Guenevere (WIP)

If that’s true,then that’s great! It was only an idea I thought of and I didn’t intend to nitpick. I still love the game.

Will Arthur resent him tho? That’s something to think about. Pretending to love the live embodiment of your best friend and wife’s betrayal must be hard, even for him.

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Even if he doesn’t outwardly resent him, I find it extremely hard to believe he wouldn’t on the inside.

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Mine doesn’t have nothing to resent yet. However when in last game discovers my Guen with Mordred… My girl would totally blamed him
“Your fault, You wanted bang your sister?! Here you have your price… He’s at least a trully man with ambitions. Not a half hippie half warrior”

On the other side, I think Lance wouldn’t care about Guen and Arthur having a child, because that’s pretty much common sense (he’s the “mistress”, after all) and he would actually love him/her. My gut tells me that it’s 99% a boy, but then again Jean always manages to surprise me.

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A boy would have it much easier; girls are basically screwed from birth so long as their priorities extend beyond looking pretty, having nice things and procreating.

Although this would mean that a boy is less likely to learn and become his own person; he may receive more of a strictly classical education depending on the view of the parent, but a boy would have much less incentive to figure himself out and find out what he wants, who he is and what his principles are; he’ll have stuff given to him anyway. A girl would have to struggle that much more, develop herself and her mind since no-one will help her do it like they would if she were a boy.

In my mind, that’s why Guen (depending on your personal Guen) and Morgana are portrayed as the particularly intelligent ones; they survived childhood and adolescence same as the men, but they did it with all sorts of boundaries and restrictions and societal attitudes thrown on top of that.

They say true intelligence is the product of independent thought. Honing your mind even when you’re told by everyone that honing your mind isn’t your place and when no-one helps you would quite likely result in an intelligence surpassing their peers.

In case it wasn’t already clear, I’m particularly gunning for a girl. Because there isn’t many bigger challenges for character development than a character living in a society dominated by people who oppose key aspects of the characters being.

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If Guen has a girl, my Guen would raise her to slay the patriarchy since birth, I hope we can do that. (within the game proportions, obviously)

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Question:Aren’t there many different ways to be intelligent? For example a Warrior Guen could be better than Arthur at battle tatics/strategy and swordfighting than even Lancelot(maybe Arthur) depending on your choices right?

Not right now. With time and training we would ending with stats enough to be better than all of them. For now we are good but far of being better morgana hippie of Barbie. But that’s good we have many books to improve

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Of course there is. It’s not traditional intelligence, but Guen could excel in any number of ways.

My point was that it’s extremely likely that no matter what she chooses to excel in, the Arthurian society she lives in would dictate that she shouldn’t focus on it because it’s not what women should focus on, namely looking pretty and procreating.

So whatever Guen chooses to excel in, she’s excelled directly in spite of society as a whole telling her she shouldn’t even attempt it. Which is quite often more impressive than if you excelled with the full endorsement of the society you were in.

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I hope that we can punch someone in the face at some point.

I’m fairly certain you can.

Lancelot, after he kisses Guen. It’s actually a hilarious scene.

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I know, that’s my favorite scene ever!! I meant more like Count Grimald or something. Or Lot. He seems like the kind of guy who has a punchable face. :blush:

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Wait you can punch him? I only shoved him away.

Try actually attacking him.

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Right thank you. (I hate this 20 letters bull)

They’re really minor, so I’m going to be shocked if anyone actually recognizes the names as such. :slight_smile:

@InfiniteDreamer Did your post about Guen’s father get deleted? I can’t seem to find it… anyway, thanks for playing and commenting! :smile: I do plan to add at least one small scene where the reader can say something general about Guen’s relationship with her father, and maybe set a flag that will show them interacting in more positive, negative, or neutral ways in the future. But, as @poison_mara has said, I don’t want to be too specific about Guen’s backstory, just as I don’t want to give a specific list of options for her appearance – as soon as you offer five options for the reader to choose from, you rule out all other possible options, so it can be kind of limiting. Some readers have come up with really interesting and in-depth backstories about Guen and her relationship with her parents, and I don’t want to have canon contradict those unless absolutely necessary. That said, I agree that it would be good to include some more interaction with Guen’s father if I can, so I’m going to see what I can do while keeping it vague enough to allow for lots of imaginative interpretation (as I try to do in general). :slight_smile:

Heehee… Oh, I cannot wait to write that child. :smiling_imp: Both of them, actually.

It depends on the circumstances and Arthur’s “hardness” level. Arthur might believe the child is his, or he might be complicit in its conception from the beginning. Even if neither of those is true, an unhardened Arthur might see Guen having Lancelot’s child as a result of his own failure, and not feel resentful so much as sad/guilty.

