Princess Trivia: Deleted/Changed Ideas

Only two weeks until The Snow Queen’s Shadow [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] comes out! I’m marking the occasion with random deleted and changed bits from the series. For example, did you know I once jotted notes for a 5th princess book in which Danielle would have a second child (a daughter), and Jakob would be revealed as a fairy changeling?

More beyond the cut, as there are a few potential spoilers for the earlier books.

One of my original notes for Roudette’s (Red Hood’s) character described her as an old veteran who was “relaxed and at peace with herself.” Yeah, that didn’t last long…

Lirea originally killed Queen Beatrice at the beginning of The Mermaid’s Madness. Then when I wrote the first draft of Red Hood’s Revenge, Bea died at the start of that one, too. Apparently I just had a grudge against the poor queen.

Fairytown didn’t exist in the original outline for The Stepsister Scheme. Instead, our princesses reached fairyland via a fairy hill hidden midway down a waterfall in the middle of Lorindar.

Danielle’s mother was supposed to show up in Danielle’s dreams, but this felt like too much of a deus ex machina to solve plot problems.

An unused idea and quote from The Mermaid’s Madness: “When a human gives his heart to a mermaid, he gives a part of his soul as well. Our mistake was assuming that was a metaphor.”

I originally planned to model Captain Varisto’s wardrobe at least in part on Klingon fashion.

There are eight castes in fairy society, though I didn’t do much with this in the series. From my notes:

Pure (Royal), Deathweaver (Warrior), Magian (Other magic weavers), Servant, Bloodless, Slave (One of the few castes fairies can move in and out of), Beast (Can enter this caste through involuntary transformation/curse), and Unnamed. Exiles are outside of the caste system – they aren’t considered of Fairy blood, and are forbidden from wielding the power of the fairy hill.

Danielle’s stepmother was alive (though blind and banished from Lorindar) in the first version of The Stepsister Scheme.

Lorindar was first called “Whitefall Island.”

Febblekeck, the annoying ambassador in Red Hood’s Revenge, first came to life as Bishop Febleek of the fairy church. He was still annoying, though.