The Uninvited Princess ✔

Afterword

Wow, that took so long to write. 81k words, 1 year and a little bit, all sprouting from a tiny idea I had.

I would like to start by thanking everyone that read so far. I know this story isn't by any means anything that you see in a standard Western or East Asian story because this is a Southeast-Asian-inspired setting. I can understand that some things may have been lost to the reader due to some small cultural disconnects and in the unlikely chance that I have some Thai readers, they might be upset with my additions to Thai folklore so it could fit into the narrative that I was writing better. My family lives in Canada which means they had to give up a lot of their culture so they can fit in more easily to Western standards which means that I don't know the full scope and stories of my own culture but I'm trying damn hard to reconnect with it in a way that I'm okay with which happened to be my writing. So I want people to take the cultural aspect with a grain of salt. It's not a Thai story, it's not a Western fantasy story, but it's a Thai Canadian fantasy story. A thing entirely of its own.

It was honestly even harder to figure out how to incorporate queerness into an ancient Thai setting since there are not a lot of records (in English at least) that really delved into all aspects of queerness and more so just gay men and trans women. I had to take a lot of creative liberties to fill in the gaps and figure out why nagas are called dragons (they're both generic terms of different continents, I learned that the hard way). If I am not burnt out from this story and find the energy to polish it, I'll probably do major updates to make the story more consistent but for now, it is done.

I'll also take the opportunity to explain parts of the story because I have ideas that I wanted to use but I couldn't find a way to fit them into the story. Like a behind-the-scenes but not. So, let's go!

1. Kiet is trans and Shashi talking about dating him before he transitioned: I hinted at this in the story but I never fully delved into it because I didn't really have a space to explain it nor a real reason to.

2. Charunee would've backstabbed Ritthirong during the fight: I had no justifiable reason to write it in but imagine the drama.3. Wipa is an international spy and gets paid to steal secret information of each monarchy but has no loyalty to any: Yeah, Aslo's emperor was too caught up in his own romance drama to really care about other countries so I didn't find a way to write it in.

3. Wipa is an international spy and gets paid to steal secret information of each monarchy but has no loyalty to any: Yeah, Aslo's emperor was too caught up in his own romance drama to really care about other countries so I didn't find a way to write it in.

4. Anuman dying to save Tanet and his last words are a love confession: No real reason to write that in since there were so many characters. These might be ideas to use if I ever decide to write a story about Tanet's awkward love triangle.

5. Ubol having a moment with her mother before the wedding and Ritthirong meets the mother for her hand in marriage: Honestly this just slipped my mind. Whoops. I had it, forgot it, didn't know how to put it in after writing so much without it being awkwardly done, left it out.

6. Kiet dying: I debated whether to kill off Kiet and not have Shashi's staff broken or to break the staff and not kill off Kiet since I wanted either situation to feel heart-wrenching enough without it feeling like I was torturing Shashi for existing. So, I did a compromise.

7. Kiet's prosthetic leg breaking after an encounter with bandits: So, this was the origin of the idea of Shashi's staff breaking since this idea came first. Then I would kill off Kiet during the final fight. Couldn't find a place to do that with Kiet, couldn't make it feel like it came out of nowhere so I passed it onto Shashi which led to the dilemma of whether I should've killed off Kiet or not.

8. More flashbacks of Pranee's childhood with Ritthirong and Tanet: I couldn't find a place to fit them in. Seems to be an ongoing issue honestly. It would be good for bonus chapters but I'll figure it out when I feel up to writing this world again.

9. Shashi and Pranee actually meeting before when they were kids: I had a whole scene planned out. Shashi's dad would've been carrying them around and Pranee would be with her tutor and her being shocked by Shashi. Shashi would try and pick a fight, their dad would step in and then notice that they were connected in some way and would surely meet again. Then I was like "Hm, I actually don't like this" so I didn't write it.

10. Shashi is the lizard in Pranee's previous life: I probably might've done a small hint of it but like I didn't reinforce it hard. That's not what the story is about.

11. A crossover with another story that I ended up scrapping: Yeah the two characters were supposed to appear but the cast was so large that I decided against it. I don't even know if I'll still even write that story (I have two chapters written of it but it's a dual perspective so it just seems like two unrelated short stories at the moment) so it was better to just leave it.

That was all the ideas I didn't use or really reinforce so I hope it was interesting to see.

Thank you again, and I hope to see you in the other stories I write!