A Forgotten Legend: Anaivere the First

Special Chapter: The Forgotten Legends and Untold Stories

In this special chapter I would like to introduce what had been there before the time I knew of Wattpad and made these children of mine known to the public. If I had not known of Wattpad, the Legendary Trio would have been nothing but words on paper, scratched sketches and their Author just an ordinary, if not obscure, child living her days knowing only how not to make her tomorrow more miserable. I would like to tell you... the original tale of Anaivere and, in extension, of those before her.
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It all began some day around eight years ago, perhaps minus half a year, I started writing the tales of my first creation. I called her Victoria. I modeled her after myself at the time, ten or eleven years of age and had a strong curiosity for mystery. I was heavily influenced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's writing then. Probably one and a half or two years after that, an interest in historical fiction led me to the creation of whom is now the very unfortunate Hortense. And a year later, when I started studying English seriously and reading English stories to practise, one book caught my attention, which was this book that resulted in the creation of whom we now call the illustrious Forgotten Legend:

My deep gratitude for our most beloved outlaw, but my deepest gratitude for Classic Starts.

Let me make it clear that most things around the creation of Anaivere were lost, and those published in Wattpad were the finalised version, not the original, but I would regard them as still canonical. What I wrote here actually more or less completed the originals, though, for said originals never reached their endings. I even did not consider of how I would have ended them before I started rewriting and publishing them, beginning with Anaivere's tale. With this special chapter I would like to recount how far had I gone and reminisce on how my realm had been in those amateur days.

In those days of old, the original Legendary Trio's tales were not even written in English. Tác giả chúng nó khi đó chưa đủ chữ nghĩa để cho ra một câu chuyện nên hồn. I honestly forgot the original's title, but I remembered clearly I did not name her Anaivere in the first place. In the original, Anaivere was a relative to the king (the relationship of hers and Kings Richard and John and surname were not explicitly said), later used her authority to make herself a Robin Hood-like outlaw to help the poor while remaining unsuspected of unlawful acts by the Sheriff of Nottingham and the king. She was then called the Princess Annatoire. That name she shared with an early Hortense, because I was a terrible namer back then. She was acquaintance with an abbess who aided her in helping the Nottingham peasants, said abbess was kept as Mother Maiseline in the published version; there was her handmaiden that acted more or less as her partner-in-crime, later rewritten as the peasant-born Lady Sylvia Walther who had significantly less role and served as a typical lady-in-waiting. The original Anaivere (or should I call Annatoire?) never was crowned queen nor did she partake in a Crusade; I recalled having planned an ending, in which she would be tricked into revealing her identity and perhaps later living a life in hiding and dying in secret. What ended up in the published version, in my opinion, was more glorious.

At that time I wrote the original Anaivere, I had little to no experience in writing a fully-developed story with chapters and the likes; I did not even know how to research sources to write a logical tale like I did these days. The original was supposed to be a short story and as the legend had it my previous previous phone's battery (an old iPhone 3GS which I kept until the end of my ninth-grade) went awry, my father had to fix and reset all the data, thus the original tales became, well... legends.

The published/final version, though mostly rewritten and the later part was not even there originally, still kept several things from the original: the idea of a princess-turned-rogue-outlaw, the abbess who was inspired from my estranged primary school close friend, the partner-in-crime for the princess (her handmaiden in the original and Robin Hood himself in the published/final version), and the name Annatoire. Although said name was scrapped and both Hortense and Anaivere were given official names, it still lives on in one way or another. Initially it was there to indicate a connection or continuity between Anaivere's and Hortense's tales, but because I liked how it sound and how it became the common alias of all three in the Trio, I adopted it as an other way to refer to the Author when I was tired of calling myself "the Author" all the time, then as my first pen name. In-story, Anaivere did not reuse that name at all, instead opting for a combination of Anais and Guinevere, which I believed was a brilliant idea; Hortense was somewhat more special because her original tale was generally preserved (the original started with Hortense already the Queen's courtière), name and all, the only difference was the final version was more extensive and several characters were scrapped, and I still kept Annatoire as her nom de guerre; Sherline, yes Sherline, my ever favourite creation, revived the name when my interest was caught in the Rose of Versailles and I decided why not put my favourite creation in a war. That time I was being busied with the life-changing, fate-deciding high school entrance exam and coincidentally the Battle of Verdun somewhat reflected honestly the state we were in. I made Sherline adopt Annatoire as her nom de guerre, one part was to establish a connection between her and Hortense, another was to serve as a continuity nod to Hortense's tale. Of all my creations, my attention spent most for her. That child appeared in most of my earlier (short) stories, because I felt it was far easier to portray her, who began as an ordinary child like her little Author, than either Anaivere or Hortense.

My Anaivere Plantagenet, she was not a "forgotten legend" without a reason. It was actually a rather obvious reason: since the time her original was lost till the time I reread the book above, I forgot she (and Hortense in extension) existed and instead focused on Sherline because it would take too much effort to rewrite them all just for them to lose again if my phone would ever go awry. In the meanwhile Hortense was outstandingly lucky to not be scrapped like the less fortunate drafts of her time and Sherline was immortal for being the setting stone that the legends thenceforth were built upon.

I realised I had never illustrated my children properly those days because of my apparent lack of skills. Now after 4 years (for Anaivere), plus or minus half a year, I could finally do that. Above is how our beloved archer princess should have looked like if my thirteen-year-old self had known how to not screw up proportions. I believe although I had had a considerable time being unknown and inexperienced before I published Anaivere's tales on Wattpad, those years we spent in the darkness weren't wasted at all. To be honest, the remakes are actually better than the originals, and I had made a ton of remakes thanks to my drafts constantly got lost.

I didn't forget how an amateur I was those days and how awkwardly characterised my creations were made, but I cherish them, because something perfect could never be done without a prototype. I missed those days when Sherline was archetypically an aloof person like her profession would indicate, when Hortense acted alike to her descendant but more authoritative and condescending as any aristocrat would typically be and when Anaivere was more into herself than her kingdom like how a princess should be; however, I love how they have become more than how they used to be.

Till the moment I write this special chapter, Anaivere had earned herself a fair amount of reputation and Hortense, despite the promotion, is still being obscured comparing to the former and the eldest of all, Sherline, quite frankly, is still almost exclusively in her Author's mother's tongue (except for one I feel like too lazy to translate up-to-date) and unknown to foreign readers. Hoping I can complete the Trio's canons before I become the dust.