Behind the Round Table Tournament
The King of the Round Table Tournament, a story I crafted that sprung from a single scene I saw playing over and over in my head. A man, standing in front of a wall of fire, claiming he was going to be the next king. For those who read the story, you know this man to eventually become Rhodain Kayden, the once Triumphant Knight on fire.
Table of Contents
The Why Factor
The King of the Round Table Tournament was always supposed to be part one of an epic story.
The King of the Round Table Tournament reflects what it means when life throws the unexpected at you, how do you handle it? Do you run from it and hide, or run towards it and embrace the hardship.
It was originally planned to be ten chapters, but during the outline I realized I needed at least two more to properly set things in motion for book two, and give the story air the better get used to the characters. Once I knew all the makings up for the story, the ending…well, I knew I wanted that tragic end because it would be obvious otherwise, which added to the fun of the story. The “why factor”. The why everything happened the way it did. For every question set up, I usually put the answer in the following chapter.
Thus leading the overall “why” of the story. Why’d I chose to tell this story. The first saga of my Fate of the King series is called, The New King Saga. It’s the journey of the new king from beginning to the end where he’s finally an established leader. It reflects my journey when I was adopted into a leadership role while I was in the Army. How I went from complete naivety, to not truly wanting to be a leader, to understanding what it means to be a leader. So The King of the Round Table Tournament reflects what it means when life throws the unexpected at you, how do you handle it? Do you run from it and hide, or run towards it and embrace the hardship. West makes this decision pretty early on.
Rhodain Kayden
The idea of Rhodain came to me from multiple inspirations. For one, I wanted my “bad ass” Han Solo type character that’s rugged, distant, and tough to be around, but also caring. The name Rhodain Kayden came in two parts. The name Kayden meaning warrior and with Rhodain I thought of the author that inspired me to create this story, Rick Riordan, creator of the Percy Jackson series and to this day I still mess up the spelling of his last name which was also a part of the reason for Rhodain. Another inspiration came from the legendary Japanese kaiju, Rodan, the monstrous fire bird because I knew Rhodain’s story was going to reveal that he had powers equal to that of the legendary Phoenix. So mixing the two names I came up with Rhodain. It was much later, after I decided his inevitable fate, was when I came up with the rest of his story and significance to the series and how I would bring him back throughout the story.
Divinity
For writing a dark fantasy epic, it’s funny how little of a fan I actually am of fantasy. That’s mostly because a lot of the ones I’ve read tried really hard to mimic Tolkien than to make the magic as epic as the rest of their stories. I also blame a lot of other inspirations where I watched more Anime growing up than I replayed Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, thus wanting my magic system to match the dramatics I grew up with. Which lead to Divinity.
My way to explain why certain characters are super human, and others can use magic while others cannot or more so don’t. I was inspired more so by Avatar the Last Airbender when deciding to divide up my magic system, which would be more explained one by one in each story. That’s why Rhodain’s is a quick rundown to get readers into the story. The next book will focus more on the Martial Arts, then the Mystic and so forth.
The Inspiration
“One day I’ll write my actual tournament story.”
With Rhodain in mind, I needed a story to craft around his claim of becoming the king of the Round Table Tournament. Why he would be making such a bold exclamation. So the plot began to thicken.
For one, I love tournaments. Ever since watching Dragonball as a kid, another heavy influence for the story, I fell in love with the bracket tournament setting…but I also had the idea of the kingdom becoming the stage for the tournament, thus a battle royale better fit the narrative.
So tournament, check, battle royale, also check…I also love labyrinths. From the David Bowie movie to the Greek myths, I knew adding a labyrinth to my story would provide the additional challenge for the tournament. That’s when I came up with the idea of the kingdom shifting to set the stage for the tournament. As you can see, piece by piece the story was unfolding. Next came making the castle as the end goal, and climbing it to reach the throne and so forth. It was an interesting enough plot and story for someone that hadn’t written in over five years. So I decided to challenge myself.
The Challenge
Two things came to mind. For the first time, I wanted to tell the story from first person like the Percy Jackson series I grew to love and enjoy, and instead of the generic story of following a rugged “bad ass” hero, Rhodain, as he fights for his goal, but see it through the eyes of who would usually be the lesser side character, West. This would mean that I’m telling a Young Adult story…I didn’t want to leave it at that. I wanted a hint of realism in my story, like what would really be happening if a kid was running around in a battle royale tournament with adult fighting seriously for their lives or the prize. They wouldn’t censor themselves that’s for sure, and it’s here that the darker tone of my story took place. Some parents probably wouldn’t like their kids reading something like that, and that’s why I felt the disclaimer was necessary at the beginning.
