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Land magic questions & answers

Time for answers to some questions about the land magic! These come from a discussion in the comments of a post for patrons on my Patreon. It’s an episode where various people – nine of them – are talking about the land magic. It’s in A Fox Hunt, a series of prequel scenes before the events of Grown Wise.

You might also want to check out some of the previous conversations about the land magic here from 2022. Though I’m going to mention the relevant bits for these questions below. 

Naming an Heir

The ideal is that the Heir to the land magic has a chance to learn all the moving pieces of being Lord or Lady before they take that on. It’s also obviously helpful to have a named Heir in case something happens to the Lord or Lady. Most families do favour having a bloodline connection.

But research (such as it is) hasn’t settled the question of whether the bloodline connection matters, or whether it’s being familiar with the landed estate from an early age. As you can imagine, it’s hard to get a control group for this kind of study.

There are a number of ways someone might name an Heir. 

If the Lord or Lady has children. They might name their child Heir any time after the child turns 12 and has made the Pact. (Various families have their own customs around timing, some do it a bit later.) If there are no children (or no children yet), a younger sibling, cousin, or more distant relative might be named Heir. Someone might be named Heir temporarily (for values of ‘years, more than a decade’ temporary). That’s especially true if it’s thought likely that the Lord or Lady will have children or choose to adopt in someone specific from the more distant family.In some cases, an Heir might not be named. There’s no formal Heir to Ytene from when Geoffrey Carillon inherits in 1922 until his son Edmund turns 12 in 1938.If someone inherits very young, there might be appointed as regent. This is mentioned in Nocturnal Quarry and some followup. More below. Stepping down as Heir

It’s possible for a Heir to step down. In fact this is fairly common if the Heir is a younger sibling of the Lord or Lady, and there are children under the age of 12. In Illusion of a Boar, Orion Sisley’s younger brother Achilles is his Heir. Everyone expects that when Orion’s children are older, one of them will likely become Heir. Similarly, Isembard is his brother Garin’s Heir for most of their adult lives. That lasts until Isembard steps down in favour of his daughter, Ursula. 

This brings us to the first of the actual questions (leaving the original spellings here…) 

But what happens if an Heir who is, say, a sibling or cousin of the current Lord or Lady, inherits before that Lord or Lady’s child is old enough to be ritually named Heir? Does the interim Heir become an interim Lord or Lady? Are they expected to favor the original Lord/Lady’s offspring when choosing the next Heir? Or does the whole thing devolve to them and the offspring is/are out of luck? It seems like the system leaves room for some rather dastardly maneuvering on the part of an unscrupulous Heir.

Honestly, this depends a bit on the family. The deal is that the Lord or Lady gets to name their Heir. It’s also trickier for the Lord or Lady to step down. (Though that’s also possible, especially if there’s a significant ongoing health issue or the land is doing poorly. See The Hare and the Oak for the latter). 

Some families have a tradition of favouring the sister’s son, if there’s no son in the direct line. The Sisleys do this when it’s relevant, it goes back to an old pre-Norman custom in the area.

Demographics

Honestly, most often, there are not a vast number of plausible candidates. Albion’s had fairly reliable magical contraception for a good long while. Most marriage agreements (when those are in play) are for two children. That means there aren’t necessarily a horde of people in the next generation.

And many families leave the daughters out of this equation because finding a suitable man to marry into the family (if a daughter becomes Heir) can be a lot trickier to arrange. They prefer their sons or nephews or whatever as Heirs. (Men marrying in might want other concessions to do so that affect the land, inheritance for other members of the family, etc. Families with one child who’s a daughter don’t have a division of property problem the same way.)

The mechanics

Generally, if someone’s stepping down as Heir, there’s a reason for it. A more direct relation has come of age. Or there’s some reason someone can’t inherit. For example, it’s become clear they’re not going to be able to tend the land magic for some reason.

But if someone does inherit, then they get to make their own choices about who becomes their Heir.

You can see this in the Mysterious Fields trilogy. After a chain that goes father to son, Sigbert names Dagobert (his uncle, jumping back up another generation). If Garin had turned 12 already, Sigbert might well have named Garin instead. Or he could have named one of his Aunt Bradamante’s children. 

I am quite certain historically there have been tangles of one person getting named, the Lord dying, the new Lord naming someone different, and so on. This doesn’t usually come down to open conflict.

If it does, well, handling the problems that can come up (especially unscrupulous moves) is one of the things the Council is for. They can bring a vast amount of social pressure to bear, as well as more direct magical responses.

That’s especially true if there were formal oaths in play. Sensible Lords not sure about the actions of their Heirs often do have oaths enforced by the Pact about what happens after they die that remain binding. As well as witnesses to those oaths and other precautions.

Wartime considerations

One of the things that Albion learned in the Great War was that having both the Lord and Heir in combat at the same time was perhaps a really bad idea. Not just because of death, it turns out. As they figured out over the next decade, there were huge problems with damage to people’s land senses. (That bit really needs to be its own post, I will come back to it.) 

By the Second World War, arrangements were generally made so that the Lord and Heir were not both in combat positions.  

This wasn’t universally followed. Both Orion and Achilles are serving in active combat at the same time until Orion’s injury in 1943. However, they were in different arenas of combat, in hopes that something wouldn’t happen to them both at the same time.

However, the general idea was more or less sound. This is one of the places where you’d see a temporary Heir who expected to step down after circumstances changed.

However, the Blitz made that more complicated. In one of the Fox Hunt extras on Patreon, Ursula references someone stepping down as Heir in favour of his sister. He was going into combat. Unfortunately, his sister was then killed in the Blitz. Sensible plan, but with tragedy to follow. Once the war was over, the brother was named Heir again. 

Sites of difficulty

One thing where there is more trouble is in the larger family estates. The demesne estate goes to the Lord or Lady. This generally involves a manor house, associated farmland, orchards, tenant leases, and other forms of income. However, that says nothing about all the other family resources! People can be and often are dastardly about money, precious family objects, and land that isn’t the demesne estate. 

There’s a reason the inheritance court in Trellech has an entire courtroom. And a reason that the people working in that courtroom know the Guards and Penelopes well. Also some reasons that the demesne estates typically have exceptional warding. And reasons that many people at that level of society take a number of sometimes excessive protective measures at larger gatherings. 

However, a Lord (or Lady) can leave their property whatever way they want, other than the demesne lands. Geoffrey had a substantial inheritance from his parents before they died (enough to make him a man of independent wealth). He can leave the other family properties to whichever of his family he likes.

Similarly, Garin and Isembard had inheritances from their parents that split things up fairly equitably. The Essex House, which Isembard inherited, is actually a much larger manor house and arguably more generally valuable as a property. Arundel has more associated farms and tenants, as well as being the demesne estate.

Young Heirs

So one last problem that can come up is that being 12 is old enough to be named Heir, but not actually old enough to run an estate. This comes up at the end of Nocturnal Quarry, where Geoffrey Carillon is asked if he’ll act as regent for the southern half of the New Forest. 

The situation there is that the current Lord has cancer. His Heir is his grandson (his son having died in a car accident some years previously). Geoffrey agrees. Everyone in 1938 is also aware that the non-magical folk in the New Forest are going to respond better to Geoffrey (an officer in the Great War, but too old to go into active fighting in the Second World War) than a 13 year old. 

In this case, Geoffrey does not become Lord of both places. That may have happened occasionally historically, but no one wants to do it again. It’s just really hard on the psyche and magic. But Geoffrey does ritually take on some responsibility for keeping things running and training up the new young Lord in what he needs to know. 

The post Land magic questions & answers appeared first on Celia Lake.

Demesne Estates

The demesne estates are at the heart of Albion’s land magic. Time to talk a little more about what they are and how they work. 

What’s a demesne estate?

And key, how do you pronounce that? Demesne is roughty ‘deh-mane’ (as in a lion’s or horse’s mane). ‘Domain’ is pretty close (and the words have the same root). It comes out of Anglo-French property law. 

The demesne estate is the estate associated with the land magic of that area. Over time, following the Pact in 1484, Albion became divided up into a series of demesnes. These are areas of the country with Lords (or Ladies). They’re responsible for maintaining the land magic of that area, dealing with issues in the magical communities, but also responding to other kinds of needs. 

Common needs and tasks

For example, these are kinds of things the Lord or Lady would generally handle: 

Seasonal planting, harvest, and other rites and rituals to ensure the flow of the land magicTending to particular magical issues – blight, unexpected upswellings of magic, magic not flowing as it ought to.Magical creatures causing problems. Making sure that people in the area with strong magical power get sufficient training. That’s for their wellbeing and the safety of people around them.Assisting with issues like flooding, bridge damage, bogs, trees down across roads, and so on (magically and non-magically)Ensuring that the keep-away charms and glamours on magical villages or magically dangerous spaces are maintained. 

And there’s some overlap here with the Church of English parishes, but the Lord or Lady also provides functional support for people in need in their area. That could include alms or charity in various forms, figuring out a reasonable option for employment, fixing housing, etc. 

Some are a lot more attentive than others. In some places, someone needs to bring a formal petition to ask for help. (Which, as we all know, can deter people from doing it. They may not be able to show up at the relevant place at the right time). Other Lords and Ladies are extremely proactive, making sure they hear about small problems and tending to them.

Rufus is a good example here: Temple was not aware Rufus was having the degree of problem he was. Geoffrey has arrangements to hear about that sort of thing – someone down to their last resources – much earlier in the process. (All right, a number of those arrangements are just named “Benton” here, but.)

Two key notes

First, it’s no longer a feudal system (though it definitely has roots there). The Lord or Lady does not have any particular authority over the people in their area except in the ways that are directly related to the land magic. However, they are obliged to provide certain kinds of support if asked. That includes facilitating access to the Guard or magistrates for legal issues, and so on. They may also assist the Ministry or Guard if someone breaks Albion’s laws or protective customs. They are always particularly well tied into communication and transportation methods.

Second, the Lord or Lady does not have to do any of this themselves, other than the local land rites. Everything else can be delegated to someone with relevant skills. Some Lords and Ladies are exceedingly competent. Others hire competent staff. Most of the estates do have a fairly substantial core staff.

Demographics and the demesenes

The previous times I’ve talked about this, I gestured at numbers, because I did not have them fully mapped out. Now I’ve done that! Here’s how the demesnes break down. (The numbers by country include the relevant special cases.) 

Special cases

Trellech is its own demesne, encompassing the city and immediate area, headed by the Lord of Trellech’s Justice. This is someone who has come up through Trellech’s courts, and is one of the few lordships that is not hereditary. The Heir is chosen from among senior staff in Albion’s courts. It’s someone with extensive ritual magic experience along with other skills. (Facets of the Bench explores this in much more detail if you’re curious.) 

