4, 21 and 27 for Three Princes from the Ask Game ☆
skdfhjksjdhf hello friend!
4] What detail in Three Princes are you really proud of?
There are a lot of little details in Three Princes I'm really proud of! Mostly because they were 'mistakes' that I caught in time and then worked into the story.
So, because of the time period, I'd have to stop and re-evaluate basically every line I wrote, like 'does this make sense?? did [x] exist in 1912??' and most of the time, the answer was 'no' lol such as Dean's wrist watch - I wrote him as just wearing a wrist watch for a while bc I wanted to give him something that sort of personified his limited time to pursue his freedom, something on him that would be a constant reminder (and meaningful when it's on him versus when it's off and left in his room) - it was just gonna be a little easter egg (of which there are many in that fic), and then as I was writing, I was like '... wait did wrist watches exist? People only use pocket watches in the movie, I think' and i checked, and lo and behold, no, wrist watches for men did not exist at the time. Men used pocket watches, but wrist watches were a hot, new commodity for upper class ladies by 1912.
So, Dean likely wouldn't have one for himself, but it wasn't impossible that his mother wouldn't have had one in that universe based on the background I gave her, so i was like 'omg wait it can be a symbol for the limited time he has to let Cas rescue him, to rescue himself, but ALSO it can be a wink wink nudge nudge at him being queer, and the limited time he has to accept himself!'
There's lots of other little things; when picking character names, I chose Temesras for Amara by just researching what variations of the word 'darkness,' existed in proto-english, as a small easter egg to 'she's ancient, she's Thee Darkness,' and then there's Drozdov, which means 'blackbird' - an allusion to Cas' black wings/being a many feathered thing, but also of being something of a wounded outcast.
I had the Moon calendar for 1912 pulled up, there are details in that fic that no one will ever notice or care abt but *i* know skldhjf lmao
21] If you wrote a "missing scene" in Three Princes, what would it be?
The first thing that comes to mind is Sam and Rowena at the end (I'm gonna speak vaguely so as not to spoil it for anyone that hasn't read it yet) - the last scene w them is meant to spark doubt, in a way, bc you don't hear from either of them again, but that was a decision I'd made later on - there WAS a scene after Rowena leads Sam away, but I decided to cut it bc when it's Dean's POV, i wanted the reader to also feel sort of stressed out abt what Sam's fate ultimately had been. But the first 'missing scene' that comes to mind is that - in the chaos, out on the water, Sam and Rowena.
27] How long did it take to write Three Princes? Describe the process.
So, this was a long process! I first made the doc the day after my birthday last year, so October 24th 2022. I didn't start writing in it much until late November, though.
Now, @atomicteaparty really badly wanted a Titanic Destiel AU that was well-researched, and, bless her <3, she likes my writing and wanted it to be of that quality/voice. So, the process first started w me figuring out how much Real Life Event can I tastefully include without it feeling like... idk, like I was making light of a horrible tragedy, then how much of the movie's formula am I going to use, then how am I going to transmute the spn characters into OUR universe, into 1912, and make them recognizably themselves while still having completely different backstories.
I decided that no matter what I did w the real life event aspects, I wouldn't name real people. I don't begrudge folks that do that, i know it happened over a century ago, but something abt it for me personally felt icky, so i decided that ALL the characters i used had to be from spn or made up. Then I watched the movie. I watched the movie several times lmao and I saw that, the existing Titanic AUs for destiel always allot Cas as the Rose-insert, but I was like '... but Cas is the one that initially rescues DEAN! Dean should be the one trapped!' - I decided the suicide rescue was going to stay, and Dean would be my Rose-insert, but he'd still need to be *Dean.* And a young!Dean, too, this is pre-Stanford era Dean. This is early 20's Dean. So, not so hardened, but very disenchanted, loyal to his father - I built him a backstory that would make his personality make sense, and I kept key elements of his persona; he loves cars and car maintenance, he loves cowboys, he is v pretty and is aware of that, etc etc.
Tbh the hardest part of writing any of the characters was Dean. Dean, canonically, was raised by motel televisions - he's all pop-culture and quips. I had to allude to the 1912 equivalent of that, which is why I have him sing a song to himself (if you look up the song he sings when he has his first anxiety attack, you'll find that it was sort of the 1912 equivalent of being in the top 40 lol) and he calls Sam 'kid,' and you might notice that his formal language relaxes around Benny and Cas and Meg, like, once he's in the lower decks and he's allowed to be more himself, he uses lots of turns of phrases and is a little more crass or flirtatious, bc that's truer to who he actually is - so, he needed to use slang, but he also was not a complete street kid either, he's somewhere in between, and bc he really got to KNOW Mary before she died (bc in Three Princes, she dies when he's ~14), he's not AS hardened a soldier. He doesn't question John (at first), he's miserable like he is, and Mary's death still had to be the weight-bearing pillar that brings the whole castle down.
