.\u00a0 Rarely the first to speak, but often at the end others are nodding their heads to what he says because he makes sense.\u00a0 (He has not, however, studied formal logic.\u00a0 None of them have.) \u00a0\u00a0 Staunch Girdsman;\u00a0 Serrostin was the second Tsaian noble (after Marrakai) to side with the Girdish in Gird’s War.\u00a0 He takes all his duties seriously,\u00a0 does what he can to help the recluse duke southwest of him.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But once roused, he’s\u00a0 formidable foe and bull-dog stubborn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book IV is now just over 34,000 words. \u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have Tsaian dukes figured out, pretty much, but not all the counts and barons.\u00a0 Um….that would be none of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[22,106,20,107],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contents","category-the-writing-life","tag-characters","tag-contents","tag-progress-report","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1022,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions\/1022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}