Howdy everybody! With The City of Veils coming out next month, I thought it might be fun to introduce some of the characters. Today, Princess Brynna-Larissa Archer Rhodes Lonsdale is on the hot seat. Keep reading to find out why this newest Sush heroine fits right in with the rest.
Brynna, the Vigilante
When we meet Brynna in City of Veils, she’s doing what she does best, saving a poor shopkeep from a band of criminals. She’s got a bag of tricks worthy of the best vigilantes, she’s got the whole “Dark Knight” vibe down. And she’s even got a swanky day job as a sweeper in a butcher’s shop.
Then Felix Llobrega, newly-minted Captain of the King’s Guards, ruins everything by dragging her back to the castle to become queen.
As you read in the free short story, The Runaway Princess, Brynn had thought she’d left that life behind. But now, with her father and brother dead, she’s forced to reacclimatize to life in the castle. It goes about as well as you’d expect a street-tough, no-nonsense vigilante to fare in a highly-political climate. In fact, the dichotomy of her prowess as a vigilante compared to her disastrous attempt at being a princess is one of the things I love most about this book!
Brynna in the Past
If you’re a real old-school Sushi, then you know that when I was a kid, I had a huge list of ideas and stories in my mind that I worked on for years. Razia was one such story, as was Lexie Carrigan. Brynna and Felix take their names from a story unimaginatively called The Quest. Originally, there were six characters (all of whom got paired off, leave me alone, I was 12) but after a few revisions, Larissa and Felix got the axe. When I was naming my characters, I didn’t want YET ANOTHER CHARACTER WITH AN L NAME (Lyssa, Lauren, and Lexie are enough), so I gave her the name Brynna-Larissa, with the latter used as her peasant name.
In the original Quest, Larissa was a thief and Felix was a lord of some kind, which is how Brynna became a former thief. Maybe one day I’ll tell the quest story (with a much, much better name), but for now, I’m happy I got to cast my two lovelies in a new role.
