Royal Affairs Discussion Thread and Romance Guide (Spoilers Within)

oh my gosshhh

getting a little more time with the Dominique and Javi triad was wonderful and THE SPONTANEOUS WEDDING? THIS IS EVERYTHING TO ME.

Lovely lovely epilogue!

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is there any face reference for npc like in game creme de la creme?

@izzily I’m so pleased you enjoyed it! :star_struck: I really wanted to give triad romancers a lovely romantic time!

@www There are some very approximate ones for the female versions here, and for the male ones here. It’s very much not an exact science to match them though and people are of course free to imagine them differently!

For the nonbinary versions, I like to find actors or models who are out as nonbinary as face casts, but I never found ones that were quite right for Asher, Beaumont, or Trevelyan, but I did find some for the others (Dominique and Hyacinthe would be more smiley in real life, heh, and Dominique and Javi are younger):
Dominique: Jayr Tinaco
Hyacinthe: Ki Griffin although Hyacinthe has skin that’s more like Lil Nas X’s (edit: this time with the correct link…)
Javi: Travis Alabanza

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To gush a little more, your games are honestly the first time I’ve played IF on poly routes and found them to be just as fleshed out and romantically satisfying as the mono options. You handle the dynamics so well.

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Oh gosh, that’s really wonderful to hear - thank you so much! It really means a lot. I don’t always gravitate towards polyamorous options when I’m playing games because I tend to like one character more than the other, so I’m extra glad that they’ve been a good experience for you!

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I just got through playing the new epilogue and i loved it. It was so ni e to get a little closure after Archambault. I linked up with Dominique and the spontaneous wedding was just magical. So unlike my MC for that playthrough, more of a thinker than a reacter. Something tells me Dominique is going to really make my MC spread their wings and take a chance. Brava.

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There were face references for NPCs in Creme de La Creme???
@HarrisPS could you please point to where you posted them on tumblr

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Just a few! I didn’t end up doing it for all the characters. They’re linked over here under the “Extras” section :slightly_smiling_face:

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I love this game so much (mainly Asher and Javi)! But how do i start a poly route? It went well with Beaumont and Trevelyan (i love how their personalities complement each other), but when i tried it with Javi and Dominique it didn’t work. In the end i had to break up with Dominique.

I’m so glad you’ve had fun with the game! You should be able to speak with Javi and Dominique in Chapter 9 about polyamory if you’ve started romances with both of them before that point.

Great game! Love it like all in the series! Also hyped about Honor Bound ) Wanted to ask, do Karson and Creme MC get mentioned together if they decided to get married in CdlC and if they are both at Archambault in RA? I mean, my MC romanced Hartman and they got engaged and in Royal Affairs I got to choose whether they are both teaching at Archambault, I chose that and got pretty cute scenes with them. Does the same happen with Karson? Thanks!

Plunging Westerlin into a bloody war with Teran wouldn’t necessarily make for a good game, but their material prosperity and social instability does evoke an Edwardian England hurtling towards 1914. However, there don’t seem to be any colonies of downtrodden coloured people for the great powers to squabble over, or oppressed ethnic groups that might assassinate an Austrian archduke. Westerlin has an army, and it would be slightly interesting to hear about its past ‘quarrels’ with Zaledo, but they sound like a war as a continuation of politics, the antithesis of modern, total war. Westerlin as a Wodehouseque fairyland where 1914 never comes - and a fairyland with a reform movement - is both lovely and valuable.

Real world compulsory heterosexual marriage pushed gay men and women to marry against their orientation. Same-sex arranged marriage could expose everyone to this risk, reminding us once again that any kind of forced political marriage is abuse motivated by selfish greed. Thankfully arranged isn’t exactly the same as forced, and we can be glad that Westerlin parents we meet in these games have fair respect for their children’s choices. While being completely unwilling to sleep with the opposite sex, or with the same sex, is a positive aspect of het or gay identity in RL society, Westerlin’s greater acceptance might make its people more fluid and willing to explore their preferences, as well as alternatives. The idea of LGBT identity is going to be understood differently by a non-heteronormative society.

Although the major historic reason for noble arranged marriage was to continue the family line with children from the ‘right stock’, this wouldn’t be the case for same-sex arranged marriage, sans the fertility magic from Choice of Romance. It’s just as well that no one was complaining about this plothole, since I don’t think it is one.

