I’ve long been interested in the princess in the tower. Why is the princess in the tower? Why can’t she escape? Why was she put there in the first place? If you study Classical Literature, you have Danae, the mother of Perseus, who is locked away by her father. In Germanic folk tales, you have Rapunzel who is locked away by a witch. Both are rescued by princes.
I asked myself: why does it have to be a prince who rescues the princess? While there are lots of other examples of people playing with this idea, for example princesses who rescue princes, or princesses who rescue other princesses, I didn’t want it to be any of those. I didn’t want my hero to be royalty.
I also love the Chosen One idea, but I like to play around with it. We’ve all seen the Chosen One be prophesied to bring down the wicked regime, or be born in order to end the reign of the evil Queen Bavmorda. But what if the Chosen One was not because they were chosen, but because they did the choosing?
In stories, the Chosen One is often hidden royalty, or secret princes or princesses, or lucky orphans. I didn’t want my hero to be an orphan. I wanted them to have a nice family that supported them, because I don’t often see that in literature. I also wanted them to be practical. I wanted my hero to be able to take care of themselves, and growing up in a rural community the most practical people I knew were farmers.
So why a chicken farmer?
Honestly, because it was funny. Originally I had the bard as my hero, because that amused me, too. Why not have a bard be the one to rescue the princess, instead of a prince? Except that my bard did not want to the do the rescuing. In two pages the bard had ceded all responsibility and one of his audience members had stood up and said that she would do it, and lo and behold, my story was born.
You can read how Erin chose her quest in The Colour of Her Magic, available now.