Conclusion to the trilogy

Well, writing these words right now sure feels unreal, to say the least. After all, it is the conclusion to the “The Daughters of the Sun” trilogy… Quite the unexpected trilogy, but it all started with O2A2, right?

How this game ended up happening

My first participation in an O2A2 game jam was for the special queer edition which was held last year, for which I released Kissing Snow-White, an ace rewriting of the “true love’s kiss”. So, when the actual O2A2 2023 jam was approaching, I knew I wanted to participate because I had fun developing the short game, but of course, it was important to get an idea which would work within the restrictions of the jam: less than 1,000 words, using only one sprite, one background and one music track.

And what better tool than classical French tragedy from the 17th century! Imitating their Greek counterparts, these plays happen in one day, in one room and revolve around one central action (they are therefore very different from the English tragedies that were written at the same time, and for example, the hints of humour you can find in Romeo and Juliet would completely be considered inappropriate in a classical French tragedy).

But long story short, French classical theatre works with very restrictive rules (the “one place, one day, one action”, called “rule of the three units”, is only one of the rules), and if comedy is more permissive (for example, it could be written in either prose or verse), tragedies were considered as the ultimate excellency of writing, and playwrights shone through their restrictions, using them to enhance their stories; those who just worked under them never reached the heights of the genre.

Nowadays, two main tragedy writers from this era are remembered: Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine but it is in general admitted, even by those who prefer Corneille, that Racine is the master of the genre, writing dramatic plays, focusing on characters’ paving the way to their own destruction, and in which love and hatred are the two sides of a same coin. And if Juliet says, in the famous Shakespeare’s play, “my only love sprung from my only hate”, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear one of Racine’s character say the opposite (and it actually exists, in Andromache, one of his plays, Hermione shouts: “Ah! I loved him too much not to hate him!”).

And one play amongst all of Racine’s masterpieces is considered as his masterpiece: Phaedra, narrating how the eponymous character struggles to fight her incestuous feelings for her step-son, is the peak of two centuries of art (as classical theatre was mostly written during the 17th and 18th centuries; the 19th century, under Victor Hugo’s impulsion, brought much needed modernity to theatre and poetry, getting rid, for example, of the rule of the three units).

So, Phaedra isn’t just a play: it’s a monument, and an example of what beauty can bloom when one works under the yoke of strict restrictions. So I thought it would be a perfect inspiration for O2A2! It would moreover be self-indulging, considering this play holds a lot of significance for me, but I’ll detail this later in this devlog.

Of course, Phaedra was too rich for an O2A2 project, especially considering it includes several characters and, well, 1,654 verses, so definitely more than 1,000 words. So I decided to focus on one scene, revolving around a single character and who else but Phaedra herself? The idea of focusing on her ultimate suicide felt natural to me. Of course, I had to tweak things around (for example, in the actual play, Phaedra actually confesses everything to Theseus, rather than speaking to herself, and doesn’t mention Ariadne and Pasiphaë in this scene), but I was set on the idea.

I then remembered a film I watched in 2021, named Annette, I suppose most of you must have at least heard of it. I won’t really spoil it, as it is a rather enjoyable feature as a blind experience, but one of its major themes is the depiction of violence women undergo in fiction, how it is often depicted to the sake of men, and how it influences the way we treat, or dare I say, instrumentalise women. I thought it would be an interesting approach for this O2A2 project: after all, the basis of the myth is Aphrodite taking revenge on the Sun because he humiliated her, and doing so by cursing in love his female descendants. Hence the title of the first game of the trilogy, “The Daughters of the Sun” (despite Phaedra technically being his granddaughter). I especially enjoyed the idea as I thought of a good way to portray different characters (Phaedra, Pasiphaë and Ariadne) using O2A2 restrictions and Ren’Py colour matrixes.

