Writing Equestria's Changeling Princesses Part 6: A Posse of Queens

Background
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

So chapter 4 of Equestria’s Changeling Princesses and the Kinsbane wasn’t too hard to write, but several rather important characters were introduced in it that I’d like to discuss the creation of.

First among them was Facere. Facere was briefly mentioned (though not named) as Alternia and sisters father in the first and second stories. The original idea I had was that at the time when Mirage and Kyria headed to the past, he was dead.

But… that felt like a copout, plus, I wanted to flesh out just what kind of changeling would Chamelia marry and mate? What kind of father did Alternia and sisters descend from? 

Furthermore, I’d just recently visited my grandparents in Hong Kong and you could say I was beginning to find the theme of “family” in the story. So I really wanted to add Facere in and make him a dynamic, interesting character, without impeding on the canon that I would establish.

Without going into spoiler territory, I designed Facere with a very gentle stallion around his family, if hiding a core of titanium. He’s grown to be one of the favorite male characters I’ve written and I cannot wait for you to see some of what I have in store for him.

The other character… was Sarar.

Queen Sarar’s a complicated character and in some ways I think I need to add more to what I’ve already written in this story. The last that people saw her was in book two, Equestria’s Changeling Queens and the Abyssal Empress… where she (then head of the Queens Council) basically betrayed Alternia and company. And yet, I also established in that book that Sarar used to be a very good friend to Chamelia.

What I wanted to do in the book was show when she had that… idealism/innocence before a thousand years of changeling politics changed her personality. I think I succeeded but well, let’s see what you all think.

Finally, we have Thera.

Chamelia is very much a singular, dominating figure from the past, but she must have had friends, and so very very early on… like around the time I was writing book 1 and figuring out the changeling’s lore, I wrote a character called Thera… the last, “good child” of a terrible family of changelings. The idea was that she was someone who suffered, but who eventually overcame it. 

I would like to go more into why Chamelia and Thera became friends in this book, but wasn’t really able to. Suffice it to say… they have very complimentary personalities, with Chamelia being a bit louder, and Thera being a bit more quiet. Both are wise, but are able to look at problems with their own perspectives. Altogether, I really liked writing the two on stage because you can see these two elderly queens with a long, friendly history.

And finally… yeah Chapter 4 mainly featured a Queens Council… I couldn’t resist for several reasons. One, I needed to show Chamelia’s authority over her fellow queens and two, I really wanted to show how the dysfunctional Queens Council of book 2 functioned in the past when it was more of a semi-formal family gathering to discuss business.

And of course… here’s the list of references:
Tomoe (Chamelia’s elder sister): Reference to the character of Tomoe from the manga Rurouni Kenshin
Nefertiti: After the wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten.
Borte: After the wife of Ghenghis khan.
Hatshepsut: After the female Egyptian pharaoh.
Vittoria: I actually don’t recall. Possibly after Queen Victoria of Great Britain, but I modified the name.

Enjoy the new chapter, which is going up later today!