Those Who Fly Worldbuilding

Solving the Choir Problem

For almost as long as I've been trying to write this story, I've found myself confronted with what I've come to call "the choir problem." See... the Nine Choirs of Angels as described by Psuedo-Dionysius make for a very convenient classification system for a YA novel, but I also found myself backed into a corner by it. First of all, in the original hierarchy, "Archangels" is its own choir. This does not work. It doesn't work because most of the archangels belong to different choirs, all having classifications of their own, and sometimes these classifications change depending on the source. I certainly want my archangels to belong to their own choirs instead of all being lumped together in one choir. There's also this concept called the "Seven Archangels," and literally no source can agree on who the seven archangels are. (Short version: It seems as though everyone agrees that Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel are archangels, but there is a whole long list of angels that get the last three spots: Jeremiel, Jophiel, Raguel, Sarathiel, Sealtiel, Zadkiel, Barachiel, etc. etc.).

The biggest problem I ran into regarding choirs actually had more to do with the demi-angels themselves. That problem is that most demi-angels, statistically, will be the children of their human parents' guardian angels. This is what I originally intended, and it just sort of makes sense. Angels are already eldritch celestial beings that are quite removed from humanity, so, it makes sense that the angels who are closest to humans will have romantic/sexual relationships with them. An angel who has been watching over you specifically throughout your life is much more likely to fall in love with you. But I wasn't really sure what to do with this idea. My magic system ended up relying more heavily on elemental magic than I intended*, and I associated elemental magic with Virtues, because Virtues are angels of nature and the elements. Virtues are also associated with miracles, healing, and divination, so basically, every type of magic. And Powers are the demon-hunting warriors, so they're cool by default. As for the rest of the choirs, Dominions only exist to give orders to other angels, and Principalities exist to give orders to human leaders. This is boring as hell. And Thrones are too weird to do anything with. That means that of my demi-angel characters, the majority ended up being either Powers or Virtues. I don't want all demi-angels to be Powers or Virtues, I want most of them to be the children of Guardian angels. I also don't really like the concept of your magical powers being determined by what kind of angel your divine parent was, because that's an uncomfortable sort of biological determinism. I don't want every character's powers to be defined by who their parents were. If the vast majority of demi-angels can only do basic holy-aligned magic and then a handful of Virtues can conjure freaking thunderstorms, how unfair is that?

Seth and Ember's powers are directly related to who their parents are. So why are Seth and Ember different? That's easy -- because they're the children of archangels. Before, that was just an arbitrary way of making them special to justify why they're the protagonists, but now, it actually means something. First of all, Seth and Ember's powers are extremely specialized. Seth has unique abilities that most necromancers don't have, but he can't do most elemental magic. Ember can do only fire magic, and is hopeless at everything else, including "neutral" ritual magic. Most demi-angels are capable of multiple different kinds of magic. Second of all, children of archangels are relatively rare because archangels are extremely high-vibrational beings regardless of which choir they belong to. It's very rare that they have children with humans, if at all. The rules surrounding them are different. A human that mates with an archangel will likely have lost their sanity in the process, ranging from "not all there" to "completely detached from reality." Seth's mother had a morbid fascination with death, slept in graves, sometimes astral projected for days worth of time, and would awake raving about otherworlds and being embraced by Death. Ember's mother is institutionalized. As a general rule, humans who have romantic or sexual relationships with archangels usually have unique connections to said archangels that span multiple lifetimes. Archangels are more analogous to deities, while other angels are more along the lines of daemons. There will be more children of archangels than just Seth and Ember, but they will be placed very conscientiously.