I don’t know whether this has been asked, but will we be able to choose Guen’s reaction to her own child? It is, of course, awful when someone does not love their child, but if Guen feels pressured to have an heir, she may resent her child if she does have one.
@Kinruush I so want that choice! At least one of my Guens (and maybe more) will feel, ahem, less than loving to their child once they actually have it. Ditzy Guen for example…
Before: “Ohmygosh, babies are SO cute! I want one! I want a cute little baby!”
After (puked on, massive headache from crying baby, no sleep for 36 hours): “Nurse! Nursemaid! Take this thing away.”
Ditzy Guen wants a child for the same reasons many little kids today want a puppy; they’re adorable, and all of her friends have one. And just like many little kids with their puppy, Ditzy Guen didn’t think about all the work and responsibility involved in caring for her baby.
So when she does see what being a mother is actually like, Ditzy Guen will promptly leave her baby in the care of nursemaids and governesses and never look back.
@jeantown Can we have this choice, please? In so many games, characters (especially women) are basically forced to love their children. It would be wonderful if all mothers did, but that’s not the case in the real world, and it certainly wouldn’t be the case for a few of my Guens.
1 Like
Would in the world of Guenevere Guen have the “puked on, massive headache from crying baby, no sleep for 36 hours” experience of motherhood? I mean, she’s the queen, taking care of her children personally seems like something unorthodox.
Not to object to what buggygirl11 is asking for, I second the motion.
@Elfwine Historically, yes, it would be rather unorthodox for the queen to care for her own baby. But the queen riding out to battle would be seen as more than a little unorthodox as well, and yet that happened in Guenevere. So who’s to know what’s normal or not in Guenevere’s world?
@buggygirl11 Indeed. But a queen raising her own child is unorthodox even if a woman fighter is barely worth commenting on (as distinct from a man at arms), so I’m not sure the latter means the former would occur.
No reason why Guen couldn’t try to insist on it anyway - not all royal women (Thinking of Franz Joseph’s wife Elizabeth) have taken well to not being given the choice IRL, and Arthur is not likely to insist on the “You can’t do that, you’re the queen.” for mere “propriety”.
I can see this whole argument where Arthur is trying to get some from Guen, and she’s not having it, the baby is too aggravating. He says: But Guen, it can’t be THAT hard, can it?
And then Arthur has to look after the baby for 48 hours, complete with Guen laughing and taunting.
I’d so love for that to happen. ^^
@Elfwine I’m not sure it would either. I’m just saying, who knows whether it would or not except @jeantown. The Guenevere world is filled with anachronisms. Anything is possible! 
But REGARDLESS, let’s get back to what we’re really here to do…ask @jeantown to give us the choice of deciding our Guen’s feelings toward her child. (I really, really hope we can do it!)
@Kinruush @buggygirl11 @Elfwine buried 600 posts ago in the thread:
So the answer is yes. 
in fact, I think the IF format is going to allow the possibility for Guen to be the kind of mother who is rarely represented in fiction: a good person who just isn’t that enthralled with motherhood. Of course, she can also be evil, and/or she can also love every minute of being a mom, but usually in fiction you just have saintly mothers who love everything about it, or evil, selfish women who are bad mothers because they’re so evil and selfish. Rarely do you get the mother who honestly loves her child but just finds parenting difficult (because the tendency is, the second any mother acknowledges that parenting can be difficult, for people to jump all over her with screams of “evil, evil, you should never have had children; how dare you suggest that cleaning up puke for the third time today isn’t total transcendental bliss!!!” … when in reality, it seems to me that plenty of parents are good people (and even good parents) even if they don’t find puke-cleaning blissful. As for Guen, she can be a good person who doesn’t like parenting, or a bad person who does, or a person who likes parenting but doesn’t particularly like her child – maybe she considers the child a disappointment – or a person who loves her child but is terrible at parenting… My plan is to allow for at least as much variety of possible feelings as she has with the main NPCs now.
As for how much involvement she’ll have in taking care of the baby… the current plan is for the baby to be born at the beginning of part 4. Since not all Guens will have babies, the baby will be a conditional character, like Bretta after part 1. So that means I’ll be writing scenes with and without the baby. Since that’s the case, I’m planning to offer Guen a choice at the beginning of part 4 about whether she wants to keep the baby with her most of the time or hand it over to a nurse. So, @Elfwine and @buggygirl11, my plan for a while has been to allow Guen to insist on taking care of her baby personally if that’s what she wants. It’s more common, in the guenverse, for noblewomen to have nurses taking care of their babies, but it’s not going to be earth-shattering if Guen does most of the work herself. Most people would probably read it as some sort of extension of Arthur’s ideals.
8 Likes
Hm. Will we have scenes revolving around Guen when pregnant? Like people discouraging her from doing stuff because she’s pregnant, and maybe making certain things more difficult today because she’s pregnant?
Also, without a baby, would you make more people commenting on her lack of having one? Would there be an issue of people believing either she or Arthur is/are sterile? ^^
1 Like
@Mim Unfortunately we’ll miss out on the pregnancy, since part 4 is set to open with Guen giving birth (if she does have a child, obviously). Maybe there will be some references to her pregnancy. And if she doesn’t have a baby, people will absolutely comment on it and assume she and/or Arthur are somehow infertile. Those comments and assumptions will mostly be happening in part 3, though… by part 4, if Guen hasn’t had a baby, most people will have concluded that it’s not going to happen. If Guen does not have the baby, Arthur will officially announce Gawain as his heir in part 4.
1 Like
Thank you for replying so promptly! ^^ Is it definite that Guen will be having a boy, or could she have a girl? Would we be able to choose that, or would it be random?
@Mim I’m going to try to keep the baby’s sex a secret until it’s actually born in the game. I do already know, and unfortunately the reader won’t be able to choose. It won’t be random. Someday I hope to write a Robin Hood game where everyone’s gender is selectable, but for this game and this world, gender is fixed.
2 Likes
@Cat_Raider Morgana’s oldest son.
If the child was a girl, would she be able to inherit the kingdom?
Usually when I check this thread, there’s like 90+ replies from one day to the next, but I would just like to squeeze in a little thought that occurred to me regarding this baby business. Warrior queen nursing her babe whilst riding out to face some kind of dignitary or something similar! Eh? Eh? Powerful imagery that. pats my own back
3 Likes
@WulfyK Gawain and Gareth are well-intentioned people, and they’ll try to be nice to Mordred. Mordred will consider them pawns.
@bomsasa Yes. Guen’s Britain cares a lot more about royal bloodlines than it does about the sex of the monarch.
@MutonElite That would indeed be awesome, and it has been added to the notes.
3 Likes
And Morgana will have no other children, no daughter for her?
1 Like
@WulfyK Nope, no daughters for Morgana. Once she has Mordred, she won’t want any more children.
1 Like