Three Lives is a low fantasy short story about friendship, trust, and love-with a hint of magic.

Three Lives focuses more on relationships than character descriptors, but there was still an appearance type in mind. It was important that Perdita was a person of color and Constantine had a more ‘quintessential’ beauty to her. There was much more freedom with Ermingild’s look and ended up making him red haired – at first I had played around with him being a brunette. As for attire, I gave each character a lot of thought and incorporated symbolism into their wardrobe – everything has meaning from colors to decorations.

Aesthetic Symbolism

Creating a visual narrative was very important, and while no attire was described in detail, each prince and princess had a specific symbol they shared with their royal knight, signifying the pairings. A petunia flower became the ‘sub-house’ emblem that embellished Perdita’s and Constantine’s clothes and armor.

Petunias represents anger and resentment, however they also symbolize a desire to spend time with someone who soothes you. There is no other flower that so perfectly portrays the duality of Perdita’s affections towards Constantine.

Purple was chosen as the petunia’s color palette due to it’s visual versatility. The color could represent both light and dark aspects; light purple gracing Perdita’s royal garbs and Constantine’s royal knight’s armor as a color of nobility, femininity and mystery, while dark purple would represent sadness and frustration and perfectly serve as the color of a dark knight’s armor.

While lavender represents beauty and femininity, too little purple brings out feelings of powerlessness, negativity, and apathy. The purple in her royal dress seems to be swallowed up by yellow, which can represent deceit.

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