Boy, I have a lot to say on this chapter. Let’s talk about Sarene’s engagement to Roial.
Some moments, when you’re writing, things just click together. The moment when I came up with this plotting element was one such moment. I hadn’t actually planned this into my outline. Suddenly, as I was writing, I realized just how much sense it made, and how wonderful it would be to force the characters to have to go through this. Even still, this is one of my very favorite twists in the book.
The scene in the carriage has been there from the beginning, but I did change it slightly in the last draft, adding the section where Roial talks to Sarene about herself. His line “You’re an excellent judge of character, except for your own” is something I think needed to be said to Sarene at some point in the book. The actual suggestion that it happen came from my Master’s Thesis committee. They—correctly—saw Sarene as someone who had an unrealistic image of herself.
She really isn’t as unmarriagble, or as unwantable, as she thinks she is. Even back in Teod, she wasn’t regarded quite as harshly as she assumes. However, she’s very hard on herself. Someone needed to sit her down and tell her—at the same time acknowledging to the reader—that she isn’t half as bad as she seems to think.
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