From what i understood through the game, Arthur is not stupid to believe that everyone is good. He and Lancelot knew that someone might try assasination at the wedding and prepared for it, he ordered the interrogation of a prisoner, he fight on the front lines with his soldiers, so he is killing other people with his own hands (although fom mediaval-like perspective that last can be seen as normal thing to do). He also know that the people he loves the most often don’t share his view, and even after the battle and not killing Hrothulf he thanks Guen for not doing it (if i remember correctly) so he must have aknowledged that even his wife, who he clearly idealise, may want to kill unarmed prisoner.
So at least in my impresion, Arthur understands that others may not want to be all goody and forgiving, and it won’t make them bad people, but believes that if they do, the world will be a better place, and want to show them this by giving the example from himself.
I think the appropriate attitude there for the “I am a practical woman, not a foolish idealist.” should be Byzantine - not Guen advocating doing unto the enemies of England what the Mongols did to Khwarezm.
I don’t mind the idea of a Guen who wants to go in a Vlad Tepes direction
being an option, but I think presenting this as a conflict (for players who want their Guen to be more into realpolitick than Arthur is) between “idealistic idiot who believes in fair play” and “‘realist’ who wants to leave none alive” hurts the story.
Ejem , people i am rp My GUEN. Don’t yours, I never suggest my guen is canon or something, my Guen is probably one of weirdest one ever. Also not Vlad Tepes, but England my friend only was totally conquered once since romans , and suffered two wars simultaneously. People die at thousands in one or two hours while the commoners salvaging all the belongings from the dead like a prize. That was the real medieval period, not a Camelot Disney story , where only rain at night. My Guen was forced to marry a man she hates, so her vision of him is fulled by hate and rage. But she really believes she has a duty to the kingdom make it one and strength, peace, where commonedon’tobeere continually worried about raids and rebellions with the small kingdoms savage each other causing famine…
So my Guen has her ideals too, it just hippie had been all she hate in a man. And he is not the man she always watched in her dreams , Mordred. But as I said I just talking about MY guen not anyone else 
Mara, you overuse and incorrectly use the word “hippie.”
Sam LOL WHAT PART OF A NICKNAME YOU DON’T GET? Now really medieval kings usually have nicks the prudent, the brave, the lion heart, the chaste… the hairy one. So I find funny put nicks to people like a joke, but you take it too seriously man. Do you thiIk i believe Lancelot is a real plastic Barbie?? 
Has there been any updates like new chapters? :0
Its been soo long since ive been on this topic 
Anyone care to enlighten me?
Here’s the thing to me, and I don’t mean to imply your Guen was more canon than mine or anyone else’s.
Your Guen believes she has a duty to the kingdom and wants to see an end to raids and rebellions and bickering by small kings. So does mine.
But Jean can write it so that either approach can potentially solve the problems, she can write it so that one approach makes things worse and the other makes things better, or the rebellions can be solved (or not) independently of what Guen advises, making our choices there essentially *falsechoices with no impact on anything.
I think it makes a better story for both Guens like yours and Guens (who went into this out of duty but also hopeful Arthur would be a good husband) like mine if she picks the first - that either choice can potentially solve the problem - rather than making it so that pardoning or trusting is always the wrong response or always going to work without a hitch.
I’m not sure we disagree there, I just want to emphasize why I’m saying what I’m saying. It’s too easy to make “practical” and “brutal” the same option on the part of the writer, despite the fact they’re not the same thing.
@elfwine yeah, you are right our guens could look similar, but there are really different. It is what made this game so awesome, the opportunities of custom her almost totally. But I don’t know if hippie hardened is like Alistair maybe she could like him for real, and not fake like she is now. She was just obliged to marry him a week ago, the hatred is too fresh in her. She prefers hippie to Barbie though, my girl hates don Juan type of man ready to bang any women and cheat on them even his king and best friend woman. But maybe is the Spanish version of him, for us he is more guilty than Guen in the fall of Camelot. She loves Morgana, not only physically she could understand her being forced to marry a man that she hates. Also, her personality is practical and realistic.
@Xhandas_Antonidas No substantial updates since the game was first posted, just some small revisions and tweaks here and there. I want to wait until all of part 2 is finished before I post it. I’ve been working diligently and am now maybe 2/3 through drafting part 2. I had hoped to finish 2 by the end of 2014, but I got really sick in July and lost a lot of time, so now I’m shooting for January.
