Playing with Age and Gender in Daughter of Glory

In re-working my novel Daughter of Glory into something my daughter might be interested in reading, more than just the plot, some of the characters need to be altered.

In the original, Mairwen is an adult, in her early twenties. I think I’m going to almost halve that, make her a tween, maybe thirteen? Thirteen sounds like a pretty good age. My daughter is turning seven this month, and she’s already reading novels set in middle school, so I think in a year or so, she’ll be happy to read about a thirteen-year old.

The original novel also had a bit of a romantic triangle. That’s going to change. She’s way too young, for one reason. For another, one of the triangle is going to be changing gender.

Two of the characters in the original novel were the brothers Thoron and Corum. Thoron is the older, serious brother who had once been one of the arch-mage’s bodyguard, but is now a mercenary captain. His brother, Corum, was not one of the bodyguards, so he’s an outsider. He’s more carefree, a bit of a rake, and the crew’s “faceman.”

I’m keeping Corum as he is, while Thoron is going to become Thora. Everything else will remain the same – she was a bodyguard and has turned to mercenary work. The dynamic with her and her brother will remain – a bit of tension because Thora believes Corum disregards his future and is a little too flip with everything. This helps to balance the gender of the characters. We have Mairwen, Thora and Jian – a female Elf who is young for an Elf but hundreds of years old – on the female team, and Corum, Gustav – a Dwarf and Jian’s father-figure – and Paris Fitzgurth – Mairwen’s “adoptive” father – on the male team. There are other secondary characters that will come in later, but this is the main crew for at least 25 of the 30 written chapters.

This will remain in the planning stages for now, with maybe a rewrite for the first three chapters. My calendar looks pretty full, with the Farewell, Something Lovely and then the Nefertiti Overdrive Kickstarters planned. We’ll see what happens.

There’s no rush. I’ve got a couple of years.

You can learn more about Nefertiti Overdrive here.

You can learn more about Farewell, Something Lovely here

Art in this article by John Wigley and Aires N.F. from deviantART