Royal Affairs Discussion Thread and Romance Guide (Spoilers Within)

Ah sorry about that! Old habits die hard, will be more mindful for sure.

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I finished this lovely game, and once again I’m very impressed with your work. I loved the posh school setting of CDLC, so I enjoyed coming back to it. It was fun to experience some of the classic events of the series again (such as Winter Ball, Festival of the Birds, etc.), but from a different perspective. And from the perspective of a member of the royal family, no less! I loved playing as someone so important, and seeing how people fawn all over the MC was endlessly entertaining.

Now I’m going to ramble a lot about my playthrough!

My MC, Prince Celeste, was a very ambitious, intelligent, domineering and a pretty insensitive person. His highest skills were authoritative and eloquent, which made for an interesting combination. On the one hand, he simply tells people what to do and expect everyone to follow his command without any questions. On the other hand, if someone does raise questions, he, with no small amount of annoyance that someone dared to oppose him, gives them a perfectly reasonable and logical explanation for why his way is the right way, which is really hard to argue with. I imagine this must be very frustrating for people who disagree with any of his decisions. :laughing:

Celeste romanced Asher, and I must say I enjoyed every second of it. Asher is literally perfect, what a great RO! :heart_eyes: I also liked that we could make him jealous a few times - I enjoy a bit of drama. :face_with_hand_over_mouth: Asher and Celeste are so very different, but they complement each other so nicely. I was pleasantly surprised that the book continued after graduation, and it made me especially happy that we got to see the engagement and wedding of our MC and their RO. It was so lovely, I was smiling like a fool for the entirety of the last two chapters. I’ve been wanting a playable wedding scene in a book for so long, thank you so much, Harris! :pray:

In the end, Celeste ensured that he would become heir to the throne instead of Josiane, and he was also accepted to Zaledo’s university to study politics. Choosing to study in Zaledo is, of course, partially a political move, because the relations with Westerlin were damaged by the suffrage voting (which my MC actively opposed), and he intends to fix them as a future monarch. By the way, I felt so bad for Trevelyan during this whole voting storyline, the way he was hurt by my character’s actions was heartbreaking (although they did made up afterwards). I feel like I have to romance him with my next character as an apology. :joy:

I’m glad to know that Javi and Celeste often hang out together in Merenil, because despite everything, they became pretty good friends. Javi in general was delightful, and I loved how he and the MC sassed each other constantly. The person who became Celeste’s closest friend, however, was Dominique. They were together in the Student Council, and Celeste sort of became his mentor figure who encouraged Dominique to be more determined, and acted as a disappointed parent whenever he was irresolute, which I found really endearing. And to round off their cute friendship, Dominique also became Celeste’s official companion on his wedding. I liked Beaumont and Hyacinthe as well, but I haven’t spent as much time with them, so I have to focus on them more on my next playthrough. Anyway, enough of my ramblings. Thank you for another great game!

I have a couple of questions, if I may: 1. What colours are the flag of Zaledo? 2. Since Asher who marries the MC aren’t their bodyguard anymore, who will they bodyguard? Maybe Oliver? It’s hard to imagine them being just one of the guards after they became the spouse of a royal.
I also wanted to ask something about the code, would it be okay if I ask it via PM?

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Ahhhh this was wonderful to read, thank you so much! I love hearing about people’s characters’ journeys through the game and the decisions they made :smile: I’m so pleased you had a good time playing.

The Zaledoan flag colours: I actually can’t remember whether I’ve specified. I feel like I might have said that it’s red and purple ingame?? Or that it has red in it? I thought I wrote it in the Hearthlight chapter when Rosario and Javi come to the party but I couldn’t track it down. I may also be getting confused with the Teranese flag which is blue and purple. I’m sorry about that, it’s rather embarrassing!

Oooh, as for Asher… I think it’s something I’d leave open for reader interpretation. Estell would prefer Asher to not be bodyguarding anymore as she wouldn’t want her child-in-law to risk harm, but if Asher and the PC had other ideas, they could certainly push back against that.

And yes, please go ahead and drop a message as you’d :smiley:

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My what

Like this kind of thing!

Z

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Ooooh, that tie is so pretty! (I have a thing for ties, okay?)