Both Roman and Japanese noble clans, as Shaw reminded us, readily continued their family lines by adopting heirs. The Right Sort of parents would still be needed, of course, to bring up noble-blooded adoptees according to the Right Sort of values, with responsibility and predictability ensured by the institution of marriage, as much an instrument of social control as ever, even sans compulsory heterosexuality. Don’t mind me, I only find this interesting.

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Absolutely - the non-heteronormative setting doesn’t mean that the cultures are “kind” across the board.

You may be interested to hear that the other week I wrote a very-much-not-canon short story that I haven’t shared yet (it’ll probably go up on Patreon sometime in the next few months) in which a conflict has broken out between Westerlin and Zaledo and Florin is having an awful time living in the trenches. I briefly considered a game or duology where Part 1 was a school story ala Creme de la Creme and Part 2 was a war story where a school class went to fight, but the idea didn’t quite feel right as a CoG game - the way I envisioned it, it would involve too much major character death that was out of the player’s control and it would probably be too miserable for most people to want to play. Perhaps it would be doable as a novel one day.

In the reality of the game, I see Westerlin and Zaledo as a somewhat of an England/France analogue (though Zaledo didn’t have a revolution), where they have had conflicts over the centuries but by the early 20th century, they are on reasonable terms but have non-violent spats every so often and there’s some ingrained cultural sniffiness between the countries.

I have gone back and forth on the idea of a fully-fledged spy game mixed with the mannered glamour/etiquette, but it’s never quite clicked for me. One day maybe!

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Just want to say, the war story can work as sort of a backdrop. Like when you mentioned a whole class going to war and dying it made me think of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

One of his most poignant lines was admitting that sometimes, time can’t fix everything and sometimes the grief and trauma is so deep that you can’t go back to what you were before.

So I do believe it can be something to explore in your beautiful writing style, but perhaps not as the main plot. But an axis in which to build a different story on.

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I really appreciate that, thank you so much! :heart: I think a lot about Jane Austen where war is a presence affecting the characters but isn’t engaged with directly, or Vanity Fair which does so more directly. Or indeed Narnia with the evacuee kids… or lots of the interwar and Modernist novels. I think there’s a lot of room for writing something related to a wartime period at some point, particularly with the various squabbles and tensions that go on between the countries, and some of the unrest bubbling away… definitely food for thought.

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Something I thought about was just like, y’know how the US has the GI Bill, free college for servicemen/women et: all. It’d be interesting I think if you and a bunch of your class graduated early to fight in the war and you start as a freshman in Uni.

Like you’re dealing with an 18 year old Count and you’re a 22 year old combat vet who survived the trenches.

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Peace would be nice as well, but the great advantage of the Creme series over the Infinite Sea Saga isn’t lack of war as such but characters who sort out their problems with sense and sensibility rather than gratuitous war crimes and idiocy. World War I, with a sequel to follow, can’t end happily in the same way as all the Westerlin stories can, and changed society in a way the Restoration/Regency period wars that you’ve mentioned only approached…although there were interwar decades where the Edwardian world of maidservants and earls shambled on in places, as a zombie that didn’t know it was dead. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll enjoy anything you write (maybe less so about Florian, though Beaumont was excellently drawn) so long as Westerlin’s problem can still be reasonable sorted by a handful of plucky meddling schoolkids.

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Hi, how do I make my Creme de la Creme character teach in Archambault by playing the 3 games and importing a save file?
The only way I can make this work is by answering the opening questions in Noblesse Oblige or Royal Affairs.
Sorry for my English, I’m using a translator.

It’s a bit fiddly, which was why I included the option in the quiz of “I started at Gallatin before going to Archambault” for folks who wanted to see a bit more of their teacher PC in Royal Affairs.

You can apply for a job at Gallatin in Creme de la Creme Chapter 9, or get Lady Renaldt to give you a job as a reward later on. If Lady Renaldt stayed teaching at Gallatin by the end of the game and you didn’t work for her, or Gallatin was totally closed, the PC automatically moves to teaching at Archambault.

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A little late, but that premise sounds incredible. I understand why you say that players would be averse to a game where too many bad things are out of their control, but I have to admit this sort of game would very much appeal to me. I’m not opposed to a little well-timed tragedy.

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