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[highqueenofprydain]

So I just finished Single Wild Ember, and your author commentary indicates you already did an Eilonwy POV version of The book of Three. Where can I find that?

Right here! https://archiveofourown.org/works/26379922/chapters/64255711

Nearly everything I’ve written is in that profile on ao3. 🙂

[highqueenofprydain]

A few questions: Are you planning on doing the High King from Eilonwy's perspective (The High Queen?) Are you planning on doing a book about Eilonwy's education in Diplomacy and Statecraft(tm) on Mona that occurred off screen while Taran was off Wandering(tm)?

(apologies if this is presumptuous, I just really love your work)

oh, please, I’m just dying to be asked!! The High King: absolutely. My goal is to write Eilonwy’s perspective to mirror Taran’s all the way to series end, and that book in particular has SO much I want to tackle and plenty of space to do it.

For the Mona years, I am currently stuck, trying to figure out whether to write them as an entire extra book or try to work in what she experienced there into The High King, as memories and flashbacks.

The purist in me says I really should write the entire book, for the sake of completion. The practical side is frustrated because I have almost no information to work with, beyond certain key events—all we know is that at some point Glew shows up, and at some point Rhuddlum dies. Other than that, by her own testimony, Eilonwy is bored out of her mind and nothing interesting happens. Of course, she must be being at least a bit hyperbolic, but it still doesn’t give me much direction for the sort of plot that will carry an entire novel. I’m quite bad at plotting—how I actually came up with one for my prequel is still a miraculous phenomenon I don’t expect to be repeated.

I’d give my eye teeth to know what Lloyd had initially intended for Eilonwy’s Education! I will always be bitter that he didn’t write that one. But it would feel like an honor to fulfill that myself, if I can just figure out what happens!

[highqueenofprydain]

Scarlet

The great door crashes into its frame, slammed by the hand of the silence that swells into the room. Only as the last echo ebbs away does she remember she is wounded, reeled back to reality by the flat, pittering sound of her own blood dripping upon the floor.

She raises her hands and stares at them, shining crimson streaming from multiple slashes across their surfaces, a pattern to drive any fortune-teller to madness. The idle thought breaks through her numb rage for an instant: imagine the reaction of one of those itinerant peddlers of cheap magic, asked to read the map of horror etched on her palm.

A long lifeline. She almost laughs, but it’s a bitter thing that fills her mouth with iron and salt, or perhaps she’s just bitten her tongue too hard again.

Her gaze wanders over the metal shards littering the floor, reflecting bits of the room like a shattered mirror. She sees her own face, a fleck of skeletal white against a field of scarlet drapery, and turns away from it, leaving the empty room to its silence.

She wraps her hands in her own skirts to keep from leaving a trail down the hall. The sliced flesh throbs and stings, welcome reminders that she still can feel something. It is a long time before she speaks a word…a charm with which she once could have healed such superficial wounds from the inside-out. Now, depleted, it merely closes what was open.

But better that, than bleed where anyone can see.

[highqueenofprydain]

Heyyy! I love your Prydain comics! Did you draw them? I wpuld like to make comics similar to yours.

I did draw them. ☺️ It has taken me over ten years so far, but I’m just a couple chapters from the end of the first book.

If you want to make your own comics, try it out! You will learn a lot in the process. It’s a great creative exercise.

[highqueenofprydain]

I redid this one in prep for printing this novel. Never was wild about her face in the previous one so she got an upgrade.

[highqueenofprydain]

When research meets fandom (so much fandom)

For my next WIP, I’ve been researching the archaeology and early history of southeast Scotland, particularly Lothian. Then I got distracted by reading bits of Aneirin and other early medieval literature relating to the area (slightly later than my period, but tangents will tangent >.>). Which is why I found myself reading the old Arthurian poem Pa Gur?, which mentions Arthur and co. in Eidyn (Edinburgh or thereabouts), fighting an enemy called the “dog-heads”, which have been interpreted as werewolf-like monsters.