I had a lot of fun and pleasure developing it, fell in love with Justine’s voice acting for the three characters (I swear this trilogy is a testament to her skills and versatility as a voice actress), and was pleasantly surprised with people enjoying this game, because it felt like they were enjoying this play I adored so much.

However, most reviews raised an interesting point: everyone seemed to agree that Phaedra was the victim of Aphrodite, doomed to love her step-son because of a cruel goddess. And I have to quote this specific rating, because it was iconic:

One thing about this particular rating struck me: all the men were perceived as similar trash, be it the Sun, Theseus and, most importantly, Hippolytus. This single rating gave me the idea of making a game from Hippolytus’ perspective. I feared Phaedra’s perspective clouded the real situation: he is a teenage boy who received a love confession from his step-mother. Then, I figured out I could make a game about the actual confession scene. In the end, I had some sort of roadmap for a trilogy: The Daughters of the Sun, the game narrating Phaedra’s confession to Hippolytus from the former’s perspective; Son of the Woods, the game narrating the confession from the latter’s point of view; and finally, The Thread and the Sword, the actual confession, letting the player draw their own conclusions.

So, I kept the idea in mind. When autumn arrived, I was hit with seasonal depression and started hating everything I created, only seeing the flaws and not the qualities. So, I decided to work on Son of the Woods: if anything, it should be Racine-inspired, and it should at least be good to some extent.

Well, the game took me out of the seasonal depression, as I really enjoyed working on it. I enjoyed shaping Hippolytus’ character and working outside the restrictions of O2A2 for this sequel to The Daughters of the Sun. I was fortunate enough to work with Dylan, who offered an amazing performance as Hippolytus. His role, in both Son of the Woods and The Thread and the Sword, requires a youthfulness, a ruthlessness and yet an innocence not easy to capture, and he did so brilliantly.

Now, Son of the Woods is the game of the trilogy which is the most different from Racine’s play. Racine indeed took a very unique direction with Hippolytus’ character: he made him fall in love. Now, this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I think it is, because of one rule in classical tragedy: when adapting mythical characters, they have to appear as they do in the myths. For example, Achilles has to be impulsive and impetuous; Odysseus has to be clever; Phaedra has to be in love with Hippolytus etc. 

Well, mythical Hippolytus’ main trait is the following: he is a misogynist. He hates women, sees them as the reason for corruption of the world, and goes as far as saying that he finds comfort in his own mother’s death because he is now allowed to hate all women without distinction in Seneca’s play. So, although Racine justifies his choice by pointing out an author who did make Hippolytus fall in love with Aricia, it is still a choice that is quite unexpected.

However, I believe it was a good choice: first, it gave us an amazing scene, in which Phaedra has a fit of jealousy, horrified at the realisation Hippolytus isn’t closed to all women, but closed to her; before realising she is now so low that she dares be jealous of a woman because she got her step-son’s heart. Moreover, it made it easier to sympathise with Hippolytus: the Greeks and the Romans certainly weren’t bothered by misogyny, but I think we can all agree it is something that would make the character pretty detestable.

So, I got rid of the misogyny and Aricia. Instead, I dared to apply my own headcanon onto Hippolytus, and rewrote him as an aro-ace character. What I kept from both mythical and Racinian Hippolytuses is his immaculate virtue and his pride, and that’s what framed his character in Son of the Woods: an asexual, aromantic teenager failing to understand how his step-mother could have developed incestuous feelings for him, wondering if he did something to enable everything that happens in The Thread and the Sword, seeing it as a stain on his honour, virtue and pride. And when The Daughters of the Sun’s core theme was “depiction of women being sacrificed for men”, Son of the Woods’ one was “self-inflicted victim-blaming”.

This now leads us to discuss the game you’re currently reading a devlog of…

The Thread and the Sword

The Thread and the Sword is the last entry of this trilogy, and is certainly the heaviest. While I think The Daughters of the Sun is still the saddest of the three, this one is the most intense, the most dramatic and the most frightening.

