#i wanted to make him distinct and recognizable but still simple af to draw

[andypantsx3]

hiii weird question so sorry if you dont feel like answering this (bc thats totally okay) but i have a question about world building in royal aus… im literally about to knaw my entire fist off clean out of frustration (💀)

thank you in advance for reading and i hope youre doing well !! ! !! !

Hello my angel!! Is your question just generally, like, what goes into worldbuilding for a royal/historical type of AU?

If yes then I'd love to tell you what I know--although it's like, very little lmao. The only royal AU I've written is in cinders (and war paint kind of, since that's a tie in), and I was woefully inexperienced when I wrote both.

But for in cinders, the story focused largely on class differences, so a lot of the world building I did was to supplement that point. Basically I had two main tasks:

Establish a recognizable hierarchy

Supply some detail to emphasize that hierarchy

And I think in general, the way we observe historical periods is through things like clothes, living/working conditions, and linguistic cues--so those were the places that I chose to supply the detail.

Establishing a hierarchy

Okay so to establish our ranking system, I basically just janked existing noble titles and ranks. I found this Wikipedia article, and narrowed everything down to the European titles as those are the ones I am most familiar with--and as in cinders is a Cinderella retelling and that is a European fairy tale.

Obviously our love interest Shouto was gonna be a prince, but I made sure to weave in other ranks as well to make it clear there was a peerage system at play. Bakugou became a Marquis, Asui become a Countess, Camie became a Lady (as a daughter of a minor noble like a Baron/Viscount might be referred to) etc.

I also wanted our poor Y/N to be at the bottom of the totem pole because I am a monster, so I also looked into the hierarchies among servants. I can't find the exact resources I used but I basically googled around to find out a) what typical castle servant roles were, like in this article, and b) what that reporting structure would have looked like, as in this article.

Scullery/kitchen girls are like, the lowest ranked (RIP) so Y/N got assigned that lmao.

Supplying the deets

Now that we have our vague hierarchy established, it's time to emphasize it! Like I said, historical periods (and class distinctions therein) are usually analyzed in terms of clothes, living/working conditions, and linguistic cues, so that's where I chose to add detail.

For clothes, I mainly drew attention to Y/N's low rank by how much she admired clothes that weren't her own. When she stole Lady Camie's dress, she narrates the "luxurious thickness of Lady Utsushimi’s skirts," implying her own skirts are thinner and more barren. Y/N's own clothing is described more in terms of its state and function: "You shook your head, grasping your soot-stained skirts and glancing meaningfully at her clean chair."

Shouto's clothes draw less of that distinction but still help set the fantasy/historical context. I basically gave him a bunch of historical buzzwords like breeches and doublet to show the period: "He wore a doublet in a blue color only one shade lighter than your own gown, and the high points of his starched collar curved up towards his sharp jawline," and "You noticed he was dressed plainly, a soft linen shirt, unadorned, tucked somewhat untidily into simple breeches."

In terms of living/working conditions, I emphasized Y/N's lack of means again by recounting a lot of her job duties: peeling vegetables, scrubbing pans, sweeping out the kitchen fire places, not exactly high-class stuff. I also put her and Ochako in a supply closet that doubled as a sleeping chamber to drive it home that wow, they poor af. For her sleeping arrangements, I gave her a straw pallet so poorly constructed that straw kept poking through and stabbing her in the back.

In contrast, Shouto's living situation is described with a mind to emphasizing how large and fancy all his shit is. He has rooms plural, and a ton of things to put in them: "The prince’s chambers spread out before you, so large they could fit the kitchens three times over. You looked to be in a sitting room, peppered with low tables and couches overstuffed with bright pillows. A large, ornate writing desk sat against one corner, covered in papers. On the far wall, a series of double doors lay open, leading deeper into his apartments. You caught a glance of a four postered bed deep within, covers dripping off the sides to lay crumpled on the floor like they had been kicked off in haste."

And lastly, linguistic cues! I don't know enough about upper class vs lower class speech in historical periods and also wasn't willing to invest huge amounts of time in this, but I did want to give some nod to a historical/fantasy setting with word choices that aren't quite modern.

If you've ever heard a Shakespearean insult, it's so clear that one of the major places modern English differs from something like Elizabethan English is insults. So when Y/N insults Kamiko, instead of having her call her a cuntwaffle or whatever choice phrase we might use today, she calls her a toad. Shouto asks if Y/N's mother has been called a dog, and Y/N replies with something like, no, a swine--as apparently back in the day people liked to toss animals around as insults.

I also just jammed a bunch of old-timey sounding phrases into everyone's speech, like perhaps and a bajillion forgive mes and until tomorrows. And I think even if a lot of the other speech sounds modern, those kinds of phrases still help highlight that the setting we are in is not 21st century.

Conclusion

Anyway all of this to say, when writing a historical/fantasy/royal AU like this one, you should focus on the elements that are key to your story--what ways of life are you detailing; commoners, adventurers, soldiers, nobility etc? Then, with that in mind, research key points of period expression unique to those ways of life: clothes, speech, living conditions, and sprinkle those details throughout!

I am also still a novice writer though, and I am a notorious skimper on details, so if anyone else has better tips please feel free to jump in!! Otherwise, I hope this helped!!

[poorlydrawntazcomics]

Oh, your voice is like a song!