Character Portraits - Lydia (Patreon)

Aelinia's "assistant," and late arrival to the To Be A King universe. Let's talk about Lydia. Would you believe that Lydia was originally a throw in character to round out a release? Yep. She wasn't meant to stick around much at all. You may be noticing a pattern here already.

It turns out that Aristhenes has quite the connected family in the kingdom. Wealthy families in ancient times tended to maintain and grow their influence, unless they had successive morons in the bloodline. And heck, sometimes even THAT didn't diminish their power. Ah, history: you remind us that our times aren't as unique as we think they are. Lydia is a part of this highly influential family, though she certainly has ideas of her own. Fun fact: she is one of only a handful of female characters in TBaK to have received a formal education from tutors. So far, the others are: Valentina, Juliana, and Dinah. It doesn't mean the other ladies are idiots, but their education would not have been formal. It was a rare thing then for women, after all. And yes, Valentina is actually more educated than her sisters, though clearly not in the finer areas of interpersonal relationships. Maybe she spent too much time pwning newbs in Civilization. But this isn't about Val, so let's return to Lydia.

She is also one of the few ladies to have traveled extensively throughout the kingdom (another thing Val shares with her…dammit, Val!). Lydia's time in Greece will be especially important later in the game, but let's not get into that now. Lydia is a character that has surprised me. I originally saw her as a more quiet woman. She is turning into anything but. She is nervous in situations where she feels uncomfortable, and you'll see that in Chapter 7. But she also is not shy about her deeply held opinions. That might be a detriment to her, but we will see. At least she has Aristhenes to help her along. Lydia continues to change and adapt, which makes sense given her upbringing. That means that I'm not always sure how she will respond to certain situations until I start writing. Think of interacting with Lydia as walking through an old minefield. Maybe it's fine and you get to enjoy the calm. Or maybe you step in the wrong place and you trigger an explosion.

She and Aelinia seem to be close. We are going to explore that a bit though, as I'm kind of worried how much Lydia feels Aelinia will get in her way. While I think Aelinia is an independent spirit, I think Lydia may turn that up to 11 over the next few chapters. She has spent a lot of time around powerful family members, and we know what the children of successful politicians turn out to be if they go into politics. She could certainly be an ally for an ambitious person. Assuming, you know, you don't accidentally set her off.

Besides her more progressive views on women, she shares one other key thing with Aelinia. Astute observers may already have figured it out. I'm not going to spoil and reveal it here.

Since Lydia was a throw in, she got the bare minimum of work on her model. I took hair from another model I had, mixed a couple of existing morphs, slapped some textures on Lydia, and bam! The only positive to this is that she is a lot closer to a standard G8 model than some of my ladies, so, except for her ample assets, her model is pretty easy to work with.

Unlike some of my other characters in TBaK, Lydia has no historical inspiration. I'm not even pulling from any material for ideas for her background. She is purely tethered to the TBaK universe.

I have a confession. I've toyed with eliminating Lydia in many interesting ways, and I've even written some scenes that start us down that path. But I just can't do it! Not only because Wolvy would find me and murder me. But her story is going to be very unique. And oh boy, those on the harem path with her in it…god speed.