But before anything, I have to thank all the voice actors who made it true.

Justine really did an amazing job for this whole trilogy, and I can’t emphasise it enough. Phaedra’s role is one of the hardest of French theatre: she is a lover, she is a Queen, she is mad, she is depressed, she is jealous, she is desperate, well, she alone explores all the nuances of terror and pity a tragic character can explore. And if that wasn’t enough, The Daughters of the Sun also put Justine in Pasiphaë’s and Ariadne’s shoes.

She really captured the essence of the character: all her regal dignity and yet, all her vulnerability and her weakness. Well, this is easy to pity Phaedra with The Daughters of the Sun; it however becomes harder after Son of the Woods, since the game displays the consequences of Phaedra’s terrible love for Hippolytus, a teenager who never asked for any of it. The Thread and the Sword articulates both Phaedra’s furor and pain, all soaked in her love for Hippolytus and her self-hatred. And while it is easy to despise her and see her actions with horror (understandably so), managing to sympathise enough with her pain is a harder task: and Justine did it so wonderfully, her performance broke my heart and then sent shivers down my spine at the climax of the game.

I also want to emphasise how a perfect fit for Hippolytus Dylan is: most actors, even theatre ones I watched, fail to portray the young prince’s fragility and vulnerability, while maintaining his pride and his roughness. If anything, most actors just play him as dignified, like any other tragic Prince. This is a huge mistake. This is how Hippolytus himself, in Racine’s play, characterises his own feelings for Aricia when confessing them: “Perhaps the tale of so wild a love will make you/Blush, hearing me, at all your charms could do” in Kline’s translation; and for the pleasure, here is the French quote: “Peut-être le récit d’un amour si sauvage/Vous fait, en m’écoutant, rougir de votre ouvrage.”

More than that, Hippolytus is compared to “a tiger” (“Ce tigre que jamais je n’abordais sans crainte” litt. “This tiger I never approached without fear”, as Phaedra says), and even the first scene of the play describes him as more comfortable in the woods than in Athens’ court. So I think his roughness is capital to his character.

Dylan nailed it: his Hippolyus is a Prince, but he made him sound impetuous and proud, and articulated his wildness with a youthfulness most stage directors ignore in the character, failing to see how his young age makes his situation more tragic. If he certainly is older than fifteen, he is nowhere older than eighteen. I think it is tied to a common misconception about Phaedra: most of the time, she is played by actresses in their fifties, when she certainly isn’t older than thirty, certainly as close in age to Hippolytus as she is to Theseus.

But here is Dylan’s genius: without making Hippolytus any less proud or rough, he made him as vulnerable as someone forced to confront his own fragility can be.

I also want to thank Ariana and Robert for their performances as respectively Oenone and Theramenes. If Theramenes isn’t that developed a character in Racine’s play, there definitely are interesting things to say about Oenone: however, the “The Daughters of the Sun” trilogy doesn’t really do her justice, although it suggests her devotion to Phaedra. They both offered great and very fitting performances, really helping in making this game an even fuller experience.

And while I’m thanking people, I will also thank Chatter, Len and Butter for beta-testing the game again, despite me not expecting to get this one beta-tested. Their feedback was rich and interesting and really contributed to the quality of the game.

Now, The Thread and the Sword is a peculiar game, as it is the culmination of everything The Daughters of the Sun and Son of the Woods have set up. And if the influence from the former is more obvious, I hope you guys manage to see how Son of the Woods has influenced it.

So, the game is the most faithful to Racine’s play out of the three: if you forget that I gave Hippolytus a few more lines, the dialogue in this game is a translation of the fifth scene of the second act, the best scene of French theatre: Phaedra’s confession to Hippolytus.

