How the Twelve Kingdoms Came to Be: Stories for my Brother

The Twelve Kingdoms is the setting for several novels, including Niamh and the Hermit and the short story collection, Charming the Moon.

The Twelve Kingdoms first came about while I was still in high school.  It was often my duty to put my youngest brother, thirteen years my junior, down for the night.  Since I had little patience for reading the same story over and over again, I began making up stories for him instead.  The first of these can be found in Charming the Moon, about the restoration of the Sun and the Moon into the sky.

After that came two of my longest verbal epochs: about how Prince Gavron (Niamh's father in the novel) was cursed with a form of blindness at his birth, and the trials he endured to regain his sight.  During the course of which, he met and fell in love with one of his immortal godmothers, the Fairy Rhianna, who had lost her wings to her jealous sister's machinations.

The other story took place some several thousand years later, and takes about an hour in the telling (so it was only brought out for special occasions).  And that was the quest of Princess Isllel to save her betrothed, Prince Tamerin (a distant scion of Gavron's line) from the Shadowqueen who has been targeting all the princes of the Twelve Kingdoms.  This was the story that helped solidify the cardinal directions of the basic cartography, including the Dragon Prince to the east, Malinka's castle to the south, the Well at the End of the World in the east, and the Ice Giants in the north - as well as the obligatory Dark Woods in the heart of the Twelve Kingdoms.

Having been brought up on Grimms Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Andersen, Irish Folklore, Greek Mythology, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and pretty much anything epic I could get my hands on, this first world built incorporated all the legends I'd learnt together, plus a few of my own.
The Twelve Kingdoms is the setting for several novels, including Niamh and the Hermit and the short story collection, Charming the Moon.

The Twelve Kingdoms first came about while I was still in high school.  It was often my duty to put my youngest brother, thirteen years my junior, down for the night.  Since I had little patience for reading the same story over and over again, I began making up stories for him instead.  The first of these can be found in Charming the Moon, about the restoration of the Sun and the Moon into the sky.

After that came two of my longest verbal epochs: about how Prince Gavron (Niamh's father in the novel) was cursed with a form of blindness at his birth, and the trials he endured to regain his sight.  During the course of which, he met and fell in love with one of his immortal godmothers, the Fairy Rhianna, who had lost her wings to her jealous sister's machinations.

The other story took place some several thousand years later, and takes about an hour in the telling (so it was only brought out for special occasions).  And that was the quest of Princess Isllel to save her betrothed, Prince Tamerin (a distant scion of Gavron's line) from the Shadowqueen who has been targeting all the princes of the Twelve Kingdoms.  This was the story that helped solidify the cardinal directions of the basic cartography, including the Dragon Prince to the east, Malinka's castle to the south, the Well at the End of the World in the east, and the Ice Giants in the north - as well as the obligatory Dark Woods in the heart of the Twelve Kingdoms.

Having been brought up on Grimms Fairy Tales, Hans Christian Andersen, Irish Folklore, Greek Mythology, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and pretty much anything epic I could get my hands on, this first world built incorporated all the legends I'd learnt together, plus a few of my own.

The world of the Twelve Kingdoms has grown since then: and I share the worldbuilding as it progresses in the following pages.  If you'd like to read a proto-story in full, check out the gallery pictures to the side.

Enter a world brimming the magic.  Welcome to The Twelve Kingdoms.
A proto-Twelve Kingdoms story: my first official publication, "If We Shadows Have Offended" in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine.

Explore the Twelve Kingdoms
(c) Emily C. A. Snyder