#the funny thing is that after i made up Mira and Lysander's original names they only changed slightly while the others went to huge changes | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

artinandwritin · 2 years ago

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I wanna hear everything about your Of Thrones and Heirs project (if you feel like talking about it ofc) because it sounds AWESOME, dude

And historically I have just loved your characters and stories lol

ly bestie <333333

Omg y e s ofc I wanna talk about it! Glad you wanna hear more about it cuz holy shit it's like opening a can of worms.

Of Thrones and Heirs (or OTAH, if we wanna get short lmao) is the book I've been working on since I turned 13 - which means this silly story has been in my head for 6 whole years. Holy shit. Seeing as it's been with me for so long, it has developed immensely over the last years and has seen many alterations.

It started as a very self-indulgent fanfiction, written for a school project by me and four of my friends at the time. We used our own names (at the time I still most frequently used the name my parents gave me, Manon, instead of the nickname given to me by one of my best friends, Mona. Funfact, that same friend also helped write the first version of OTAH!), used plotlines that aligned most with our own fantasies, and inserted already existing stories into it.

Hey, what can I say. We were preteens and as I've said before, teens are just idiots in nature /j. For the information, I'm technically still a teen. Turning 19 on November 8th.

Now I'd like to inform you a bit on the storyline of this first iteration of OTAH, written between October and December of 2016, the time before I actually knew how to write a well-developed story. Hold onto your seat, darling, this is gonna be one heck of a ride. Oh, and I'll totally provide excerpts, translated word by word from Dutch. Just because I can.

The Destiny of Five (2016);

We open up on a small prelude by a 13-year-old Manon. She tells her readers about world, a strange one, one no-one has ever seen before. However, she has been there, has seen its dragons, its elves, the creatures one can only dream about. She informs us that she and the friends she has visited this world with have decided to write their findings and their story down, and closes with expressing her wish that this book inspires the readers and makes them realise how even their own world can consist of magic.

After this, we get a list of characters we meet in the book. After starting on Manon and her friends (for their own privacy, I will change their names. Mainly cuz I have had a severe falling out and have some lingering traumas over one of them and would like to not be reminded of that lmao), Sander, Norneth, Fioré, and Laventher (these names will also return in future iterations, funfact!).

Next to that, we get a little introduction on the side characters, and this is where we get a bit weird. We "meet" Hiccup and Astrid (because little Mona and her bestie were the biggest fans of HTTYD even at that age), and Saturno and Spica (the main characters of a fantasy serie by Geronimo Stilton little me was obsessed with). With that information, we start the story.

Closing in on the group of five friends we've met in the introductions, we see them walking out of their Dutch class of the day. They have been assigned to go to the library and pick a book that interests them (even tho that isn't clearly stated lmao) and are not happy about that. Well. Sander isn't. Little Mona and Fioré are. After some shenanigans, they reach the library, however, Little Mona halts them right in their step. She has a strange feeling, like something is going to happen.

"And suddenly little Mona yells: 'Stop! We have to stop!'

And everyone stopped.

'What is it this time!' Sander sounds outraged.

Little Mona gulps and her eyes seem fearful. 'I don't know, but we have to leave! Something is going to...'

Suddenly, a car drives at us in full speed. He can't stop. He scoops Sander.

A few minutes later, an ambulance arrives, who takes Sander to the hospital.

'Let's go to the library. Sander didn't want to go anyways,' Little Mona says.

'So let's do that!' Fioré steps on her bike. The others quickly follow."

The epitome of storytelling, I know. After that marvelous display of friendship, the rest of the group arrives at the library. There, Little Mona and Fioré see a strange library worker walk out of a hidden room. They decide to enter that hidden room - as if that isn't just a storage room and the library worker is just doing their work - and find a strange, shining book. And cuz they have no impulse control, they steal the book and go to the hospital Sander is at, to visit him or something. Fun times.

However, when Sander opens this strange book, the five children get sucked into it. Classic. When they open their eyes, they find themselves in a case of glass, their bodies starting to fade. Oh shit, goes through their minds, but it's already too late.

Suddenly, Fioré and Little Mona are in an all too familiar place; Berk. Dragons everywhere, they meet Astrid (cuz she's an icon) and are brought to the village. Fioré runs off to do whatever the fuck - Little Mona brings her back and they get to take a good look at themselves; Fioré looks exactly like a dragon rider, and Little Mona suddenly looks like a little elf. Very strange. However, a problem rises; the rest of their friends aren't with them.

Let's turn our gaze to Laventhel, who has ended up on the very Dutch island Vlieland. Yes. This is a real island located in the north of the Netherlands - that's how Dutch we were in this book.