This scene is the most important of the play, the one that shouldn’t be failed under any circumstances. This is the scene where Phaedra reveals herself as a monster, and yet, a monster that knows her true nature and hates herself for it. This is the moment she embodies this description Racine makes of her in the preface: “Phaedra is neither completely guilty, nor completely innocent.” She is both miserable and furious in this scene, embodying all the “terror” and “pity” Aristotle expects from a tragic hero.

To explain how genius this scene is, I offer to examine four authors: Euripides, Seneca, Racine and Pradon (who was a rival to Racine, writing a play about the same subject at the same time, even stealing the Aricia idea from him).

The confession scene in Euripides’ play will be quickly examined: it doesn’t exist. Phaedra’s wetnurse (the character Racine names “Oenone”) goes to see Hippolytus to confess her mistress’ love OFF-STAGE. We only see Phaedra react to the scene and hide herself before Hippolytus arrives on stage, horrified, before being misogynistic (“O Zeus, why did you ever set women in our sunlit world to lead men astray with their corrupting ways?”, in Johnston’s translation). If Hippolytus’ horror is very palpable, the scene ends up being too rhetorical in my opinion and, obviously, not making Phaedra confront Hippolytus is a mistake.

Seneca, centuries later, truly improves the scene: if it alas still starts on a more rhetorical discussion about the beauty of ancient golden ages, and how women ruined it all between Hippolytus and the nurse, Phaedra arrives and, upon seeing Hippolytus, suffers much. The Prince supposes the reason is her widowhood and reassures her, promising Theseus will come back: Phaedra answers he certainly won’t as nobody meets death twice, before seeing Theseus in Hippolytus and accidentally confessing her love to him, explaining the love Ariadne had for the father is similar to the one she feels for his son. Hippolytus immediately wants to slay Phaedra to punish this crime, but stops midway, considering her blood will soil him. Seneca is the one to bring the idea of the sword Hippolytus leaves on the ground being what Phaedra and her wetnurse will use to frame him for rape later in the play when Theseus comes back. And in my opinion, the scene is immensely better than Euripides’, and it’s no surprise that it inspired Racine. However, it is not perfect: Phaedra’s wetnurse encouraging her earlier to confess her love to Hippolytus is a horrible idea, and we fail to see how Phaedra could be regretful after that.

Racine improves upon this: Phaedra has to see Hippolytus because of Theseus’ death: not only do they have to discuss the ruling of Athens, she wants to make sure the years she spent bullying Hippolytus, even forcing Theseus to exile him, so that she would ease her burning passion, doesn’t have unfortunate consequences for her sons, younger than the Prince. Oenone plays a smaller role, not even talking with Hippolytus. It’s all about Phaedra talking as her passion for Hippolytus grows bigger and bigger inside. And when her ardour gets the best of her, her step-son suspects it is because of her affection for Theseus. Then, the first tirade of Phaedra, and almost an exact translation from Seneca: of course, she loves… Theseus, but she loved the young hero who defeated the Minotaur, the one who looked just like Hippolytus. In the end, she narrates the famous myth, but picturing herself as her own sister, Ariadne, and putting Hippolytus in Theseus’ shoes. And only Racine could have concluded with a magnificent “Et Phèdre, au labyrinthe, avec vous descendue,/Se serait avec vous retrouvée ou perdue !” (“And Phaedra, plunging with you into the Labyrinth,/Would have returned with you, or have herself perished!” in Kline’s translation). This channels Hippolytus’ anger and horror, and Phaedra quickly pretends it is all a misunderstanding, before revealing the whole truth: she has loved him for years. After that, she ends up begging Hippolytus to kill her and, considering he doesn’t act on it, she takes his sword for him, to die by her own hands. She gets interrupted by Oenone, who drags her away. Well, I am not sure I can be objective since this scene is honestly the best thing I’ve ever encountered in my life: the furor, the passion, the pain, the shame, everything that Phaedra feels is palpable and visceral. Even the rhythm of the verses goes from long moans of pain to rushed passionate words barely giving her enough time to breathe.