My first thought: dog- or wolf-headed monster men in Eidyn? Did they ever roam as far afield as Cramond at all? Because this is putting me very strongly in mind of that bit in Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Shining Company, where the protagonists camp out in the ruins of the old Roman fort at Cramond:

[Castellum] had an unchancy reputation, for it was said that it had been garrisoned, not by Red Crests, but by men who called themselves Frontier Wolves and had some sort of kinship with the four-footed kind, and whose ghosts still came back in wolf shape to run through the ruins at full moon.

Even better, though, the leader of these dog-heads is named as Gwrgi Garwlwyd. Gwrgi…… OH MY GOD, IT’S GURGI. The weird hairy anthropomorphic thing from the Prydain books, it’s Gurgi!!! So that’s where he came from! :DD

I already knew that Lloyd Alexander drew a lot on the Mabinogion for the Prydain series, but now I’m finding there’s actually a lot of detail from more obscure corners of Arthurian mythology. Pa Gur actually has a reference to Cei fighting a giant cat on the island of Anglesey (Latin name: Mona). Llyan!!

Further reading also reveals that, according to the Welsh Triads, the giant cat was birthed by Henwen the otherworldly pig, who was kept by Coll son of Collfrewy, swineherd to Dallben… I AM LOSING MY MIND.

Now I’m feeling it’s high time to read those books again. :D

[highqueenofprydain]

[highqueenofprydain]

excuse me what kind of absolute bollocks. Literary friends, ye of the realm whose mascot is not a corrupt rodent, correct this travesty of a poll.

ETA (well done, books are now a solid lead)

Which version of this do you prefer?

[highqueenofprydain]

A redo of an old image.

[highqueenofprydain]

He broke the seal at their lips to speak raggedly against her mouth. “This is why.”

She had forgotten the question, and mumbled in confusion.

“Why I keep my distance.” Words broke hot against her cheek, her jawline, under her ear; down the curve of her neck. “Because when I am close to you, I cannot think of anything else.”

“And what is so wrong with that?” It was a gasping demand, too urgent to acknowledge the satisfaction of such a confession.

“Eilonwy,” he groaned softly, into the hollow of her throat. “I have a responsibility to my men. It isn’t fair to them.”

“Fair?” She pushed him away a little to glare him in the face. “It wasn’t fair that I was sent away for years and had to fight to come back to you. It wasn’t fair that the moment I got back, the world came all undone. It isn’t fair that I can’t stay with you on what could be our last night alive.” 

Her hands fisted into his cloak, as though she could twist the sense out of him by force. “And you worry so much about being fair to a lot of farmers and crofters, you’ll barely be seen in my company. Shall I always come second to your sense of duty?”

“I...” He looked upset and bewildered, as though somehow it had never occurred to him that she would want anything else. “I didn’t...”

“Next time you decide to be so bloody self-denying,” she plowed on ruthlessly, “you might stop and consider how it’s affecting others. And by others,” she added, “I mean me. Because you’re quite good at thinking of everyone else.”

She sensed him tighten all over, stoked by an invisible spark, like the crackling jolt that sometimes jumped between metal and wool. He took her by the shoulders almost roughly, steered her backwards until she was pinned against her own bed, leaning against its high support, melting into the space between it and his body. “I never stop thinking of you,” he said hoarsely. “Never. It is all I can do, when you are in my sight, to concentrate on the tasks set before me. You cannot know what it is, to be so...”

“Oh, yes, I can,” she interrupted, and pulled him to her mouth again to prove it.

