The plague over, King Erik Lovejoy cautiously came out of hiding. His father had crowned him before eating his last slice of bread. Erik could barely remember this, he had been so young. Yet somehow he remembered much about being a king. His father had taught him, repeating his royal lessons so often they stuck in his mind more that his dead father's face.
King Erik had been promised to a fine lady. He knew this lesson best of all. "You will know Matilda for her fine breeding and deep red hair. She will know you for your crown, as all your subjects will." He had been told where she was hiding. It was no more a fit place to live than where Erik had lived.
Maid Matilda had been alone and frightened for some time. When first they met she screamed and pleaded for mercy.
King Erik quickly sealed off the entrance that they may not be disturbed...though that was unlikely. Then he revealed his crown. In a very rehearsed move, he placed the crown upon his head, bowed deeply, then - Erik had not practiced this part.
Erik looked up at the frightened maid uncertainly.
Softly he addressed her. "I did not mean to frighten you fair maiden." She had stopped screaming when he bowed. With these words she had grown most quiet. "I am looking for a fair maiden by the name of Matilda, she is to be my bride." Her face looked quite still. Perhaps he had made a mistake.
"Forgive me. I thought you must be my bride for I have been told she is fair with lovely locks. I cannot imagine a maiden with more lovely auburn hair. Please, at least let me help you up."
He held out a hand to the maiden, still crumpled upon the floor. She timidly put her hand in his, staring at him. By the time he had her on her feet, she found her voice.
"Might you be Prince Erik Lovejoy?"
At first he was stunned. Then he remembered his subjects would recognize the crown. He bowed again.
"I am King Erik Lovejoy. Alas, my father the King died of starvation that he may feed me. Please, tell me your name fair maiden." This did not fall ill with the maiden as she had survived in this way.
"I am Maid Matilda. I have been promised to the Crown Prince, should he and I survive."
There was a moment when they each realized who the other was. Both had questioned if the other lived. Both had questioned if any person still lived. Matilda because she had been so long in hiding, Erik because he had just come out of hiding and had seen no one else. It is likely for these reasons they fell in-love so quickly.
They wed simply and immediately. It was necesary. Erik would not have the chastity of his bride questioned, nor would he leave her once he had found her.
Erik kept his affections for his new Queen to gentle kisses. He insisted that they "be married in body" after he move her to their castle. It was most gracious of the king. Queen Matilda was more endeared to her husband for this chivalry.
Erik aquired the things he needed from many hidden locations. As they traveled about, he left notices, telling one and all to return to his kingdom. The papers included a picture of King Erik and a simply drawn map, that even a peasant may find the kingdom. It was doubtful anyone surviving would remember how to get their anyway. They likely left as babies. That is if anyone else survived.
Neither the King nor the Queen had drawn up these notices. They had been made long ago. The former king had them drawn up months before Erik was born. King Erik looked remarkably close to the picture, considering he had not yet been born when it was drawn. His parents had been cousins so this was not the most difficult task for the artist.
Erik and Matilda saw no one on their journey. Erik only hoped that some would find their way to the kingdom as his father had told him. With any luck some of the servants had survived. To Matilda he said that people would come to the kingdom, they would want a safe place.
The couple traveled to an island so great, one could not see from one end to the other.
King Erik found it only sparsely populated. He found only a few servants. He had seen them from the shore. When they arrived at the castle he was greeted by one who had apologized. The servant stated simply that they were short staffed as few on the island survived. They had come out of hiding a year ago, and had repaired and cleaned in the hope that he and his father would soon return. While sorrowed that King Lovejoy had passed, they seemed genuinely glad that his son had returned in his place.
He woke Matilda who was quite weary from the travel. He asked her to close her eyes and come with him.
Queen Matilda delighted in the game."Open your eyes My Queen."
Matilda was overcome. The castle is so great they could only see a small portion.
King Erik came close and whispered in her ear. "You can explore the castle later. It's time I made you my wife."
Matilda was overcome. The castle is so great they could only see a small portion.
King Erik came close and whispered in her ear. "You can explore the castle later. It's time I made you my wife."
Queen Matilda is wearing an Anne Boleyn dress! Squee!!