Meanwhile, Norneth is in a city of fire, where she meets a crazy old man, dubbing him the crazy old man. Deep sigh. He is a firewizard and they argue for a very long time.

Fioré and Little Mona talk to HiccStrid and meet Saturno and Spica, two knights from a special knight island. How fun! They're making friends. Damn, this was self indulgent and I love it. Take me back pls.

A lot of filler follows; Laventhel meets an old man as well and learns that they're in the year 2070 (which, okay, very accurate with the lore I suppose? I guess that's what happens when you write a book with five people lmao), and that Vlieland is slowly sinking into the sea. Laventhel is gonna save the island!

Meanwhile, Fioré and Little Mona remember the book that took them to this new world, and decide to not open it until they have found their friends. They get dragons of their own to go and find them, a Night Fury named Arya for Little Mona and a Stormcutter named Cloud for Fioré. Fioré can suddenly talk to animals and Little Mona is an airbender, which is fun. They leave to find their friends with HiccStrid and the two knights.

Laventhel realises she's a waterbender and finds a horse. Sander has some hijinks and loses his memory. He immediately decides to become the evil overlord of an army of evil people he hypnotises to do his bidding, as you do. He becomes a firebender and a teleporter out of sheer rage. Apparently he can also steal powers, but it never comes up again.

Fioré, Little Mona and Sander run into each other and have an epic battle. The girls try to tell Sander he is their friend, but he can't remember. They part ways again, and Sander is gonna try and take over the world. Way to go, 13-year-old.

Laventhel fights a watersnake and realises she needs her friends to save Vlieland. As she does that, Fioré, Little Mona, and Norneth reunite for some reason. Apparently, Little Mona is psychic or something, cuz she can see the future. They inform Norneth of Sander's evilness and the next day, they run into Laventhel, who has left Vlieland to search for her friends. This, they do. Vlieland is saved! Good way to end that plot.

However, things are twarted as Sander and his evil army hypnotise Norneth and make her evil too. Little Mona sees this happen, but gets caught and falls into an intense confrontation with Sander. As they fight, Little Mona gets drained of her strength, but Fioré and Laventhel save the day just in time. They lock the two evil kids up - Little Mona gets a bit manipulated by Sander as he pretends to know her again and he summons his army. Another fight happens, and it doesn't end well this time. Sander manages to hypnotise everyone, but suddenly remembers his past with his friends. He is back to being himself for a moment, which is great, but doesn't last long. At night, he turns evil again and he and Norneth kidnap therest of the group, minus Laventhel, who manipulates the two to let her go back to Vlieland. In secret, she raises an army against her friends.

Little Mona and Sander fight a lot again, the tension is real as apparently they are each other's equal in match. Eventually, the war starts as Laventhel brings her armies to Sander's kingdom. And epic battle ensues and guess how the two evil friends gets turned good again? Well, um...

"Fioré and Cloud fly up to Little Mona and Sander, who are fighting. 'Hey, Little Mona. A question: if someone is evil and gets a stone thrown against her head and her cape turns white, is she good again?' Fioré asks.

She answers Fioré without looking up. 'Yes, indeed. Why?'

Fioré yell: 'Norneth turned good!'"

Yes, they solve the conflict by throwing a stone against Sander and Norneth's heads. The war is over, and friends go back home again.

This first iteration is… something. Yeah, it sure is something. What it is, I am not sure, to be honest, but it was my first work of fiction and I’m glad I did it. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have been the person I am today, which I’m pretty proud of.

After this, I wrote two sequels in the span of a few months, this time on my own and not for a school project. My friends didn’t work with me on those, it was just ya girl. However, about a year after that, I decided to redo everything from those first books and turn it into something completely new. It would no longer be a self-insert story, instead being about a new group of people who were basically me and my friends, but with different names. I don’t have the whole plot for this, cuz this version actually never got finished and got changed so often I couldn’t keep track, but I’ll try my best to recreate it in a satisfying way.

Myths (2017-2020);

Fifteen years ago, a young queen, Daphne Liber, dethroned in a senseless war against a family named the Farunturs and having lost her entire family, made a deal with the Gods to save her newborn daughter. She died because of this, but the daughter and heir to this kingdom, the Kingdom of Erujishan, is saved.

In the present, we get an introduction to Miraya Liber and Sander, two middle school kids, best friends for life. They go through life as one normally would, growing up happily. However, one incident throws their entire lives into disarray; two girls, Fioré and Norneth, show up to kidnap Mira and bring her back to the Kingdom of Erujishan to take back her throne. Mira is like, hell no, I have no idea what you’re talking about, cuz she has gained some spunk in the last few iterations, and she and Sander flee from them. Fioré and Norneth go crazy when they hear Sander’s last name; Faruntur.

