I love answering reader questions about Alpennia. Did you know that? I received a lovely question on my Goodreads page yesterday about what my sources and inspirations were for Alpennian magic. Answering the question gave me a chance to pull up my "development diary" where I took notes about how my ideas developed and changed when I was first writing Daughter of Mystery. Check out my answer and feel free to ask more of your own (either at Goodreads or here). It was also interesting to learn of a new path by which a reader came to the Alpennia books!
One of the tropes that I find annoying in historic or fantasy adventures revolving around female characters it "Not Like Other Girls", where the character actively rejects the trappings of traditional femininity to demonstrate that she's worthy of being a protagonist and having adventures. So I've found it doubly annoying when readers have pointed to hints of that in my own stories. I confess that, for Margerit and Barbara, I can see how they might be interpreted as indulging in that trope. Barbara with her cross-dressing and sword-fighting, Margerit in being disinterested in balls and the other events of the Season, in favor of academic study. But I never meant to imply that traditional femininity is incompatible with adventure or great deeds, and I hope that the variety of my characters has demonstrated that. (If anything, I try to draw on real-world examples of women with fascinating occupations and adventures who felt no need to reject being female.)
It is true, however, that Margerit (in her secret heart) fears that the conventional attractions of society--of love and marriage and family--will prove and either/or choice for the students she teaches. And in the following passage, we see her struggling with that fear.
Chapter 27 - Margerit
There was a soft knock on the door, though she’d left it open in invitation. She looked up to see Valeir Perneld waiting. Margerit glanced over at the clock. Was she late for the thaumaturgy lecture? The girl’s expression combined excitement and trepidation.
“What is it, Valeir? You must have news to share. Come in.”
She still remembered her first meeting with Valeir, during one of the summers spent at Saveze. Valeir had been a student then, at the Orisul convent, just about to launch into her dancing season. The two of them had helped Sister Marzina devise and work a mystery to heal a little boy deaf from a fever. It had been a revelation to her how differently Valeir’s sonitus worked from her own visions. Now the girl was one of the strongest pupils in the thaumaturgy classes and a constant challenge to Margerit’s understanding.
“Maisetra Sovitre?” Valeir said. The excitement in her voice was infectious. “He asked last night. Petro Perfrit. We’re betrothed.”
For only a moment, disappointment ruled. No, I don’t want to lose you! But this was a time for congratulations and a wish for every joy. It would come to this more often than not. They would come to study and then move on to take up the roles of wives and mothers. It couldn’t be a matter of one or the other. She wouldn’t allow herself to think that education was a waste for girls who then chose the conventional path. That was the argument of those who saw no point to educating them at all beyond languages and the arts.
“We’ll miss you,” she said, as she released Valeir from a quick embrace.
“That’s what I—that is, Petro and I—we wanted to ask about.”
Margerit glanced at the clock once more. A quarter of an hour before her lecture. She gestured Valeir to the chair facing her own and sat.
“What’s this about?”
“I was thinking,” Valeir began. “And I asked Petro because I don’t think I could have married him if he said no. I want to finish my studies first. Before the wedding. Petro agreed, but my papa doesn’t like it. He’s afraid Petro will change his mind if I put him off for two more years. I was wondering—would you speak to him? To my father, that is?”
Now that was unexpected. A fiancé who was willing to wait for a girl to complete her degree? Or at least as much of a degree as they’d be able to offer her. But… Petro Perfrit. She remembered that name now, though it had been years. He’d been part of the late lamented Guild of Saint Atelpirt, the student guild she’d joined that had ended in the disastrous castellum mystery. She searched in memory. A quiet man, not sensitive to fluctus but solid in his approach to theory. A partisan of the Dowager Princess, but so many of them had been and that was all in the past now. It was odd to think that her own example in that guild might have influenced his willingness to choose and champion a scholar-wife.
“Yes, of course I will,” she answered. “You’ve made a good choice in Maistir Perfrit. I don’t know that your father will listen to me, though.”
“He will,” Valeir said.