You would think that with fairly common names like Vincent and Victor out there that I wouldn't have any trouble finding a V-named character for today.
Problem is, in an older phase of my writing journey, I used to write fan fiction for certain JRPGs like Final Fantasy VII and the Suikoden series. In the former, one of my favorite characters was Vincent Valentine, and in the latter one of my favorite characters was Viktor. Consequently, I wrote about those characters a fair amount, and it's made it between hard and impossible for me to use those names (or variations on them) in other contexts. So, I don't have any characters by those names, and I really didn't want to have to cite any writing quite that old, because it was really, really, really, really not good.
That's left me with the character of Verena to write about. She's from the untitled novel I wrote for 2012's NaNoWriMo. Which I posted in entirely unedited form on AO3 a few years back just as a way to preserve it. Because in many respects it is utterly awful--I hated it so much that as soon as I finished writing it, I never even opened the file again for almost ten years--but in some respects it's actually better than what I write now, because at least things actually happen in it, and with a lot less chatter in between events. I think some of the pacing is due to the narrative style, actually, that and I was thinking of it as a JRPG.
Somewhat hilariously, considering what I said just two paragraphs ago, the novel is actually a rewrite of and expansion on an unfinished Final Fantasy VII fanfic. I had written a very brief story wherein Yuffie Kisaragi ended up transported into the real world, where she kept finding all these signs that maybe her world was just a dream, but they didn't quite add up, and then some FBI agents visited her about some attacks in her area, and she reluctantly told them the whole story of FFVII, since she shouldn't have known their faces for them to be in her dream. (Her telling of the story was of course skipped over, and the narration merely said that the tale took her several hours to relate.) But then I didn't know how to handle the final confrontation as Sephiroth attempted to enter the real world, so the fic just sort of died unfinished (as is not unusual for such things). Anyway, so in the NaNo novel, it was standard third person narration for the plucky young girl being dragged into the ocean by monsters and emerging inside a bathtub in our world, then most of the novel was first person narration as she tells the tale of the grand adventure that had taken place prior to her dunking to the two agents who came to her door. In addition to borrowing liberally in terms of story elements and character types from Final Fantasy VII (though the one filling Vincent's story role didn't really have much in common with him aside from being hot and taciturn) a lot of the characters were painfully blatantly based on Suikoden characters...though mostly characters from Suikoden III, so Viktor wasn't one of them. (One other borrowed thing, which I think was unintentional, was that when I needed a name for a water buffalo-like animal, I ended up calling it an armu. That, it turned out, was the name of a large grazing herbivore in Xenoblade Chronicles, but I guess it had been long enough since I had played that on the Wii that I had forgotten. 😰 Having not too long ago finally gotten around to playing the HD remastered version on the Switch, I now remember that name. 😅)
Anyway, long story short, it was really bad and excessively derivative. I don't think I was wrong to just dump it as unworthy of the effort of rewriting.
But it is something I can talk about and say "here's a link to it" at the end, so...🤷🏻♀️
The V character this novel(?) provides is Verena, the queen of Vianterre. She is, at least, original to the novel, and not based on a character from something else...though the guard devoted to her is pretty heavily "inspired" by the guard who joins up along with the strategist Lucretia in Suikoden V. 😰
Verena's story role changes dramatically over the course of the novel. You see, the heroine, Hua, tells the tale from when she met with two of the Vianterre soldiers who had been most responsible for the conquest of her homeland three years earlier. She, of course, attacks them, trying to avenge her conquered nation. But it turns out that they're now on the run themselves, because their empire, Vianterre, has just been conquered by another empire, that of Heiligeland. (So named because it's playing the role of Holy Harmonia from the Suikoden series.) Anyway, Queen Verena is the daughter of the Heiligelander Bishop-King, so the two women Hua first attacked and then joined forces with both believe that Verena betrayed Vianterre to her father.
Learning that Verena is now being held prisoner--by her father's troops--they set off to extract the truth from her about what she had done and how she had convinced Vianterre's most powerful warrior, Clarimunda, to turn on Vianterre. (One of the two women is Clarimunda's suddenly ex-girlfriend, and she is vehemently certain that Verena seduced Clarimunda.) They arrive at the prison only hours before the queen is scheduled to be executed by her father's men, though of course everyone except Hua is convinced that both the imprisonment and the execution orders are lies intended to draw out the resistance.
They get there, reach the queen and...
...learn that no, she actually tried to stop the invasion, and the reason she's locked up is that she turned on her father when she found out he had ordered her husband and children to be slain as soon as the Heiligilander troops could find them.
So they have no choice but to rescue her, and she was supposed to become something of a symbol for the resistance. Though she kinda just faded into the background, to be honest. I've always been a massive pantser, and this novel really suffered because of that. Even more than my usual stuff does. I mean, it would have been awful anyway because it was so massively and obviously derivative, but if I'd had a more consistent plan for it from the start, it might at least have been less worse. 😰
So. Uh. Yeah. Guess I should try to find something else to say about Verena. There must be at least one moderately acceptable quote in there somewhere...
Okay, so this is not long after they rescue her, while they're still being pursued by the Heiligelander execution squad. Marce and Hedi are the two Vianterre soldiers Hua attacked at the start of the story, Talbot is the guard who is devoted to Queen Verena, and Jun is the name of Hua's guardian spirit, a fire elemental whose voice can only be heard by Hua. (Due warning, this is 12 years old and 100% unedited. Including that I didn't fix spelling errors, typos and grammatical kerfuffles.)
We ate in silence until Marce came riding back up again. “The road ahead seems clear enough,” she announced, looking down at us with irritation. “Aren’t you done eating yet?”