@elfwine @poison_mara @Ponku I wish I had more time right now to reply to everything in better detail, but I’m running off to one of those long days of work that will be back-to-back meetings with no time to breathe. (and I don’t like using my phone to post in the new forum format.) But in the few minutes I have right now, let me throw in a couple of general thoughts:
It’s important to me that Guen can potentially have reasons to like or dislike each of the three main characters. So Morgana might seem friendly and caring to one Guen, but nosy and judgmental to another. Lancelot could be interpreted as attentive and charming, or inappropriately invasive. With Arthur, I’m trying to get just the right balance of heart-in-the-right-place but somewhat clueless. He’s not stupid. He’s a good leader, and most of his people respect him. As @Ponku says, he does fight, and he does kill people in battle – and he even glorifies battle, in an adolescent sort of way. In that sense, he’s somewhat hypocritical (as Morgana points out), but, perhaps subconsciously, more of a realist than he seems – he’s not trying to walk out onto the battlefield and give the enemy flowers and hugs.
As for medieval brutality in general, the game leans a liiiitttle more toward Disney than the “real” Middle Ages, though Guen herself can be a very villainous princess (give it time). It’s meant to be a fantasy world, not the historical Middle Ages. I know Mara would like it if the game was more gritty/brutal, and even though it will never come up to her impressive standards of bloodthirstiness, I value her perspective a lot, because she’s helping me keep the game from being entirely rainbows and unicorns.
In any case, Guen will never be railroaded into being the brutal pragmatist that contrasts with Arthur’s idealism – although, for some Guens, that may be the way it works out. But there will be many other options, like changing Arthur’s perspective and personality a bit, or being a non-brutal, benevolent pragmatist, or just working with Arthur as he is and trying to help him achieve his dream, with whatever setbacks and successes happen along the way.
And now I’ve written too much and I’m late for work! 
So far making all three either likable or dislikable seems to working pretty well, although its easier to see Morgana’s likable side and Lancelot’s dislikable side for me personally. But don’t change him on my account - that’s my biases speaking, just as much as relating how my Guen finds him would be hers.
I’m pretty happy with the choices so far, I just wanted to encourage keeping multiple approaches to being a “practical woman” to Arthur’s idealism (as well as all the other possibilities outside “practical”) so we don’t have this become a struggle between brutality and stupidity.
So far so good!
I was going to reply and then I saw Jean’s post, so the brief version of what I was going to say:
I agree with you on the game, and my Guen is probably closer to yours than different when it comes to Morgana (respected but not loved in her case) and Lancelot.
It’s nice to play a Guen able to treat the guy who is supposed such a wonderful knight but who actually has some rather appalling flaws as a human who may not be very likable. In my Guen’s case him being Arthur’s best friend is a point in his favor, but even if she wasn’t married to Arthur she wouldn’t want to be his. Completely not her type, and the Don Juan side is only part of it. Arthur is like a growing puppy and is willing to listen if told he should, but Lancelot just comes off as immature and foolish.
Seriously, Barbie in Merlin’s Tower was an idiot. If this is Arthur’s best knight, thank the Goddess he’s better on the battlefield than this kind of sneaking.
I’m just going to say, I kinda hate this new forum. >.<
Anyway, the above post does kinda make me wonder - how do Arthur and Lancelot manage to avoid the traps if Morgana and Guen don’t tag along with them? You see the fireworks if you stay in the room, so they obviously succeed, but how?
Whew, long long day of work. Fortunately I now have seaweed snacks and beer, and a wonderful “real”-world LI who is making me dinner.
@Elfwine I’m very glad you think it’s working so far. I get a lot of different reactions to the characters, which is exactly what I’m going for. So far, Lancelot seems to be the most polarizing. I think that’s probably as it should be, and it will play well into the plot of the final two books. I too like imagining a version of the Arthurian legend in which Guen absolutely despises Lancelot. It’s a fun variation on the tradition.
