FOW: The South

 

Fortunes of War is now available! 

In the world of the Drake Chronicles, the South is younger than the North, but thanks to its more temperate climate, its rich, fertile soil, fresh waterways, dense forests, and long summers, it quickly eclipsed the North in prosperity - and finery. With more money, more leisure time, and large distance from its Northern roots, the South became - in their own words - much more advanced...but really, just more dandified. The North likes its jewels, its hair beads, and its tooled leather, but those all look rough and unrefined when compared to the silks, satins, and men's high-gloss boots of the South. If the North is largely inspired by Viking culture, then the South is inspired by the Georgian era in England. Not contemporary periods in the slightest, but that's the beauty of fantasy: I can play around with the eras. 

Casually known as "the South," the kingdom itself is called Aquitainia, which comes from the duchy of Aquitaine, in what is now modern-day France, once the inheritance, through his mother, of King Richard the First of England. Before he was the King of England, Richard the Lionheart was the Duke of Aquitaine, and his was a duchy ripe with pastoral beauty, rich with bountiful harvests. The Loire River Valley is some of the most beautiful countryside on the planet, and so it seemed a fitting name for my fictional kingdom in the Drake Chronicles. Inevitably, when I finish Lionheart, there will be some confusion. That's for Future Me to worry about. 

I've already talked about Amelia in previous posts, but I love her small entourage of friends, generals, and voices of reason a whole lot. Leda and Edward are mature, emotionally "settled," so to speak, but we have more to learn about them. And the others, Reggie, Connor, Colum - and little Liam, who I left out of the graphics, but who's one of those rare, for me at least, fun kid characters to write - have lots of character growth in the books ahead. Reggie and Connor, at least, have already come quite a long way since their introductions. Reggie and Connor shared some of my favorite, emotional scenes in the book, but Leda wins Favorite New Character. I love that she can offer Amelia a strong, feminine viewpoint that isn't complicated by history and family, the way Amelia's relationship with her mother is. 

Expect much more from the South in Avarice and the rest of the series. 

“You’re only humoring me, aren’t you?” he asked, wryly, and gave her a scritch behind the horns. Her eyes slitted shut and she leaned into the touch, crooning a low, pleased sound not unlike a purr. “That’s all right. If I’m to be humored, I’d rather it be by you than anyone else.”

Connor bowed first, somehow elegant with his messy, too-long hair and his open shirt, his chest on flagrant display. “My Lady Leda,” he said, warmly. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

She offered the slightest of curtsies…and a very thorough perusal of all the male skin on visual offering. Her smirk said she liked what she saw. “Lord Connor Dale. I do believe I’ve seen a ghost.”

Her gaze slid over, then, startling in its hardness. “That’s why I’ve come, Lady Amelia. I don’t think Aquitainia can win this war, honestly…but I want to be on the side that tried to win it, scrabbling until the last, rather than on the side that rolled over and let the bastards take the victory without a fight.”

Amelia felt her brows go up. “That’s a noble sentiment.”

“I have those, from time to time, despite gossip to the contrary.”

Edward said, “My family is not originally from Aquitainia. I have made it my business to study the ways and customs of this continent, new and old, and those of their neighbors to the north. You have said this man is your cousin and ‘beta.’” Hint of distaste on the word. “But if he is your thrall, then he is your war prize, also.”

Colum, by contrast, was dressed in his usual dour browns and blues, buttoned up to the throat, cloaked with a wool nearly as heavy as the frown that marred his young forehead. He was tall, but willowy; shoulders broad, but hands soft from handling books rather than swords. The bookish boy she’d met years ago had grown up into a joyless young man, pale from lack of sun, his hair a limp and uninspiring brown, cut closer than was fashionable so that his ears seemed to stick out like mug handles. His devotion to his stepmother was an outward, obvious thing; at times it seemed to swell and fill a room, pressing its other occupants up against the wall where they traded raised-brow looks of surprise.