Author Laura Sebastian discusses writing a heroine who fights with her mind, and the impact of trauma on the story of her new novel Ash Princess.

About ‘Ash Princess’ by Laura Sebastian

Theodosia was six when her country was invaded and her mother, the Fire Queen, was murdered before her eyes. On that day, the Kaiser took Theodosia’s family, her land, and her name. Theo was crowned Ash Princess–a title of shame to bear in her new life as a prisoner.

For ten years Theo has been a captive in her own palace. She’s endured the relentless abuse and ridicule of the Kaiser and his court. She is powerless, surviving in her new world only by burying the girl she was deep inside.

Then, one night, the Kaiser forces her to do the unthinkable. With blood on her hands and all hope of reclaiming her throne lost, she realizes that surviving is no longer enough. But she does have a weapon: her mind is sharper than any sword. And power isn’t always won on the battlefield.

For ten years, the Ash Princess has seen her land pillaged and her people enslaved. That all ends here.

Interview with Laura Sebastian

What was your initial inspiration for Ash Princess?

I think that all art we create is a response — conscious or unconscious — to the art we consume. With Ash Princess, it was definitely a conscious response to what we tend to think of as strong female characters. I wanted to create a world that was violently brutal and place a heroine in the center of it who was not made to survive it. I wanted to find a way for her to not just survive, but thrive in it and through that broaden what we think of as strong.

Your main character, Theo, is unique in that she has to rely almost entirely on her wits to survive and change her circumstances. What was it like to create a character like this?

My favorite fantasy books all have tough as nails heroines, who I love, but if I were in their worlds, I wouldn’t survive the prologue. I remember when Game of Thrones became popular and everyone would hate on Sansa but hold Arya up as an ideal heroine and it would always annoy me. They’re both well-developed and nuanced characters, but most people aren’t Arya with her Needle or Katniss with her bow or Eowyn slaying the Lord of the Nazgul. Most people would be lucky to be Sansa, because Sansa survives where most people would not.

So I wanted to write about a girl who should not have survived the prologue but somehow does, who uses the talents she does have to keep surviving against all odds.

Ash Princess uses fantasy to explore personal and national trauma — not easy subjects! How did you approach this, and how did you embody this struggle in your characters?

I tend to start with character and then figure out the world that would have shaped them into who they are. With Ash Princess, I knew it couldn’t be a kind world. I knew that if I was writing about a captive queen, I was writing about a conquered country and I didn’t want to pull any punches there.

I’ve always been a lover of history, but the tricky thing about history is that it’s often told from the perspective of the conqueror, so it was all about peeling back those layers and looking at the ugly parts of history that we often don’t talk about and how people would have been shaped by that on both sides.

There’s a moment toward the end where Theo says that she doesn’t think she’ll ever be alright and I think that’s important. Traumas like the ones the Astreans have suffered are not ones that can be neatly healed, not by the end of the book or even the end of the series, and I wanted to address the raw messiness of that.

Throughout the book, Theo struggles with the fact that some of the people she is closest to, like her friend Crescentia and Prinz Søren, are also her oppressors. What was it like to explore the dichotomy between friendship and political division?

I think that as someone who only had her oppressors for ten years, she had no choice but to find friendship with Cress. If she were completely isolated and alone I’m not sure she would have survived it, but she knows who Cress is and what side she’s on. She sees it in the way Cress treats Astreans who aren’t her. They use the term heart’s sisters — their version of BFFs — but Theo is also keeping huge parts of herself hidden from Cress because she can’t trust her with them, even though she loves her.

With Søren it’s a bit different, because he’s a relatively new person in Theo’s life. If Theo’s a twist on the princess trapped in a tower, Søren is a twist on the knight in shining armor. He sees her as someone he can save and he wants desperately to do that—but how can he save her from his own people? She manipulates that desire in some really fun ways.

Both of them see Theo as separate from the Astrean people — special. They treat her better because of it. But when that separation begins to bleed, they both make choices that were surprising to me as I was writing.

What was the most challenging part of writing Ash Princess? What did you find most rewarding?

The scenes of abuse were really difficult to write. I normally write a whole scene in one sitting, but with those I had to take breaks, walk, clear my head. I think they’re necessary to the book, but I hated writing them.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed writing Theo’s scenes with Søren, though maybe not for the obvious reasons. Because so much of it was her manipulating him and showing him what he wanted to see, there were so many layers to it, and once the layers begin to blur—well, it was definitely a challenge, but a rewarding one.

How did Ash Princess change most between your first draft and finished novel?

Cress’s character was probably the biggest change. Even when I was writing the first draft, I saw her as sort of a throwaway character. I remember giving the prologue and first chapter to the twelve year old I was babysitting for at the time and she came back and said that Cress was her favorite, which took me by surprise. She was so right, though. Their friendship added a necessary layer to the story. After the first draft, though, it got a lot tougher. I had to dig deeper into her character and pry open the uglier parts of her in order to explore how a girl like her, growing up in the world she’s grown up in, would react to the events of the story.

What was your approach to writing the villain of Ash Princess? Will Theo face different kinds of antagonists as her story continues?

The Kaiser is just evil in every facet of his personality, which was easy to write in a sense. I would just ask myself what the worst thing a person could do was and then amplify that by ten. It helped drive up the stakes of the story immediately and keep them going throughout the book. But villains wear many faces and I’m excited to show different kinds of more nuanced antagonists in future books. Evil doesn’t always announce itself as loudly as it does in the Kaiser and I wanted to write about the subtler kinds too — the kinds you might not recognize until their close enough to stab you in the back.

Which is easier for you to write, the first line or the last line?

My first line was the first thing I ever wrote for this book, even before I knew what it was about. It hasn’t changed since then. The last line was definitely trickier and changed quite a bit, but now it might be my favorite line in the book.

Do you need anything in order to write?

Coffee. Copious amounts of coffee. I tried switching to tea but that did not turn out well.

Would you rather be a book or a computer?

Definitely a book. Don’t get me wrong — I love my computer — but it’s a tool I use and every few years I need to replace it. The books I love, though, I intend to cherish for my entire life.

Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian is available on April 24 from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your local independent bookseller.