Pradon’s take is way inferior: first of all, he’s the only author I know who places Phaedra’s confession to Hippolytus after Theseus comes back. This is, in my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes one can make adapting this myth. Theseus is believed dead and that’s why Pheadra ends up telling Hippolytus about her love: she wouldn’t do that with her husband alive. So that’s why Theseus being revealed alive in the best plot twist I’ve ever experienced cements the tragedy: if it’s not the most surprising plot twist, it dooms Phaedra and Hippolytus, because the truth is now out there. To say, this reveal is so important that it is the 827th verse of a 1654-verse-long play: “Le Roi qu’on a cru mort va paraître à vos yeux” (“The King, thought dead, will appear before your face” in Kline’s translation). So, Phaedra confessing her love to Hippolytus after Theseus came back just makes her look stupid in Pradon’s version. Moreover, she does so to blackmail him regarding Aricia’s fate in this play: so, in the end, she doesn’t even confess her love because she is overwhelmed by it… What can I say, this play isn’t a good tragedy…

And now, here I am, releasing what is my own take on this mythical scene (not exactly my own take, as The Daughters of the Sun canon isn’t exactly how I would reinterpret the myth, but you get me).

As I said, this game is very faithful to Racine’s interpretation: if Racine did translate Seneca for Phaedra’s first tirade, before still giving it another conclusion, the rest of his scene is mostly original; on the other hand, this game is less me using Racine as a base and building around (similarly to what I did with The Daughters of the Sun), and more me actually stage-directing this scene. There is mostly one thing I emphasised here: Hippolytus’ refusal of this situation.

In Racine’s play, when Phaedra begs for Hippolytus' sword, she throws herself onto him, screaming “Give!”, and then takes the blade from him to stab herself but gets interrupted by Oenone. Hippolytus is silent, waiting for Theramenes to come in to express the horror he feels. I changed that, making Hippolytus explicitly state that he doesn’t want to lend Phaedra his sword (because he doesn’t say a word in the play, some adaptations even make him give Phaedra the blade: I wouldn’t say it’s a mistake, but I think it’s misinterpreting the scene).

Perhaps you laughed when I wrote “Pheadra begs for Hippolytus’ sword”... well then, stop laughing because this is what the game is about: I use this scene as a metaphor for a rape. While I think the sword as a metaphor for a phallus is already present in Racine and even Seneca’s takes (after all, Phaedra begs Hippolytus to use his sword to penetrate her chest), the novel part here is the framing of this situation as a rape attempt.

And therefore, I guess it goes without saying, but I wanted to channel horror and, admittedly, a bit of pity with this one, basically, to make it tragic according to the Aristotelian criteria. When The Daughters of the Sun wanted to make you feel majestic sadness; when Son of the Woods wanted to make you feel pity for Hippolytus; this one, The Sword and the Thread, is a game meant to make you feel uncomfortable and confused about what you’re supposed to feel. Now, I don’t know if I achieved that, but I hope I managed.

Other than that, I didn’t alter Racine’s scene: I really find it perfect, and changing anything would have been criminal.

Now, in terms of coding, this one is definitely more ambitious than the two previous ones: it did borrow ideas from its predecessor – after all, we needed some thematic continuity. Besides the sword, there is however the introduction of a new motif: the thread. The thread of destiny. Ariadne’s thread. A thread Phaedra rips apart when she takes the sword from Hippolytus at the end of the game.

I won’t go into analysis because analysing my own work will feel obnoxious; however, I sincerely hope you guys enjoy this game, because it is…

(Bonus for anyone curious: my actual very personal take on this scene would involve Hippolytus reassuring Phaedra, even after her confession, telling her that she isn’t doomed because of her love; he trusts her and is convinced she will stop loving him with time, especially now that she let this thing out: she doesn’t need to carry all by herself. The tragedy, however, still happens when Phaedra, pushed by her son, frames Hippolytus when Theseus comes back, therefore breaking his trust and becoming truly deserving of the tragedy… but that’s a story for another time!)

