The 8th Rank - Story Notes (Chapter 1-4) · 7:52pm Apr 2nd, 2019
It's hard to say what the real origin of this story was. The idea of Gilda being someone of importance is one I've played around with in past stories, but never could make it work, and after The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone I sort of put it aside. As good as the episode was, it kind of broke my plot. That happens though and sometimes you just have to move on.
Even so, I was still interested in the concept and wanted to do something with it. It was a couple years back that it occurred to be that the Griffon Kingdom was a failed state, at last as much of one as you can portray on a kids TV show. Having something like that on your border is a very bad thing, so naturally Celestia would want to find some way to fix that issue. Somehow that all kind of rolled together in my head to come up with the core of the idea.
This picture also helped, and is where the design for her crown came from.
Getting from that idea though to a working story has taken a couple years. A good chunk of the first draft for these chapters were written at the start of last year somewhere over the north pacific. Part of it was trying to come up with good reasons for why things got where they were and how come the ponies weren't really helping. I wanted something that sounded reasonably believable with enough slack to let people fill in the blanks themselves. Based on some of the comments I think I succeeded at that.
One of the interesting things about this story was coming up with a good version of the Equstrian government, and I tried to not make a direct copy of any existing system that I'm aware of. I've mentioned the three great charters a few times in the story, these are the documents that the government is built on. The first one made the country and created the royalty, the second one, about ten years later, created the government and nobility. Both of these happened right after the first Hearth's Warming, the third charter came centuries later, and served to reform many problems in the government and outline the rights of the citizens (and returned some powers back to the princess after they were abused by the government). None of them have a direct one-to-one correlation to any existing documents, the closest would be calling the third charter the pony version of the Magna Carta, but even that's not fully accurate.
If people are interested, I would be happy to write up a more detailed blog post just on that topic, as much of that work will probably never end up in the story.
So, lets talk chess and how it effects the story. That is something that kind of came about backwards as I was looking for an interesting title for the story. All the ones I came up with were bland and generic... and half were from Shakespeare, and I wasn't happy with that. During brainstorming, my mind jumped to chess and how a pawn becomes a queen. That's were the title comes from, the eighth rank is the far side of the chest board, where a pawn has to reach to be promoted.
Of course once I settled on that, it also solidified one of the themes of the story. It's also why the pawn is also in the cover image (though that was a fairly late addition, more on that in a bit). Naturally I'm also going to make a reference to my favorite chess related story on the site, Fluttershy and Celestia Play Chess.
There are a couple other fics I'll be having some references to as the story goes on, and I'll make sure to drop links to them as I do so.
With how long this story took to come together, there was also the problem with the series moving on and changing things out from under me... but believe it or not that turned out to be a huge help for me. While Granpa Gruff and Gretta were always going to be part of the story, this last season brought two very interesting developments. The first was back in School Daze when Gallus said that Gruff wasn't actually anyone's granpa, then later in The Hearth's Warming Club with Gruff, Gretta and Gilda all together with one other unnamed hatching (Grizzle seems to be his fan picked name).
The unspoken (and in this story assumed) implication to this is that Gruff is more of a caretaker for orphans then a parent. Which works really well for my story as it puts him in the position of being the one Gilda can trust, and can turn to for ungilded advice. It will also create a few more interesting interactions later on, as we'll see. Also the fastest way to annoy Gilda is to call Gabby as her sister.
One other nice thing the show gave me was the Crown of King Grover. There were always supposed to be two crowns for Gilda to pick from, but the large one was always more generic (Celestia had two, not knowing if it would be a prince or princess). Having an actual crown from the show helped make it feel a bit more real and connected.
The other part of Gilda's royal regalia is the scarf, which is based on the one we saw King Guto wearing in the flashbacks. This came about as I was commissioning the cover art, and yes, I waited until I could get a piece from specifically from Silfoe before posted the story. I felt just having Gilda in the crown was a bit to plain, but I didn't want to copy everything from the picture up top. Digging through derpibooru I found the pictures of Guto and liked the idea of the scarf. It adds to her look and gives her a connection back to the old kings. Add the pawn to the clasp just worked with the chess imaginary. Now I just have to work it into the story.
Lastly, lets talk about griffon names. With only a couple griffons around, having names all start with G is a clever theme, having a large cast of griffons having every name start with G gets confusing, both as a writer and as a reader. As such we're going to start seeing that theme expanding to other letters, such as E, and possibly Z. Now it will still be limited to small set of letters, but it all won't be just G names.
Oh, and as for miss 'just abandon Rainbow Dash' to die up there... we'll be seeing her again.
I actually am looking forward to some of these being part of the story later. As I said in my comment on the story itself, I actually like the political thrillers when it comes to fantasy type kingdoms such as these, especially when the people do have a voice overall. While I do think some of the legality of what's happening is suspect, this does outline pretty much your plan for the story, in a very vague way, and combined with the info of the last chapter(4 at the time of writing this), you've given us both Gilda's first hurdle as a leader, and a possible antagonist for the story as a whole, though with room to add more as you see fit.
So yeah, I'll be keeping an eye on you and this one.
Perhaps one of the former noblesse gives Gilda the pawn broach as a sort of insult. "If you're just going to be Celestia's pawn why don't you have the decency to wear it on your chest?"
I assumed Edward's name was a sign of culture drift away from traditional griffin names.
This makes me think of the dragons.
While the dragon lands are a darwinistic anarchy, they're a FUNCTIONAL darwinistic anarchy, with the Dragon Lord's authority being absolute, even Garble doesn't dare challenge it. And apparently being powerful enough to bring the dragons to WAR if needed. Something I imagine that terrifies anyone, since the only other weakness dragons have besides their limit numbers is their fierce individualistic attitudes.
Huh. On the crowns I assumed Gilda picked the smaller of the two because the Kings crown was going to end up as something she didn't feel she could choose unless the Griffon kingdom was standing on its own. I mean, that thing has a legacy behind it I imagine she would want no part of (at least not while she has a choice in the matter). Unless, y'know, she ends up able to organize the Griffons enough to go find that Idol from the Lost Treasure episode - she does know roughly where she dropped it after all, its just getting down there to look would require a major project of some kind.
Which she would never do because thats just begging everyone to replace her little crown with the big one.
Edit: few days ruminating on this and i have this to add - Gilda would totally go pick up the idol if she got to beat some respect into somegriffon with it. Literally. She might break it again but for a good cause.
When it comes to the crown thing I do actually think it's important that Gilda eventually end up switching to crown of King Grover, namely when the Griffons eventually transition to independence or some similar turning point. It would effectively symbolize the point where she "flies under her own power" and truly becomes queen, the point where she proverbially actually reaches the the 8th rank and is both figuratively and literally queened. At the moment she isn't a queen but rather a Passed Pawn that's just started it journey, the crown of King Grover symbolizes maturity and rule beyond being subservient/a puppet, independence not only for the Griffons but for Gilda too.
I would like this very much. I'm always interested in hearing other people's headcanons, partly because I find other people's constructions and expansions on their favored fandoms to be fascinating in their own right, and partly because I'm already integrating bits of your explanation for why Equestria hasn't helped Griffinstone before now into my own Headcanon and would be interested in seeing what of your headcanon on Equestria's Government I could do the same with.
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Also, very much these.
I am very interested. Will be following the story.
As a possible idea, Gilda could use the laws of the Kingdom to play with the nobles. As you said they lost their titles and land due to not having paid the taxes. She could offer to return the titles at a price, namely paying back all the taxes they owe. If they don't they forfeit their titles.
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I had never thought of that, but it is an interesting idea...