“You can’t expect royalty to be as uncouth as your troops and just wolf down her food the way you and Hedi do,” I told her a little bitterly. I was none too pleased with the way she kept expecting me to swallow my food in one giant bite, either, but complaints on my own behalf had never gotten through her thick skull yet, so why would I expect them ever to start doing so?
Marce scowled, and muttered something under her breath. I suspect it was very rude. Still, she didn’t try to force us to finish eating faster, anyway. She even dismounted and had a little to eat herself.
However, a few minutes later, Hedi came riding back in a big hurry. “We have to get moving now!” she shouted.
“How far away are they?” Marce asked, hopping back onto her horse’s back. It may seem silly that she skipped the whole ‘what’s wrong’ stage of the conversation, but it’s not as though Hedi would have been acting like that for any reason other than that our pursuers were close on our heels.
“Half a mile at most,” Hedi replied, as the rest of us hurried to our feet. “I laid some traps for them, but they won’t slow them down for long.”
“We won’t be able to avoid a fight, then,” Marce said, frowning grimly. “There’s a good, easily defensible position about a mile ahead, if we can reach it before they get to us.”
“Then let’s get moving!” I shouted from my horse’s back. I ddin’t want to die, after all!
Marce looked back over at us. The queen and Talbot were both ready to ride as well, so we began riding off at top speed. The defensible position Marce had mentioned was a narrow pass between two cliffs as the road dipped down into a canyon.
“We’ll need two people on top of the cliffs, throwing rocks down at them, preferably boulder-sized ones,” Marce said, looking up at the tall cliffs.
“How in the world could anyone get up there?!” the queen exclaimed, staring at them in wonder.
“Well, Jun can fly, so he can get up there really easily,” I said, “but I’m not sure how anyone else will get up there. I could climb it if I had about an hour, but I don’t think there’s any way Hedi’s traps would slow the enemy down that much.”
“I can carry someone up,” Jun told me.
“Oh? Sweet! Jun says he can carry someone up,” I told the others.
“Your majesty, you should go up so you’ll be safe from our pursuers,” Talbot said gently.
“No, if she’s not visible with the rest of us, they’ll smell the trap,” Marce said, shaking her head. “Hua, you’re used to throwing things. You go up.”
I nodded, and got down off my horse. Jun changed his shape into that of a phoenix, then took hold of my shoulders in his talons and flew me up to one side of the cliff. Despite that his talons—like the rest of his body—were made purely of flames, I wasn’t burned in the least by the contact. Setting me gently down, he released my shoulders, then flew over to the other side, where he resumed his normal shape. I have to admit, I was starting to wonder if there was something unusual about Jun, apart from his apparently phenomenal power. Normally, a guardian spirit can’t change its shape at will, you know!
In any event, the top of the cliff was littered with stones, many of them as large as I was. It was easy to hide behind them, and I could see it would be even easier to roll them off at our pursuers.
Back down on the canyon floor, Marce and Hedi took up positions behind curves in the canyon walls, so that the pursuers couldn’t see them. “Now if you two will dismount and settle down on the ground, as if you were eating your noonday meal, the enemy will think they have us at a considerable disadvantage,” Marce said.
“I don’t like using Queen Verena as bait for a trap,” Talbot said coldly. “She is a precious and delicate flower who must be protected at all costs!”
“Talbot, please, I am fully trained in the arts of summoning. My father raised me to lead Heiligeland after him, and that included training in the art of war so that our empire could continue,” the queen told him, even as she dismounted from her horse. “I am just as capable of fighting to defend myself as anyone else here.”
Marce chuckled. “I don’t think you could be as capable as Hedi or myself, but…I’m glad you can fight. That will make this a lot simpler.”
“I cannot summon without a weapon, though,” the queen answered sadly. “I am not a witch like my sister; I cannot call up monsters to defend myself.”
“Wait, you mean you actually saw Clarimunda summon monsters?” Hedi asked, moving towards the queen. It was a real breakthrough moment, I thought; it was the first thing Hedi had said to Queen Verena that wasn’t hateful, jealous or threatening.
The queen shook her head. “No, she professed to be ignorant of the skills required, though I am not entirely certain I believe her in that respect. However, the seers were all quite certain that she possesses the native gifts required to summon and control monsters.”
“I still have several spears from the previous fight, your majesty,” Talbot said, getting down off his horse. “Can you use one of them?”
“Yes, that will work very well, thank you, Talbot,” the queen replied, accepting the spear that Talbot offered her.
“Summon now, before they get here,” Marce said. “They may not give you the chance if you wait until they arrive.”[and then a bit later, after the enemy arrives]Jun quickly returned to his own side of the canyon, as I moved cautiously forward to look over the edge of the cliff. The ones with crossbows had stopped in the canyon mouth, blocking it very effectively, and they were all aiming their crossbows at the queen. The ones with the axes and spears were riding up towards her at great speed, even though she and Talbot were still pretending not to notice them.
“Heretic, prepare to surrender your life, in the name of Bishop-King Walhdramm!” the leader of the execution squad shouted, as he brought his horse to a halt directl in front of her.
The queen got to her feet, holding her enchanted spear at her side, and looked at him with regal defiance. “As the Queen of Vianterre, I am no longer one of Bishop-King Walhdramm’s subject,” she told them calmly, “and I will not permit you to take my life. What my father sees as heresy is only heresy within his own kingdom.”
“All of Vianterre is now the Bishop-King’s holy kingdom!” the squad leader retorted, then lifted one hand above his head. “On my mark, archers, prepare to deliver the justice of the gods!”
...yeah. Not really much there about Verena, because she's kind of background noise all around. 😰 I had really hoped I wouldn't have to depend on this work, 'cause it's such utter garbage. 😭
Anyway, on the off chance that you actually want to subject yourself to reading165k words of unedited garbage, here's a link to it.
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