London is also its own demesne, held by the Keeper of London. We haven’t seen much about this yet. There’ll be a little in the upcoming Harmonic Pleasure, but I want to come back and explore more at some point! This one is not hereditary in the usual bloodline sense, but bounces between a handful of families normally. 

The Five Schools (encompassing the school and immediate area: at Schola, that includes the entire island) have their Head of School as Lord or Lady. Those are Schola, Alethorpe, Dunwich, Forvie, and Snap. The schools generally pick their own Heads, almost always from an existing staff member. 

England

There are 87 demesnes in England, roughly two for each of the historic counties (Wikipedia has a handy map), which date back to the Normans. Some areas have more: Hampshire, for example, has Northern Hampshire, Southern Hampshire, the Northern New Forest, and the Southern New Forest. Other areas are much larger geographically. Manchester has its own as a city (though with the same hereditary family model of inheritance as most demesnes.)  

While I eye historical division patterns for this, there are also places where the demesne doesn’t quite follow what you’d expect. Kent, for example, is more often divided based on whether you’re east or west of the River Medway. Albion divides it into northern and southern. Northern includes Canterbury and the northern and most of the eastern coastline. The Southern part, where the Edgartons are, includes a little coastline but not nearly so much. 

Wales

Wales has 16 demesnes (again, including Trellech and Schola), roughly based on one of the many possible maps of the historic Welsh kingdoms. Historically – and up to the 20th century – the lines have tended to pass through families. Often members of a particular family would hold two or sometimes more demesnes between brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. in ways that move back and forth depending on marriages, available family members, etc. Mostly, they work it out amongst themselves and no one outside of Wales wants to argue about it. 

Scotland

Scotland has 38 demesnes, mostly based on the historical shires, with Glasgow and Edinburgh both having their own demesnes. Because of the distances involved (and the generally lower ratio of portals in Scotland compared to England and Wales), they’re a little more spread out in terms of size. 

Demesne estates

We’ve seen a range of demesne estates so far in the books (and Grown Wise spends a lot more time at Arundel and environs). 

The immediate demesne estate

When we’re talking about the demesne estate, we’re talking about a building (generally a substantial manor house or country home) and the immediate land around it. The family may well own additional land in the area that’s not a part of the formal demesne. The Fortiers, for example, have the immediate demesne estates around Arundel (the manor house). They own, farm, and lease out additional property throughout western Sussex.

The home on the estate is often in the same place, century to century. Or it might be rebuilt for various reasons, expanded, or altered as needed by the family. Generally, they’re big enough for two or three generations (plus staff) to live comfortably in separate sets of rooms. There will also be public rooms for larger gatherings. Veritas is on the larger side as a house (with a much older footprint than most). Arundel is on the smaller side.

Most of the landed families also own other properties – townhouses in Trellech, other estates, etc. Hawk’s Breath (the Carillon estate in Cumbria) is larger and younger than Ytene. It’s better suited for larger scale entertaining, but in an entirely different demesne. These secondary properties might be sold off, be passed down a cadet line, etc. but the demesne estate needs to stay in the landed family. (As noted in Ancient Trust, the death taxes work a little differently for the demesne estates or in Trellech proper.)

Magic and the demesne

One key distinction is that the demesne estate always has a significant degree of magical protection and warding. This prevents people from wandering onto it if they’re not magical, creates a container to help build, maintain, and nurture the land magic. However, that core is in the land, not the buildings – if there’s damage from fire, war, etc. that obviously affects the land magic but doesn’t shatter it.

The Lords and Ladies do have a sense of what’s going on throughout their larger area. Orion mentions being aware of bombing in Illusion of a Boar. Even though they’re not even in Sussex at that point! Gabe has a particularly finely tuned sense, to the point of a certain advance notice of bombs dropping in Upon A Summer’s Day. Garin is unsettled by it, but needs to go check with people to find out what was bombed.

The land rituals would be a whole other topic, and I’ll save those notes for later. 

Portals

Most – but not – all demesne estate portals in Albion were created after the Pact (so after about 1490 or so). Priority has consistently been given to the demesne estates in building and maintaining them. That way, the estate can serve as a contact point. Albion’s government can then have a way to get emergency help out quickly from Trellech. However, access to that portal outside an emergency might be limited. The precise location of the portal depends on a number of factors – the local bedrock, geological features, ley lines, imbued magic, and so on. So it’s not always possible to pick an ideal location on all levels.

The Ytene portal is in a courtyard right next to the main house. People coming and going would affect the household significantly. It’s emergency use only for people outside the demesne estate.

Veritas’s portal is within the demesne estate warding. It’s designed so that people can come through during hops-picking season and so the magical villages nearby can access it. The Arundel portal is actually technically right outside the estate warding. It has some precautions that mean the estate (and especially the Lord and Lady) are aware if it’s in use.

Specific demesne estatesVeritas

One of the oldest demesne estates, Veritas was built on the previous footprint of a Roman villa. Tucked into a quiet corner of Kent, it has a portal a little way from the house. The main house was built up over a number of years. It has multiple wings, four ritual and magical workrooms, individual office spaces, a large lawn, a duelling salle, a separate building with the alchemy lab. Along with sufficient sets of rooms to comfortably house multiple generations along with guests. There’s a home farm nearby that provides the household with a fair amount of their food. 

Schola

Schola is unusual in several ways. First, the actual demesne building is a castle. These days, that’s a curtain wall remaining around three sides and the fourth open, as well as the keep. That means that about four hundred people live in or right next to the key building, far more than most of the other demesne estates. Second, the demesne encompasses the entire island. And third, while the professors and staff are fairly stable as a population (as is the village), hundreds of students cycle through the school every five years. It gives an entirely different energy. 

As those who’ve read Chasing Legends know, Schola has some particular mysteries when it comes to the land.) The core keep itself dates from about 1100, with a number of improvements since then. The heart of the demesne has been there since about 600 CE. 

Ytene

The manor at Ytene has been around since about the 11th century in some form. Though it’s a rather quirky building with odd additions due to the way it’s nestled into the New Forest. The portal, as mentioned, is right off the main courtyard between the house and the stables. There are formal gardens behind the house and less formal ones in the surrounding area. A particular challenge during the Second World War was the bombing test range right to the west. 

Trellech

Since the Lordship in Trellech passes through the courts, the Courts are actually the anchor of the demesne estate. The Lord (or Lady) can live wherever they like, so long as their primary residence is in Trellech. That usually means a townhouse, perhaps with a bit of deliberately tended garden. The actual rites take place at various public points in Trellech, as seen in Facets of the Bench and Mari Lwyd 1927 (an extra set in Trellech). 

Arundel

Arundel is actually one of the younger estates – it broke off after the Pact, when the magical and non-magical lines split. Arundel-the-castle stayed in the non-magical aristocratic line, the magical folks built an estate a dozen miles north. And also called it Arundel, because that’s a perfectly reasonable name. The manor is not particularly large – enough for Garin and Livia to have separate sets of rooms, with room for short-term guests, but not a lot more than that. However, there are extensive gardens, orchards, and greenhouses. 

We’ll come back to some of the demesne estate rites and rituals in time!

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The Fortier family (a brief history)

As we approach Grown Wise, it seems handy to have a brief history of the Fortier family. At this point in the Albion books, we have four generations visible in some way. That’s quite a lot of time to work with.

The past

In the beginning, there were the Merovingians. 

Well, not actually in the beginning. But when it comes to the Fortier family, that’s the most important part. The Merovingians were a dynasty among the Franks (roughly what is now France and Germany). You’re more likely to have heard of the Carolingians (and especially Charlemagne), unless you’ve got a particular interest in early mediaeval European history. Or, admittedly, some other quirks and odd eddies of tales. 

There are, culturally, several interesting bits of magical lore associated with them. One has to do with how the dynasty began. The tale goes that a king’s wife bore a son fathered by a quinotaur named Merovech. (What’s a quinotaur? A bull-shaped magical beast, possibly with a tail like a merman.)

From Merovech came the dynasty, eventually. They were known as the “long-haired kings” for their custom of wearing their hair long, possibly for some magical theory reasons. The dynasty also has a number of tales related to dreams, visions, etc. being a driving force in certain decisions. 

(If you’d like to know more about the Merovingians, I greatly enjoyed The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak when I read it last summer. The direct evidence for the two queens of the title is very slim. But Puhak discusses the sources she’s working from, and puts them in the larger context of the Merovingian world. Warning, comes with death, betrayal, war, battle, more betrayal, etc. approximately every other page for a lot of the book.) 

At any rate, some of Albion’s families trace their lineage back to the Merovingians, mostly via the Norman Conquest. The Fortiers are one of the most prominent families to do so. (It does mean the family has a fondness for Merovingian names. I might possibly regret that at this point, given how many times I’ve had to type some of them now.) But it’s also shaped a fair bit of the family magic and traditions, some of which we get to see in various books. 

The Arundel demesne

At some point around the Pact in the 1480s, the magical Fortier line split off from the non-magical lords. They established the Arundel demesne estate (distinct from Arundel Castle, which is still there) and claimed responsibility for the land magic of West Sussex. The estate runs alongside the River Arun between Amberley and Greatham (and of course, it’s magically protected and hidden). The family also hold a number of other fields, tenant farms, etc. in the area. Garin mentions at one point that there was a Fortier on the first Council in 1484.

The members of the family who go to Schola are uniformly in Fox House (until we get to Leo). Those who attend Schola are also in Dius Fidius, the most elite of the secret societies. Until we get to Ursula, who had other ideas about what to do with her time. 

Vauquelin and Chrodechildis Fortier

The first people we see, chronologically, are Vauquelin and Chrodechildis Fortier. Chrodechildis came from another – though more recent – line of the Third Families, those who had particular ties to France in various forms. 

Vauquelin Fortier was born in 1810. He married Chrodechildis (born the same year) in 1835. Together, they had three children: Clovis, Bradamante, and Dagobert.  Vauquelin was a ritualist, when it came to magical specialities. He inherited the land magic from his father in 1840, relatively young. He remained Lord until his death in 1885 (nearly 5 years before the Mysterious Fields trilogy). 

When the trilogy begins, Chrodechildis is still very much the matriarch of the family, decidedly in control of a number of matters. She certainly has many expectations about her children and what they should be doing with themselves. 

The Fortier Mess

The Mysterious Fields trilogy takes place in 1889 and 1890. At this point, we have the next generation of the family in play (as well as the generation younger). These include Clovis, Bradamante, and Dagobert Fortier, along with their families. 

