The Offspring || Edmund Pevensie Fanfiction ||

Book Trivia

Thanks for staying tuned! This is a 'Behind the Scenes' chapter, where I reveal some facts about the development of this story to show my thought processes and credit the various inspirations behind my ideas. Let's get to it!

✏️ Peter Pan II: Return to Neverland technically inspired this plot. In summary, Wendy's daughter, Jane, travels to Neverland (or actually, was kidnapped by Captain Hook) and meets Peter Pan, and has her own adventure. Initially, I had this idea that the OC could be involved in the events through her parents' past adventures, so that was when I realised it was parallel to Jane travelling to Neverland, which Wendy always tells stories of. Similarly, I developed a brief backstory that Charlotte's parents were involved in the past events and had their own romance in the adventure, which would foreshadow Charlotte's blossoming romance with Edmund.

✏️ I really like the name Charlotte because it sounds so sweet. It's Emma Watson's middle name, hence teenage Emma Watson ended up being the face claim for Charlotte. Additionally, I just plucked Baker off of Baker Street in London.

For this story, I guess I didn't work so hard on names. You can probably tell from the name I gave her aunt too because it's basically a recycled name in the franchise (but that's also because I wasn't intending to write a sequel when I wrote that first chapter, but now it'll be awkward if Aunt Jill and Jill Pole were to ever meet in the sequel) 💀

✏️ I watched scenes on Disney+ to get the film dialogues accurate in filler segments. I also included deleted scenes in this plot because I really thought they dive deeply into areas like Peter and Caspian's  relationship. I know it doesn't matter because it's just a fanfic and it's totally up to my own creativity. Nevertheless, more focus was given to Charlotte's original plot and development.

✏️ I used traits of the Hogwarts Houses to develop the original characters. I wanted Charlotte to embody mostly Hufflepuff traits, and sprinkle a bit of the other Houses into her character. #HufflepuffPride #BadgersRule. I would've liked to think that her father is a Ravenclaw and her mother a Hufflepuff, but there's more room around these minor characters to leave it to the reader's interpretation.

✏️ I wanted to build her importance in the story so I created a prophecy that foretold her arrival. I've read some other fanfics that used this trope so I guess they inspired me to model my own. My first draft was "With a blow of the horn, Kings, and Queens of Old return, with an offspring born, to claim the land Narnians yearn."

✏️ I spontaneously came up with the idea of Charlotte's sacrifice while writing Chapter 4. Even I spooked myself like "that sounds brutal, but it interests me more. What would happen?" So I took a break from writing for further development (which pushed me towards publishing, otherwise I wouldn't bother, really). Alas, the prophecy was modified to its final version to include the mention of her sacrifice.

✏️ I brainstormed long and hard about this sacrifice. Then, I thought about how most of us hated that the troops were killed off during Peter's plan because of both Caspian's and Peter's mistakes. So then I thought to myself, "what if she sacrifices her freedom for theirs?"

✏️ I have to admit, it was challenging to come up with Queen titles. Just is such a cool title, and it's a Hufflepuff trait. Damn it, Edmund. Some other traits were considered that I feel Charlotte embodies, but they were too similar to Gentle. The list was basically endless. Lots of fanfics let their vocabulary flourish in their OCs, which lowkey made me insecure about my mediocre English. I'm sorry, Charlotte 🥲

✏️ Eventually, I decided on Selfless because I thought to link her title to her sacrifice. So it's not all that bad, there can be beauty in simplicity, right? Furthermore, she was already portrayed as selfless in the train station, jumping in between Peter and the bullies to take a hit for Peter (I had already written Chapter 1 before further development). I thought "Damn! Okay, there's something solid there." So this was another development that pushed me towards publishing this story.