#shahnaz of corval

[wellindad]

7, 9, 10, 25!

7. Parents - Corval - mother. 

Really, the way I see the Lady Parastu is pretty faithful to what information exists about the Courtier’s Mom in the game—with the exception that she has two daughters, who attend the same Summit and will eventually require a Canon Overhaul, which is trademark for my girls at this point, let’s face it. So Roshni and Naz’s mom is the very model of a Cunning Corvali Courtier, and has been friends with the Empress since before she even was Empress. And despite the fact that most of Parastu’s life has been decided by “the whims of the Empress”, like her marriage and her children, I think the friendship between the two women is genuine? Like, there’s a consensus that regardless of however many secrets they’re keeping from each other—spoiler: A Lot, It’s Corval—they’re never gonna outright betray each other. So maybe Parastu’s a little more faithful than the Empress is, and the power dynamic is a little skewed, but they’ve known each other for over thirty years. If the relationship didn’t work, they wouldn’t have remained friends this long.

(The Empress calls her “Stu”, which is great. What is also great is the time another lady new to the inner circle tried to call her Stu as well, cue that lady leaving the Imperial City in disgrace within the month.)

The El-Amin girls absolutely adore their mother, which is only heightened by the fact their dad died when Shahnaz was ten/Roshanara was five, and he was never a huge part of their lives up to that point anyway, since they spent most of their time in the inner court. Parastu, in turn, loves her daughters, and put a lot of effort into getting them to break the Corvali stereotype of Not Trusting Your Family Members. A lot of effort, considering the girls were brats to each other for most of their childhoods. So they’re a remarkably close-knit family unit for the inner court, which was a deciding factor for sending both sisters to the Summit to represent Corval, and while Rosh and Naz are good good Moral/Noble/Compassionate girls, there is very little they wouldn’t do for their mom. Nor she for them.

9. Parents - Hise - Blackthorn.

I love Blackthorn so much, okay, I’m an absolute sucker for fictional video game families and the Hisean MC’s personal plot is my favourite of the bunch. Since we don’t get a lot of information on Blackthorn beyond her Current Situation I haven’t deviated too drastically from the text, I don’t think. But so Sadja’s mother, specifically, is Captain Lujayn Blackthorn. Lujayn is Hisean herself, born and bred, and both of her parents were pirates, though their approach to piracy was definitely more bloodthirsty/immoral than their daughter’s (and by extension granddaughter’s). She mostly spent her childhood alternating between her parents’ ships, since both Rachim Stormdancer and Araceli the Sea Wraith refused to give up their captaincies after their marriage. Tragedy struck when Lujayn was about thirteen, as both of her parents died within months of each other: I haven’t specifically decided what caused her dad’s death, but I do know he died first, and then her mom basically ramped up the “terror of the seas” angle in her grief until she was killed in battle.

So that left an impression on Lu, which. Is an understatement, absolutely, but it’s the main reason why she only kills as a last resort, since maybe her parents would have lived longer if they hadn’t approached everything with blades drawn, maybe murder isn’t always the answer, what a Novel Concept. It was also an unconscious influence on her marriage, since even before she met Ozias she’d think about how it would be nice, wouldn’t it, to have someone to come back home to. Whereas if she married a fellow pirate, a fellow captain, then there wouldn’t be anything anchoring her to land.

I’m still fleshing out Lujayn’s backstory, particularly how she survived her teenaged years, and of course The Kidnapping Of Wellindad, but what doesn’t need fleshing out is that Sadja loves her mother so damn much. The current timeline I’m working with is that Lujayn vanished four years ago, so that’s been four years of Sadja struggling with depression and trying to come to terms with her grief, only to come to the Summit and learn her mother lives, Blackthorn Lives, and she would do anything to get Lujayn back. Which is honestly the most canon-compliant aspect of Sadja, how much she loves her mom.

(Daughters Loving The Shit Out Of Their Moms is another theme for me, clearly, but as a daughter who loves the shit out of her own mom, I stand by it.)