All efforts of the two teens are stopped when the intruders get to them and suddenly, they are teleported out of this world, into an entirely new one, separated and alone. Mira, disoriented and terrified, meets the surviving Libers, Dawn, her husband, her grandfather, etc. Fioré turns out to be her cousin, a girl who can talk to animals, and Norneth is a family friend with fire magic. Mira is determined to find Sander again so they can go home, but that can’t happen. The girl’s grandfather explained that the world Mira and Sander grew up in was the afterlife and that she has been in a life-saving coma for the last fifteen years, having been brought back to save the kingdom.

Which, okay, fine, but I don’t think it would be very safe to let a fifteen-year-old save a kingdom. Heck, I’m almost 19 and I don’t even know how to drive. And also, this opens up a lot of weird plotholes I’d love to explore some other time (like, um, how tf did they put Fioré and Norneth in a coma? Wut? If the exchange to putting someone in a magic coma like that is taking the life of another, who in the world died to get Fioré and Norneth into the afterlife? That’s a story that should be explored).

Mira learns she has air magic and that the Libers want to use her to get the throne back from the Farunturs, which is always fun. However, Mira now has shifted her goal to finding Sander and getting away with him, away from this war she has fallen into. She and Fioré, together with Fioré’s dragon, Kumo, sneak away to the city of Shin’yu, where they meet Arbre and Joyeux, two siblings, the children of the leaders of the city. They also meet two elves, Selene and Atlas, a couple. Now with a team, Mira’s hope to find Sander grows bigger.

However, Sander got brainwashed by the Farunturs. Turns out, he, as a child, after the Farunturs learned of Daphne Liber’s sacrifice to save her daughter, got send to the afterlife as well as a way to keep him safe of all harm. Now, they washed him clean of all his memories to make him the perfect heir – throwing away he has an older sister and cousin who are both much better rulers than him, smh.

Sander and his sister, Mavis, get send into the world for… reasons, together with a traitor of the Libers. Turns out, Norneth is just a traitor! Yes, this has a real life reason. The person she was based off of, who I thought was a friend, and I had a huge falling out during this time. They kinda stabbed me in the back and the trauma ran deep after that, so I decided to make their character an absolute bitch instead of doing the more logical thing, which was write Norneth out of the story. But, I guess Little Mona needed this to mentally survive and not get more fucked up.

They meet Mira and the gang in Shin’yu, and a fight ensues. Norneth kills Kumo and Selene (not that we really cared about them as we had only known them for like. A chapter.) and Sander turns out to be able to control fire. He and Mira got into a shouting match and Sander yelled at her to stop calling him Sander. His name was Arashi now. After this, he ran off, leaving Mira alone in the ash and dust.

Arbre, with his village now destroyed, blamed Mira for the cost he had paid, as Atlas grieved his girlfriend. Fioré just cried over Kumo’s corpse – and Mira realized the pain Erujishan was in because of the Farunturs. She would get to Sander in another way, but saving this kingdom seemed more important at the moment.

The gang returned to the Libers’ hide-out, where plans got hatched to rage a war against the Farunturs. However, as Mira begged her family to let her help, she got pushed away, being told her admiration of that Faruntur boy would be their undoing. As she was send off, she walked into her grandfather, Riyu. He expressed his desire for a shared rule between the Libers and Farunturs, and Mira agreed. After they had parted ways, however, Mira got kidnapped by the Farunturs.

When waking up in a cell, Mira was greeted by Mavis and Sander. While Mavis mocked her, Sander had a strange kind of concern in his eyes, leaving Mira wondering about his thoughts. She met the Farunturs’ leader, the grandfather Jinsei. However, as they left, Sander expressed his concern outloud and the two kids bonded over their shared history, even if Sander couldn’t remember any of it. The boy, his social abilities being wacky, kissed the heir of the Libers through the prison bars, and the next morning, he helped her escape. They rode to the Libers’ newly established front by horse, where Sander got threatened and was forced to ride back home. The kids kissed again. I guess I really shipped them.

Mira was brought to her family and met a strange girl in a dark coat. Her name was Yami and she was a necromancer – she had raised an army of the dead in Mira’s absence, consisting of old Libers and their warriors. Thus, Mira reunited with the parents she had lost. Soon, the world got ready for yet another war, but this time between equals. Shit, I can’t imagine how fed up the normal people must be with the Libers and Farunturs. Like, oh damn, there they go again, guess I’d better pack up my farm again to let them wage their war. Pff I need a story about that.

Mira and Sander pretended to fight as the large battle around them started, the two fronts yelling and screaming at each other. Atlas killed Norneth in revenge, Arbre’s sister Joy got killed as well. Mira’s father tried to kill Sander in an act of rage, but the girl threw herself in front of his sword.

