History Headscratchers / TalesOfTheFiveHundredKingdoms

** Their whole deal could *maybe* be related to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamamo-no-Mae Tamamo no Mae]] and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sessho-seki Sessho seki]], but it's unclear how exactly the Shogun fits into it.

* So... In ''Fortune's Fool'', is the story the Shogun tells Katerina (being the son of a ghost, etc.) an actual Japanese myth? Or is it just something Mercedes Lackey made up? ^^;
** On a similar note, in ''The Fairy Godmother'', what fairy tale (if any) is Elena trying set up when she arranges for a young woman to get a ''particular'' pot of flowers with the intention that this will eventually bring down a Black Magician?

* What is Lackey suggesting by having Godmother Bella not attract unicorns? Not long after they meet, she tells Elena that she had no real interest in the local men before becoming a Godmother and no time to find one after (page 72 in the paperback), but she seems evasive about it and seizes on their arrival at the cottage to quickly change the subject. Given that her pre-Godmother life could fit either CinderellaCircumstances or the Monster and the Maiden (lazy older sisters left the housework to her), could she have had a bad encounter with either a beast or a prince that she doesn't want to talk about? Or did she really have no interest and time and just sprinkled Unicorn-B-Gone around the property to keep them from being a pest?

* What is Lackey suggesting by having Godmother Bella not attract unicorns? Not long after they meet, she tells Elena that she had no real interest in men before becoming a Godmother and no time to find one after (page 72 in the paperback), but she seems evasive about it and seizes on their arrival at the cottage to quickly change the subject. Given that her pre-Godmother life could fit either CinderellaCircumstances or the Monster and the Maiden (lazy older sisters left the housework to her), could she have had a bad encounter with either a beast or a prince that she doesn't want to talk about? Or did she really have no interest and time and just sprinkled Unicorn-B-Gone around the property to keep them from being a pest?

* Does Lackey imply that Godmother Bella had a disastrous if not abusive first marriage -- perhaps a Deconstruction of the Maiden and Monster path -- before she became Godmother? She claims to have had no interest in marriage (and quickly brushes off the subject when Elena asks), but she's not a virgin.
** Does it have to be marriage? Could that's such a vague description. Quote the source?
** I'll have to re-read my copy, but there's a part where Elena starts feeling uneasy because Bella's unmarried, and when she asks about it, Bella just sort of laughs and says "When would I ever have time to marry?" (I'll post the exact exchange when I find it). Plus she strikes me as a Kethry {{expy}}, and Kethry's backstory was that she was married to a 'husband' who just wanted a little girl to abuse.

** Does it have to be marriage? Could that's such a vague description. Quote the source?

* Does Lackey imply that Godmother Bella had a disastrous if not abusive first marriage -- perhaps a Deconstruction of the Maiden and Monster path -- before she became Godmother? She claims to have had no interest in marriage (and quickly brushes off the subject when Elena asks), but she's not a virgin.

** it wouldn't be the first time - or rather, the last time the Tradition switched a character from one Path to another. Rosamund of ''The Sleeping Beauty'' was expected by both her GenreSavvy parents and Godmother Lily to follow the Sleeping Princess Myth - instead, the Tradition pushes her down the Snow Skin (aka Snow White) path. Lily muses that the Tradition, for some reason, seems to have been hedging it's bets with Rosamund - right up until Rosamund's mother died, and Lily stepped in to take the role of WickedStepmother, she could actually have taken either Traditional path.

** This sort of thing actually depends on the Kingdom/s. In ''Beauty and the Werewolf'', Bella initially thinks that she's stumbled into a variation of 'The Monster in the Labyrinth', but with Sebastian playing both Daedelus (the Magician) and the Monster (the Minotaur) at once. (Note that she thinks of a ''Greek'' myth, though she lives in a pseudo - 18th century European town) Elena enlightens Bella that she's actually playing out 'the Maiden and the Monster' - which is a tale that ''Bella hasn't heard of, because it's from another Kingdom some distance away''. It's only happening here because it's the only Tale the Tradition could find to fit the resulting circumstances, when the far more common situation [[spoiler: between Sebastian and his bastard brother, leads to Eric cursing Sebastian to become a werewolf]]. The point I'm trying to make is that significance attaching to certain names or variations thereof probably depends on how prominent a particular Tale is in a Kingdom's history, thus strengthening that Traditional Path. ie variations on 'Blanche' would influence the Snowskin/Snow White path on a princess in a pseudo-English or Germanic Kingdom, but in a psuedo-French Kingdom could turn the princess to the old French fairy tale of 'The White Cat'. In support of this, I can only say that 'Fair Rosalinda' is actually a really obscure story IRL; when I first read 'The Fairy Godmother' I had to do some fairly extensive Googling to find out if Lackey actually invented the Tale for her book. (Note: she didn't - barely. 'Fair Rosalinda' is actually a medieval poem/ballad that's BasedOnAGreatBigLie about a mistress of Henry II of England, who Eleanor of Acquitaine supposedly had murdered and her body disposed of in the manner described in the story.)

