This story came from a couple of different places. First, it was written for a rainbowfic challenge--use as a prompt a Presidential Pickup Line. I saw this one, and immediately thought of Sorell, because of his particular brand of villainy.

The second thing I wanted to get into was...well, I really, really don't like one-dimensional villains. I have four villainous characters/characters with strongly villainous traits in my story.

Two of them I haven't spent that much time on. One of those primarly operates in backstory (though if I write the sequel I've kind of sort of drafted out partially in my head, he'll play a role there). The other is Sorell's son, Kellom, who is harder, at least for me, to make sympathetic. The problem is he's a fanatic and refuses to compromise on just about everything (not only his views on mages), and isn't particularly close to anyone except his father and one of his sisters--maybe his kids, if he has them, but he's only recently married as of when the main narrative starts and hasn't yet.

Of the two left, Kesshare, who I've spent a lot of time on, is a villainous character who is not actually a villain (though she would be in the sequel). Then I have Sorell. I already knew he was very devoted to his family, among other sympathetic traits, despite his being one of the two main villains of the Feredar War narrative.

So, with those two goals in mind (filling the challenge and highlighting some of Sorell's more sympathetic qualities), I decided to write how Sorell proposed to his wife, Nida. I knew roughly how they'd met--it was somewhere between an arranged marriage and a love match. He'd been given a group of women selected by his council (for family ties/known family fertility, wealth, etc), was introduced to them in stages starting when he turned seventeen, and given instructions to pick one by the time he turned eighteen. Of all those women, Nida impressed/seduced him, so she became his queen.

When I started writing about the proposal, I realized I had to write what led up to it--Nida winning Sorell--in order to a) fit the pick-up lines prompt and b) give a real representation of their relationship and why it makes Sorell relatively sympathetic. Between the need for that second part and searching for a structure for the story, I ended up also writing the later months.

Then something...kind of odd happened. At some point during this process, I realized there was a hell of a lot more going on with Nida than I'd previously suspected. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, since I'm working on pieces of the story proper to explain what's going on with her, but I'll just say that she's not necessarily the woman she presents herself as. The story ended up being, in a weird way (at least for me as the writer) more about Nida than about Sorell, despite his being the POV character and the one who's actually a major figure in the main narrative, since Nida dies six years before it begins.

So, what the two of them are thinking is...well, each for their own reasons, they really want this marriage to work. And Sorell genuinely, deeply loves Nida. Which is why he's so upset over the possibility she's disloyal (and also why he can't quite figure out why she's pissed at him for asking her about it the way she does, in August).

Okay, a brief comment on each of the months:

January: The first part I wrote, once I scrapped my original draft that was just the proposal. It's basically a direct address to the PPL prompt--how Nida began her seduction.

February: I wanted a little snippet of their actual courtship--again, showing how Nida largely took the lead here. The waterfall comes in because I wanted them to have a place that's uniquely theirs, tied to their relationship, which is really hard for a royal couple, I think. So, I gave them a park with a pretty waterfall.

March: The original meat of the piece--the proposal--and the first introduction of the color prompt for rainbowfic (Nacre #1: Pearl).

April: Their actual wedding, which I realize is a little bit fast for a royal wedding, but it was rushed due to Sorell being completely head over heels in love with Nida, and also his ministers wanting an heir as soon as possible, since Sorell is young--not quite eighteen--and his current heir is something like a second cousin, who's actually older than he is. Not really a good situation to be in. So, some grandeur of the wedding is sacrificed in the name of producing a direct heir that much faster. And, again, it's at their special waterfall.

May: I decided I wanted them to have their first child within a year of the wedding at the latest, and figured 'why not within the bounds of the story?' So, Nida essentially gets pregnant on their wedding night and their first daughter is born about a month early. She tells Sorell as soon as she's sure, about a month later.

June: ...I'll be honest, I think this is the weakest of the segments. I needed another event, so I decided to take them back to the waterfall, and sort of tied it into the season.

July: Again, tying in with the color prompt, and also doing an ordinary milestone that happens in a year. Again, one of my goals was to humanize Sorell/make him sympathetic, and showing a relatively ordinary yearly event is a good way to do that, I think. Also, tying back to the waterfall--where the pearls for the necklace were found. This is Nida's seventeenth birthday--she's about eight months younger than Sorell.

August: Part of the reason I introduced the letter was to hint at some of Nida's below-the-surface aspects. Part of it was I wanted to follow Chekhov's actual gun rule and not mention her sisters without using them in some way. Part of it was because I didn't want their relationship to be perfect, even in the newlywed/infatuation/honeymoon/first-year stage. So, I put in a major fight. I'm a bit of a bitch like that. ^^

September: ...another weak one. I like this better than the June segment because I think it reads better, just in terms of the flow of language. The first line is almost a haiku (one syllable short):
There were leaves floating
In the pool at the base of
Their waterfall
which actually wasn't deliberate, but is probably why I think that line scans so well. It also ties back to the waterfall, and does better at showing the stage of their relationship than I think the June bit does.

October: Well, I had them fight, so I needed to have them reconcile. And I will say here that, despite everything else that's going on with Nida, she does have a certain fondness for her husband. She wasn't lying when she said she'd missed him.

November: Another basic milestone, another tie to the color prompt and their waterfall. Her use of his title instead of his name, even in private, was deliberate here, both on her part and on mine.

December: Well, like I said, I decided I wanted the child born within the bounds of the story, plus it's another opportunity to show how much he loves her. Sorell and Nida have another two daughters before Kellom (who's born seven years after this), then three more daughters and three more sons after him. Of their ten children, four daughters and three sons survive to adulthood. In case you were curious.