I’m convinced most novels are a mixture of random, possibly incompatible ideas. Who knows how many different influences I had while conceiving, writing, and editing The Unremarkable Squire? More than I can list or remember.
Still, for fun, I thought I’d list some of the allusion/puns/winks contained within the novel that you may have overlooked:
- Two separate allusion to Shakespeare plays, one that plays quite an important role.
- A place to dine reminiscent of a famous Poe short story.
- A river named after a mathematical concept due to its undulating path.
- A brief cameo by one warrior princess and three French swordsmen.
- A squire with a suspiciously familiar name.
- Boatloads of koine Greek origins for words, because I was studying it at the time. For instance, Paskon = pain.
- Speaking of which, why do suppose Paskon has a thing for apples? (An apple a day….)
- Fun fact – The time between the Splitting of Rael and the events of the books is 70 years, which is the length of the Jewish exile in Babylon.
- Characters named Lance Valentino and Obed Kainos show up in The Story Project. Actually, those were inspired by The Unremarkable Squire and not vice versa.
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A lot of rulers in Basileon just use their title as their name: “The city of Baryn, which had been called Monseer a short five years before and the Eternal Empire of Dafin before that…” Read: Baron, Monseigneur (approx.), Dauphin
And….
- Misan Throp wants to live alone. Obviously.
Okay, some of these I knew — Story Project characters, obviously; and you’d mentioned at least one of your Shakespeare allusions on the podcast — but most of them I did not! Though I did kinda suspect the cameos in the crowd scene in chapter one. Fun stuff!