Clovis

Clovis was born in 1836, and married Maylis in 1862. They have two children, Childeric (born 1865) and Sigbert (born 1869). They have been living at Arundel, the demesne estate, throughout their marriage, not least because of the expectation that Childeric would inherit the land magic in due course. If you’ve read the trilogy, you know that’s not how things go.

The Arundel manor house has two distinct wings, joined by a central wing. Chrodechildis has kept the wing traditionally used by the Lord and Lady (a sitting room on the ground floor, a bedchamber and other space on the first floor), while Clovis and Maylis have rooms in the other wing on the first floor, with their sons and some guest rooms above on the second. 

Clovis had a solid magical education, with a focus on duelling magic and sympathetic magic. However, he’s far less of an expert in his field than his father was in ritual magics, and it shows. 

Bradamante

Bradamante was born in 1840. As a daughter, it was always expected she’d marry out of the family. She marries Yves Nevill (born 1840) in 1860. As you might guess by her age, she did not do a formal magical apprenticeship. She was educated privately, with a focus on Flora and horticultural magics. Particularly the sort that lead to gardens planned with magical intentions or floral arrangements designed to evoke and encourage certain moods. Her husband is attentive, aware of the changes in social settings, and protective of his family’s long-term well-being. 

They have three daughters, Rosine (born in 1862), Flora (born 1865), and Jacinthe (born 1870, and the only one of the three to attend Schola). Rosine marries and moves to France with her husband. They have a highly respected business producing delicate flower essences and oils. (One of their children is mentioned in Three Graces. And we’ll be seeing a little more of that line of the family in something to come.) Flora has three children (two daughters and then a son) and they move to Canada. Jacinthe marries Amalric Howard (seen briefly in Enchanted Net) shortly after leaving school. They have two children, born after she completes an apprenticeship in Incantation. 

Dagobert

Dagobert is five years younger than Bradmante (born 1845), and he marries much later than his siblings did, even allowing for the age difference. He marries Laudine in 1878 when his siblings have already had their children.

Garin is born in 1880, and Isembard is born in 1890 (as seen in Elemental Truth). Isembard, for the record, is definitely a wanted child (there’ll be an extra, hopefully out soon, with more about Laudine’s thought process there). But the ten year gap – along with various family events – mean that there’s quite some emotional distance between them. 

Laudine and Dagobert Fortier

Laudine’s family is quite well off, via family money and professional skills. Her father is a talisman maker, though of the sort who does not need to earn his keep by taking commissions he’s not interested in. They own multiple family properties. By the time the trilogy begins, Laudine and Dagobert have been living at one of them for some time.

(This is what everyone refers to as “The Essex House”. It’s a manor dating back to the Tudor period that’s actually rather larger than Arundel in terms of the house itself.) 

For a number of reasons, Laudine and Dagobert live apart once Dagobert becomes Lord. Garin lives at Arundel with his father (though he’s shortly of an age to be away at tutoring school and then Schola), while Isembard grows up with his mother at the Essex House. Dagobert’s magical training is in alchemy. Following the events of the trilogy he focuses on theoretical work, often supporting an assistant who can test various ideas in the lab (in exchange for room, board, supplies, and a salary). 

Dagobert lived in the west wing of the house (where his mother had previously been) with rooms for his sons and guests in the east wing. Both Laudine and Dagobert asked Alexander Landry to be a tutor to their sons in various ways. They give him a fair amount of free rein with the process, as well as giving him some amount of social support when it came to Great Family politics. Alexander joined the Council in 1897, helping establish some more solid foundations for his own life, while also suggesting a pathway for Garin. 

Laudine dies in 1911 (right after Isembard turns 21), and Dagobert dies in 1913. 

Garin and Isembard Fortier

Garin, as the older brother, has always felt the weight of the family on his shoulders. He is intensely intelligent (emphasis on ‘intense’ there), a skilled alchemist, and a highly trained duellist and fighter. Garin attended a tutoring school run by the Alveys, and married the eldest of the Alvey daughters, Livia, in 1903. He also made an unsuccessful challenge for the Council that year. Livia made a successful challenge in 1905, and Garin joined her on the Council in 1907. 

The two had an increasingly acrimonious relationship, the sort that spilled over into their public lives on a regular basis. Once Dagobert died, Garin moved into his father’s rooms in the west wing, and Livia took over the entire first floor of the east wing for her rooms. They met for supper in the joining central wing, for duelling and fighting practice, and for various Council events. Often with a certain amount of argument, sparks flying, and both of them constantly honing themselves against the other’s challenge and skill. They had no children. (Garin tells Isembard in 1925 in With All Due Speed that Livia had three miscarriages, all likely caused by her using dangerous magics during pregnancy.) 

Isembard as an adult

Isembard was therefore his brother’s Heir for many years, from 1913 until 1946. He preferred living in a flat in Trellech or at the Essex House – certainly not in the middle of Livia and Garin’s fighting. Once he takes up teaching at Schola, he lives there most of the year. There are visits to Arundel for various of the land magic rites and obligations, and the Essex House for other time away from Schola. His preferences are for warding and protective magic. But he’s a skilled duellist and has picked up a number of other magical skills, especially while fighting in the Great War. 

Isembard marries Thesan in late 1925 (after Eclipse), and they have two children. Thesan finds both Garin and Livia intimidating in different ways, but over the course of her marriage, she gets more skilled at dealing with Garin, especially after Livia’s death in 1940. As she points out, she doesn’t have the hooks set into her that Isembard does. She’s eventually able to deal with him in a way that turns out to be good for them both. 

Ursula and Leo

Finally, we come to Thesan and Isembard’s children. Ursula is born in 1927 and Leo in 1932. By the time we get to the late 1940s (and Ursula’s romance in Grown Wise), they are still learning. Ursula was in Fox House and left school in 1946, moving to Arundel. Garin named her his Heir remarkably quickly – later that summer. She is absolutely dedicated to tending the land magic, fixing things that are not working well, and convincing her uncle that he can in fact be civilised. 

Leo is still in school at this point, but in Bear House (unlike the rest of his family before him). He has a great deal more steadiness about him, combining his father’s focus on protection and solid foundations with his great-grandfather’s focus on ritual (though in a very different mode.)

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Idea to book: Mysterious Fields trilogy

Time to talk about why the Mysterious Fields trilogy exists! That’s for a number of different reasons. 

I’m avoiding plot spoilers here. If you want those details, you’ll want to go read Enchanted Net, Silent Circuit, and Elemental Truth. And Grown Wise, coming in May, is also quite relevant to these tales.

The Fortiers and Landrys

I began by knowing that something major had happened around 1890 to both the Fortier family and to Alexander’s mother and brother. It became obvious, as I started digging into specific dates and resources that those things were in fact closely linked. 

On the Fortier side, it was clear that the Fortiers had once been a particularly powerful and widely spread family, drawing on connections, expertise, and favour-trading to get things done the way they wanted. 

And yet, by the time Garin and Isembard are adults, the rest of the family isn’t visible. So my starting question was “What actually happened here?” It was followed shortly by “What did everyone else think happened?” Those two questions shaped the trilogy. 

Mysterious Fields Trilogy dates

I went into the writing of the trilogy knowing some key dates. These are things I’d already mentioned specifically or at least gestured at in other books. For the Fortiers, these included Isembard’s birth, the death years for his parents. I knew that Alexander’s mother and brother had died in 1889, six months apart. 

Then I spent a lot of high quality time with some genealogy software that would let me input fictional people (MacFamilyTree), my timeline app (Aeon Timeline), my private authorial wiki, and a fair amount of caffeine.

You can see the results of the family tree over here on the public wiki site. (You can zoom in and out and drag and drop, but highly recommend a computer screen, not mobile.) I’ve since named more of the younger cousins, but I’ll update the image when the relevant book comes out. 

A key event for someone else

There are two other dates that I noticed as I went through what I’d already referenced. One was the year that Cyrus joined the Council. This ended up forming quite a substantial piece of Silent Circuit, with implications for decades to come.

The other part is a reference at the tail end of Eclipse, about a teaching method in play when various people in the trilogy were in school.

Who knows what?

One of the interesting parts of the Mysterious Fields trilogy is what people who are alive into the 1920s do and don’t know. Alexander has some solid guesses about what happened, but not much certainty. Garin and Isembard know rather less than that – for reasons that are clear in Elemental Truth, neither of them was ever told much in the way of details by their parents. And while Thessaly and Vitus eventually piece some aspects together, they’re both aware there are many aspects they don’t now and aren’t going to find out about. 

File this under ‘possibly annoying but realistic’ (especially with binding oaths in play. But also file it under ‘Grown Wise can pick up some pieces of that story decades later, from a different point of view’. 

Why the Mysterious Fields trilogy?

The next question is why this story needed three books.

On a story level, it’s because there’s a lot of story to tell here. Betrothals! Council Challenges! Deaths! Chaos! Funerals! Unspecified magic! Talisman making as a magical art! Secret societies! (Well, at least one). The story needed some elbow room to develop.

That’s especially true because Thessaly and Vitus – our points of view here – have a particular view of what’s going on, but not the whole picture. It takes time for what they can see to unfold, or for them to figure out what the next step might be. (And whether they ought to take that step!) 

Of course, they both have some powerful motivation. Thessaly wants to know what happened to her aunt, Vitus has seen a number of patterns that suggest things. And he also very much wants to help Thessaly as he can. 

On an author level, there’s another reason for writing a trilogy. I hadn’t done one yet, in the sense of three books telling a single story. I wanted to expand some of my skills with writing, with an eye to future projects. Specifically, as I look ahead to writing something in the 1480s, I wanted to challenge myself to plot a complex sequence of events more tightly, and figure out what that meant for pacing, character development, and the growing romance. 

I’m expecting the 1480s series – when I get there – will be seven books, because Albion likes a seven. But I’m also currently expecting it will likely have some internal structure. Two duologies and a trilogy, maybe. At any rate, more skills at doing multi-book arcs isn’t going to hurt anything. 

What it means in the 1940s

Finally, we get to the consequences of the timeline. Grown Wise (coming May 2nd), is what happens when Ursula Fortier (granddaughter of Laudine and Dagobert, who died nearly two decades before she was born) gets her teeth into a puzzle. It’s not the only thing on her mind, but it’s important. 

After all, whatever happened is continuing to affect Arundel into the late 1940s. It’s not the only thing that has – Uncle Garin, Aunt Livia, the Second World War all have also had a role here. But Ursula is bound and determined to improve things. And that means figuring out what’s going on, then coming up with a plan that might help. 

It is a help that she has her own particular relationship to her Uncle Alexander (Landry). Even better, he’s her godfather, and she definitely makes the most of the access and scope that gives her with him, when it comes to asking about difficult topics. She’s also got a different angle on her Uncle Garin than the rest of her family does, especially now she’s his Heir. 

