• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Wow, what a fantastic choice! Fondest congratulations!

I've long said that Solomon of Itil stands head and shoulders over everything else I know in AARland, and exactly because of the fantastic characterisation of Solomon! I'm very happy that it's finally getting some "official" recognition.

And, TemplarComander -- I totally envy you that it was you and not I who could pass this award to phargle! :D And belated congrats also to you, btw; sorry for missing you last week.
 
Thank you for the kind words. It is a surprise to receive this award, and nice to hear so many nice things said about the story. I am grateful to TemplarComander for the recognition, and surprised that my story got his attention. The interconnections of AARland continue to delight me. I don't have a speech ready, so I apologize if this is awkward.

Solomon of Itil is hard to write. It's a story about one character due to the format of the story, but in many ways has two characters because of the role played by Miraglia as seen through Solomon's eyes. I will write the story for a few updates and then lose steam. To keep the mood consistent, I go back and re-read the entire AAR each time I return to the story. I know I've done something right with the writing because some of the updates feel alien, like someone else - someone who writes well - did them. They trigger an emotional response when I read them. That's a nice feeling. The story is fundamentally depressing, and writing it puts me in an artificial funk each time I post an update. It's also fundamentally a love story (a rare thing in these parts, I've noticed). As you can imagine, there's a bit of an emotional rollercoaster involved in putting myself into Solomon's head. I am not an emotional or depressed person (nor is Solomon, despite the story being both), so it's an unfamiliar place to be.

I like to tell myself that the story is a secret shared between me and my readers. It's a joke about the AAR having an active readership of a couple of readers and a few lurkers. I know it's a specialty AAR, and I treasure the readers the insights they bring. This may be why it feels weird to have any attention shed on the story. Part of the pathos of writing Solomon is from the knowledge that only a few people read what he has to say. The writing is all the more lonely as a result. I hope that loneliness has been apparent in the writing.

I had an obvious and glaring choice on who to select as my successor to this award. I also wanted to be fair and give other AARs a chance, to spread the award out, as it were, so I charitably decided to go with my number two choice. . . which has already won this award three times in the last several months. It turns out charity is the mother of dumb decisions. My number one choice is it.

It is fitting that this award be given to this character as the curtain falls on his life. Once again, the Best Character Writer of the Week award shall go to The_Guiscard for Serlo de Hauteville. Serlo is a great character, a hero, and as close a peer to Solomon as a Christian Norman may claim to be.
 
Congrats!:)
 
A belated congratulations to phargle, and congrats to The Guis!
 
Congrats Guiscard. A fitting tribute to the memory of Serlo. :)
 
Congratulations The_Guiscard :)
 
Ahh my fondest congratulations to all the winners I've missed ! Congrats to XHR , Brandenburg III , TemplarCommander (and I'm so happy that you are enjoying the glory that is Kurt and Peti as well XD) , phargle with a big welcome back ! and also The_Guiscard whose talents we have all missed ! A hearty welcome back to the last two especially and I had great fun reading all the great speeches of late ! Keep up the good work !
 
Congratulations :) Well deserved!
 
Congratulations The_Guiscard! I miss Serlo already. :(
 
A big “Thank you“ to phargle for nominating me, and more “Thank yous“ to all you kind well-wishers.

I am really very happy to receive this award. It is both a very nice “Welcome back” to myself and an even nicer “Farewell” to Serlo de Hauteville, now that he has exited the stage. And it is indeed for Serlo that I am happier about this award than for myself – I guess one could say that he has really grown on me. Not bad for a basically random choice of a character from the game-play to tell the story with, I reckon.

It is not fishing for compliments when I do sometimes voice my misgivings with my own writing, how I do often consider it tripe I am deeply unhappy with. But then some kind soul comes along and reminds me how Furor Normannicus and its characters, first and foremost Serlo de Hauteville, seem to resonate emotionally with quite a few people, and I realize again how resonating emotionally with people is far from nothing, shortcomings of the writing aside. On this level, too – maybe more on this than on any other – it is therefore wonderful to receive this award as a reminder that some people are really touched by my characters. Thank you.

Well, now for a successor. Having been away from AARland for quite some time, this choice has not been an easy one – I am not as up to date with what’s going on as I used to be and many of the few AARs I am currently following have recently received awards or are of a style unsuitable for the “Character Writer” award. So I did some reading around, which was not easy amid the business of the weeks preceding Christmas.

To cut a long story short, with all those constraints, I have been unable to follow my original intention of passing the award out of the Crusader Kings subforum. It just has to go to one of the best CK AARs that are on, an AAR that has many delightfully drawn characters, but with none as appealing to me personally as Princess Gro Svendsdatter. I am of course speaking of


I hope the nomination finds the community’s full approval, and that Saithis will now finally write the new chapter that’s already overdue. ;)
 
Congratulations Saithis !