Along the lines of my previous post, this is me, listing all the niggling details I kinda need to figure out for the Alanna-isn't-Champion AU. Sorta spoilers, for the work in progress, though not in terrible detail. This is mostly to keep things straight in my head, but if anyone has any opinions or suggestions, those're always welcome. :)
1. Who becomes training master. This actually isn't so much a detail caused by the AU, but one caused by the canon timeline; Duke G. has his heart attack in LR, and then three years later Wyldon becomes training master. Did he take over for the duke? If not, who was training master between the two?
In this AU, I am sticking with Duke G. being training master up through the coronation, and then after, there's a problem, because I'm pretty sure in this 'verse that the heart attack causes his retirement, but that means I either move Wyldon up three years, put someone else in there before Wyldon, or simply don't make Wyldon training master in this 'verse at all. I have an option I rather like if I go the no-Wyldon route, but Wyldon as training master'd be equally interesting.
2. What happens to Neal. I am not at all sure he decides to become a knight late in this AU, but if he doesn't, it creates a whole host of problems when it comes to Kel's assimilation into her cohort.
3. Alanna's kids. Just for the sake of limiting the number of timeline wrinkles I have to wrangle with, I know she still has them, and I am (at least for the moment) keeping to the canon timeline of when she has them; for all that she implies in LR that she wants to wait on kids, by the timeline, she doesn't really, to my eyes, wait all that long. (Four years, I think.)
Thom I am keeping canon; he'd go to university, given what little we know of him, whether Alanna was Champion or not. Alan and Aly ... are problems. Alan's only a problem because of the lateness of when he canonically goes for page training; I need to decide, for this AU, if he goes at the normal time (three years earlier than canon), or doesn't go at all.
Aly, I don't even know. George is still spymaster, like in canon, and so I'm pretty sure that like in canon he's been teaching his kids tricks, and Aly's taken to them like a duck to water. But even if she has that epic fight with Alanna over spying, I'm not at all sure there's an opportunity for her to get kidnapped by pirates.
Then again, part of what makes DotL so unsatisfying to me is that Kyprioth is constantly meddling, and I thought it was at least implied that the whole reason Aly even got kidnapped in the first place was that Kyp arranged it. So he might still find a way to meddle, IDK.
4. What happens with Carthak. I'm pretty sure that everything through WS happens roughly as it does in canon; all the impact my AU has on the events in WM and at Dunlath are a few switches of who's where when, and those are for secondary characters, or a few alterations of motivation.
EM becomes a problem, because of the embassy. I am not sure who ends up sent, entirely; given one person who likely would end up there, I'm not sure the plot turns out at all like canon. Which is absolutely fine by me, but it leads to the question of if the Immortals War even happens in this AU ... which, now that I think on it, ties directly back to #2.
5. I shouldn't even really number this, because Kel's story, despite being quite a bit different in her page and possibly her squire years, still ends up in the same place. I think. Kel is strangely unaffected, ultimately, by AUs, I find. XD But, I dunno. I kinda feel either like she should be more affected by this one, or like there's something I'm really missing here.
