SPOILERS - Sam's Background and History (Patreon)

This serves as an overview of Sam's life before the start of the story, and is rife with spoilers. It's primarily reference material for me so I have things ironed out from the get go.

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Samantha Aurelis Lundreame

Sam is the 18 year old Crown Princess of Karnalle, and is the oldest recognized child of King Theostus Lundreame. Her mother is Silviana Lundreame, formerly of House Glorigold.

She is fierce, stubborn, determined, never backs down, and rebellious. Despite the best attempts of her family and a legion of royal tutors, Sam has a mind ill-suited for academic pursuits and she hates girlish things like wearing big frilly dresses, jewelry, makeup, or fancy hairdos. Other such feminine pursuits like manners, etiquette and so on were similarly lost on her.

Her true passion lies in adventuring and fighting. Growing up, her favorite hobby was dodging her lessons and sneaking out of Castle Lundreame to explore the streets of Imperalis, as well as wandering in the seemingly endless upper layers of the manic castle itself looking for cool shit. Sam didn’t really hide that she was the Princess while out on her excursions, which led to the young girl growing popular among the common folk. They loved seeing her stroll around town and given that she treated them as people and not a lower caste, she had many friends and adults would go out of their way to give the Princess treats. It helped that Sam has a strong sense of justice and would often take measures into her own hands if she saw something like a child getting bullied or city guards harassing innocent peasants.

As is common among those in her bloodline, Sam has an above ordinary level of strength even prior to being trained. Although it was evident she would have been a successful warrior if trained from a young age, her father forbade the girl any chance to pick up the sword and insisted that she spend more time on her lessons.

There are times when Sam starts to sound rather arrogant and full of herself, stemming from a deep place of pride somewhere in her ego. Whenever she recovers from episodes of this, Sam gets really disappointed in herself and claims that acting like that isn't who she really is. It's a great source of shame for the otherwise kind-hearted girl.

She also has a huge libido, another common trait of her bloodline, but she's devoted to the man she latches onto. As far as with other women, though, Sam often acts like a rowdy man, gawking at tits and ass with exaggerated hunger. She hates when it's pointed out that in this regard she's just like her father.

Let's break down some of her relationships to build a better picture of her life pre-Dewhurst.

Sam views her father as a drunken oaf, despite all of the amazing things people told her he did during the Young Lion Rebellion. Throughout her childhood she has only ever seen the worst of him, with constant drinking and lusting after women left and right. Worst of all is how much everyone seems to believe she is the spitting image of her father at the same age. He rarely spent time with her, leading Sam to develop a need for attention that could be classified as ‘daddy issues.’

One of the biggest times they butted heads was five years prior to the start of the story, when Sam was 13. A self-proclaimed Demon Lord appeared in the southwestern Echora province at a town called Bridgebury. He made a big mess of things, but was repelled thanks to a certain heroine who sacrificed her life in the defense. The lackluster response to the event didn’t sit right with Sam, who believed that her so-called ‘hero’ father should have gone and hunted down this Demon Lord himself. Instead, he merely dumped a lot of money into the Association of Adventurers, built a fort near Bridgebury and pumped a lot of gold there so they could rebuild. Sam was furious and she never let her father hear the end of it, and any remaining good will she had toward him died.

She is close to her paternal uncle, Vandalton Lundreame. He was rarely around because of his position as the Kingdom’s Minister of Intelligence, a job that requires him to jump to and fro engaging in and overseeing shady dealings. It's meant to be a running joke that similarly to how her daddy issues inspired her interest in older men, her Uncle Vandalton was the cause for Sam developing a preference for shady men like our dear Guild Master.

Sam has a rather tense relationship with her mother Silviana, who is a very stern and quiet ice queen-type. Sam gets the feeling that she's a disappointment to Silviana, and not the type of daughter she wants. Despite this, Silviana is still a large part of Sam’s life compared to her father, who mainly kept his distance. She would frequently check in with her, make awkward attempts at conversation(that mostly seemed threatening to Sam), and genuinely tried to be there for her.

As far as her siblings go, there are too many to list and that’s not even counting all of her unofficial half-siblings. The most noteworthy of these relationships would be with the Crown Prince, Olivier Lundreame, 17. Olivier was a frail and sickly child in his youth, which led the young princess to dote on her baby brother and take care of him all the time. They were very close, but as Olivier grew older and became healthy, he developed a troubling interest in reviving the long since abandoned tradition of marrying brother to sister to keep the royal blood strong. Sam now avoids Olivier at every opportunity.

After a certain point, Sam stopped getting close to her other siblings. Her mother popped out one or two new ones every year, all the while her father continued producing bastards like someone was betting him he couldn't. She couldn't keep up, and it became hard to care. It's not that she doesn't value her family or love them, but she doesn't know a bunch of them now.

On the topic of siblings, one contributing reason as to why Sam hasn't had any experiences with boys is because growing up, pretty much everyone around her was related to her/looked like her in one way or another and that made things confusing. She also wasn't interested in any of the boys in Imperalis, despite just about every lad in the city having a crush on her.

I'm keeping the area of her half-siblings vague at this time, and if she mentions any in the future I can make note of them and better define their relationship.

Outside of her blood-related family, Sam had a special friend in Castle Lundreame who changed her life. When exploring the upper levels of the winding castle, she ended up in the hidden tower home of Zutiria Syndaline. Sam was five years old and although the reclusive hermit wanted nothing to do with the obnoxious brat at first, Sam kept showing up again and again and again until Zutiria's traumatized heart thawed enough to let this girl in as her unofficial younger sister. I will expand on Sam's influence on Zutiria's life when writing Zutiria's document, but as for Sam, she gained an ally who took care of her and gave her someone who would listen and not judge.

