@daemonofrazgriz821, @Bob_Rijke, @Bryce_Kaldwin,
The second story will take place during a time where religious institutions are trying to keep a grip on their power, while Kings and Parliaments are trying to distribute those powers to themselves.
The protagonist, your character, will be twin to the heir of Aswick, and because of the way nobility works both twins will be Lords of Aswick in their own right until certain other circumstances. Technically, joining the church would remove the title of Lord, but that doesn’t diminish your position as a noble.
Roughly half of the story will revolve around your position in Norwall. You will be sent to a religious institution, you will learn what the monks and/or priests teach you, you will eventually become an adult and able to enter the church politics. You will be able to wrangle your way to certain church positions and use that power to run your own agenda, whomever that agenda may side with. Perhaps you’ll condemn a rival noble house with your preaching, or perhaps you will gain the favour of those above you by conducting yourself more carefully. You may either solidify your place in the lower tiers of the church, or continue to rise through the hierarchy by playing your cards right.
Ultimately, your path will continue to the Holy Seat, where you find an entrenched set of older, powerful men and their families. The latter half of the story is about managing your way through that set of powerpolitics, which may bring entire nations to odds, and perhaps in the end you can find yourself in an ultimate position of power. Perhaps an Archbishop back home, standing almost equal to the King of Norwall, or as the Holy Father, sitting on a gilded throne and wielding the Word of God against those who would step in your way.
There’s the sales pitch for the second LoA. This series, from the moment I came up with it, revolved around a few select themes that I really wanted to explore in depth. Themes that many people, modes of popular media and history books just don’t delve into.
The first story was about a society of power and what monarchies of the era were really like. You could have a good King, but have those in the court who wanted them out of the picture, have a bad King and have those that would still lick their boots, have a weak King and find those who truly ruled the Kingdom standing behind them. It was about the issue of legitimacy as well, where who rules the country is not about what blood runs in your veins or about the will of a dead King, it’s about having the most supporters and the biggest army, or being able to outsmart your enemies to make yourself the biggest and most powerful.
The second story will be about the position of religion in that same society of power, where Kings and nobility are ruthless in their desire for power, but there still stands this entity above them, an entity that is spread across all Kingdoms, and which holds greater power than Emperors. At some point, the rising ambition of Kings and the church will meet, and that chaos is what the second story is about.
The third one will explore the themes of colonialism and exploitation, a shifting time where merchants became more important in society. As new lands could be conquered and exploited, it brought power, prestige and riches to whomever could bring the most back to the Kings and Emperors. It also deals with the clash of cultures between those living in these new lands and those arriving from the old kingdoms.
The fourth, if I ever get that far, will probably end up being another clash of traditional sects. With the advancement of the enlightenment period, there is an inevitable clash between the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Between those who rule lands in name, and those who rule the land in practice.
Bringing in alternate viewpoints is very important to how these themes are examined. If the viewpoint remains constantly the same, it is far too easy to lull yourself to the belief that everything is an outside threat. The family has earned it’s nobility and it’s land, now those others are trying to threaten that. The stories take place in times when the status quo is being shaken from both sides, and it depends entirely on the viewpoint and the outcome on who was the “bad guy” in all of it.
If that does not interest you, it is your prerogative to not purchase or read the story when it eventually comes out. I will provide tools to fill in the major blanks if you want to skip one.
As the one who spends a fair bit of time to work on these stories, I would hope that you at least give it a go before dismissing it entirely, but I understand that some people don’t find the same things fascinating as I do.