I described my impetus for getting started and the woman who inspired the project, but an account of my motivations wouldn't be complete without mentioning the failures of every fictional depiction of her that I have seen. She's mostly been treated as a supporting character in her more famous husband Jumong's story, which I understand. Jumong is a totally valid protagonist (who isn't?) and his life was better documented so he's in the lead more often.
My objection is that Soseono plays second fiddle even when she's the nominal protagonist. Seriously, I read a novel titled "Soseono" that started with her obsessing solely about Jumong for pages and pages, without any mention of Soseono other than the first paragraph establishing that these were her thoughts. I resisted the urge to hurl the damned book across the store, since then I'd have to pay for this crap.
Believe it or not, the supporting character portrayal was actually preferable to the one novel I read that acknowledged that Soseono had a life before and after Jumong, called Empress Soseono. That story was just a device for stringing together a bunch of rape scenes. At least the book acknowledged the existence of female-on-male rape (not Soseono but her evil stepmother), but it was mostly fail, fail, fail all around.
There are screen and stage portrayals of Soseono that don't entirely fail, but aren't that true to history. They also continue the linguistic error of treating "Soseono" as her name, when research should reveal that a) it's probably a place name, not a person name, and b) it wasn't pronounced that way by ancient Koreans.
TL; DR: In addition to being tremendously interested in Soseono's story, I was disappointed by the lack of well-written portrayals of the historical Soseono as a protagonist. So I decided to write it myself, and in English to bring her to a wider audience.
no subject
My objection is that Soseono plays second fiddle even when she's the nominal protagonist. Seriously, I read a novel titled "Soseono" that started with her obsessing solely about Jumong for pages and pages, without any mention of Soseono other than the first paragraph establishing that these were her thoughts. I resisted the urge to hurl the damned book across the store, since then I'd have to pay for this crap.
Believe it or not, the supporting character portrayal was actually preferable to the one novel I read that acknowledged that Soseono had a life before and after Jumong, called Empress Soseono. That story was just a device for stringing together a bunch of rape scenes. At least the book acknowledged the existence of female-on-male rape (not Soseono but her evil stepmother), but it was mostly fail, fail, fail all around.
There are screen and stage portrayals of Soseono that don't entirely fail, but aren't that true to history. They also continue the linguistic error of treating "Soseono" as her name, when research should reveal that a) it's probably a place name, not a person name, and b) it wasn't pronounced that way by ancient Koreans.
TL; DR: In addition to being tremendously interested in Soseono's story, I was disappointed by the lack of well-written portrayals of the historical Soseono as a protagonist. So I decided to write it myself, and in English to bring her to a wider audience.