:: snickers ::

During the inspection in chapter 5, when Gabi interrupts Dominique, what stat do we need to succed when selecting the option “I interrupt Gabi on Dominique’s behalf.”? I wanna call out Gabi’s rudeness and defend one of my loves!

I wish characters were able to have a more adult conversation around the expectations within their romance. I ended up on the Javi route, not realising they were asexual. There is a single line, but it’s wildly open to interpretation. Are they more demure on the physical side? Their background isn’t big on physical affection? They’ve had a bad experience? That it appears (based on some conversations above) intended to be a clear signal that they’re asexual comes across as a little too deep in the CoG sauce to me, where experienced readers might know what that means in this genre, but newer players won’t.

Rather than dancing around issues like this, or being respectful of boundaries to the point it feels like they’re being psychically communicated, I really do wish couples were able to just have a conversation, which then allows for a more organic approach. How about it comes up naturally when a player tries to do something an asexual would not be comfortable with? This allows for a mature conversation as to relationship expectations and whether or not the two are a suitable match. It also means if both parties want an asexual style relationship then it just happens naturally and there doesn’t need to be a sexuality dump at all.

I didn’t pursue ever date opportunity with Javi, so perhaps one of them features all of this, but I do wish the relationship was more communication and less inference.

I was scrolling threads. Saw your rainbow worm thing. Love it!

I appreciate the comments! Javi does discuss their asexuality a bit more down the line, but you’re right that it doesn’t get explored in great detail. If I was writing it again I might handle it a bit differently, although I wouldn’t want to rely on it arising as a result of a PC making an advance either.

Javi is not a very mature or communicative person either, especially with the PC - so while some characters might want to have better communication with the PC about such things, Javi is generally reluctant/cross about the idea of having emotionally open conversations with them (on any subject). Which is on me for choosing to write the character that way, of course! but is a contributing factor to how I decided to write about Javi’s asexuality in the game.

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Do you mind if I ask why not? That seems a very realistic way for it to come up.

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Javi feels throughout the story very tired of people scrutinising every single thing, plus being all but guaranteed to get into a political marriage that they obviously were not asked their opinion on, that talking in depth about their asexuality is “just” one more personal thing that they wouldn’t easily talk to anyone besides someone they trust deeply. Also doesn’t help that Fabien misled them for whatever reason in regards to the MC.

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I don’t generally like to rely on specific PC actions to trigger that kind of conversation - it would be too easy to miss it. Similarly I wouldn’t want to require a PC to make the first move physically to learn about a character’s asexuality (this would also block off a conversation from PCs who don’t make a physical move - including asexual ones, which seems especially counter-productive).

I also feel that a lot of players a) don’t want to feel rejected in the moment like that, and/or b) don’t want to feel they’re putting an NPC in a position where they’re uncomfortable. Especially if either of those scenarios are a load-bearing requirement for learning about an NPC’s sexuality. (If there were other ways of learning about it too that the player always sees, I might include something like that kind of interaction, but I’d be really cautious about doing so.)

So for those load-bearing interactions, I would generally rather have the PC learn about NPCs’ sexuality before it gets to “I’d like to kiss you” etc. Obviously mileage will vary on how well it works in practice but that’s the reasoning.

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Will there be a sequel to royal affairs
(in which we continue as the same character)??

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Not at the moment - I don’t have any plans for it. I feel I’ve explored the characters as much as I’d like, and right now I don’t have any storyline ideas for the Royal Affairs PC that feel workable for a full game. Thank you for asking!

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I have a question.
Is our NO MC being mentioned or making cameo anywhere in any case?
I’m not sure if I’d missed it.

(I escaped with Pascha)

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No, the Noblesse Oblige MC doesn’t get mentioned directly in Royal Affairs. There’s a small mention of Pascha, and Rys appears briefly under a different name depending on what happened in NO, but because the Noblesse Oblige situation can be resolved in so many ways - and the Jezhani royal family have done a lot of work to cover it all up - it didn’t quite feel that it fit to reference it directly.

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I noticed a possible mistake in chapter 10. Would that be worth reporting?

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Please do! It’s best to email support (at) choiceofgames (dot) com so they can check whether it’s something that’s been reported before or connected to any other issues - then they’ll pass it onto me.

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