The Assassins from Castile

I started Victoria as a retelling of Snow White and female relationships are incredibly important to that fairy tale. I’d thought to show Snow White from the outside because stories from her POV always seem angsty and failed. So Victoria, her scheming younger sister, would play the lead, and Bella—the beautiful—would be Snow White.

But the story didn’t turn out that way. In fact, Bella became a rather shady character. And unlike in Snow White, the world of Victoria got filled with assassins and thugs and gained a very different theme altogether. When I created Ignacio, I’d had an idea of him as a benevolent character who would care about Bella. But he became more like Boba Fett. (Yes people keep writing romances about Boba Fett and I don’t know why they do that. I wish they would stop.) Ignacio can pretend friendliness, especially when he’s trying to get information, but he is always up to something and is very confrontational.

The Hirado is a trained and hired mercenary who goes around killing people—again like Boba Fett, or like any criminal or bounty hunter from other stories. And Webster, though lighter, is always verbally aggressive. I call historical from 1400-1800 “Bigga” because of the Bigga dresses, obviously. Everyone who’s into Bigga seems to have a bigga attitude too. And I’ve noticed something bad always happens to people after they get into Bigga historical. They always divorce, or lose all their money, or get caught in being deceptive and lose a friendship, or it’s found out what they really believe about something, or they disappear and their friends don’t hear of them again.

I guess Bigga is where people who have been living a lie go to get popped off. The assassins are waiting for them. I’m glad I’ve never had a bigga attitude.

And there will be more updates.