ReplyDeleteSorry. It's just that I can spot that B necklace at fifty paces. ;)
*ahem* Anyway, you're off to a brillian start! I love your back story; it really explains why the Kingdom is so small (population-wise, if not square-footage-wise). And your story of King Erik and Queen Matilda meeting was very sweet. :)
Your pics on the whole are great, but let me just share a quick tip. There's a cheat (showheadlines on/off) that will allow you to turn off the speech bubbles, thought bubbles, relationship +/- signs, etc. Having King Erik's thought bubble in the last picture really works, but sometimes they can just be inconvenient. :)
Anyway, great start, and I'm off to add this to my blogroll so I remember to check the darn thing! ;)
I liked the beginning of your story too. You must have an awesome computer to handle all that CC. Where did you get the neighbourhood that you're using? I really like the layout of it. I've bookmarked your blog too! I have a feeling Matilda is going to get pregnant very soon...
ReplyDeleteGwrych kingdom at mod the sims. I couldn't find more amazing medieval lots anywhere. They are fully furnished with custom objects - the same ones I had been eyeing everywhere on the web. I stopped searching and just downloaded her objects. I have a few lots that aren't hers as well.
ReplyDeleteThe kingdom is much bigger. It won't fit in one picture. That decoration that looks like a village represents my downtown. It is built, but you haven't seen it yet. I'll also be adding more lots over time. More realistic if the kingdom keeps growing! In time you will see more Grwych lots.
Thank you for that cheat! The last thought bubble was on purpose. The rest don't show due to careful camera shots!
I have an xp laptop with about 52mb, and about 10mb free space. It has extra ram, which was cheaper than taking a family to the movies.
To make my game handle the cc I employed some tricks. Before making the neighborhood...
I reset the sims, bringing it back to the original state. (Download folder pulled out of the game and sitting on my desktop.)
I went into the game and deleted all the maxi neighborhoods. (Not through the files.)
I went out of the game and into the files using advice from a clean template tutorial. I deleted all the maxi snapshots and thumbnails except the picture of the witch castles. Apparently they take a ton of memory. I deleted all but the bon voyage characters and their relationship files. I deleted the neighborhood packages (after all the neighborhoods are deleted) which scared me to death...but when I did make the new neighborhood, the game made a neighborhood package and I felt much better.
Before making the new neighborhood I was careful to put in a notownie regen mod. It seems to be working. The game has made the service npcs, so it looks like all is going well.
I'm so happy you like my first chapter. It may be a challenge to write it's equal.
My goal is an average of a chapter a day. I'll have the next one posted tonight if all goes well.
Hi Chicklet! I like the beginning of the story.
ReplyDeleteFirst the two cents (which you can take or leave)! :) Being an educator (former school teacher), my only "suggestions" to you at this point is to slow down your action just a bit and increase your conversation. I sense your excitement in telling the story, but it's much better to just give us bits and pieces and let their words help us to see what they are like...even more so than what they do. :)
One other thing....I didn't quite get the part where you were discussing the papers being drawn up. When you say King and Queen...I was uncertain which King and Queen. It was a bit confusing. :(
With that said...I love the idea that they are coming out of a plague. I also loved that the couple are a bit awkward with one another...although I don't know about them being so intimate with so much else to take care of. But...I'm intrigued enough to see where you take this.
BTW - Are there rules for how you write your story? Is this done all from imagination or how does it work?
~*~Stephanie~*~
P.S. Not all my comments will be so thought provoking. I'm just getting a feel for your story. Take everything I say with a grain of salt. :)
I see how the king/queen thing was confusing. Something else about this chapter wasn't written well.
ReplyDeleteHere is some extra knowledge of the kingdom that will clear some things up. (Maybe I should have written it closer to this in the first place.)
King Erik is king of Grunwald, and his father before him (now dead) was king. His parents are not named, as I don't want them to be a big part of the story, afterall they are dead. The king that is dead is sometimes refered to as Good King Lovejoy, which is confusing, because Erik could be called the same. Then again, perhaps the peasants like being able to use the phrase and let the king interpret it as he likes.
Matilda was a bit confused when she met King Erik Lovejoy. She is the first person Erik has seen in years. Erik is the only one at this point who knows his father is dead. When things got bad, the king went into hiding and no one ruled the kingdom. King Erik is lucky no one took it over...then again, most anyone who may have wanted to is dead due to the plague. A bit of a fatalistic view of the plague to explain a sim-sized population.
So Matilda doesn't know Erik's father is dead, and is uncertain if he is Prince Erik, and likely bringing up dim memories of what little she was told about this Prince Erik (now king) that she was promised to.
