After the Worker Boards and People’s Representatives were proven corrupt, after people were starving on the streets and jobs were necessities to prove you were a citizen, even if you weren't being paid for the job in anything but stale bread and thin soup twice a day, after the revolution and the decision to end the Grand Experiment, they found a queen. They found her, rather where she had been all along, working quietly sewing jumpsuits to the standard requested sizes, taking her bread and soup and being grateful for it, and scraping up maybe a little extra on the side by designing and hand-sewing clothing for those who wanted something better, or by doing alternations to make the standard jumpsuits actually fit the people they were issued to. She knew that her great-grandfather had been king, and she knew that her grandmother and her father had both lived out their lives in hiding because people were still looking for them, and the money from their royal artifacts still continued well enough for them to scratch out a living at the level that people in those eras considered to be a living, meaning that their children all lived because doctors, food, and shelter could be afforded. The money had run out when she was ten, much to her father's--


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eholubow/10368696496/
Story potential: High.
Notes: And nobody here really knows what to do with royalty anymore. But they know she has to have a palace, so they put her back in the old one, that had temporarily been refitted to industry and then fallen abandoned. And there's basically not a budget. And it's a whole lot of rebuilding, that's kind of the whole story. And maybe there's some magical element, too. There's certainly some odd diplomatic stuff--kind of as if North Korea suddenly emerged from their isolation. And isn't this photo just gorgeous?

Save up all your USDs to go to British University if you expect to be able to have a job in the future galactic. Yeah, I know, it wasn't what we were expecting. America is the biggest, loudest, best! Or China or India, because they're the most populous. Possibly the Netherlands because they're oh-so-socially-advanced. Some impoverished African country that's only a country on the maps, if they wanted to really take over an area. A polite, well-mannered country a bit past its prime, stuck on a tiny island, with a relatively small population, that has its own problems? Not so much. The only reason the galactics gave was that they "liked their attitude." Some of us figure that means they were really tickled by the Dr. Who series sent streaming out into the galaxy! Others think it's based on the colonial history of England, which is a much more sinister interpretation if you think of it. Of course, this announcement has prompted some ridiculous attempts at copying Everything British, as people try to figure out how to get on the galactics' good side.


Inspiration: "Prince Harry" - Sohodolls
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: But it is funny.

It was very hard work being a Fool. One had to be entertaining, and funny, and do pratfalls, and make oneself a spectacle--while still pointing out the pomposity that rulers and those who surrounded them might be prone to. Puncturing the egos of the rich and powerful, without going so far as to make them kill you. It was even harder to be the Fool in Trilandia, for one also had to please the Queen--ahem. Literally. That required a good-looking, strong man who could still leave the impression that he was nothing of the sort. And one must please the queen without allowing others to know you'd gone that far and making them kill you. He'd clearly failed at least in one respect--

Inspiration: The book cover of Fool's War.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Meh. Nothing new here.

It was precisely what she'd wanted, and that made her furious. She'd set an impossible task. In order to marry her daughter, which was what every knight who came to the castle wanted, he'd had to figure out the perfect gift for the queen. He had. She was so angry that she nearly hurled it across the long corridor of flagstones, but she couldn't. It really was that perfect. She looked at the knight kneeling before her, his head bowed to await her verdict. He was a nice man, a gentle man, a man who was clever and smart and skilled and-- Her daughter would make his life hell.

Inspiration: Finding exactly the program I wanted.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: I really *like* the idea of a wicked step-daughter instead of a wicked step-mother, an evil princess instead of an evil queen. It would be a nice twist for a romance.

The mikado had been restored to power by the invaders. Nobody really knew what to think of this, least of all the mikado, who had been only a little boy when the invaders had come and fought a decades long war that destroyed the world, killed his entire family, and left him living on the street and singing for his keep. Singing, he insisted against the raised eyebrows of those who knew how young boys forced to live on the streets usually earned their keep. Yet, when asked to sing, he would only ever shake his head and say that there was no need, and the singing was only for if there was need. Some wags made jokes about "flesh flutes," but though the mikado had no experience with ruling in the past, those who made the jokes, and those who laughed at them, had disappeared--

Inspiration: A historical entry about the mikado being restored to power.
Story Potential: High? Ish?
Notes: It might be too much of a jumble of things. The Japanese emperor, an alien invader, a royal heir restored, some magical singing power...or all these disparate elements might be a good thing.