All of that means, she might just manage to put some puzzle pieces back together – with a little help – and make sense of them in a way that offers new ways to go forward. 

The good news, from her point of view, is that society has changed over the course of two world wars. She has more room to act – in society, on the estate, in the family – than Thessaly ever had. She has an entirely different set of resources to draw on. And she has the benefit of growing up amongst experts in their respective fields, and being able to draw on expertise without being intimidated by it. 

All of this is while juggling half a dozen other plots, of course. This is Ursula  we’re talking about. She’s made of them. 

Come for the Mysterious Fields trilogy, stay for Ursula sorting things out later! (You can absolutely read them independently of each other, as well.)

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Albion: The original inspiration

Time for a story! Specifically, it’s time to talk about my initial idea for Albion and where it came from.

The background

Between 2007 and 2015, I was part of a fan project with a number of other player-authors. It was an alternate universe Harry Potter dystopia moving to something more hopeful. Yes, that’s seven years.

(Before we go further, I have to point at the end date here. This was before the current awareness of Rowling’s views was visible. Because of that, I’m focusing in this post on just enough content to understand the seed of why I got started writing.)

There were 12 of us for the last four years. Between us, we were playing/writing about 70 characters between us, with a reasonably substantial readership. I learned a tremendous amount from it. I learned about collaboration, about leaving space for better ideas later, and about what details seemed to really catch the imagination. And then there was all the learning about keeping track of a lot of details. That one’s served me well in my later writing. 

The underlying structure of the project was the idea that characters had magical journals. What the reader saw were the conversations in those journals. There were public entries, and eventually a couple of variations on more-or-less private ones. And, because we were playing this out day by day (with a lot of little plot details to sneak in there), we needed a lot of background material. We had a substantial need for conversations that would drop a couple of key pieces of information into what otherwise looked like an ordinary chat between two people.

Books in the world

One of the things that we did (about quarterly) was come up with a list of titles that characters could talk about. Several of the players involved were public librarians. I was working in a college library at this point. Everyone else had their own range of reading tastes. We’d pull together a mix of genres with a sentence or two about them. That way, people could talk about the same books. These included some completely horrendous self-help books, a range of fiction (we’ll come back to that), and a handful of ‘here’s the current popular non-fiction titles”. 

Coming up with the lists was a lot of fun for me (and other people). We did it having an idea where the plot was going (we worked that out collaboratively toward a known end-goal.) That meant that we could sometimes sort of gesture at coming issues or plot concerns in the book (and music and other media) lists. 

The inspiration

So, just about 14 years ago (April 5th, 2011), there I am in a conversation between my main character and a fellow teacher. For the record, my character is the precursor for Thesan in my head (though there are some significant differences). The other teacher was eventually her husband. At this point they were not yet dating. Thesan and Isembard in his first year teaching is absolutely the correct vibe to have in your head. 

The other player and I had some specific pieces of information we needed to get out for readers about recent events in the story. Specifically, a key event he was more likely to talk about, or at least allude to, than most characters. Those had to do with a friend of his who had been badly injured and who was in hospital. 

But of course, it’s no good if you just blurt out the key plot points. We knew we wanted to have a few back and forth exchanges. Oh, do you need to be away from school? Can I help with anything? Yes, thank you, that’d be a help. I’m trying to figure out how to keep him from being bored, he’s a terror when he’s bored.  

Like you do. 

The moment

We got into a suggestion of a book or two. At which point, I typed the following, and hit “submit” to post the comment. 

There’s a particularly good one about the Wars of the Roses – the author looks at what Muggles thought they knew about it, and how confusing and mismatched it was, and then slots in all the proper wizarding history bits to demonstrate how it was actually fairly straightforward if you know all the pieces. Rather nicely done, and a lot better than Binns’ explanation was.

Then I stared at it, a whole lot. Because if you know anything about this period of British history, you know exactly how incredibly confusing the Wars of the Roses are. It’s a thing basically everyone agrees on.

But what happens if some of that confusion is about the difference between those who know about the magical history and those who don’t? 

We had more details to get out, so I kept having to pause and reply. And then I stared at that paragraph some more. I kept staring at it. And coming back to stare at it. 

That’s the seed of my Albion books, right there. 

Fiction

The other seed – specifically for Geoffrey Carillon in all his glory – was another aspect of those book lists. One of the things in play from the start of the project was that non-magical literature was Not Approved. (People still snuck copies, or had them stashed away, but it was absolutely not something you’d admit to. See also: dystopia.) 

But of course, people had their favourite books. Which meant we at one point came up with a series that did a lot of what Dorothy L. Sayers did. None of those books were ever developed beyond a sentence or two of general plot. (And they leaned much more heavily into the slow burn romance of the Harriet Vane books, with a number of different details.) 

But that meant I also had this ‘what if Wimsey were magical?’ kicking around my head. Many of the details of Geoffrey’s life are different (starting with the implications of the land magic, him inheriting the title in his thirties, and more, and the focus on the New Forest). But again, you can see the seeds there. 

In other fictional fun, we also did a whole riff on the Sweet Valley High books. (This one included characters doing literary analysis to figure out which of the stable of authors behind the pen name might have written a given volume). There were bodice-ripper romances disguised as Dark Arts texts. We had a whole riff on the Hunger Games trilogy. And there was a particularly memorable run of commentary when a student mistook a magical text title for the title of the universe’s equivalent of Fifty Shades of Gray. 

What that means

If you’d read my other posts about the Pact, you know I’m slowly working my way toward writing something in the 1480s, the end of the Wars of the Roses. So much history reading to poke at the details is still in my future!

I am, however, pretty confident about the actual specifics that made the Pact make sense when it did. (I have also run it by smart friends with reasonable knowledge of the period. Being the sort of person who actually has a substantial number of friends with knowledge about the Wars of the Roses.) 

Because that origin? It’s still stuck in my head. 

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Albion’s Council

Albion’s Council is a rather unusual institution. What else do you call a group where everyone on it is arguably a twenty-first part of a king, at least in a ritual sense? Time for a blog post with a bit more about the Council. (And psst, it’s going to be relevant in Grown Wise, coming out on May 2nd, 2025.)

The beginning

Albion’s Council began because of the need for the Pact. The forming of nations is a complicated question, and the flow of the land magic is an even more complicated one. (This would be why I am reading a whole lot of British history right now.)

By the late 1400s, the land magic was firmly in the hands of the king or his chosen representatives. That held up for a good while, even through the tumult of the Wars of the Roses. But in early 1484, it became clear that it was not a long-term solution. (Why? Well, that’s part of what I’ll be writing about when I get writing the series in the 1480s that I’m doing all this research for. More on that below.) 

At that point, Richard III (who became king at that point, rather than his nephew), began to make arrangements with the Fatae for a new approach to handling a number of things about Britain’s magic, leading to what Albion refers to as the Pact. That set of agreements – functionally a treaty between the humans and Fatae of England and Wales – did a lot of things. But one of the pieces was that responsibility for the land magic on a country level changed.

Individual areas had lords – or ladies – responsible for their particular land magic. This roughly maps to the area of about half a county in England. (In Wales and later in Scotland, the areas are a little more complex to map.) But following the Pact, instead of the King being responsible for managing the land magic on a national level, the Council had that responsibility. There’s a problem here? Someone from the Council gets to figure it out. There’s a drought? It’s up to the Council to figure out negotiations of how to help the land magic parts of that. (Can’t change the weather reliably, but magic might be able to help avoid flooding, direct water in the places it’s needed, and so on.) 

The structure of the Council

Albion’s Council has, fundamentally, an unusual structure. It’s actually drawing on successful Councils established prior to the Pact (notably the Council of the North. That was established by Richard III before he was king. It was based in part of the Council of Wales and the Marches, established by his brother Edward IV. Both groups were administrative bodies, intended to improve judicial access and prompt legal action. They included key figures in the relevant areas – many of whom were not particularly allied or amenable to each other. 

In Albion’s Council, while there is a nod to seniority on the Council when needed, the members are peers. The Council Head chosen through more or less the same method as becoming a member of the Council. (The nod to seniority is handy when they all have to line up to do something specific. That includes things such as greeting people during the formal offerings and reports at the solstices.) 

Members serve until they die or retire. In some periods, retirement is more common, in others dying in service is. (This also depends on how many dangerous things the Council members are directly involved in.) Ideally, there are twenty-one members. But it’s common for a seat to be empty for a few months after someone dies or retires. Sometimes a seat has remained empty for longer – a year or two, depending on the circumstances involved. 

The Council Keep, Dinas Emrys

Dinas Emrys is a real castle – or at least it was, in our world. Built at the site that some folklore names as the location where Merlin uncovered the red and white dragons battling in a deep pool of water, it stands up in Gwynedd in northern Wales. It became a ruin in our timeline and world, but in Albion, it’s been maintained and the various amenities expanded. 

The Keep has a tower that goes up for several floors above the rest of the building. This is anchored with powerful magic, and is the location of the challenges. The rest of the Keep includes a great hall, large enough to gather hundreds of people when needed. There are rooms for meetings, smaller gatherings, and various administrative tasks. There’s a staff to provide food and to keep the public rooms clean and tidy – as well as do the extensive rearrangement of furniture needed for some events. 

Upstairs on the first floor, there are some guest rooms (in case anyone needs to stay overnight during emergencies). The Council members each have small private offices. This floor also has the Council library, workrooms and other magical spaces. The rest of the Keep has additional storage, including a fair amount of foot storage space. The pool at the base of the tower provides fresh water, currently free of dragons. 

Challenging for the Council

Council Challenges happen when a member dies or retires. Because it takes some time for Challengers to make preparations, usually the Challenge is a month to three months later. (If someone knows they’re planning on retiring, there’s less of a gap in time). The date for the Challenge has some consideration for astrological timing, but there are not specific requirements. It is often a full or new moon, if there’s one at a suitable time, for example. Certain astrological and astronomical events are avoided, like eclipses. 

Preparing

People prepare in a vast range of ways. In the Challenges we’ve seen in text so far, a lot of people go to a great deal of trouble to dress for a fight. They wear fancy protective magical clothing, commission talismans for specific needs (that also has a lead time), and so on. Others don’t do that. 

In the modern era, people put forward their name or are sponsored by an existing member. They show up on the night, with their chosen guests. Those usually involve parents, apprentice masters or mistresses, close friends, other family members, and so on. It can be a time of pomp and circumstance. The Challengers are welcome, they draw lots for the order they’ll enter the Challenge. It’s most common for there to be four to six Challengers. More is possible, but the combination of the role, the intimidating aspects of the Challenge, and what people think is needed for preparation keep the numbers somewhat reasonable. 