Sam has two living grandfathers, the Lucadeus Lundreame the Blasphemous and Duke Wassily Glorigold. Lucadeus was the previous king who inspired Theostus to begin the Young Lion Rebellion as his madness reached a peak and he began attacking worship of the Twin Goddesses of Karnalle. Rather than become a kinslayer at the end of his war, Theostus spared his father and had him chained and imprisoned. By the time Sam was born, he was a harmless, semi-senile old man. Although Sam knows about all of the evil things he's done, it's hard for her to see him as anything other than the weird, kindly grandfather in chains that was allowed to visit every so often.

Duke Glorigold is another matter. Her maternal grandfather is a cold and calculating man who has never once looked at Sam as anything other than a tool. As he is the Realm's Minister of Wealth, he was often around when Sam was growing up and he only ever spoke harsh words and condescending remarks to the girl. He genuinely unnerves her, one of the few people able to do so.

Sam doesn't know it, but Duke Glorigold is the source of many of her problems.

After the Rebellion and his ascension to the throne, there was a period of time where Theostus ignored the daunting task of picking his wife. He'd implied a lot to many different lords in exchange for their support, but never actually promised who he would take. After a couple of years, the pressure was too large to ignore.

Silviana was his top pick because they had a history together, but he was unsure of marrying her simply on account it would lead to him becoming indebted to the Duke of Lillance. Wassily made the young King an offer he couldn't refuse. He would bankroll the entire Kingdom- which was dearly needed after most of the treasury had been used on reconstruction from the rebellion- so long as he promised their firstborn would marry back into House Glorigold after their coming of age, giving the Duke the opportunity to put one of his own on the Throne of Sun and Moon. With great regret, Theostus agreed.

The reason Sam was never allowed to learn how to wield a sword or ride horses or other such things was solely due to Duke Glorigold's influence, who believed in very old-fashioned views on women despite the royal family largely moving past such strictly defined gender roles.

The thing is, Sam is a bit clueless and she doesn't quite understand just how much her parents did for her under the table. She didn't question why no one ever seemed to chase after her when she would sneak out onto the city streets, or why she never got punished for skipping out on her lessons to go and do whatever else she wanted. In short, Theostus and Silviana were fully supportive of whatever Sam wanted to do with her life... which is why they gave Sam an advance warning that she'd be marrying the 54 year old twice-widowed son of Duke Glorigold several months before her coming of age.

They made a whole show of it, too, with Theostus threatening her and Silviana doing her best to look as disappointed as possible. Even Vandalton told her she needed to suck it up. Sam lost her cool completely, throwing a tantrum in the King's court and causing tons of damage. Her pride made her think everyone was treating her unfairly and Sam reasoned they no longer deserve her presence. She stormed off claiming she deserved to live the sort of life she dreamed of, ignoring empty threats from her father about locking her up forever. Little did she know that was playing directly into his hands.

The entire confrontation was meant to inspire Sam to runaway, and runaway she did. Sam broke into what she thought was her father's armory, but was actually his fetish costume closet and stole a slutty warrior cosplay and a big sword. Zutiria aided in Sam's escape, although she had something to say about the attire. Sam brushed it off and Zuzu gave her some gold and supplies and led her to a convenient single person boat which would take her downriver to Perlshaw. Zuzu offered to come along, but Sam was insistent on doing it alone and Zuzu promised that if Sam wrote her, she would come whenever she is needed.

From there, Sam paid and registered herself as an adventurer in Perlshaw but she had an incident with the Guild Master, a distant relative by the name of Silton Glorigold. There was a blatant attempt at sexual harassment, followed by a blatant, ego-powered kick to the balls. He told her he had no place for her in his Guild and rather than discharging her, thought it would be funnier to point her towards Dewhurst and hype it up. Sam then found passage to Cransmere, was thoroughly creeped the fuck out by that place and didn't even stop by at the Guild before hitting up a trader for a bodyguard/escort deal to Dewhurst. That's the complete chain of events of Sam's escape.

All efforts to find Sam have been half-hearted at best, but her father is well aware of exactly where Sam ended up. After Sam's escape, Duke Glorigold has been pushing for her to be disinherited so that Olivier could fulfill the bargain, but Theostus has the upperhand since the contract specifies the first born.

Are Sam's parents at fault for being put into this situation? Yes, absolutely, but it's far more complicated than that. Theostus loves Sam more than anything else in the world(including his hundreds of other children), and he essentially sacrificed having a good relationship with her for the good of the Realm. If things were different he would've taught her to be a warrior himself, taken her hunting, and so on, but at the start of the story he's merely content to know Sam is finally out there living her best life.

I plan to have Zutiria deliver a short message when she arrives in the reboot so we can clarify right from the get go that things are complicated and that no one will be looking for her. The full mystery will be kept vague, but I want this much established early on.

Sam's greatest desires are as follows;

To be a great adventuring hero powerful enough to defeat the Demon Lord. Sam idolizes the strong and wants to help others whenever she can, in a sense becoming the hero

To have a better relationship with her family. As much as she pushes it down, there is a part of her that wishes she could be what they want from her and to not be such a disappointment.

As far as being the Queen one day, it's not something she is overly interested in at the moment. Naturally she's given it some thought, and the throne is hers by birthright, but she's putting it off to solve some other day. The problem is that giving it up would pass it to Olivier, which would be less than ideal for her. Given that she's going to be rewritten to be more prideful rather than angry, there is a chance she might come to believe that she deserves to be Queen.