@Sherlock221B Sort of yes, but also no… :slight_smile: I really need to write an official/comprehensive blog post about gender roles in the Guenverse. It is a very gendered world, but not as sexist as the historical middle ages – there’s a big difference. Here’s some stuff I said about it earlier:

The middle classes of the Guenverse – artisans, professional soldiers, priestesses, etc. – have more freedom when it comes to gendered behavior and appearance choices. Nobles are much more constrained because of the expectation of passing on noble bloodlines. They’re expected to marry someone of the opposite sex and have children, and women are expected to stay home and cultivate more domestic talents, while men are expected to protect them by fighting and leading battles. So the Guenverse, especially aristocratic culture, is very gender-normative in that sense.

But it’s not as sexist as the historical Middle Ages, so women aren’t seen as inferior, stupid, or unworthy of education. They’re certainly not told that they shouldn’t think for themselves, or that they’re inherently dumb, or anything like that. Aristocratic women are given books and good teachers, encouraged to be educated and intelligent, and applauded for being so. Intelligence is considered a gift for both women and men. (In the game, if Guen has a reputation for high intelligence, nobody ever faults her for it.) The oldest royal child inherits the throne regardless of gender, so people want future queens to be smart!

Arguably, the expectations for men in the Guenverse could be just as constraining as the expectations for women. A woman who doesn’t want to stay at home and have babies is going to run into some resistance (not because people think there’s something inherently wrong with her, but because she’s not fulfilling her duties as a noblewoman), and likewise, a man who doesn’t want to go out and fight, for whatever reason, is going to be seen as not fulfilling a nobleman’s obligations to protect his home and his people.

On the other hand, some people are lucky enough to be good at and enjoy the things they’re expected/obligated to do. Arthur just likes fighting and leading battles, and it comes to him naturally, so he hasn’t had much reason yet to question society’s expectations or be terribly self-reflective.

Morgana, on the other hand, as you say, doesn’t seem as perfectly suited to the expectations set on a noblewoman. She would rather have stayed at Avalon. So I agree 100% that part of the reason she’s more reflective, more self-aware, and more worldly is that she’s had to do a lot of thinking about society and her role in it. (She also just has six more years of life experience, but it’s the nature of that experience that makes her more mature.)

This is making me think that at some point I ought to show a male aristocratic character who isn’t happy with society’s expectations of him… There are a few, sort if, but they don’t do much in the story, at least not yet. Sir Baldwin is a priestess of the Goddess – he considers himself to be both male and a priestess, and has been accepted as such by the other priestesses – but he is also a knight and does fight. Similarly, Lancelot’s cousin Lionel really has no interest in marrying anyone (least of all a woman), but he’s being pressured to by his family and has been courting Lady Elise, mostly just to get them to shut up (though he and Elise are good friends and his feeling is that if he has to marry a woman, she’s the only one he could stand). But Lionel also enjoys fighting, even though he wasn’t trained in the conventional way for a knight. As for Elise, she’s passed the trials of knighthood and could use the title “Sir” if she wanted, but she prefers “Lady,” and she’s just as much at home wearing a dress as wearing armor. She’s managing to avoid criticism (so far) by fulfilling her feminine obligations as a noblewoman while also being a knight at the same time – and her family is fine with that. But not everyone is that talented. (For example, Maris and Bretta have no interest in fancy dresses etc., but they’re lucky enough to come from families whose bloodlines aren’t considered noble enough to matter, so they don’t have the same bloodline-preserving expectations set on them.)

Anyway, I should really come up with a male character who doesn’t want to fight (other than Mordred). I have no idea how I’d work that in, but there’s some space in the plot in the later chapters. So thank you, @Sherlock221B for sparking that thought. :smile:

I honestly don’t know if the Guenverse’s social structure would count as a patriarchy or not. Certainly Guen can be angry about it and try to work against it, and she can destroy the lives of men and take power for herself. How her child might play into that remains to be seen…

Eventually, yes. By part 5, Guen can exceed the other characters’ stats.

I will keep that in mind. :slight_smile:

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Really enjoyed the depth of this. The pace is excellent, the freedom given for relating to the main characters is wonderful, and the cohesion despite the wide range of choice is really inspiring.

Thanks for the fantastic read :blush:

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My baby Arthur, always blaming himself, even when it comes to Guen’s somewhat selfish behaviour. He deserves protection. :persevere:

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That’s extremely extensive. I do seem to have based my argument on the assumption that social attitudes exactly match those of the contemporary Arthurian age. Not that it ever technically existed in the first place, but you understand my point.

Although you are right; in order to truly be taken seriously, women would have to accomplish a lot more than men. My Guen is a strategic genius, but after three years people still instinctively defer to her inferiors, namely Arthur and Lancelot. But hopefully that will change in the future; I’m picturing a scene where Arthur, Lancelot and Guen are at a military meeting, and whenever Arthur or Lance attempts to talk, nobody is ever talking directly to them; it’s all to Guen because she’s a badass genius and everybody (finally) knows it.

A guy who has no interest in warfare or battle and just wants to paint all day would probably contest Morgana for the BrOTP award, probably in spite of the fact that Guen considers most everyone her inferior. Doesn’t deal with anyone that can’t make her think, so her and the sassy-to-the-max artist would probably spend hours just dishing out one sarcastic barb after another.

Best day ever that doesn’t involve subtly flaunting her genius in the least subtle way possible.