The Challenge itself

They’re escorted upstairs, and one by one, they open the door at the top of the tower, and go on. The unsuccessful Challengers emerge in an unpredictable order (it’s not first in, first out). At some point in the process, the successful Challenger (if there is one) comes out, and is taken somewhere to wait if there are others still to come out. Sometimes, there is no successful Challenger. 

It is possible to be an unsuccessful Challenger and later make a successful Challenge. We’ve seen that in the current books in Garin Fortier, Theo Carrington, and Orion Sisley. 

The experience is unique to the individual – I’ll be noting books where we see the experience from the inside below. For many decades, there was basically nil conversation about the initiatory experience of the Challenge by anyone. That was true even when married couples (Garin and Livia Fortier, Hesperidon and Silvia Warren) or siblings (Paulus and Troilus Watts) were on the Council at the same time. 

Occasionally, there is a death – not very often, but often enough people are concerned about it. It’s more common for there to be some degree of injury, from Challengers biting off more than was sensible in some form. Scratches, cuts, and so on are the most common, but the Council has a Healer on hand to tend to people as needed. 

The process for choosing a Council Head works roughly the same way: those interested in the position enter the tower room. One of them comes out with the white rose pin that indicates they are Head now. (As Alexander says to Cyrus at various points: “That’s why you have the shiny pin and all the headaches.”)

The Council over time

The Council has a clear focus, but what that looks like and means changes over time. Above all, the Council has to react and change in response to what’s going on in Albion (and more broadly in the British Isles and in Europe). 

At this point, I’ve written about four different Heads of the Council, and Claiming the Tower (Hereswith’s romance in 1854) has mentions of a fifth. 

Hereswith Rowan

Hereswith becomes Head of the Council in 1871, well into the period where the Council is entirely made up of people who attended Schola. Unlike many on the Council, however, Hereswith was in Horse House. She brings a different approach to how she leads the Council, both because of that and because of her prior life in diplomatic circles in Albion and in Britain. She’s Head until her death in 1896. 

She’s able to move the Council from some of the more hidebound approaches of the Victorian period to that point into something that’s more deliberately collaborative and stable. You can see her as Head in the Mysterious Fields trilogy. We’ll be seeing more of her as a member of the Council in several upcoming books.

Those include Claiming the Tower (1854, which includes her Challenge), a second romance in the 1860s, and a novella planned for the late 1870s. (For those who’ve read the trilogy, that’s partly because I wanted more time with Metaia and Owain.) 

Hesperidon Warren

Hesperidon comes from a long line of the Great Families, the sort who go into Fox House and come out convinced they rule the world. He has an absolute idea about how things should work, and does not take advice well. He is Head of the Council from 1896 to 1932 and his death. That means he’s Head during the 1920s books. We see Cyrus and Mabyn (both on the Council) during this period in The Hare and The Oak. 

He does have his virtues, though they have not been very present on the page so far. He is in fact deeply concerned on the impact of the industrial revolution on the land, and that’s a sensible concern. However, his rigidity about proper process, about who should get to do valued tasks, and whether trust is a thing that might possibly exist are all problems. For him, and for most people around him. 

Cyrus Smythe-Clive

Cyrus’s challenge is in Silent Circuit (the middle book of the Mysterious Fields trilogy). He’s Head from 1932 until he retires in 1946. It’s under Cyrus’s leadership that the Council is dragged (sometimes kicking and screaming or at least arguing loudly) into more collaboration again. He has some help, both from Mabyn and from Alexander Landry.

Best Foot Forward touches on some of the Council aspects in this period. Upon A Summer’s Day has another Challenge (from the Challenger’s perspective), and Three Graces shows another from the outside. 

Over on Patreon, the Ritual Time series of extras follows Cyrus through his time as Head (more or less one story per year).  You can do a week free trial, or it’s absolutely fine with me to subscribe briefly, read everything of interest, and disappear again. This series of extras will get some additional editing and be available to everyone in due course. 

Silvia Warren

Silvia becomes Head in 1932. She’s the (much younger) third wife of Hesperidon Warren, and they had 8 years on the Council together after her own Challenge. She’s 62 when she becomes Head, giving her some time to establish some more stability in the wake of the Second World War. 

Grown Wise has a Challenge during her time as Head, with some interesting results. 

Future explorations

We have more coming about the Council! That’s going to include the last book in the Liminal Mysteries series (set in 1950), as well as two novels and probably a novella including Hereswith, her partners, and others on the Council in 1854, sometime around 1860, and in the late 1870s. 

I’m also slowly working my way through the necessary research to write a series about the time of the Pact. That’s obviously going to have a great deal about the formation of the Council. I don’t even remotely have a date for that yet, but I’m hoping to be able to start the writing toward the end of 2026. We’ll see how that goes. 

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Idea to Book: Facets of the Bench

Time (past time!) for another “idea to book” post, this one about how Facets of the Bench came to be. 

Facets of the Bench takes place in 1927 and it’s all about love of place. It’s also about making a life that we want, even if there are some unexpected twists along the way. 

Elise, Whitby, and jet

The beginning of this book, the first idea for it, comes because I’ve had the great pleasure of being good friends with Elise Matthesen for over twenty years now. (We knew each other online first. But we particularly bonded over a public shared reading of The Young Visiters at a small convention in 2001.)

Elise is a jewellery maker, using wirework techniques with a dazzling array of stones and beads.  Elise is also responsible for a number of minor and a couple more major corrections to the stones in the Mysterious Fields trilogy. It is excellent to have friends with expertise if you’re a writer.) 

Anyway, Elise had been reading my books (never something I expect of my friends, but I’m delighted when they do). She’d been arguing for a little I really needed to do something with Whitby. I knew enough not to argue, but figuring out a plot that would work there took me a little while. 

Whitby has a fascinating history. It has long been a seaside town, supported by fishing and some amount of longer distance trade. But it’s also home to a key source of jet (and the main one for the United Kingdom). Originally, the jet all came from pieces washed up on the beach. But at the height of the jet craze, there were also mines a little bit inland. The beach runs from Whitby about seven miles south to Robin Hood’s Bay. 

Jet

What jet craze? Well, after the death of Prince Albert (Queen Victoria’s husband) in 1861, she wore black and remained in formal mourning for the rest of her life. She also dictated what stones could be worn in court settings. Mostly that meant jet. It was polished and carved and cut into all sorts of different shapes, and it remained tremendously popular into the 20th century. The fashion for jet began tapering off around 1900. The Great War (and the tremendous number of deaths) meant that by 1920, there were only a few jet workshops active. 

There’s a great page from English Heritage (with photos) talking about the history of jet and Whitby. These days there are a number of jet carvers working again in Whitby. 

St Hild

Oh, and there’s the other part of Whitby. The authorial Discord has a number of smart people with fascinating knowledge on them. They include a group of people who like the term ‘church nerds’ as a description.

When half a dozen people tell me that St Hild is fascinating and could there be something about her in a book, I am inclined to listen. (St Hild is indeed fascinating. While the now ruined Abbey in Whitby is not of her era, it’s in the same place.) I managed to work in about 11 paragraphs about St Hild and her work and approach to the world. This is approximately 10 more than most histories of the period do. 

Griffin

Next, we have Griffin. At the time I wrote Facets of the Bench, Griffin had already appeared in two other books. He’s a minor character in Shoemaker’s Wife (which takes place in 1920), and he also appears in Point By Point (in 1926). In both cases, he’s acting for Albion’s Courts as a relatively senior specialist. 

Griffin is also an ambulatory wheelchair user. As he explains in the course of Facets of the Bench, it’s something similar to an autoimmune condition triggered by magical and physical shock during the Great War. (That kind of sudden physical shock can do the same thing without magic). He has trouble with muscle weakness, especially in his legs, and with stamina and exhaustion. A chair means he can do a lot more – so long as he can get somewhere in the chair. 

Going somewhere new when you rely on a chair (or even crutches, as he also uses) is a constant series of judgement calls and choices about navigating the world. Griffin has a lot of it figured out at home. But in Whitby he needs to rely a bit more on people who know the town. 

Griffin and disability

The other thing about Griffin is that I wanted to write someone who has, in many ways, made an excellent life for himself that takes his disability into account. However, at the start of the book, he’s in something of a professional limbo. He could stay in his current role indefinitely, but there’s the potential for something more, something he wants very badly. Until the events of the book, he is trying to figure out what might lead to a change. 

That’s a problem with long-term disability we don’t always talk about a lot. It’s one thing to make a life that’s comfortable and good and has wonderful things in it. But maybe we also get stuck, not expanding when we actually can.

Griffin does have to deal with other people’s assumptions about what he can and can’t do. But he also has support from others who respect his skills, love how he approaches solving problems, and who enjoy his love of his home and his work.

Trellech

That brings us tidily to Trellech. Trellech is Albion’s main magical city. It’s actually built on the bones of an older city, abandoned around 1260.

At its height after the Norman Conquest, the city had about 20,000 people. (It was for a while the third largest city in Great Britain.) It provided munitions manufacturing for the de Clare family. When they fell from power and in the century after, it became a much smaller village. (And remained one, in our world.) In Albion, around the time of the Pact in the 1480s, it was built up as the centre of magical government and organisation. 

Because it’s the centre of Albion’s Ministry, Temple of Healing, and Guilds, many people living in Trellech weren’t born there. Griffin, however, is a child of the city, and he’s loved it since he knew it was a thing he could love. He’d utterly enmeshed in Trellech’s traditions  (seen both in Facets of the Bench and in Mari Lwyd 1927, last year’s solstice extra). He has his favourite bakeries for all sorts of good, including Welsh cakes. 

And Griffin knows just about everyone. By the time Annice comes to Trellech with him, she has become rather amused by it, that no matter where he takes her, he knows someone. Not just knows – but he’s on friendly terms. 

I really loved writing a book that got to spend more time with Trellech as a character, as a place that has its own opinions about the world, and its own rhythms. 

Do these things intrigue you? Check out Facets of the Bench. While it features some people who appear in other books, it’s a great place to start with Albion.

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The problem of names

Names are important. They have power, they indicate things. And they’re also sometimes confusing. 

A reader mentioned recently that this can be confusing (alas, yes, though more below about how I try to make that a little easier). Today, it’s time to talk about why those different names and forms of address matter. 

What’s in a name?

Britain – and Albion – in this period indicate a number of things through form of address. Some of them are subtle, others are much less so. (Or look subtle to a modern eye, but are decidedly pointed in the period.) 

These come in all sorts of forms, but when it comes to Albion, we can talk about some common groupings: 

Titles (and how and when they’re used)Degree of friendship or trust (last name vs first name or nickname)Familial structure or habitsOther traditions

And then we’ve got Alexander and Geoffrey, who are their own thing, while also intersecting with these. (And a few words about Naming magic in specific here.) 

