Hello everyone,
A comment I saw recently about Emmeline’s namesake in Tangled Fates brought to my attention that the note I had written here about this must have been deleted somehow. Because I saved what I had written I will share it with you again.
-I wanted to take a moment to share the meaning behind Emmeline's name, which has always held a special place in both Abigail’s story—and mine.
When I named Emmeline, I did so with intention.
Her name is a tribute to Emmeline, the heroine of Charlotte Smith’s 18th-century novel (this of course has been mentioned in the story). Graceful, courageous, and resilient, Smith’s Emmeline was a woman who survived a world not built for her—a sentiment that felt deeply appropriate for the daughter of a woman like Abigail.
Abigail, having endured abandonment, betrayal, and isolation, names her daughter not just with love, but with hope. She chooses a name that reflects the strength she wants her child to grow into—strength forged not by innocence alone, but by perseverance. In doing so, she also reveals something more quietly devastating: a belief that she, too, had once been worthy of protection, love, and dignity. And in a moment when she had been granted none of those things, she wished for them so fiercely for her daughter that she named her after a woman who had endured, who had been worthy, and who had overcome.
I first read Emmeline while in school and was drawn to its romantic threads and almost Cinderella-like arc, but what stayed with me was the quiet power of a woman who never stopped holding to her sense of self, no matter the cost. In a world never built to serve or shelter women like her, her resilience felt all the more remarkable. That spirit—the mix of heart and grit—was exactly what I imagined Abigail would want for her daughter.
A name, after all, is a wish as much as a legacy.
Take care