A very personal game

Although this game isn’t my most personal (The Day Being Ace Made Him Stronger is), I’ll admit it is still very personal to me.

Something to know about me is that I love Racine’s Phaedra, and that this scene, the fifth of the second act, is my favourite piece of media ever. It has greatly influenced my work.

If you guys played High School Lolita – my crushing love story, the parallelism between Matthieu and Phaedra is obvious; and actually, more than Humbert Humbert from Lolita, it’s Phaedra that has shaped his character. If anything, even the first game I worked on, La Vie en Rose, involves a scene in which Isaac and Elijah are rehearsing the dispute between Hippolytus and Theseus for their theatre class (Theseus’ attitude being the inspiration for Isaac’s attitude in the “vivid” route, while Hippolytus’ is meant to mirror his attitude in the “grey” route).

I’ll even drop it here, you deserve to read it if you reached this point: one of the things that has inspired The Daughters of the Sun is… Margarêve, my dream project, which even has its own twitter account. Without giving away too many details, Margarêve focuses on the dreams of the main character, 15-yo Margaret. And well, one of the scrapped ideas for the dreams was around The Daughters of the Sun: one variant of the dream would tell you Ariadne’s story, another variant Pasiphaë and the last one… is what ended up being The Thread and the Sword, and was focused on Phaedra.

Now, these variants were determined by three core notions of Margarêve: amor, dolor and nefas, inspired by Latin tragedies (although the actual terminology for Latin tragedies is “amor – furor – nefas”). “Amor” evokes love of course: in Margarêve, it consists of sweet, peaceful dreams. “Dolor” is linked to pain and woe, and in Margarêve, the “dolor” dreams are melancholic dreams, filled with sorrowful characters. The “nefas” notion is more complicated, but it’s used to describe a character who left humanity because of their actions: more than a human, the character who went through nefas is now a mythical monster. In Margarêve, the “nefas” dreams are the violent one, portraying inhuman characters, doing the worst humanity can do.

And this whole “amor – dolor – nefas” dream is at the centre of Margarêve’s symbolism… now, where did I take this symbolism from? Well, from the fifth scene of the second act of Jean Racine’s Phaedra. This scene conjugates wonderfully the three notions: and if Seneca’s Phaedra follows the “amor – furor – nefas” pattern, Racine’s one suffers so much we cannot ignore her pain, her dolor. This the kind of thematic influence this scene has on my work.

Now, for Phaedra, I’ll admit it didn’t strike me when I first read it: I was in tenth grade and it was for French class. I found it neat but didn’t think much of it. Then, in eleventh grade, I decided to read it again, to prepare for my highschool exams (since we sit through the French one at the end of the 11th grade; French gets replaced by philosophy in 12th grade in France)... and it blew my mind in indescribable ways.

I fell in love with the writing, I fell in love with the tragic tones of it and, considering the situation I went through and suggested in the The Day Being Ace Made Him Stronger’s devlog, it was a cathartic experience (and certainly why I headcanon Hippolytus as asexual). It has single-handedly redefined my approach to art, to creation, and created me a passion for classical theatre, and classical French poetry: a passion that hasn’t withered in the last nine years, as I read excerpts of Pheadra every single day.

Now, don't think that, as a dev, I am done with Phaedra: after all, I still intend to turn this play into an isekai game. It will feel different from The Daughters of the Sun trilogy, as it will contain much more humour, but you guys know me: it will end up being deep lol. And if you want more games like those of this trilogy, do not worry: for O2A2 this year, I plan on making game based on Andromache, one of Racine's masterpieces. I hope you will enjoy it!

That’s it for this very long devlog, phew! I hope it was interesting to read!

Thank everyone reading this for your support (which I suppose exists if you took time to read that much of the devlog),

Best,

Chimériquement