There will be no chapter uploaded this Saturday, as I will be playing Silksong for the next few days. Regular scheduling for The Distinguished Mr. Rose will continue as usual by Wednesday.

This notice will also be deleted once the next chapter goes live. Since there's a 500 word requirement, however, I'll take this chance to give all you readers a little sneak peak into my drafting process/behind-the-scenes coverage about the story. Some facts might be interesting. Some not. I didn't want to just spam a single character and be lazy though, so feel free to read on if you so wish.

To begin with, I am a massive pantser. I have general outlines and goals I usually set beforehand when I first start drafting a new chapter, but other than that I mainly write whatever comes to my mind first. This leads to some details being changed along the way.

For example, Ganelon was initially supposed to be the guardian of Roncevaux Fortress instead of Ogier. I intended for Ganelon to betray Francia out of bitterness for being assigned to such a lowly position, and my main influence came from the Matter of France which most of the stories about the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne originated from.

In one such a story, a little tale called The Song of Roland, Ganelon was Roland's stepfather, and he became jealous of the fame his stepson was garnering and his continued success out on the battlefield. As a result, he plotted with the Saracens which lead to Roland, Olivier, and Archbishop Turpin to be ambushed at Roncevaux Pass (sound familiar?) Roland actually died as a result of his scheme, but his friends managed to expose Ganelon for his treachery in the end.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I intended to follow a similar story structure, albeit with my own twists and details. I decided against it, though, and created a separate scenario involving Ogier as I felt his experiences would help contrast with Ruggiero's own arc.

At this point, I have every single Peer's backstory fully fleshed out and planned, so there won't be any other last minute changes like that.

Moving on to Ruggiero himself, creating his background was quite complicated. I wanted to incorporate various aspects of his mythological self as told in the Matter of France, such as his steed—the Hippogriff—but then that would have involved beast raring and open up a whole can of worms that'd be hard to explain. If Ruggiero could ride a beast, then why not the other Frankish paladins? There'd be no need to travel on ground unless they were transporting equipment/cargo, so I had to find a logical reason why only Ruggiero could do so.

That's when I came up with the concept of a flying train. The nation of Moors and the Crystologists ended up developing from there.

With that roadblock solved, I also wanted to somehow incorporate Ruggiero's foster guardian in the myths, a sorcerer named Atlantes, but couldn't find a way to include him without dragging the story on. While thinking about that, I randomly thought "Why don't I just combine them?" And so I did. Having his original Moorish name be Atlantes and Ruggiero his Frankish name introduced a lot of depth that I could build upon in regards to his struggle with self identity.

So yeah, that's how the Ruggiero as you see in the story was born. A lot of little things or details you might notice about the Peers is likely stuff I incorporated from their historical versions. Try reading the original stories sometime, if you can!

The main sources I took from are The Song of Roland, Roland Innamorato, and Roland Furioso. They are very cool books, and who knows: reading them might just give you hints about how certain arcs might progress in the future.

Anyways, I've reached the word requirement. Time for Silksong—good cheers and hearty farewells to you all!

Sincerely,

QuiteTheSlacker

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