Explaining The Four

Although the previous story line had come to an end, I still thought of the world of Fabulae as an ongoing story, so I thought about what the next plotline would be.

At the time I was reading Livius and I was really interested in the story of Romulus. For a couple of reasons I guess. If you read Livy, it is interesting to see the awe and respect the Romans held for the founder of their city. In fact, Romulus was so respected they believed he became a god. The line between semi-historical figure and mythical figure was interesting to me. I wanted to create a character with that kind of power and charisma in my own stories.

Also, the story of Romulus and Remus always fascinated me. In Livy, and all of the other versions I read, there is never really a reason given for why Romulus kills Remus. There was of course the reason that they were fighting over control of the city of Rome, but after all they had been through together, after growing up together with the wolves, fighting the robbers together, and fighting against the evil king together, how could one of them just suddenly kill the other over some stupid dispute about who to name the city after?

I always thought that Romulus and Remus would make a good movie. In the movie you could explore the emotions that finally led Romulus to kill Remus. They start out the best of friends. They have each saved the others’ life hundreds of times. But when they become famous, it changes them. They start to argue more and more. One day one of them pushes the other, the other pushes back, and they start fighting. And without even meaning too, one of them kills the other in the heat of the moment.

Since I knew I wasn’t going to become a Hollywood producer anytime, I thought the best I could do was adopt the story of Romulus and Remus into my own Fabulae Universe.

There were several problems with the adaptation. First of all, in the original story of Romulus and Remus, they decide to found the city of Rome because their city was too overcrowded. I toyed briefly with the idea of having a Watcher Romulus found another city, but where would the Watchers go? They had been too conditioned by modernity to survive on the outside. Besides, I had just written in the previous story that a 10th of the Watchers had been killed in the invasion. Overpopulation was not a problem.

So, instead of having them create a new city, I decided they would create some sort of organization that would become immensely popular, and they would eventually fight over control of the organization.

Subtlety was a bit out the window on this one. Romulus’ and Remus’ father was Mars, mother was named Rhea, but they were raised by their grandfather Numitor, just as in classical mythology. Aside from the obvious give away of the names Romulus and Remus, the set up of the first chapter meant that anyone who was familiar with the classical history would have a pretty good idea of where this was going right from the first chapter.

I decided to start the story two years after the end of the New Era story. I figured the Watcher city needed some time to settle down, before I shook things up again.

Romulus and Remus were both 21. That seems incredibly young to me now of course, but from the standpoint of 16 when I was writing, that seemed a very mature age.

Although the principle characters of Romulus and Remus were obviously both new, it was my intention to continue writing about the surviving characters from the previous story as well. That didn’t work so well. I’m not sure why. I tried at various points to re-introduce Pericula, Kyoko, and Kile into the story, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that their story had already been told, and that, try as I might, I couldn’t make them come alive in the new story. I think they were already frozen in my mind, and I couldn’t really develop them anymore.

The only characters I did have success with were minor characters from the previous story. Katina, Kyoko’s younger sister, and Julius, Pericula’s younger brother, as well as Boon, Julius’ annoying friend, all were very minor characters in the previous story. All 3 of these characters were also about the same age as Romulus and Remus, so I was able to integrate them into the new story very easily.

Lauto appears briefly at the beginning as Romulus’ girlfriend. I was originally thinking that, in order to get Romulus to a state where he is prepared to kill Remus, I would need something more than just a fight over the organization they co-founded. I thought if a fight over a girl was involved as well, then they might have something they were prepared to kill for.

This had the added advantage of helping to resolve Lauto’s character. I felt like I had left her unresolved at the end of the previous story. Lauto had attempted to kill Hans and Kyoko, but at the end her noble side came through as she risked her life to fight Gaius. But although Lauto ended the previously story on a high note, I thought there was more to her dark side that had not been explored. So, I thought I would showcase the treacherous side of her personality by having her betray Romulus and sleep with Remus.

I later decided against this because I thought that it would undermine my whole theme. The whole point of the story was that these two brothers destroyed their relationship on their own, not with outside help. And plus there was no romantic conflict in the classical story.

If this was a novel, I guess I would have just gone back and edited Lauto out of it. But I was still thinking in comic book form. I couldn’t mess with an issue that had already been issued. All I could do was downplay Lauto’s character in the later chapters. And so Lauto, who appears in the first two chapters, fades away and out of the story.

Chapter 1
What little we knew of Julius in the first story was that he was a hot-head, so I thought it would be interesting to make Julius part of Romulus’ and Remus’ organization, and see how he reacted to the pressure.

To balance things out, I created another character Andrew, who was nervous and indecisive, the complete opposite of Julius.

The Kalka Project, the idea of bringing food to the starving areas of Fabulae, worried me a little bit because it seemed a little too close to some of Jistap’s projects, and the whole debate over the project seemed a little “been there, done that”. I allude to this by having the characters themselves mention this is very similar to Jistap.

On the other hand, in a city like the Watchers city, where the Watchers have everything given to them, I couldn’t think of any other sort of organization that Romulus and Remus could create.

Chapter 8
I remember discussing the embargo on Cuba in one of my high school classes. The sanctions against Iraq were also just beginning to become an issue around this time. The morality of starving a population to affect the policy of their government was an issue I was interested in, and that is obviously were the dilemma of Marram comes from.

I was still developing politically, and I had not yet formed a firm opinion on this. Sometimes I agreed with Remus, sometimes with Romulus. The situation in Marram was just an excuse to create conflict between the two, using an issue that I could see both sides of.

Chapter 14
Of course in the classical version of the story, Romulus is not punished for his murder of Remus, and goes on to become the first king of Rome. But in the Watcher City, it was inconceivable that this crime would go unpunished, and so the ending is changed.
I stuck a bit about Lauto in to make show I hadn’t forgotten about her entirely, even though I had faded her out of the story. By this time I regretted my decision to bring her into this story in the first place, but it would have been a loose end to say nothing about her at the conclusion.