Avoiding confusion

I do my best, when using alternate names for people, to signal them as clearly as I can and indicate what names belong to the people in the conversation. There are times this is easier than others, especially since some internal narration isn’t going to spell that out.

(Gabe is always Papa to Avigail or her siblings, for example, so it depends on if I can wedge the other things Gabe gets called in that conversation in there by other means.) 

Titles

The easiest set of name layers has to do with titles.

Unlike non-magical Britain, “Lord” is a specific job title. Where in Britain the title and the surname are most often different, in Albion they’re reliably the same. You become Lord (or Lady) and you put that in front of your existing last name name. That’s the same as you would with Master, Mistress, Magister, Magistra, Professor, Portal Keeper, Healer, Penelope, or a military or Guard rank. 

For those other forms, Master and Mistress indicate an adult who’s completed an apprenticeship or the equivalent. They’ve reached journeyman status if there’s a formal guild. Magister or Magistra are for people recognised as having particular mastery of their field (and are recognised as a master in guild terms if relevant). 

People who haven’t done so use Mr or Mrs or Miss. The convention is that staff in a house (or equivalent roles) use the form that staff in a non-magical household would. (Mr Whoever for the butler, Mrs Whoever for the cook or housekeeper or other senior roles, and so on. This avoids problems if the household is out shopping in non-magical stores.)

Other forms of address

Students at the Five Schools generally get referred to by their last names in classrooms and other group settings. Their first name or birth order might be added if disambiguation is needed. 

During apprenticeship, the more formal version has them referred to as Miss or Mr Lastname, and calling their apprentice master or mistress by proper title. If there’s more affection there, the apprentice gets called their first name, and refers to Master or Mistress Firstname. (Even when Magister or Magistra might be correct, it’s not used as often in informal mode.) 

So, for example, Cassie is Mistress Cassie to her apprentices. Rathna and Ferdinand shift to the less formal mode part way through Old As The Hills. Ursula refers to her apprentice mistress as Mistress Renata.

Degree of trust

The second category has to do with degree of trust. People normally start out more formally, using last names and the appropriate title. At some point, one or the other might cautiously suggest moving to first names or a nickname. That offer might or might not be accepted. (Strictly speaking, it should be the person with more social status making the offer: that isn’t always what happens.) 

This is often a pivot point in the romance arc, if you pay attention to those romances where the two don’t start out as friends already. 

Of course, there are exceptions. Benton remains Benton to Geoffrey Carillon (and Lizzie and Alexander) long after they might reasonably have switched to first names. Benton refers to Geoffrey as ‘my lord’ or ‘his lordship’ most of the time. The man has habits.

Family names

Of course, names can also reflect specific relationships. 

Some of this comes out in what children call their parents. There are a lot of nuances to this one, especially when it comes to class in Albion. 

Mother and Father are more formal, and tend to be used by people who are not emotionally close to their parents. (Mater and Pater would also be an option, but none of my characters have yet gone for that one.) The Fortiers interestingly go for Maman and Father, a mix of French and English, even though it’s the paternal line that’s always French-descended. Family relational name traditions are weird. Mama and Papa are the more intimate form for folks in a higher social class. Both Ros Carillon and Avigail Edgarton use this for their respective parents (as do their siblings). Mum and Dad are distinctly not posh. Thesan and Isembard deliberately choose these with their children (it’s what Thesan grew up with) because Isembard wants the regular reminder to do things differently than his parents did. Also, it drives Garin up a wall in a way he can’t do anything about. (Jasper also uses these, as do a few others.) 

In terms of other family, this is one of the places where you can see some complex dynamics. Ursula and Leo both refer to a ridiculous number of people as Aunt or Uncle (it’s a running thing in Ursula’s romance, Grown Wise) – both their actual relations, but also the professors at Schola, and a number of family friends. 

Nuances of family names

Sometimes it’s more nuanced: Edmund refers to Cammie as Aunt Cammie, but not Hypatia, Orion, or Claudio (or Cammie’s Duncan, for that matter). He’s got a different relationship with Cammie because she apprenticed with Giles (a long time friend of his father, Geoffrey), she’s a generation older than he is, and it’s the form of respect that fit best. 

One thing I’ve been figuring out in recent writing is how Benton and Edmund refer to each other. The answer is “Master Benton” (as a formal and deliberate acknowledgment of Benton’s skills and role as steward on the estate), and “Young Master Edmund” (lengthy, but more intimate than “Master Carillon” or something similar). Mostly, they try to avoid needing names, at least in the writing so far. 

Here’s some more examples. 

Ursula, Leo, Edmund, Merry, and Ros all refer to Alexander Landry as Uncle Alexander (he’s in a familial relationship to all of them). Avigail, however, asks at one point (in The Changing Door extra) what she should call him, because she isn’t in that sort of relationship to him.Edmund (and his sisters) refer to Giles and Kate Lefton as Uncle Giles and Aunt Kate (long time friends of their parents). To others, they’re Major and Captain Lefton (Earned military rank for Giles, and Kate’s Guard rank).Thesan and Isembard are Professor Wain and Professor Fortier professionally, and often Professor Thesan and Professor Iz with students they’re closer to. (Thesan is Mistress Fortier socially if people are being fussy.)An example group

A Patreon extra coming in April (from February 1947) gets into what Ursula calls various people:

Uncle Garin (uncle by blood)Uncle Alexander, Uncle Orion (both of whom are longtime family connections, uncles by choice).Lord Richard (the use of the title is a nod to the generational choice, but the families are close)Gabe says Ursula is an adult and can call him Gabe now. Achilles and Edmund by their first name (family connections, relatively close to her age rather than a generation different). But she refers to and thinks of Geoffrey as Lord Carillon, because there’s more distance there. (It’s not bad distance, just the Carillons are more protective of names and privacy in specific ways. Even if Ursula doesn’t know the reasons why, she will use the formal mode until invited to do something else.)Other traditions

Nicknames are a thing that comes up – they’re a staple of British boarding school (and non-boarding school) experience, both good and bad. But various characters also use variations on their names at times. 

Giles is officially Aegidius, and thank you, no, he prefers to be Giles. (Giles is in fact a related derivation from Aegidius). His wife Kate is properly Katherine, but that’s a much more common nickname.) Gabe is Gabe in preference to his full first name, Gabriel, because of the tendency for people to assume they’re getting a woman. Merry (Edmund and Ros’s middle sister) is properly Meraud and almost never uses her full name. Alexander, Geoffrey, and Naming magic

Finally, we get to Alexander, Geoffrey, and the question of Naming magic. 

As a response to the trauma of the trenches (and specifically some of the early gas attacks in Ypres in 1915), Geoffrey Carillon begins to think of himself in his own head simply as Carillon. Sometimes that needs disambiguation, and he never explains to his brother and sister-in-law that he doesn’t think of himself as Geoffrey. When he meets Lizzie, she uses Geoffrey (at his request), but it’s not an entirely comfortable name for him. 

It’s not until Best Foot Forward – a book where Alexander’s Naming magic skills feature for other reasons – that Geoffrey becomes Geoffrey again inside his head. From that point, he keeps it up. But it’s also at this point that Alexander and Geoffrey both enjoy trading relevant epithets (Geoffrey’s relate to Horus, and Alexander’s to Set. I have lists, and I pick depending on what makes sense in the scene.)

The larger question of naming people and renaming people is also coming up in Apt To Be Suspicious (Edmund’s romance in 1947-1948, out in November), not least because Alexander is teaching that particular form of magic for the first time since he taught Perry before the Great War. It’s a particularly potent form of magic, but one barely practiced in Albion. The idea that words are magic – and names are words – is a key aspect of ancient Egyptian magical theory.

In other words, there’s no simple answer to any of this! But which names people use and how they use them are character information, among many other pieces of it.

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Buying books: the landscape from an indie author perspective

Right now, a lot of people are (for various reasons) rethinking where they get their books. I’ve been seeing a lot of comments about it. Along with the comments, I’ve been realising how many pieces of the underlying landscape aren’t very visible to readers. This blog post is here to explain a couple of pieces of the landscape, for those who want more information to make their choices.

Here, I’m talking about indie authors (people who self-publish their own work), though some of this also applies to small presses. As I note where relevant, trad publishers (especially the huge ones) work under different rules.

We’re going to talk about the overall landscape, then different sources of ebooks, print, audio. I wrap up with what I do and what readers and authors might do about different aspects of this.

The overall landscape

Fundamentally, books come into the world because they are written. Then they’re polished, formatted and prepared for publication, and distributed. These involve a bunch of different steps (with all sorts of variations). That ‘distribution’ step is what we’re focusing on here: how the books get from the people who made them happen to the people who want to read them (or at least own them).

There are plenty of variations here too. I’m going to focus on ebooks, but touch on print and audio briefly later in this post.

For indie ebook authors, there is one major decision that affects everything else: wide or not. But that choice is often not very visible to readers. It has to do with whether an author wants their books to be available through Kindle Unlimited or not.

A second issue is the general prominence of Amazon in the ebook room. (Beyond the question of Kindle Unlimited).

The last key issue is how indie authors can manage multiple streams and all of the administrative, technical, and logistical wrangling that comes with that.

There are a lot of possible different answers to these three issues. Authors are going to make a variety of choices here (for reasons that may not be obvious to the reader). And of course, the landscape isn’t static. Various aspects keep changing. Let’s look at some specifics.

Ebooks

Most indie authors sell vastly more ebooks than they do any other format (there are exceptions, but that’s why we’re starting here).

To sell an ebook as an author, you get set up on a distributor’s site. (And there are a bunch of those possible!) You upload your book’s text and cover, enter information about the book (the description, categories, keywords, etc.) You click a lot of buttons and wait for pages to load. And then the book’s available for purchase.

There are whole bunch of different ebook distributors out there. The big names include Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Barnes and Noble Nook, Google Play, Kobo, and Smashwords. There are umbrella distributors who distribute to a bunch of smaller or international distributors, like Draft2Digital. Some smaller distributors focus on specific niches (Campfire has been looking to build up cozy fantasy, for example). There are some new players in the space, too. I’m going to be talking about Bookshop specifically below.

Distributors take a cut of the sales price in exchange for providing all the file hosting, point of sale (charging the credit card), and often some tax aspects. The percentage depends on the distributor, but it’s often about 30% to the distributor, 70% to the author for the big sites. That means for a book priced at $4.99, I make about $3.49 from a sale. For things where I go through another layer of distributor, it’s more like $2.49.

Amazon is absolutely the largest distributor for most indie authors. I average about 75% of my sales right now through Kindle, the other 25% split across all my other distribution channels.

