Windfire in the cave of leylines
Magical Annals is a series of nine books. The first book (Magical Annals: Antiquities and Arcana) follows Windfire Deverille and her family as they adjust to life on the mortal plane. Some of the other royal-blooded witches are followed as well, including each of her suitors. After being left alone for several years, Windfire and her family are visited by one of the royal families who had been an ally in the past. Soon, many other witch family representatives visit the mortal plane to seek audience with the Deverille witches.Windfire soon finds herself struggling with decisions about her future. She receives several offers that would allow her to return home to her birth place, but, she had grown attached to various features of the mortal plane that she could not experience on the witching plane.
Tropes Associated with Antiquities and Arcana
- Accidental Marriage: This happens when Windfire and Nightshade are children. They inadvertently do the main portion of marriage ceremonies. And their parents have very different reactions.
- Addictive Magic: This is why most physical contact is restricted before marriage. The physical acts of everything from kissing to sexual intercourse feels so good the persons involved feel compelled to repeat the act. Mixing blood has similar effects.
- Alien Blood: Witches of noble ancestry (or with a significant amount of noble blood) will bleed silver. Commoner witches will bleed blue.
- Big Damn Kiss: Subverted with Riverrose. He kisses Windfire, confesses his love for her, and then accepts that she is going to marry Nightshade all in the same scene.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The ancients have this and live by it. With there seeming to be no real guiding factor to govern their behavior. This is especially apparent when Nightfall murders the man who arranged the abduction of his child. He crosses into Moral Myopia territory during the conversation he has with Skybolt Simon. It is played for laughs for those with a Dark Sense of Humor and for Hypocritical Humor.
- City of Spies: It is revealed that the drag outside of the nobles' lands includes this feature. It is where most families get their spies.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
- The families all have a distinct color scheme with their hair, eye and skin colors.
- The families also have color schemes. The Deverille witches wear silver, red and white.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: The first haircut a witch has is when they are to be married to signify changes and moving forward in life.
- Fantastic Drug: Some magic can be seen as this and has this sort of an effect.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Antiquities and Arcana into Amor and Augurs
- Interspecies Romance: All of royal-blooded are descended from different magical ancestors. They refer to themselves and other royals as their ancestor as well.
- Love Potion: One can conclude from the timing of the love spell that Windfire and Nightshade like one another and have a deep friendship, but that their sexual encounter was sparked by the spell instead of the situation and their feelings for the other. It could have also intensified the physical contact between the two so that the Addictive Magic effects mentioned above more or less tricked them into falling in love.
- Mark of the Supernatural: All royal-blooded witches have them. This was done intentionally to make them look distinct and off-putting.
- Moral Myopia: Present with a lot of characters. But, of course others are the monsters for behaving in such a way. They are justified in their actions though. It's a tossup whether Nightfall, Skybolt or Earthwind is the guiltiest of this trope.
- No Hugging, No Kissing: This is the expectation for all witches. It is justified because it is to control the bloodlines and to track the offspring and heirs of each noble family.
- Revenge by Proxy: The ancients (who are not the best people by far) have enacted this upon one another. Skybolt (the Simon family ancient) finds out his wife Dawnbreak (Deverille ancient) is pregnant with another man's child. The man is Nightfall Gerard. And since mixing bloodlines is seen as powerful and Dawnbreak married into his family instead of vice-versa, Skybolt sees her affair as robbing him of his insanely powerful heir since it would have to be the firstborn of both of their families. So he arranges for their son to be abducted and taken to where he will never be found. And he did this as an act of torture against them because that is far worse than them finding out that the child is dead. For this, Nightfall murders Skybolt with the intention of marrying Dawnbreak.
- Sacred First Kiss: With the reserved culture, this is something important reserved for the wedding day. There are also other reasons related to magic and the effect of sexual contact between royal-blooded witches. It is basically a Fantastic Drug and Addictive Magic
- Sins of Our Fathers: The Gerard family hypothesizes that this is the reason for the misfortunes of the Deverille family. This is because ancient history is forgotten, languages change, documents are lost and there is nothing they have done in modern history that could have been seen as a declaration of war. It turns out that The Simon coven has kept detailed records that have been passed down from head of coven to head of coven for millions of years. Unlike the other covens, they do so orally instead of with written word. And for every sleight against their family, Earthwind is enacting vengeance. YMMV on whether it is justified after seeing how the ancestors behaved toward one another.
