Hello, Jinx here.
Recently, one of my friends who reads my work told me they were a little confused about the backstory, the structure of the book, and what exactly I was trying to do with all of it. After thinking about it, I realized that I never really made a proper disclaimer explaining my intentions behind writing the book the way I did. So I figured now would be the best time to do that, especially since the story is finally reaching the real meat and potatoes.
When I first started this book, I was reading two different Game of Thrones stories that inspired me a lot. One of them was a Star Wars and Game of Thrones crossover, and the other was a story where Viserys and Daemon had a younger brother. I enjoyed both of them a lot at first, until the first one was discontinued and the second one, in my opinion, completely flipped the main character after he married Laena Velaryon and made him act way dumber than he had been before. Even though I've tried to make my own story its own thing, I can't deny that both of those books influenced mine in some way.
My original plan was pretty simple. I wanted to establish Jeanyx as creative, highly imaginative, and different from the usual Targaryen-style character, while also setting up the Viking aspects of his identity and culture. At first, the backstory was only supposed to be around thirteen chapters. It was meant to give context, build up the world, and explain why certain things would matter later.
Then I hit a roadblock.
The history of the First Men is vague, and with George taking his sweet time with the books, there really isn't as much solid material to work with as I would like. Because of that, I started integrating multiple things into the backstory that were not part of the original plan. On top of that, I lost my original notes for how I wanted the timeline to work, so I had to improvise a lot more than I expected.
That especially affected Jeanyx's children.
I always planned for him to have nine children, with each child representing some aspect of his personality, which was inspired by the movie 9. However, I do want to make it clear that not every child is going to have a dragon. Only three of them will, because I personally find it unnecessary for every single child to have one. Dragons are powerful, important, and symbolic, and giving one to everyone would make them feel less special.
Anyway, I know I'm rambling, so I'll get to the main point.
The backstory chapters are not meant to be taken too seriously from a pure writing perspective. They mostly exist as context for future plans. I wrote them so that when certain things are revealed later, it does not feel like I pulled them out of nowhere. Some of the backstory is messy, improvised, and honestly a little chaotic, but that is because I was using it as a foundation. The real book starts becoming clearer as the story moves forward, which is why the newer scenes are more detailed, more polished, and more focused.
That being said, I'm not going to stop adding random things whenever I feel like it.
Like most writers, I want to have fun with my story. I enjoy throwing in strange ideas, unexpected influences, and new concepts when they interest me. The difference is that I will at least try to make them fit the world and make some kind of sense. It may not always be perfect, but I do care about making the story feel connected instead of completely random.
Also, for anyone hoping Jeanyx gets back solely with his "first children," especially since it has not even been fully revealed whether they are actually his or not, the answer is no.
Or at least, not solely.
The way I imagine Jeanyx is that even though he is slowly losing most of his memories of the future, he still remembers certain important things. One of those things is how small House Targaryen truly is compared to many other royal families. A lot of royal houses have multiple branches, cousins, side lines, and extended bloodlines under the same family name to keep the house alive. House Targaryen, by comparison, is dangerously small.
Because of that, Jeanyx would not realistically limit himself to just one wife forever. At most, he will probably have two or three wives. This is not because he is some deeply romantic person either. In fact, Jeanyx is not really romantic at all. He is fundamentally lazy, emotionally distant in a lot of ways, and not the kind of man who would naturally give one wife the constant attention and affection she would probably want.
If he only had one wife, at some point she would feel unloved, ignored, or neglected. That could create drama, but honestly, I'm too lazy to make that the main emotional conflict. So instead, his relationships will reflect who he actually is as a character: practical, powerful, distant, and more focused on legacy, survival, and control than romance.
So to put it simply, the early backstory is rough because it was never meant to be the polished heart of the book. It was the setup. It was the messy foundation. It was me throwing down pieces I knew I would use later, even if I had to improvise along the way.
Now that the story is reaching the main part, the writing is going to become more detailed, more intentional, and more connected. But I'm still going to have fun with it, because that is the whole reason I started writing this in the first place.