Notes on this Black Jewels AU

1) Everybody's alive, and everybody's happy (mostly).

As far as "Twilight's Dawn" is concerned, I'm fine with Daemon killing off Falonar, but not with what happened to Surreal and Rainier. Way too angsty for me, and I want Rainier to have a happy ending. Nothing else in TD relates to my AU.

This is a trilogy. "Saetan's Choice" is story #1. "Saetan & Sylvia Redux" is #2. The third story will be "In The Beginning" and has not yet been posted.

2) How the long-lived races age (Hayllian, Dhemlan, and Eyrien):

Bishop's general explanation is "fast growth, followed by long plateaus." My AU assumes that the weaker the Jewel/Caste, the sooner most of the long-lived Blood make their Offering, although not always. Jaenelle making her Offering at 20 is unusual, but her Birthright Jewels were Black and she's not one of the long-lived. But most Darker Jewels and high-caste Blood, like Saetan and Daemon, don't make the Offering for many decades.

3) Why Lanzo SaDiablo, Dorothea's husband, was not a true SaDiablo (Chapter 11):

In Queen of the Darkness, Saetan tells Surreal "...you have as much right to the name as Kartane SaDiablo." As a bastard Surreal has no right to the SaDiablo name at all (and why Daemon was given the surname Sadi, not SaDiablo). Saetan is obliquely saying that neither does Kartane have any right to the family name – e.g., he is not of Saetan's bloodline.

I believe that Mephis' SaDiablo bloodline was lost in the war between Kaeleer and Terreille started by his mother Hekatah; all living members of the SaDiablo family except Saetan died in the bloodshed. Saetan claims Surreal as a relative because he approves of her, not because she has any blood claim on him.

4) Saetan blurs the line between the living and the dead as no one has before:

Thanks to Jaenelle's potions, Saetan's body returns to living flesh. There is a real question whether he can continue such physicality when Witch dies. It's very likely her blood is in the strengthening potions she makes up for him. This might mean that once Jaenelle dies, even if she passes on the formula for her potion to Daemon and he uses his blood, the lesser potency will mean Saetan will begin to weaken again. And since Sylvia may only have another thousand years or so left to her, Saetan may wish to Fade with her rather than continue his half-life.

Saetan has done more to uphold the Old Ways than anyone else in the Blood's history. Allowing him to rejoin the living (at least for a time) and marry Sylvia was his reward from Lorn and Witch. They also have an ulterior motive unknown to anyone else - like Dorothea, they want Saetan's bloodline to be as prolific as possible. The more children to add Dark-Jeweled strength back into the Blood, the better.

Whether Daemon will take over the mantle of High Lord of Hell in my AU, hasn't been decided yet.

5) Who is Surreal's husband and where did he come from?

Bishop had two minor characters in different books that intrigued me. The first was Wyman, the wounded Warlord Daemon helps heal in "Heir to the Shadows". When Daemon disappears, Wyman and Surreal continue in a platonic relationship until she decides to search for Daemon again. Wyman never is referred to again. Then, much later on in The Shadow Queen, Butler is introduced as a mysterious spy sent by Jaenelle to join Sabrina's court. He is an aristo Blood male, and is a shadowy character who implies he is quite willing to kill Kermilla if Sabrina will say so, no Protocol reason required.

Killing a Queen can't be taken lightly, especially as Kermilla's a District Queen with an established Court. Yet Butler shows no fear of paying blood-price. So I thought, hmm, here's a man with manners but few morals...and long ago there was a man who spent months with Surreal in what was, as far as we know, one of the very few non-sexual relationships she allows. Most importantly, there's no mention that Surreal ever meets Butler in the canon.

What if...I assumed that those two men are one and the same man? These men never meet up; they're never described physically. We know Wyman killed a Queen; that's how he got injured to begin with. Butler, on his part, shows no compunction about offering to kill a Queen - and he wouldn't, if he's done it once before already.

Combining these two minor characters into someone Surreal would find common ground with, seemed perfect. Wyman accepts Surreal as she is, whore and assassin both, and can live with her moods. Butler has the superficial Court polish she needs to deal with her new Kaeleeran life, but has an underlying ruthlessness and black humor that meld well with a prickly, snarly, Gray-Jeweled witch.

6) Where does the SaDiablo name come from?

Saetan is pretty much the world's greatest father, as written by Bishop. He has a hard time keeping up with Witch, but he almost never puts a foot wrong with his two sons. And with those strong, angry, dominating personalities, isn't that interesting that he's so good with them? So perfectly what they need at just the right moment? He has so much stronger a relationship with his fourth and fifth sons, than he did with his first and second sons.

It's also interesting that Bishop uses all three of Saetan's names so often; no one else in her books is referred to in this way except for him. Yet Saetan is a bastard, the son of a unnamed whore. Where did he get those last two names? Just thinking about where the SaDiablo name came from, led me to some interesting speculation.

Before she married Saetan, Hekatah couldn't find any record of the surname SaDiablo in Hayll. Saetan is a common name in those times; her family has a footman with that same name. He was a bastard, yet became the most powerful Warlord Prince ever. Saetan is instinctively seductive - where did this come from? How was Daemon able to inherit this psychic trait? Bishop tries in Twilight's Dawn but fails to impress us with any other Blood male's seductive ability. Both Saetan and Daemon have an extraordinary and unusually high degree of sensual charm, much stronger than other Blood males. Even Surreal, a hardened whore, finds herself responding to the casual touches from Saetan during her first interview with him.

I don't agree with those who think Saetan's mother was uncaring and abusive. He's a very loving person...and you need to be loved, in order to learn to love. To be the kind of man he is, instinctively, deeply protective of women, shows a man who as a child was loved by his only parent. He might have been poor and had to fight to learn to survive - but he was loved, and knew it.

His protectiveness towards women stems from a childhood of wanting to protect the one woman in his life, his mother, but being unable to. He's compensating, and in the case of Hekatah, clearly over-compensating. As Titian points out, he isn't comfortable hurting or killing women. He'll do it, but he hates himself afterwards.

Thus, his mother couldn't give him a full surname as if she'd known the name of the father - e.g., Daemon is called Sadi instead of SaDiablo, and Lucivar is called Yasi instead of Yaslana, as they are considered bastards with known family surnames in Terreille (Book 1 of BJT).

So there was no shortened surname, as she didn't know who the father was. He must have been a stranger whom she met and who then left, never realizing she had become pregnant. I think his mother picked a surname which eventually became his midname, and Saetan picked his own surname - which will be in story #3, "In The Beginning" that will be posted soon.

7) Any more stories with Saetan?

I am working on a 'next generation' BJ story #4, but am having difficulty with it. If I ever do finish it, I'll publish it on this website. But so far, no go.