I haven’t really made any story progress to speak of. Why am I posting then? Well, I was just going over Chapter 9 of TSoA1 to round out the narrative when I got stuck on something. I knew Budic I of Brittany was a kinsman of Ambrosius Aurelius (part of the reason he takes refuge there after the assassination of Constans), but I didn’t exactly know how they were related. Cue me spending hours on end (and still going) trying to sort out the royal/ducal family of Armorica/Brittany.

I’ve complained before about the contradictory information that I have to sort through, which isn’t helped by me trying to shoehorn the (pseudo-)historical chronology into the timeline I have set for the story. When family trees start getting recursive, try sorting that out. For instance, I have Prawst ferch Gwrgan as her own great-great-great-great-great-grandmother and Ionas ap Deroch marrying his great-great-great-aunt. >_<

I use plain text files for my family trees, which is fine so long as they aren’t too complicated and I don’t have to make a lot of insertions that throw off the spacing. When I have to realign entire generations, my system starts to fall apart. I’ve now resorted to slapping together hasty trees that ignore dates and such just to try to get the structure in order. I’ve put tons of hours into the work I’ve already done, but a lot of it almost needs to go back to square one.

You might ask why I bother with all this when I should just write the story. Besides the fact that doing a lot of work under the hood is part of my method, the interrelation of all the characters is critical for the political situation and navigating the complex spider web of marriages is a major part of understanding the dynamics of the world. When I’m making it all from scratch, I obviously have a lot of control compared to me trying to make sense of what hundreds of people have cobbled together over the past 1500 years. I must enjoy the abuse or I wouldn’t subject myself to it.

Anyway, expect more of the same before I transition to TBP. Stay tuned.

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