The Kallan Royal Family
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One of the biggest challenges for a writer is to successfully have a backstory that doesn’t have large gaping holes in it. My personality is one that likes to fill in all the little details. Perhaps this is why I’m so keen on writing. Creating a character is always a challenge. To make sure that he or she is believable comes in part from their interactions with others. When writing a single story this is not as challenging to achieve.
However, when you start to look at writing a series of stories, and one which might skip around in time a little, then something more concrete needs preparing. For me, the root of the story of The Kallans is the Kallan Royal Family. As is mentioned in Empire, the first member of the family is Daniel I. We also have Rikardo III who is the current Kordagsar (a title similar to that of Emperor). In the story, we also mention other rulers in the past, as well as the connection of a few members to Rikardo (which we won’t reveal so as to not give away any spoilers).
All these characters need to fit accurately into a family. We don’t want mistakes. So when I first began the concept and writing for Empire (many years ago) I created a complete dynasty for the Kallans rulers. With my recent writing, I decided to make use of some family tree software that would allow me to display and keep track of each ruler plus related characters I will create.
I set to on this in late December, working my way through the list of rulers and then adding the ones from Empire that had been mentioned. Next, I added some that will be coming in the next novel. The particular software that I’m using allowed me to run some integrity checks on the data. I ran them. Immediately it flagged an issue I’d not noticed… a parent-child relationship that was too small. With a little work, I was able to shuffle the families around to create a more correct age for the mum.
I finished bringing my information up to date just a week ago. But it won’t be ending there. I’ve more information that needs adding about characters coming in the next novel and in some of the short stories I have planned.
So why is this all so important to me?
Some of the greatest authors were meticulous in their details and in their research. Take as an example War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. That book contains a great many references to events set in the time of Napoleon’s invasion into Russia. Tolstoy’s characters were fit neatly into the real events the story mentions. He consulted both French and Russian accounts of the campaign. As those who have read the book (no mean feat) will appreciate, the book has an accuracy that is refreshing and compelling to the story.
For me, The Kallans are completely fictional. But to thread them into real-world events when necessary will be important. The details about who, what and where characters appear and act becomes important to doing that successfully. So that means information. Whose parents are Rikardo’s? When did they live? I mention incidents in history, I need to make sure that the characters I mention at that time did exist. All this adds a little believability to these fictional stories.
So what more can I say about the Kallan Royal Family?
Well, I can’t say too much, I have some big reveals planned. But something I can mention is that most of the Kordagsars of the Kallans were not young. They tended to be older, often pushing close to a hundred years old. As this would imply, many of them lived longer lives. Looking through the statistics, the average age range is between 120-135.
There were also both male and female Kordagsars, and some died childlessly.
I also thought I’d post up a chart of the immediate family of Rikardo III. You will meet some of them in the second novel…
