I wanted each of the nations that are in this world to be a blend of two to three countries and their histories as we know them. I’m mixed-race myself so it was fun for me to think of every single nation in this world as mixed. But that’s incredibly difficult to code when those nationalities don’t exist in the world that you’re creating. The imperial class is not just Japanese. I really intended for them to be a hybrid of British, American, and Japanese.
The other countries are based on hybrids of places I’ve traveled in and some histories I have some familiarity with. That was difficult because I wrote this for over eight years. I would leave and come back and leave and come back, and it would change so much between drafts, so keeping things straight was really difficult. Now I’ve learned, if you ever write a second world fantasy, keeping a style guide is a must. Just a second document where you’re like, here’s this rule. That rule may never actually make it into the story, but you need to know what all of the rules are for your magic, for your world, how a pecking order is established, and what country has a patriarchy or an anarchist quasi matriarchy. Ironically, I started it as historical fiction a very long time ago. I didn’t know if I could write a second world fantasy, so I started writing it as a historical story with magic in it.
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