I was called to the home of Darrel Marks and Tracey Gonzalez the other night, they had a problem with a ghost. Darrel, if you remember, was my first high school crush. And Tracey is his current girlfriend.
It wasn’t just any ghost. It was one of those ghosts in Medieval dress. And she was not happy with me. This was my toughest ghost yet.
She was difficult to catch, too. My first attempt to zap her with the Banshee Blaster was an abysmal failure. Even though I am a Level 8 ghost hunter, I can and do fail first attempts from time to time, painful as it is for me to admit. So, she approached me.
“You are a lack-witted cur for doing this to me,” she said in a haughty accent that sounded a little like Old Simlish and a little like British and a little like French. By the accent, I could tell that she had been of the nobility.
Finally I attempted for the second time to vanquish this pesky ghost. By the time I was done it was two in the morning and I was exhausted.
Despite myself, I gathered a name, Alys de Montfort, and a cause of death, a wizard’s spell gone awry.
The next day at brunch I brooded over Alys de Montfort. I had to find out everything I could about her.
While on a visit to my parents’ I grabbed my laptop and typed in “Alys de Montfort”…
Alys de Montfort had been of Norman heritage through her father’s side of the family. She ascended the throne of the kingdom of Arkovia after her father, King Edward, had been killed in a swordfight by his own nephew, Prince Michael. When she was a young girl she had been subjected to lessons in etiquette and manners given by her father’s aunt, Cordelia, but she also secretly took lessons in magic and wizardry from a visiting alchemist.
Alys de Montfort was a very scholarly and learned queen. She built what was then the largest library on the continent in her castle.
She sought to secure and consolidate her power by issuing edicts. Her first edict was that her murderous cousin was not allowed to set foot in Arkovia again.
Realizing that her hold on the throne was tenuous until she married, Alys cleverly held off all her suitors, constantly telling them that she would consider their proposals even though she had no intention of ever getting married. The most persistent of her suitors was the Merchant Prince of Tredony.
Alys enjoyed long jaunts through the forests surrounding her castle, where she would occasionally hunt bears. Her advisers hated this and constantly complained about it.
She was noted for having a bit of a temper; her advisers hated this and called it ‘unladylike.’
She also had some skills in sword fighting. She once had to defend herself against a bandit.
When she asked for money to build a magic laboratory in the castle, her royal advisers refused; instead she appropriated some of her dowry money to do it.
A magic experiment gone wrong is the generally accepted reason historians give for Alys de Montfort’s death; attempts to revive her failed. After her death, Arkovia fell to the Nimbans from the far north; the kingdom was never fully the same.
After the medieval period, most of the provinces were split up and boundaries realigned. I didn’t realize Sunset Valley was this old. Apparently it was built on the ruins of one of the ancient provinces.
A thousand Sim years ago, a remarkable woman named Alys de Montfort became queen of a distant land. How did her ghost wind up in Sunset Valley, at the home of my ex-crush and his current girlfriend?
With those questions in mind, I began the draft of my third book.
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