When I think of Arthur, I sometimes think of this old obscure webcomic I used to read… it had a side-character who was always goofy and idealistic and nice to everyone. He was so sweet-natured that he seemed shallow sometimes. When darker stuff was going on, his refusal to be depressed was played for comedy. The comic ran for years, and the story got huge, and then the writer/artist decided to end it and start another project. In one of the last few comics, that overly-sweet character has kind of a breakdown, and at one point he says to someone else, “Do you have any idea how much work it is to be me?” I was really struck by that. I think that’s maybe related to the point @Samuel_H_Young was making; that it’s actually very difficult to uphold idealism and compassion if you have even the slightest clue of how bad the world can be. Arthur isn’t stupid; he does have a clue about how bad the world can be. There’s a willfulness to his naivete.
@OtherGrimm Somebody asked that a gazillion years ago somewhere waaay back. It’s a good question. I told them that Arthur and Lancelot are, apparently, more resourceful than Morgana thinks. I imagine they had a more difficult time, and maybe one of them got turned into a newt and then got better, but Arthur’s been sneaking into Merlin’s laboratory since he was a kid, and Lancelot knows what’s what more than he necessarily lets on. Morgana did make everything easier, but there’s an extent to which they were humoring her in her insistence that they couldn’t do it without her. They were both glad that she came along.
And now my dinner’s ready, woohoo!
Having Guen able to go all the way from “Lancelot is the best guy ever why I am married to this loser.” to “Lancelot is actively repulsive.” definitely makes a more interesting story of her relationship to him and Arthur than the traditional story - both more choices and better choices.
Especially since it has no real connection to how nice a person (either as in her ideals or personality) she is - although probably most “good” Guens are going to be in the general range of “friendly but not interested in” Lancelot, given that they’re married to Arthur and that he’s not actively repulsive despite him lacking certain skills.
Interesting on comparing him to said sweet character. He reminds me a bit of Oscar in The Royal Trap a little, though not directly. Just that kind of puppy-like adorableness.
So my Guen’s question is - will he become a real hound, or is he going to just become an overgrown puppy?
Guess she’ll have to wait for part 2 (and beyond).
One of the scenes I most looked forward to writing (and now have written) in part 2 is the moment when things between Guen and Lancelot come to a crisis-point, and she can tell him in no uncertain terms to leave her the hell alone, or she can tell him she loves him, or a whole range of things in between… and she can have all kinds of different motivations for whatever she says. Maybe she tells him she loves him even though she doesn’t, because she wants to be able to control him. Maybe she tells him to leave her alone even though she’s in love with him, or wishes they could be friends, but she thinks it’s better for everyone if he stays away. Or maybe she tells him the truth, whatever that is, or maybe she just doesn’t care.
I’m not 100% happy with that scene yet, but I care very much about making it work as well as possible, so I’m looking forward to getting feedback on it once part 2 is posted.
I have a question. This may have been asked before, and if so please just ignore it. Let’s say you play as a Guen who has no interest in having sex with Arthur or having sex in general. If I remember correctly part II of the story will take place a few years after the end of the first. Will Guen just give in to the whole sex thing with Arthur off screen or something if not she had no interest before? A few years is a hell of a long time to put off consummating a relationship, or will it be a source of conflict since Arthur and Camelot seek an heir? Random I know, but I’m curious.
@flowersloveoranges So this won’t be added to the game until I update with part 2, but I’ve already changed the tent conversation with Arthur so that, if he brings up the heir issue, Guen can tell him either that she’s not interested in sex with men, or not interested in sex at all. You’ll have to wait to see how he responds. But even if Guen doesn’t talk to Arthur about her reasons, she really can just not have sex with him for the three years until part 2 (or ever, if that’s what she wants). Of course, Arthur would very much like to have sex (and an heir), but he’s hardly the type to force her. And it’s always been my goal, right from the beginning, that Guen could go through the entire game without ever once having to have sex with anyone if she doesn’t want to. The lack of an heir will be a major issue, but it can be dealt with in a couple of ways, and Guen can live happily ever after even if she chooses a life of celibacy.
@jeantown Cool, thank you for answering! I think asexuality is something that hasn’t really been addressed in many types of fiction, so it will be refreshing to have the option to be celibate if one so chooses.
I just found this game and played Part I through like a madwoman! It is amazing…exactly the kind of gamebook I hope to write. Keep up the great work and I hope to see it on the official site one of these days!