Making Dean still *sound* like Dean would sound in that time period was REALLY difficult. Lots of dialogue re-writes for that. Other than that, building Cas' backstory and making it make historical sense was the next biggest challenge. I needed him to be a soldier, but the only war that he would've possibly fought in was the Russian revolution, so Dean wasn't gonna be his first rebellion, which begged the question, what would Dean BE to him, then.
In the text of Titanic, the movie, Rose represents the upperclass, really, but the best of them - the well-intentioned, kind, unassuming/perhaps slightly ignorant be well-meaning upperclass, which Jack is the equal and opposite to; he represents all of the lower class, the less fortunate, the daring and selfish (by which i mean, he put pleasure before duty), the adventurous and free - which is why he's doomed to die.
I had to decide what Cas and Dean were going to personify here, so that the themes were clear, and then I needed to decide how Sam and Rowena would mirror that, so you could glean some foreshadowing abt what was to become of either couple by interactions had by both.
Ultimately, I decided that Dean personified Faith-In-People, while Cas personified Faith-In-The-Divine, and their narrative purposes would be to rekindle the missing faith in one another; Cas would restore Dean's faith in a higher power (which is why, ultimately, Dean is able to pray again), and Dean would restore Cas' faith in people.
Sam is Faith-In-Self, he's sure of what he wants, who he is, what he's capable of, that he understands everything he's seeing, and he's right! He's observant and self-assured, but he plays it safe; Rowena is his equal and opposite. She lacks faith in herself, she is NOT self-assured when they meet, but she plays the socialite game more dangerously. By the end, Rowena is self-assured, and Sam is humbled, but willing to play more dangerously.
Then ofc the dreaded time of picking a title skldjfhskf lmao strangely enough, this was one of the last Hard Decisions i needed to make; i had a few titles picked out, but i kept coming back to the conversation Cas carries at The Fancy Dinner, where he talks about the etymology of serendipity, which, ofc is a running theme throughout the fic. I decided on Three Princes bc, as Cas explains, in the original story, three princes keep finding things they weren't originally in search of - this is also why the POV switches are limited to Cas, Dean, and Sam (they're our three princes). Cas, Dean, and Sam operate as our unassuming princes that continue to find things they weren't originally in quest of.
Sam has simple, short-term goals; he wants to pet the fancy dogs, he wants to go on the tours, see the libraries - have an adventure. Dean is there to follow orders and do what he must as deemed by John. Cas has long-term goals to get to America, escape old demons, shake off his old life somehow and become someone new by virtue of being in a new place.
Sam instead finds a long-term goal; Rowena. He was just hanging out, having a good time, and then he sees a goddess walk in and is like 'oohhh the odds are NOT in my favor but i GOTTA.' Dean finds cause to deny orders and pursue his own happiness which was NOT in the script handed to him, and Cas experiences attraction and love for the first time completely unexpectedly, which ofc inherently changes him (something he acknowledges he's scared of, during the Friday Morning Breakfast he follows Dean to, when he first realizes he's Changing).
In the midst of writing Three Princes, my friend got really sick, so i flew out of state to help take care of her, and then ANOTHER friend had a crisis and i drove over multiple other states to fetch HER and get her to my other friend's place and keep everyone under the same roof where i could account for them lol launching two rescues was not a simple task, and it ate up 3 weeks i was SUPPOSED to be writing slkjdfhsjkdfh which is why the fic was MOSTLY completed by April 10th, when i started posting, but i couldn't finish editing and polishing before the 14th ; _ ; i lost nearly a month i had allotted for that sdkfjskdjh
And ofc the entire fic was beta'd by @pockypuck (Megh) who helped me keep everything tonally consistent, and historically accurate (to a degree, ofc, it's fic skdjhfkdsjf it's accurate enough that you'd have to be a REAL fuckin stickler to take issue w something in there).
I drafted the fic w Megh in bullet points, then inserted that into my Titanic AU Google Doc, used Outline Mode to keep track of everything, and just ran w it. So. This is an insanely long answer and tbh there's still even more that went into it skdfhskldhfd lmao it was a long process and it's a fic im ultimately really, really proud of so thank you so much for asking me abt it ; __ ; <3 it means so much to me!