[highqueenofprydain]

Chapters: 20/20 Fandom: Chronicles of Prydain - Lloyd Alexander Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Eilonwy/Taran of Caer Dallben Characters: Eilonwy (Prydain), Taran of Caer Dallben, Prince Rhun (Prydain), Teleria (Prydain), Gwydion (Prydain), Achren (Prydain), Coll (Prydain), Dallben (Prydain) Additional Tags: Identity Issues, Magic-Users, Coming of Age, Feminist Themes, Spells & Enchantments, Slow Burn, Eventual Romance Summary:

Awakening to powers and passions compelling and confusing, haunted by her past and coveted for her future, she is bound to a land whose magic claims her for its own. The tides of fate may be irresistible…but she is a daughter of the Moon. The Castle of Llyr, retold from Eilonwy’s pov.

[highqueenofprydain]

The Book of Three

To me, the Horned King was more creature than man. A being that instilled fear in the people. In the first book, Taran as a young boy, freezes in fear in the shadow of the Horned King. "It is not the trappings that make the prince," he said gently, "nor, indeed, the sword that makes the warrior." - Gwydion Mar. 1st. HAPPY NATIONAL PIG DAY!! To: Hen Wen, my favorite oracle pig. I freckled her little back with stars ✨

bsky // twitter

[highqueenofprydain]

Right, don't have anything else going on right now, so why not hop back over to Prydain with The Castle of Llyr. I... remember absolutely nothing about this one. At all.

Anyway, our basic premise seems to be that Dallben doesn’t feel up to teaching princesses how to Princess, and so Eilonwy is being sent to an island castle for fostering, accompanied by Taran, Gurgi, and Prince Rhun, who thus far is a combination of three traits: always cheerful, “no thoughts, head empty”, and a comedic level of clumsiness. So basically, your standard Royal Twit. And Taran is frustrated because he’s finally hit puberty but Can’t Spit It Out, while also seeing Prince Fumbles as a romantic rival. And himself as losing.

…

I hope things go disastrously and fantastically wrong here soon, or this is gonna be a very painful read.

On a side note, while Dallben might not have known what to do about Eilonwy’s etiquette and such, girls in her family are also supposed to learn how to be sorceresses. Did he ever do anything regarding her magical education?

[highqueenofprydain]

Wow. I dream of a fandom active enough that I can be this picky.

Just start reading a Thing. You will generally know within a couple paragraphs if you want to continue. Who cares what the kudos ratio is?!?!

Another AO3 thing I’m curious about, how do yall decide if something is good enough to read? Usually I follow a rule of 1 kudos for every 10 hits. One because it’s easy math and two it’s yet to fail me. Thoughts? Do you just go for it and pray it’s good?

[highqueenofprydain]

[highqueenofprydain]

Knowledge, truth, and love being things that develop over time, experience, and often hardship, I suspect the brooch is sort of imbued with the essence of every bard to ever wear it, and it grants him little random aspects of their personalities and collective memory. A maturity he doesn’t possess, and awareness of things he hadn’t yet learned to be attentive toward. Wearing it even for a short time fundamentally changed him, IMO.

But like every magical object in the series, it functions as a cheap shortcut, ultimately not as valuable, to him, as what he achieves by “digging for his own worms” as the Morva ladies put it. Adaon, already in possession of all its attributes, would have worn it casually as a memento of his lady; it added nothing. For Taran, it gave him a glimpse of greater things, that he would have to strive for on his own. Keeping it would have made him, ironically, a lesser man in the end.

I wonder how would one define the power of Adaon’s broach. “Awareness” perhaps? I don’t think it’s giving Taran enhanced senses necessarily, so much as helping him notice and put together the little bits of information around him he would have overlooked or lacked knowledge about before. Of course there’s also the prophetic dreams. So there’s at least some supernatural awareness there as well.

[highqueenofprydain]

The Castle of LLyr

'The Castle of Llyr' is, in a sense, more romantic than the preceding chronicles-- Taran is noticeably aware of his feelings toward Eilonwy....The mood, perhaps, is bittersweet rather than grandly heroic. The nature of fantasy allows happenings which reveal most clearly our own frailties and our won strengths. The inhabitants of Prydain are fantasy figures; I hope they are also very human. --LLoyd Alexander

bsky // twitter