West
Enough of myself can be represented through West, and a lot of him is the sheer fun I had crafting this story. I leave you to decide.
Westley Jameson, one part springing from a video game character I used, and the other from my go to shot of whisky. The original concept for West was to be a boy with demon inside him that was kept dormient because of a pendant given to him by a witch that was also his mother…Clearly I didn’t go the demon route for West. It no longer fit the story I wanted to tell, and thus West became the young protagonist I admired from Percy Jackson, but crafted a path that would lead to him having a “Gohan moment” from Dragonball Z. More so DBZ Abridged which inspired the comedy that I would write into my story. Comedy I also shared, but never knew how to properly translate to the page at a young age until I grew up and discovered these talented people and their take of an epic Anime. Their take on the History of Trunks along with Percy Jackson, gave West his voice. I had to do the rest, and immediately, I didn’t want a chosen one story.
Growing up around sand and raised by his uncle was as close as I was going to get and I didn’t even do that on purpose. The desert came from my experience living in a desert for over three years, and his uncle, Lester, is a representation of my older brother that I didn’t even realize I wrote until I reread book before it was published. Back to West, I needed this to be his bare bones beginning, so I started him as the audience insert to the world by having him experiencing everything for the first time too. Living secluded from the kingdom with few friends and a naïve outlook of the world is almost a mirror image of me growing up, and his entering the kingdom for the first time in years was for me when I left home and first reached Maryland for my AIT training. Enough of myself can be represented through West, and a lot of him is the sheer fun I had crafting this story. I leave you to decide.
I knew I wanted West to be more for tactics and strategy early on, and leave the fighting for Rhodain, but when I started writing, not a lot of my idea translated to the page
. For example, the fight where Rhodain is battle Inspector Roxette played a lot differently in my head. Where West was to be instructing Rhodain how to use the surroundings to his advantage. A lot of my original concepts change once I start writing and developing the characters. Chapter Ten, The Climb, had to be re-written because I nearly wrote myself into a corner when West, Sophia, and Susan were trying to find clues to the crime committed. I got to that point and realized, “West would have no idea how to figure this out with how little he knows about the world…”
The redirect didn’t take too long to come up with. When I was writing this story, I wrote one chapter every weekend so that it would give me a whole week to plot out the next chapter and use hindsight about the previous. Never editing until I’m done with the first draft because I believe in constantly moving forward. Another reason why the story is practically a straight shot to the end goal with minimum turnarounds. Also a hint to why Rhodain did go back for the kids at the end of chapter four and his true intentions. How he was always going to look after the kids, but wasn’t going to openly admit it. Even when Susan called him out on it later.
Susan
Would you believe me if I said the inspiration for her name came from how I would constantly yell at my GPS while driving? I will admit, I had a lot of fun writing for Susan. I knew I needed a sinister villain for the first book, what I ended up with was Susan. The queen that wanted all the power for herself because she believes the other kings are not worth the title. There is a lot more to her story, but given how short book one is, it doesn’t all get fleshed out and it wasn’t necessary for the first part of the story. You got enough to know that Susan was bad news, obvious for some readers, I just didn’t anticipate how widely hated she was going to be. Whoops. Even being compared to Umbridge from Harry Potter, yeesh. It is hard to walk back someone that kills one of the more liked characters, and also difficult to make more antagonists because I can’t repeat the formula I used for her. I will admit, I wanted “Gods damn it Susan” to be such a commonly used phrase that it ends up on shirts in the future.
Sophia
What about Sophia? Where West was one of Rhodain’s motivations to do what all he does during the tournament, Sophia is West’s motivation to get through the tournament. I’ll admit I felt bad because there were times in the story where she nearly faded away into the background, especially after Susan appeared.
I will say, I know where her story goes and it’s definitely fun hearing the speculations around her role in the story moving forward. Some are close, but as I plan to write an epic full of twists and turns, things might not go the way you anticipate. To that I say, enjoy the ride, I can at least promise it will be wild.
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