** it wouldn't be the first time - or rather, the last time the Tradition switched a character from one Path to another. Rosamund of ''The Sleeping Beauty'' was expected by both her GenreSavvy parents and Godmother Lily to follow the Sleeping Princess Myth - instead, the Tradition pushes her down the SnowSkin (aka Snow White) path. Lily muses that the Tradition, for some reason, seems to have been hedging it's bets with Rosamund - right up until Rosamund's mother died, and Lily stepped in to take the role of WickedStepmother, she could actually have taken either Traditional path.

** it wouldn't be the first time - or rather, the last time the Tradition switched a character from one Path to another. Rosamund of ''The Sleeping Beauty'' was expected by both her DangerouslyGenreSavvy parents and Godmother Lily to follow the Sleeping Princess Myth - instead, the Tradition pushes her down the SnowSkin (aka Snow White) path. Lily muses that the Tradition, for some reason, seems to have been hedging it's bets with Rosamund - right up until Rosamund's mother died, and Lily stepped in to take the role of WickedStepmother, she could actually have taken either Traditional path.

** it wouldn't be the first time - or rather, the last time the Tradition switched a character from one Path to another. Rosamund of ''The Sleeping Beauty'' was expected by both her DangerouslyGenreSavvy parents and Godmother Lily to follow the Sleeping Princess Myth - instead, the Tradition pushes her down the SnowSkin (aka Snow White) path. Lily muses that the Tradition, for some reason, seems to have been hedging it's bets with Rosamund - right up until Rosamund's mother died, and Lily stepped in to take the role of EvilStepmother, she could actually have taken either Traditional path.

** In Rosamund's case, her name is more of a reference to Briar Rose, the Brothers Grimm's version of "SleepingBeauty". And since her parents and Godmother Lily were GenreSavvy enough not to have a public christening, the whole being cursed by an evil fairy/witch/sorceress was avoided.

* Also how many fairytales play out? Dont the ordinary folk realise eventually?

* The girls that get pinpointed as Fair Rosalindas likely have a variant of Rose as their name. One shown who dodged her fate thanks to Madame Bella is named Rosalie. Would it not be better to make the variants of Rose anathema to thwart that particular path of Tradition? Also why did the GenreSavvy King and Queen of Eltaria name their daughter Rosamund? Given the fact that she is a Princess she is unlikely to fill the peasant girl aspect of it that well, but she could get kidnapped and raised as a peasant and her mother was a peasant.

* So... In "Fortune's Fool", is the story the Shogun tells Katerina (being the son of a ghost, etc.) an actual Japanese myth? Or is it just something Mercedes Lackey made up? ^^;

* The Sorceress Arachnia was first introduced as the abused, exploited stepdaughter send in the winter in a forest to gather strawberries and her attraction to the morose poet prince put in her path was because in her Traditional path she was supposed to have married a prince. And latter while talking to Elena she explains that she was supposed to be a Witch killer child from the begining. Maybe two paths intersected? She was both the victim of a WickedStepmother that after trials marries a prince and a child that outwits and kills a witch?

* The girls that get pinpointed as Fair Rosalindas likely have a variant of Rose as their name. One shown who dodged her fate thanks to Madame Bella is named Rosalie. Would it not be better to make the variants of Rose anathema to thwart that particular path of Tradition? Also why did the GenreSavvy King and Queen of Eltaria name their daughter Rosamund? Given the fact that she is a Princess she is unlikely to fill the peasant girl aspect of it that well, but she could get kidnapped and raised as a peasant and her mother was a peasant.

* The girls that get pinpointed as Fair Rosalindas likely have a varian of Rose as name. One shown who dodged her fate thanks to Madame Bella is named Rosalie. Would it not be better to make the variants of Rose anathema to thwart that particular path of Tradition? Also why did the GenreSavvy King and Queen of Eltaria call their daughter Rosamund? Given the fact that she is a Princess she is unlikely to fill the peasant girl aspect of it that well, but she could get kidnapped and raised as a peasant and her mother was a peasant.

* So... In "Fortune's Fool", is the story the Shogun tells Katerina (being the son of a ghost, etc.) an actual Japanese myth? Or is it just something Mercedes Lackey made up? ^^;