The Idea

Princess Avenger began as a challenge.

At the time, I had been writing in a different genre, but someone challenged me to try my hand at romance. As an avid fantasy reader with a lifelong love of magical worlds, the idea of writing a fantasy romance felt like the natural place to start. Now I needed a sassy heroine.

The Creation of a Heroine

One day, while out for a walk, a character appeared in my imagination.

Her name was Alecia Zialni.

I first saw her as an avenging princess, a young woman driven by grief and determined to punish those she believed responsible for the death of her first love. Jorge had been killed while defending his parents from mercenaries collecting excessive taxes on behalf of Alecia’s father, the heir to the throne of Thorius. Though Alecia had witnessed the changes grief had wrought in her father after her mother’s death, she couldn’t bring herself to place the blame on him. Instead, she focused her anger on the men who carried out his orders.

And so she decided to kill them.

The image that came to me was not of a princess in silk gowns and jewelled slippers but of a young woman disguised as a man, slipping through a secret castle passage and into the streets of Brightcastle under cover of darkness. She was determined, reckless, and convinced that vengeance would bring her peace.

The Conflict

Naturally, everything went wrong. I figured a princess, even one who had practiced at weapons for years and had vengeance in her heart, would find killing a person challenging. Apart from being physically weaker than her opponent, she was likely to suffer psychological harm from taking a life.

Her first attempt almost ended in disaster when a mercenary attacked her. The stranger who intervened and saved her life was Vard Anton.

What neither of them realised at the time was that they were destined to become each other’s greatest complication.

Because Alecia was disguised as a young man, Vard had no idea who she really was. And because Vard had recently accepted a position serving her father as captain of the soldiers in Brightcastle, Alecia was desperate to avoid him discovering her secret.

Then the situation became even worse. Concerned for his daughter’s safety, the prince assigned Vard to protect Alecia.

What followed was a delightful cat-and-mouse game as Alecia attempted to continue her secret campaign of revenge while evading the very man assigned to watch over her. Her clandestine excursions became more dangerous, every deception more difficult to maintain, and each encounter with Vard more complicated than the last.

The Creation of a Hero

But Vard had secrets of his own. Looking back, I’m not sure what inspired this hero. He had the looks of Lan Mandragoran, a warder from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Lan was a blade master but he wasn’t a shape shifter. The ability to be able to shift into multiple animal forms is rare in fantasy and paranormal fiction but I created a new type of mythical creature—or rather my muse did.

Vard was a Defender, a shapeshifter tasked with protecting the innocent. Able to take the forms of multiple animals, Vard carried a burden few understood. While he could control his other forms, his bear remained dangerously unpredictable. Worse still, he had not travelled to Brightcastle simply to serve as captain of the guard.

He had come to kill the prince, whose actions were causing terrible harm to his people. Vard was determined to stop him before more lives were lost.

More Conflict

Here were two people on opposite sides of the same tragedy. Alecia was trying to protect the father she could not bear to condemn. Vard was preparing to assassinate the man he believed deserved justice. Both were convinced they were right. Both were carrying wounds from their past. And both were hiding their true identities from the other.

As I wrote, Princess Avenger evolved from a story of revenge into a story about truth. It became an exploration of what happens when love collides with loyalty, when justice clashes with family, and when two people are forced to question everything they thought they knew.

Looking back, I find it fitting that Alecia appeared during a walk. She walked into my imagination carrying anger, grief, and a sword. What I didn’t know was that she would eventually lead me into a story about forgiveness, trust, and the courage it takes to face the truth about those we love.

And that journey not only became Princess Avenger, but the beginning of the Queenmakers Saga.