DPe Introduction
Overview
This dramatis personae is (intended to be) a comprehensive listing of all the characters who appear in our narratives. This includes all the characters who exist only in our timeline, notable figures from the history, legends and myths of Calmarendi together with notable figures who exist in both timelines, some of whom you may already be familiar with.
For each character we have a separate “data sheet” which contains as much or as little information as we have on that particular person; as much or as little as we need to define their position in the world. Each data sheet is built around a common template of around 150 headings grouped into ten thematic sections. It is not necessary nor even desirable to enter information under every heading for even an important character. Rather, the template is intended as an aide memoir and food for thought to help decide what we already know, what we need to know, what might be good to know and what is unimportant.
When a character is first entered into the Dramatis Personae, it is likely we will know very little about them except perhaps their name and, hopefully, what relevance or importance they have to our narratives. During the creative process, as their character arc develops, we will need or will come to know much more about them: what they look like, how old they are, their back story, their motivations and, most importantly, how they might behave in the situations they find themselves. Then we will come back and fill in some of the gaps.
As authors we will be regularly returning to these character sheets to help keep the characters’ traits consistent, to track changes therein as their stories unfold and to build richer backstories that help inform how they got to where they are in the narrative and what it is that motivates their actions and decisions.
DPe Structure
This Dramatis Personae is divided into four main chapters:
- The Dramatis Personae: A-Z is a repository for the full character sheets of every character we know anything about, ordered according to our standard collation rules.
- The Dramatis Personae: Classified contains an index of character names, broken down into various classifications. The collation of names within each classification is the same as in the global index. Current classifications are intended to be mutually exclusive but additional classifications may be added in future which have non-empty intersections with others. Therefore, there is not (nor should there be) any prohibition on listing a particular character in multiple classifications, even in cases where it would make no apparent sense to do so.
- Personal Relationships is a repository for narrative descriptions of the relationships (familial and platonic as well as romantic and sexual) between pairs of characters. Not every character, of course, because that would get big very quickly, but those where the relationship goes well beyond mere acquaintance and which is important to the development of both characters.
- Character Groups is a repository for narrative descriptions of groups of three or more specific individuals who share some common bond which leads them to be considered, either amongst themselves or by wider society, to form a single entity but not one with formal organizational structure or any kind of legal standing. A prime example of this type of group in a different narrative setting would be the “Fellowship of the Ring” in Lord of the Rings.
DPe Collation Rules
How we order characters by name in the Dramatis Personae.
Component Ordering
Fictional Characters
Fictional characters are ordered on their given name (whichever and in whatever form they would normally use for themselves) first, then family name. Thus Victoria Branwyn comes before Victoria Carter but both come after Andrea Valentine.
Real Timeline Figures
Real timeline figures are ordered on their family name first, then given names (in the order and form by which the person is officially known, not — in contrast to fictional characters — by their preferred or commonly used name). Thus, Doug Naysmith is indexed as Naysmith, John Douglas and listed between Natasha Moorfield and Primarolo, Dawn.
Cross-Timeline Relations
The above demarcation between real and fictional characters applies even where two particular characters may be closely related. Thus, if the Dramatis Personae included a real timeline figure called John Doe and a fictitious son James Doe, they would be indexed as Doe, John and James Doe respectively.
Script Sensitivity
Names that have their origins in cultures that normally use a non-Latin script (names such as Natasha (which might natively be written using Cyrillic characters), Kumiko (Japanese Kanji or Hiragana) or Galadriel (Tengwar)) are always collated according to their Latin transliterations.
Case Insensitivity
All collation is case insensitive. Thus MacDonald and Macdonald would be treated as exactly equal.
Accent Insensitivity
All collation is accent insensitive. Thus Magdaléna and Magdalena would be treated as exactly equal.
Punctuation Insensitivity
All punctuation marks (including but not limited to apostrophes, hyphens, full stops, parentheses and quotation marks) and all types of white space are ignored. Thus Mary-Jane, Mary Jane and MaryJane are treated as exactly equal.
Title Insensitivity
All titles, honorifics and the like are ignored. Thus Jennifer is indexed as Jennifer Greenwood irrespective of any of her titles such as Doctor or Councillor.
Spelling Sensitivity
Collation is sensitive to differences in spelling (after ignoring case, accents, punctuation and white space) of what is essentially the same name, thus Frančeska and Francesca are always considered to be different names. The “correct” spelling of (fictional) characters’ names is always determined by authorial intent, rather than what anyone else might consider to be correct.
Change of Name
All characters are collated according to the name they had at Day 1 of the appropriate Apocalypse Reckoning, or the name they were given at birth if they were born after AR1 or the name they had at the time of their death if they died before AR1.
Tie Breaker
In the event that the above collation rules produce two characters with the exact same index name, then they will be ordered, relative to one another, by their character ID number.
Index Name
A character’s “index name” is a textual representation of their name, after all the collation rules have been applied, in all lowercase letters and stripped of any accents, punctuation and white space.
Shortened Index Name
Index names may appear with some trailing parts or letters omitted. Thus Jennifer’s index name may be given as just jennifer because there are no other characters called Jennifer. Victoria Branwyn and Victoria Carter, by contrast, cannot be indexed as just victoria because that would create an ambiguity; they may, however, be indexed as victoriab and victoriac respectively without any ambiguity.
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