Wisdom's Kiss (88 page)

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Author commentary on Handsome, Duchess Wilhelmina's terrier
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I like dogs. If you don't believe me, read my novel
Dairy Queen,
which features a totally awesome dog named Smut. Right off the top of my head I can think of a couple of dogs (Terry Wiser, I'm talking to you) who I'd adopt in a heartbeat.

All this said, I don't like badly behaved dogs. Yappers, nippers, whiners, bossers ... not a fan. Given that badly behaved dogs are often a product of badly behaved owners, it makes sense that it would be
Wilhelmina
who produces the worst dog in all of Lax. Handsome, bless his wicked little heart, provided me with countless opportunities to illustrate Wilhelmina's arrogance and delusion, and to exploit the comic potential of
obnoxious little dogs
. I so love Handsome's battle of wits with Escoffier, I present it twice, which at least one reader pointed out might be overdoing things, but that's one darling I can't bear to kill.
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Speaking of darlings ... Isn't
Wilhelmina's death
absolutely scrumptious? A friend in the medical field pointed out that the medical term was "dog-bite sepsis" caused by the bacterium
Pasteurella multocida
(or, for medical nerds,
P. multocida).
How wonderful it is that she died at the mouth of that which she loved most—or at least loved as much as she was capable of loving.

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Author's commentary on Rüdiger IV, Emperor of Lax
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In describing
Duchess Wilhelmina
, I discuss villains' crucial role in fiction. But it's not villains per se that matter; it's antagonists. An antagonist doesn't have to be wicked or evil, she or he just needs to oppose the protagonist. The ancient Greek term "protagonist" originates not with "pro-" as in "positive" but with "prot-" as in "first": a protagonist is simply the most important actor in a drama (not, as is commonly assumed, the hero). "Antagonist," on the other hand, comes from "ant-" as in "against:" the person who challenges the protagonist. Given that conflict is the predicate of entertainment (which it is; trust me), antagonists, the againsters, make the story happen. No antagonists, no conflict, no story.

Rüdiger is a classic antagonist. He shows up in Froglock in the middle of the wedding preparations and forces everyone to attend his circus; he demands that Dizzy perform, and then marry, when and how he wishes; he strong-arms Ben into touring Circus Primus; he insists on hiring Dizzy without any concern for her desires ... All this he does not from malevolence but from his own self-interest. By doing so, he's driving the story forward.
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The problem, of course, is that I thus created a character whose only real function is to get in Ben and Dizzy's way. If they say "up," he has to say "down"...even if "down" isn't suitable to his character. I had to pay very close attention to Rüdiger's every gesture and word to make sure that I wasn't writing simply for my own convenience. For example, Ben needs to tour Circus Primus so that she can introduce readers to the Globe d'Or and meet Tips. Neither of these, however, is the concern of the emperor of Lax. So how do I make his behavior rational for him instead of just for the sake of the plot?

It didn't help that both Wilhelmina and
The Encyclopedia of Lax
describe Rüdiger as senile, a detail I added to plant seeds of doubt in the reader's mind. This may have been too successful; I'm still not sure readers will realize he's sane. I also hope it's not too jarring that Rüdiger accepts Dizzy's magic with nary a blink. He—so it's hinted at, in escapades such as his own
Encyclopedia of Lax
biography and the
Mar y Muntanya Border Crusade
—has had his fingers in many plots over the years and has no scruples about twisting law and protocol for the greater good ... or at least his greater good.

The "Spindle Kaiser" sobriquet arose from my need for a nickname in the first line of his encyclopedia entry.
Kaiser
of course is German for emperor, deriving from the Latin
Caesar
; a "spindle" was a hand-held rod used for spinning wool, a tool implicitly female and domestic. "Spindle Kaiser" is thus a bit of an insult, something along the lines of "Apron-Strings King": real men don't spin; they bop people and start wars and yell a lot. Apparently Rüdiger didn't do that much. His
Encyclopedia of Lax
biography is really quite scornful—the editors apparently championing instead the bop/ blood/yell paragon of manhood—and he receives no credit for the peace and prosperity he orchestrated.

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Author's commentary on Providence, late Queen of Montagne
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In my first drafts of
Wisdom's Kiss,
Providence was still alive, and Ben's letters were to her, not Temperance ... It was confusing and stupid; looking back, I can't imagine what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking. If nothing else, Providence's existence broke the cardinal rule of children's literature, that
Mothers Must Be Missing Or Dead
. (Very early in the writing process, Temperance and Dizzy also had an older brother named Augustus, but the less said about him the better.) So Providence had to die—which sounds terribly hardhearted, I know, but that's the way it is with writing. "Kill your darlings" sometimes means literally.
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