But there’s that ‘wide vs. Kindle Unlimited’ problem here.

Amazon

Amazon has two ways for indie authors to distribute their books. One is just putting the individual book up for purchase, like any other distributor. This gives the reader access to the book, presumably long-term.

(Why do I say ‘access’? As Amazon’s text by the button has been noting recently, this is actually a license to access the book. It’s not permanent access via an independently accessible file outside their ecosystem. There have been cases of Amazon removing books from ereaders in the past. Changes in the ability to download files are part of what have a lot of readers looking at other places to get their ebooks right now.)

The other option is what’s referred to as Kindle Unlimited for readers and Kindle Select for authors. (Same program, two names. Yes, that’s confusing.) In this option, the reader pays a monthly fee and can select books in the Kindle Unlimited (KU hereafter) program to read for no additional cost. Readers can have a number of books on their device at once, but once they hit the limit for KU titles, they have to return one to get a new one.

How can you tell a book is in KU? 

It’ll have a little label above it in some search views, it will list the price as $0.00 (Kindle Unlimited) for the ebook, and there will be a button below the different options offering a trial or letting you know the KU subscription price. (This comes above the ‘just buy this book’ button.) 

About KU

There’s a couple of things that aren’t so obvious. 

1) For indie authors, being in KU requires exclusivity. This means they can’t sell the book through any other distributor (or even make it available for free anywhere.) They can sell it on Kindle (for readers not in KU), they can sell it in print or audio. But they can’t sell a book that’s part of Kindle Unlimited on any other distributor or their own store.

2) The big traditional publishers have different rules. They’re not required to be exclusive to KU if the books is offered there .

3) KU has a 90 day term. Some authors will start a book there, then move a book wide after a period time (90 days, 180 days, etc.) It’s possible for an author to ask for a book to be removed from KU early, but Amazon doesn’t have to agree to that.

4) If you (a reader) read a book in KU via that service, the author gets paid a tiny amount per page read (the first time it’s read: rereads don’t count.) The number changes every month. In January 2025, it was $0.004091 per page, with a max payout per book capped at certain amounts (for a 300 page book, that was $1.50.)

5) There are also some promotion options that are only available to KU authors.

What does this mean for buying books? Books available in KU are also available for purchase (well, license) with a single payment. But those ebooks are only available on Amazon, not other sites, so if you want to read that book, some money is going to Amazon no matter how you do that. 

Why do authors choose Kindle Unlimited?

In some genres and subgenres, that’s where the readers are. For romance readers (who often read vast numbers of books, thank you all!), a subscription can be a great choice. It keeps the book budget under control, while the reader gets to try a lot of different books. That means that books by and about marginalised groups often get people exploring them (and hopefully loving them and wanting more by those authors). There’s an established audience, hungry for more books.

The income differences can be incredibly stark between KU and wide in those genres and for some authors.

The question of moving from Kindle Unlimited to wide distribution isn’t just the cost in time, energy, learning new sites (more about that below). Because there’s no middle ground for a given book (either it’s in KU or it’s wide), moving a book wide means taking a big leap and hoping the sales will catch up elsewhere. It will also likely mean giving up a significant chunk of income in the short to medium term. For authors who depend on that income to pay their food and housing bills, that’s a terrifying shift. It’s certainly one that needs time and planning to deal with well.

Other distributors

So, what about the other distributors? None of the others have this kind of exclusivity deal, so if an author decides against KU, they can distribute their book through whatever channels they like. A few notes of interest here:

There are companies like Draft2Digital where authors can choose distribution channels – D2D will let you distribute ebooks to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and many other smaller or international options. They also provide access to library sales.

Bookshop has been making print books available with links to independent booksellers for years now. They’ve just launched an ebook app. Right now they’re starting with big traditional publishers, but they mention there are plans to make ebook sales available to indie authors (via Draft2Digital or other similar businesses) in the future. We’re not there yet for indies.

Wide distribution considerations

On the author side, every time you add a distribution source, there’s a certain amount of admin upkeep. Each site has its own user interface, order they want things in, differences in how they want the information about the book shared and formatted. You have to maintain accounts on all those sites, with appropriate payment details, and so on.

Along with that, they all pay at slightly different points in the month. (Oh, and there’s a delay of weeks in most cases between when you make a sale and when you get paid for it. For books I sold in February, I will get some payments in mid-March. Others won’t come until the end of April, or whenever I hit the payout level for that seller.)

Admin costs stack: All this isn’t a lot for one site – but if you’re managing half a dozen sites, that can take some time, energy, technical literacy, and more. (Ask my friends how often I curse about the upload interface for certain sites…) It can definitely be one thing too many if someone’s low on time, resilience, or admin cope already.

Similarly, figuring out how to help readers find you on lots of sites is different then getting them to find you on one site. You need all sorts of different skills and approaches.

Libraries

I am all in favour of libraries! (As a librarian by day job, you’d expect that). Libraries can buy print books, but there are also several sources for ebooks. In the US, these include Libby (the backend is Overdrive), Hoopla, Palace Books, and a few others.

The way libraries get access to these varies. In some cases they buy a certain number of loans for an item, in other cases there’s a cost per loan. These can add up to a lot of money per library, so libraries regularly have to figure out what’s going to work best for them, their library users, and their budget.

Subscription services

Kindle Unlimited isn’t the only subscription service out there!

Kobo also offers a subscription service, Kobo Plus. However, there’s no exclusivity clause – authors can have their books there and everywhere else. (All my books are available via Kobo Plus.) Kobo Plus pays authors via a calculation of minutes read, with payout each time a given book reaches 300 minutes across however many readers. Yes, that’s a bit confusing.

Everand also has a subscription service.

Paperbacks

Obviously, print books exist too! Or at least they’re an option. Most indie authors rely on print on demand, with some doing print runs of special editions (often via Kickstarter to make sure the print costs are covered in advance. It’s not cheap!) Amazon offers paperbacks printed on demand, as do Ingram (which has wide distribution to print booksellers), and Draft2Digital does as well.

Paperback formatting can be fiddly. Talking about it on my authorial Discord recently, I made the comment (and my cover designer agreed) that basically we expect something to glitch at least once in the process for some reason that seems really silly from our end.

Common issues are that each printing option uses slightly different paper (meaning the spine width varies across printers). Some have issues with a large area of black or very dark ink on the cover. They all have slightly different requirements for where the barcode goes.

Most bookstores also prefer to have the option to return books that don’t sell. For a whole bunch of reasons, this is a lot more complicated for indie sellers than the big traditional publishers. That’s true both in terms of bookkeeping and in terms of setting and managing payment terms. Long story short: many booksellers will gladly order a print on demand paperback on request for you, but they may well not have it in stock on the shelves.

Audio

Of course, there are a lot of different distribution models for audio books. Again, one of the big elephants in the room is Amazon. They have a setup – ACX – that allows indie and other authors to audition narrators, and manage the files.

However, if the book is done via royalty share (split between the author and narrator), the book is exclusive to ACX’s channels for a fixed term or until the author buys out the narrator. The royalty percentages here are particularly lousy, for the record – ACX keeps the majority of the income in a lot of cases.

There are some audio book services out there (Podium and Tantor are examples) that will buy audio rights to a specific book and produce it. Usually in this case, the author has less control over narrator choice or some other aspects.

The other option is to have the author fund the production costs up front. I just did that with Pastiche, which is still rolling out to a few audio distributors. I’m delighted with the audio book, but getting the funds together for that involved a Kickstarter and then a lot of other steps to get the book ready for narration and to check the recording (and a lot of steps in between).

Fortunately, there a whole lot of audio distributors out there. One a lot of people I know have been liking is libro.fm, which supports local bookstores. They offer both memberships and ‘just buy this book’ options.

Direct sales

Besides using a distributor, direct sales are getting more popular. Here, you go to an author’s site, click whatever link to buy that book, put in your payment info, and get the file (or a link to get the file, depending on how things are set up).

There’s a lot of good here: authors can share books directly with readers. There are some processing fees for handling those credit card payments, but the author gets to keep a much higher percentage. (More like 90-95% instead of 70% or less). And there’s a lot more control over how things look and feel or ability to connect to other information. I’m working on getting some things like bundles set up that would be hard to do on other distributors.

However, there are also some challenges:

The author has to set up and maintain a site, which can be a time sink! They have to figure out how to deal with taxes in different places. (Some direct sales options make this easier than others).They have to figure out how to let readers know their books exist. (The thing about browsing Kindle books or Barnes and Noble ebooks or whatever is that readers are there looking for a book already.) 

And obviously, direct sales aren’t an option for KU authors until they remove those books from KU. 

What I do

I knew from the beginning I wanted to be wide. Having books in libraries makes me the happiest ever. That shaped a lot of my other choices as an author, and continues to affect how I think about things like describing my books, the advertising I do (I’m not good at that part!), and more. 

If you explore the books on this site, you’ll see I’ve got links to the big stores, plus a link to buy direct at the top, and a link to other options at the bottom. I want readers to get books whatever way works for them that I can support.

(Coming soon: a page with more info about how to get paperbacks, and I’ll have audiobook links and info up for Pastiche. My blog and newsletter will have more when those are ready, likely both in March.)

Where do I get what I read?

I have been mostly in the Kindle ecosystem (the best setup I’ve got for research note highlighting runs via the Kindle app or reader). I’m rethinking my options for a bunch of reasons, but haven’t come to any decisions just yet. I know that I’m going to continue buying some books from authors I love (some of whom are friends) who are in KU, even if I use other sources for books when I can.

I also get some things via my library (mostly ebooks), but it depends on whether reading that book is time-dependent research, if I think I’ll want it for reference later, and my mood. 

What you can doReaders

The big thing I hope readers understand is that there are lot of different pieces feeding into an author’s choices about how to sell or distribute their books. Some of those are things that are easy to change, some are harder.

Going wide if someone isn’t already especially takes a lot of admin time early on. There’s a lot of cognitive load in learning new sites, getting payment and tax details set up, etc. Once you’re familiar with the sites, uploading is a lot easier (I do it in an hour or so now). 

And of course, moving a back catalogue takes a bunch of time! I have more than 30 books out. Even if each book only took 10 minutes each, that’s 5 hours right there. (And it’s never that simple, is it?) 

It’s absolutely fine to ask an author if there’s a chance they’re considering making their books available in other ways. But it’s also a decision that may take them some time to implement even if they are going to make a change. They may have good reasons for not doing that, or not immediately. (So many of us are at the edges of what we can manage given the state of the world around us, right?) 

If you’ve got a question about something in this post, feel free to ask it via the contact form.