Just to make things more strange, they are married alone without witnesses. I decided the marriage is still valid for a number of reasons. 1. A king can make a marriage valid like a religious man can. 2. For my story during the plague people married without the usual formalities due to shorter life expectancies and not wanting to spread the plague. 3. I like to think that in some places in medieval time people married without a religous or government person marrying the couple - due to lack of $, lack of such person, customs not reaching the little places, etc. (Besides, it makes it easier since sims marry with just each other under that arch.) 4. King Erik's father believe's that each man should keep God in his own heart. Either because he found this to be a better relationship with God, or because he believed religious leaders to be power hungry or even dangerous to royalty. My personal reason is that I find a religious leader complicated to play as a sim. Also I couldn't bare to have nuns that can't have babies without being "bad". Instead I have wisemen in Grunwald. At some point there may be something closer to a pastor, but there will be no vows of celibacy for religious reasons. (Because it isn't as much fun to play.) 5. King Erik when he finds Matilda thinks they may be the last 2 people on earth. Until he reaches his kingdom, they meet no one.
Where are these people? They are somewhere in Europe. The kingdom, is the "new kingdom" because during the plague there was no kingdom. It is also the place of the old kingdom, where is father ruled. People are in hiding outside of the Kingdom of Grunwald in areas that are like European wilderness.
The people who come to Grunwald are about all that is left of Europe.
Later Erik will organize a travel around the known world. He wants to see if anyone else survived the plague.
Much later there will be places for travel and college. These will be places not included in Erik's travel. Perhaps they have not been built yet. Perhaps they are not inhabited yet. Perhaps Erik already knows about them. Perhaps he hears about these places during his travels. I haven't decided. I may leave that up to the reader's imagination.
The Rules
ReplyDeleteYes! I do have some rules for my story. For the most part I follow the Royal Kingdom Challenge (RKC)Rules. I used the guidelines to choose how many couples begin a kingdom, sort them into 4 classes, and choose how many of each class. (Royal, Noble, Merchant, Peasant) I added prostitutes (peasants, but socially less). I also added wisemen. They are peasants, but with some higher social status in some ways - they may marry higher and be friends with royalty, where this is far less likely to happen with an ordinary peasant.
There are also marriage rules, covered in the rkc. First born son marries his own class or higher, except royalty which may marry nobility. Other children have more flexibility. Royalty can marry all but peasants. Other classes may marry any class. If a woman chooses to become a prostitute she becomes peasant class and is very unlikely to ever marry. They can cheat with anyone....but of course this is not socially acceptable.
I have added another group besides the prostitutes and the wisemen...the gypsies. Among the gypsies there is a gypsy queen. If she dies, her eldest daughter, or the woman she is closest to becomes the next queen. (There is no gypsy king.) Gypsies are peasants. The real King and Queen (Erik and Matilda) don't feel in any way threatened by this "Queen". Even though they see her as a peasant, they would consider her family line in marriage. It doesn't make sense and isn't supposed to.
So the men are considered in charge like in medieval time. But the gypsies are a little different. The men are still in charge, but the Queen is in charge of them all. This is most obvious in marriage.
I have a some special rules about marriage. The sim must be same class or higher to propose. Women may propose engagement, but still take on the man's name. As long as they are following class rules, they may choose a spouse, or someone may choose them for a spouse, provided the engagement is accepted. However, if 2 heads of household (father or eldest male usually) are BFF, they may make arranged marriages for their family, possibly when they're babies. Because of this, many of the next generation may not have say in who they marry. With any luck, I'll have some who don't know each other or hate each other when they marry. That would be fun to write about. I have a couple mods to help me do this.
The gypsy queen can meddle a bit more. If she is BFF with the head of a household, she may arrange a marriage for any of her gypsies that are not already engaged. That could be interesting.
It's too early in the story for any of that, but I'm looking forward to such complications.
I also do dowries for all the daughters. More for upper class and first borns. I made myself a little chart. The dowries are not $. Instead I put stuff in her inventory when she comes of age. This will do a family in faster than anything.
Taxes I do in a weird way. When a sim wants to give a gift, I lock it until they do, regardless of what their other wants are. The gift must be given to someone in a higher class than them. The gift is likely to be something they made, plants they grew, fish they caught, etc. If they have nothing like that they may either buy something and give that gift, or pick something from their home to give. Sometimes I choose to empty their inventory into the other's. I try not to give any dowry away in taxes, but will if I need to.
There are RKC rules about what jobs you can take. I bend this if it seems like they should be able to take certain jobs.
The only married women that can take jobs are peasants. Unmarried merchant women may also have jobs. Prostitutes may not take on a job out of the newspaper unless they marry a peasant man.