10. Parents - Hise - Wellindad.

hey that’s me

My love for Blackthorn is matched only by my love for Wellindad, frankly—again, the Hisean MC’s whole situation? So good. Sadja’s dad/Lujayn’s husband is none other than Ozias Tendaji. Who started out pretty canon compliant, much like his wife, before I had the thought “what if Ozias was a former delegate?” And then Aly mentioned in an ask that he was a younger son who wouldn’t have inherited anything in Wellin, which I then interpreted as “what if Ozias’s family is Important In Wellin, he just had a lot of siblings?”

So now Ozias is the youngest son and the fourth born child of the former Duke of Chanly, Josiah Tendaji, and his wife, the Dowager Duchess Sabine Wiegand. His eldest brother Gideon is the current Duke of Chanly, after their dad died twelve years ago, and his middlest brother Erez is Count of Barzin (which is located within the duchy of Chanly, making Gideon his direct liege lord, if I remember my Crusader Kings II mechanics currectly). One of his sisters, Liora, married a Marquis, and they have a pleasant, childless marriage; the other, Ismene, married a Count, but died unexpectedly nearly twenty years ago, leaving her heartbroken husband to raise their daughter alone.

Since he was their third son, Josiah and Sabine didn’t quite know what to do with Ozias politically until they realized the Seven Year Summit might be a good fit for their soft spoken boy, so he was a member of the Wellish delegation four summits prior to the one his daughter is currently attending. To his disappointment, Ozias didn’t make a match, romantic or otherwise, but he did participate in the negotiations, so overall it was a good experience. So he returned home to Wellin, only to be kidnapped by an upstart pirate a few weeks later.

(He insisted on bringing his dogs with him.)

If Sadja inherited the call of the wind from her mother, she absolutely inherited her enormous heart from her father, since all Ozias wants to do his love his family the best he can. Even after almost thirty years he’s yet to find a True Place in Hise beyond being “Blackthorn’s Husband” but honestly, he wouldn’t want to have any other role? And he can’t imagine going back to Wellin, since this is where he made his life with Lujayn, this is where they raised their daughter, and honestly, I love Wellindad so fucking much, there is a reason he is my url, okay, and it’s because I love him.

And Sadja loves him, too, yes I know this is basically the answer to all of these questions “my girls love their parents, thanks for asking” but it’s the truth

25. Ancestors

OKAY, so you did clarify you wanted to hear about House Tendaji, and I did already cover the Current Family Situation when I was talking about Ozias, and honestly? I haven’t fleshed out much about the family beyond that, like. They’ve been in Wellin since before the fall of the Revairan Empire, although they haven’t been nobility that long. And they weren’t always known as the Tendajis, either—it’s sort of like the Plantagenets, where that’s what we refer to them as now, but it wasn’t until the house was in its death throes that anyone ever used the surname? House Tendaji is thriving, though, they’re doing good in the present day.

Anyway, I do know that they’re called the Tendajis now because Tendaji was the name of the ancestor who first ascended to the Wellish nobility, which (without a more detailed timeline) was definitely after the Revairan Empire fell/before Katiya came up with the Summit. And I’ll honestly probably hold off on figuring out an Exact Instant for Tendaji to have gained his title until after Kingmaker comes out so that’ll be about five more years lmao whoops but an idea I am toying with is that perhaps he was rewarded after fighting against the Revairans, since I recently discovered the Countess-specific text during Jarrod’s date where she talks about how Wellin and Revaire have always had a terse relationship.

And…that’s about all I have for ancestors, whoops, sorry your family tree is full of placeholders, Sadja and Matilda.

[thetrevelyanwilburys]

"I’m sure you are perfectly lovely, Lady Shahnaz, but you must agree our time would be better spent getting to know the people we might, in fact, marry.” “Your modesty does you credit, your Highness, but surely you must agree that you have more value than simply as a future bride.”

—Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (Azalyne Studios) [listen]

Night And Day - Ella Fitzgerald・Good Intent - Kimbra・PDA - Interpol・Heat Lightning - Icky Blossoms・Love And Anger - Kate Bush・Our Perfect Disease - The Wombats・50 Ways To Say Goodbye - Train・Don’t Wanna Fight - Alabama Shakes・What The Water Gave Me - Florence + The Machine・Do I Wanna Know? - CHRVCHES・Half Of Something Else - The Airborne Toxic Event・A Night Like This - The Cure・A Better Future - David Bowie・Love Crime - Siouxsie Sioux

[wellindad]

Names 06/07: Roshni & Naz

It’d be a little weird for me to talk about the El-Amin girls separately, so they also get to share a post, hooray~

Roshanara was made after Shahnaz, who was my first MC that felt like a genuine success, she unlocked Marvelously Misjudged on the first try and everything, whereas everyone else required some retooling before they were capable of impressing the Matchmaker entirely. So I loved Shahnaz enough that I thought it'd be neat if my second courtier was her younger sister—cue the appearance of Roshni. Given Corval's inspired by the Ottoman Empire, I wanted my courtier to have a suitable name, so I looked through some Persian names and ended up choosing Roshanara. Mostly because I like the way it sounds, but also because the fact that she's only nineteen (but her mind is bolder, these Corvali streets get colder, she shoulders every burden, disadvantage she has learned to manage—) meant I was amused by her having a longer, moderately ostentatious name.

Which ended up biting me in the ass a bit, since it gets tedious typing out nine letters every time I want to talk about my younger courtier, so most of the time I stick with her nickname, Roshni, or when I'm real sick of typing, Rosh. So far as she's concerned, Roshanara doesn't really mind what other delegates call her, though "Rosh" is pretty much exclusively used by her mother and sister.

Shahnaz, like my widow Shoshana, adopted the name of an OC I'd created a few months before discovering 7KPP, whose story sadly never got off the ground. I'd initially chosen the name because I liked its meaning—"king's pride" or "pride of the king"—and thought it was a fitting choice for a confident, ambitious courtier. I also liked the idea of her nickname literally meaning Pride; this was before "(sweats nervously)" became a go-to characteristic for dear Naz, mind.

I settled on El-Amin for Naz and Roshni's surname because it means "the Truthful"; since both of the sisters start with 75 Manipulation, it seemed fittingly ironic. Particularly since Shahnaz is pursuing a certain Revairan Princess, despite her Moral nature, and Roshni is gonna talk her way into the Underwater Basket Weavers if she has anything to say about it (which she does. So much to say about it. 530 Persuasion by the beginning of Week Six, go Rosh go)

Also also: despite her -15 Courage, Shahnaz has a pet python back home that she named Deneb, which is Arabic for “tail” and such a good snake name I couldn’t not use it.

[wellindad]

Character Names Masterpost

So I’m the type of person who really likes naming characters, and I tend to put a good deal of thought into their names. Though those thoughts range from "this name's meaning perfectly encapsulates this character's personality" to "I'll avoid alliteration if i use this name, works for me", so, y’know, ymmv. Since I’ve finally gotten around to setting up a 7KPP sideblog, I thought I'd take this opportunity to ramble a bit about the reasoning behind my MCs's names. Which turned from “a bit” into “a lot” into “basically one post per MC, please help”.

For those of you who also like names, I really recommend checking out the Nameshake phone app; it randomly generates a bunch of names and provides you with the meanings associated with them, as found on Behind The Name (I think the app might be made by them, actually, but I've had it so long I'm not sure). You can adjust the filters by origin, which is useful if you're trying to give a character a Specific Sort Of Name, and also save names you think are interesting for future reference. I use it a lot in my writing, and the majority of my MCs's names I initially found via the Nameshake app, so it was money well spent so far as I'm concerned.

I wrote the posts in chronological order, so I’d recommend reading them in that order since I sometimes make references to other MCs, but whatever floats your boat, it’s all good. I hope y’all enjoy!

01: Christobel of Arland

02: Esperanza of Arland

03/04: Evadne & Shoshana of Revaire

05: Matilda of Wellin

06/07: Roshanara & Shahnaz of Corval

08: Sadja of Hise

09: Zenais of Jiyel