Doll Girl Meets Dead Guy, Annotated: Ch. 1 (Patreon)

I'd been wanting to tell Sorla's story for a long time, but I wasn't quite sure what it would be. When we last saw her in The Sorcerer's Equal, she was fourteen years old and participated in the Festival of Flowers, where maidens wear flowers and the men chase them to grab a flower from the hair of anyone they want to dance with later. Sorla was the only Fanarlem to join in, and it was kind of a Big Deal that the prince stole one of her flowers. 

I don't think Seldon would have been thinking of her romantically for a number of reasons, first and foremost being that she was a Fanarlem and still quite young, but I imagine he would have remembered her, at least, and written her to get a feel for what life was like for Fanarlem in his kingdom.

For Sorla this would have meant the world. She's a total nobody and the entire city knows that the most famous young unmarried man in the kingdom has been writing her letters.

My obvious thought would be that Sorla's story would be about Seldon having feelings for her, navigating that, and falling in love...but it kept troubling me that there would be just a massive power imbalance between them and a Fanarlem girl really, like, can't marry a prince. It would basically break the rules of the world to have that happen. On one hand, it's a story, find a way! On the other hand, in a story like this...breaking the rules is much harder than with a one and done romance. If I don't really believe this can happen, how will anyone buy that this romance is working? 

And then...I just didn't really want that for her either! 

That was when a new character walked into my brain...