Dream of Royalty, or Nightmare in Disguise?

Today, I had one of those dreams where I see some scenarios of Crescent Legends that can be a viable part of a storyline, much like a good portion of the detailed story I have come up with for Crescent Legends. However, it wasn't exactly a pleasant one, and may be a plot that is similar to an existing one out there. Who knows. ._.; It's so hard being original these days, I always end up seeing similarities to existing storylines in other media; usually in video games.

The dream I had was of Clarine getting proposed by a royal prince. A surprise even for me, as it was for Clarine and the rest of the party as well. Although now that I think about it, I don't think I've really spoken much of the other characters in Crescent Legends yet, have I? I'll have to get to that eventually. Back to the dream though, as a noble, it isn't too out of the norm for royalty to have associations with those in the noble class such as the Lirshell family. And honestly, if you were proposed to by someone in the royal family, who can really resist? Although it is an option to resist since this was a prince of a different kingdom than that of Faylite's, as this was during the party's travels across Sedule Ramios in search of knowledge regarding the Crescent Legends. Declining the proposal may have upset the prince, but what more can they do other than kick the party out of their kingdom and refuse requests and such? Worst case scenario, perhaps send soldiers to capture them and toss them in jail, or just kill them on the spot. But no, in the dream I had, the scenario led to Clarine agreeing to marrying this prince. I mean, really. How often do you get proposals from a royal prince?

This would normally be a dream-come-true scenario.. although it WAS just a dream, for many people, the way this ended was not very pretty at all. Soon after the marriage, the prince would inherit the kingdom and become king, then soon after declare war with the neighboring kingdoms for more fame and power. And such a selfish and greedy ambition would be achieved, by force, with the military advantages of Clarine's superior healing magic, revitalizing their downed soldiers back to health. This was the plan for the prince all along; to use Clarine for military power to fuel his war mongering regime. Of course, Clarine would be against all this war, but the new king doesn't care. He'll do whatever he wants.

At that point of the story, the rest of the party would come to rescue Clarine, but of course, that would mean for the party to turn the kingdom and its war mongering king to be their enemy, which would pretty much guarantee soldiers coming after them to capture and/or kill. Not that a few battles against soldiers would stop them, but a potential tool for future events as well. Such as an ambush, or assisting the other kingdoms in subduing the attacks, etc. Personally though, I'd like some third, unknown party or force doing things in the back end of this kingdom like driving the prince to desire power, or using the prince's desire for power to fulfill something else of their own as well. I haven't decided yet, and will probably be a while before I decide if I'll use this scenario or not even. It has a lot of validity and makes sense as well, unlike Twilight, which was also thought up of from a dream, supposedly. =/ But that rant is not for this post.

Aside from Clarine, I've been trying to design some of the other characters, but I just can't seem to find a good design for some of them. I was planning on writing more about the others when I get these designs ready, but it hasn't happened yet. Hopefully I'll be able to put more pictures up in the post when it happens.