Authors

If you’re an author who has thought about going wide, there are definitely resources to help. In general, Wide for the Win is a great place to learn more. (Discussion communities on Facebook and Circle, depending on your preference, plus a lot of linked resources).

Some options depend on genre. Here, I’m most familiar with romance and some subgenres, but I’m glad to point you at some other places if I know about them. Drop me a note in the contact form, tell me a little about your genre, and I’ll reply by email. (It might take me a day or two, I’ve got some upcoming stuff that’s going to slow down my responses a little this month.) 

One option that has worked for some authors I know is to move series wide one at a time. The folks I know who’ve done this generally start with the ones getting minimal reads in KU right now. That allows time to figure out how wide works without changing everything all at once. Start with a couple of wide options, or via something like Draft2Digital if the admin overhead of figuring out a lot of different sites is too much.

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Levels of magical power

Today’s topic about levels of magical power comes from a question on one of the current running series of extras for patrons on Patreon. (More about the context below.) The question is about levels of power, and how Garin (and more generally Lords of the land) fit into that. 

This post makes a quick tour through ‘how do we define magically powerful’. Then we’ll look at some specific character examples. I’ve avoided plot spoilers in those!

What does ‘magical power’ mean? 

One of my basic premises of the magical worldbuilding for Albion is that there are multiple ways to do things. (I think that’s true for our world, too.) There are different approaches to shapeshifting that exist at the same time. There are different ways to be an Alchemist or a specialist in Warding or Incantation or any other subject. 

Thinking about this, I think a lot of this comes back to my experiences with horseback riding in my youth. More than other sports, there are a great number of ways to be a good rider. Some people get there by having more natural physical talent. Others people do it by being able to build a really amazing connection with their horse. Some people build specific skills that take advantage of the things that come easier to them. Others people put in a great deal of time and deliberate learning to build skills.

Most people do more than one, but in varying proportions. These different approaches won’t all be successful the same way, but they can all be extremely successful at doing what the rider and horse want to do.

For magic in Albion, there are roughly four buckets of ‘how does someone have magical power or oomph’. These are raw power, ability to tap into power, training, and experience. 

Raw power

This is both the simplest and the most complicated. Some people have more raw capacity to draw on and use large amounts of magical power. There’s a downside to this. If they don’t learn to manage that raw power, it can be dangerous for them and everyone around them. Rufus and Jasper Pride are both good examples here. Both of them have a substantially larger capacity to funnel magical vitality and do things with it. 

Ability to tap power

Some people have access to sources of pooled magical vitality or power. Most obviously, these involve the Lords and Ladies of the land, and their Heirs. These people have an explicit ritual connection to the demensne estates, the large demesne, and the people there. To some extent (depending on their skills) they can draw on that to fuel their personal magic. 

Training

Of course training plays a huge role in how someone uses their magic. Someone without a lot of raw power can still be extremely effective by honing their skills to best use the magic they have. Someone who perfects a small set of skills can be – in practice – far more powerful in the world than someone who dabbles at dozens. The Five Schools developed in part to identify and teach those skills. The Schools also give people tools to use the magic they have more effectively. 

Experience

Finally, experience helps a lot. As humans, we learn more (hopefully!) over time about how to do things that work best for us. That’s just as true for magic as for anything else. Someone in their fifties who has paid attention to that and developed their skills to play to their strengths (and avoid their weaknesses) might well have an edge over someone younger but more magically powerful. 

(Witness the fact Magni is still duelling effectively in his eighties. He’s using less raw power, and more of his magic is going to avoid injury and help him move nimbly. But he has a lot of tricks up his sleeves for the duelling itself.)

The role of family

Some of these do have at least a little bit of a genetic component. Though as the Great Families have discovered, inbreeding is not good for magical potential. Families that have a more diverse lineage are somewhat more likely to produce people able to work with larger amounts of raw magical potential.

But a lot of it comes down to nurture. Someone who grows up in a family with folks with strong magic is more likely to develop it themselves, especially if the family provides useful guidance to grow with.

Different magical roles

One of the parts of this question was whether the Lords and Ladies of the land are inherently more magically powerful – and how that plays out for the Council. 

Lord and Lady

This is one of those places where causality gets a bit tangled. 

The Lord or Lady of the land does have access to a lot of stored vitality. At least if their lands are well-tended (and have been for a while). They certainly have access to a number of resources to help them with that too. Those include staff, techniques, etc. that allow them to make the most of what’s there. (For people who’ve read the Mysterious Fields trilogy, Dagobert makes use of this vitality for the rest of his life after the conclusion of the trilogy. But mostly he does so in ways that are not very visible to anyone other than his wife. Including his sons.) 

On the other hand, the landed families do tend to breed for magical potential deliberately. This works better for some of them than others. There’s a whole line of genealogical theory out there about which marital relationships are most likely to be successful. When Alysoun and Richard marry, the omens at their wedding (in Pastiche) mention that the prospects for their children are promising. Everyone looking at Gabe 20 years later: “That wasn’t entirely what we expected?” 

However, sometimes goes differently. As with all deliberate plans of this kind (especially with a somewhat limited and interrelated gene pool), there’s a range of results when you’re looking purely at ‘magic and ability to do things with it’.

And finally, of course, someone expected to become Lord or Lady in their own right almost certainly has also received a lot of deliberate education in how to best use their magic. That comes both through formal education (Schola, mostly), and through private tutoring (both for people who don’t attend Schola, and for those who do).

Council

The question of magical power for the Council members is much easier. Yes. They have it. How it comes out in their lives and the world varies a lot. But at a basic level, all of them have a substantial capacity for magic, all of them have training in using it deftly, and all of them have at least some ability to tap it from external sources. (And generally, they come in with substantial experience, and certainly gain that in the process of being on the Council.)

This doesn’t mean flashy magic! Mabyn, for example, rarely makes a show of her magic other than in very controlled circumstances (the stillroom or alchemy lab). Hereswith, who is Head in the 1880s, mostly uses hers as a diplomat and leader. Her skills help her read the emotional state of the people in the conversation and guiding it. Those forms might be subtle, but they can also be exceedingly powerful. 

And of course, we have some people who are very flashy about their magic.The duellists, for example, or the people who do larger ritual magic or visual magic spectacle. 

Use it or lose it

One other aspect here is that magic is a skill. The people who use their magic regularly and in varied circumstances are, on average, going to get better at using magic than the people who don’t. There are plenty of people who’ve had a perfectly good magical education. They use slices of their training, but lose capacity and skill in the parts they don’t use. 

A few examples

Let’s look at a few examples. (Do you have someone you’d like to see me discuss in more detail? Drop me a note. I have plans to visit some characters in blog posts this year.) 

Cyrus : Most of his magical effectiveness comes from his skills as a ritualist, with a particular focus on elemental ritual. When he can use that toolset, he has a quite effective lever to move the world. His approach is also what helps him be so successful as Head of the Council. It’s the same ability to bring disparate threads together and do something useful with them. 

Alexander : So, Alexander has a tremendous capacity for raw power. But what actually makes him terrifying magically is the fact that he has a whole set of magical techniques not widely known in Albion. These include Ritual approaches, but also Naming magic, which only a handful of people in Albion know in his lifetime. Alexander’s formal apprenticeship in Ritual magic was quite conservative in approach. However, he’d already done an apprenticeship with his mother and a far more wide-ranging set of techniques. 

Garin and Isembard: Both of them have quite a large capacity for magical vitality. Garin can far more easily draw on the land magic of the demesne (though Isembard can do the same for Schola, when it’s relevant). Garin’s magic is, however, far more tuned toward Alchemy on one hand (small, precise applications) and duelling on the other. As a duellist, he’s still more precise than many, but using far larger amounts of magic. 

In contrast, Isembard is a skilled duellist and fighter. Unlike Garin, he spent years of his life fighting in life-or-death circumstances, which absolutely sharpens the skills. He’s also had the benefit of working with Alexander and Perry, both of whom were able to take existing techniques and expand them. All of this makes Isembard arguably more functionally powerful than his brother, it just doesn’t show often. (And for folks who’ve read The Changing Door, it takes until Isembard is in his 40s before he realises this is actually true.)

Gabe : Gabe is just ridiculous, honestly. He’s our example here of someone who got a lot of advantages to start with, but also made the most of them. In a number of directions. (It’s honestly a really good thing his parents figured out how to teach him – with a lot of help – and that he’s got a rock solid sense of ethics. And that his primary commitment is to the good of the land magic, both local and within Albion as a whole.) 

Giles : His primary work is mathematics and crytography. While he uses some magical techniques for those, most of that side of his work is intellectual, not magical. He does use a number of small magical techniques as assistive technology by the time we see him in the books. But many of those are designed by someone else, he’s just implementing them. In broad terms, he’s somewhere around the middle in terms of magical power and potency, though with a lot of training to back it up. (And that does definitely help him as a bohort player.) 

Geoffrey : Geoffrey has a lot of magical scope, but fundamentally, his magical power comes from skill, training, observation, and patience more than sheer raw power. He knows how to use the power and magic he has well, he’s sensitive to the local situation, and once he’s Lord, he certainly uses the seasonal shifts to power things around him. 

Benton : Interestingly, Benton has more raw magical capacity, though it was perhaps slower to develop in him than some people. By the time he comes into Geoffrey’s service in the trenches, he’s a mature man in his 30s, and while he’s quietly competent with a lot of domestic charms, he’s never really been encouraged to develop more scope. Geoffrey gives him both opportunity for scope and scaffolding for learning new techniques. By the time they’re settled at Ytene in 1922 and 1923, Benton is well able to take on, direct, and help power some complex magical workings, as well as his skills during the Great War. 

Thesan and Lizzie : Together here because they’re both similar this way. Both of them have had a solidly good magical education, but both of them rely more on intelligence, observation, and choice of influence for their magical efficacy more than sheer power. Both of them do have quite a good storage capacity for vitality, in ways that let them bolster their respective husbands or children as needed. 

Ferry : Ferry is probably the person with the least magical power of anyone we’ve seen so far. She’s an example of ‘well-off families whose magic has attenuated over the years’. Once she finds a line of work that suits, however, she’s able to use that delicate, low-powered magic very deftly. It’s actually a great fit for magical tapestry restoration. There, too much magic could disrupt the delicate enchantment work.  

More about the context

A Fox Hunt is a sequence that’s a prequel to Grown Wise, Ursula Fortier’s romance (out on May 2nd). It’s particularly about Ursula’s relationships with the Arundel demesne estates and her Uncle Garin. The episode that got this particular question is the one dealing with Ursula being formally named as Garin’s Heir in August of 1946. (Grown Wise takes place the next year, starting in June 1947). 

Next week’s blog post is about the question of names and how people use them.

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