Half a year later, Mira woke up again. She had fallen into a coma again – oops? – and the war had passed. Sander had gotten his memory back, and the two reunited tearfully. The ghosts had returned to the afterlife and life was slowly getting back to normal again. For some reason, Mavis had been crowned to be queen? I don’t know man.

Anyways, the kiddos kissed again. Nothing could keep them apart anymore.

And that was this iterations. This is getting pretty long but I love infodumping about this story and I have literally never been able to do that to this extent lmao. Most of my friends got superannoyed when I did lmao. This version… well, it’s something. At this point, most original plotpoints were thrown out of the window and the kids were completely their own characters. This version has seen me through a lot of up and downs and it was always something I could return to, even when I had nothing.

And oh, I sure had nothing at times through this. As many of you can second me on, being a teen is brutal. Friendships ended, I got a boyfriend who was way too romantic from day one and ended things way too quickly, I created other stories and my homelife worsened severely cuz my father isn’t the best person. I believe that around the end of this era, I also created Siri and Niv, who were also a huge source of comfort for me at the time.

In March of 2021, I started reworking some things for this story and changed its name to Of Thrones and Heirs. Many characters got removed and changed, plus the story got a total rewrite. And damn, that was a lot to figure out, but this version got finished. In a repeat of history, I finished OTAH for a school project, in nine whole months.

So, thus, the story of Of Thrones and Heirs, my personal favorite iteration of this project and the definite summary of this tale.

Of Thrones and Heirs (2021):

On a cold day in the middle of winter, Mireya Liber, former heir to the throne of Cadence, tried to infiltrate the palace. Eleven years ago, when she was merely seven years old, her family had been dethroned and slaughtered in what seemed like a senseless beg for power from the Farunturs and the normal folk. Ever since then, she had been trained and taught to take back her throne from those wicked Farunturs and let her family rule once again.

A manipulator, a trickster, a mind of her own; things that help Mira get past the gates, despite her family’s demands. They don’t think her ready for such a serious task like taking back the kingdom. However, to her, this would be the day. She would take back Cadence for the Libers. But, things don’t go as planned as she fell into the hands of the prince of the kingdom, Lysander Faruntur. A young man with a kind smile and gentle hands, he had never seen the outside world in all its glory. His sister, Mavis, would soon be crowned queen; he was itching for it to happen.

Lysander thinks Mira is just a peasant girl, here to help around, and quickly takes a liking to her, believing her name to be Amire. He takes her around the castle, talking and talking, as Mira shudders in rage at the thought of even walking next to a Faruntur. However, maybe this can work to her advantage. Maybe she can use the prince to get close to the princess.

Thus, she fell in a careful dance around him as her family tried to get her back into their hands. Dawn, the woman who raised her and her cousins, Fioré and Silas, send Fioré after her, angry with Mira’s sudden independency. Slowly, but surely, both Mira and Fioré, the latter having flourished after leaving the Libers and working on their own, realized what the world turned out to become in their years of hiding.

Maybe the Farunturs really made things better.

Mira wasn’t ready to admit that, but as she got closer to Lysander, the switch in her mind slowly got flipped. They discovered a world outside the palace, basked in the freedom it suddenly gave them – but Mira’s internal struggles only worsened and worsened. Should she uphold her duty, or should she choose her own path?

Fioré befriended Mavis, a nervous woman with her heart in the right place. Her leadership would be grand, her plans for the world ever so great. While Fioré was quicker to turn themselves away from the Libers than Mira, they still didn’t know how to tell the princess about their Liber-DNA, about Mira’s plans, or Dawn’s.

I won’t be going into all the details here, since it’s really a damn lot and I will probably publish this story someday after I’ve polished it, but the gist is that Mira, after a lot of ups and downs, learns to trust Lysander and rely on him. With this, she isn’t an heir anymore, and Dawn rages in her disobedience.

And after this, now the two sides are established, the real fight for the throne begins.

So that’s OTAH! The roster of characters is larger than I’ve made clear here and the details are more intertwined as well, but these are the basics. Mira, Lysander and Fioré are some of my favorite characters I have ever created and they’re more dear to me than I can ever express. I hope I’ve put some clarity on this mystery project of mine and that I have entertained you <3

Ly too bestie!! And thank you so much for letting me infodump haha <3

#oh and funfact #i had the hugest of huge crushes on the guy who was Sander in the first iteration #like we were really good friends when we wrote the book which makes it really funny #little mona and real life sander were way too tiny for a relationship fr #the funny thing is that after i made up Mira and Lysander's original names they only changed slightly while the others went to huge changes #it was an experience lmao #of thrones and heirs #writing #thanks for the ask!

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