The Eternal Prince — Enter the First Story of Valentine Kingdom

The Eternal Prince is the first story set within Valentine Kingdom and the beginning of Alexander’s journey into a world that becomes much larger than he expects. At first, the story is fairly personal. Alexander and Elizabeth are travelling, discovering unfamiliar places and trying to understand events that neither of them can fully explain. Then Alexander begins to change. What starts as a journey gradually becomes something far more complicated, involving his identity, his bloodline, the strange abilities developing inside him, and a world that has been waiting long before he understood his place in it.

Alexander’s Transformation

Alexander does not begin the story searching for a crown or believing that he is destined to rule anything. For much of the beginning, he is simply trying to understand what is happening to him. His transformation into a vampire changes ordinary experiences first. His senses become sharper, his instincts feel different, and abilities begin appearing before he really knows what to do with them.

I wanted that transformation to feel gradual rather than like a switch being turned on. Alexander has to learn what his new nature allows him to do, but he also has to discover what it may eventually cost him. Power can solve problems, especially in a dangerous world, but it can also change the person holding it. That question becomes increasingly important as Alexander grows stronger.

Alexander and Elizabeth

Elizabeth remains the person closest to Alexander throughout the journey. Their relationship is important because it keeps the story personal even when everything around them begins becoming much larger. They travel together, make discoveries together and find themselves in situations neither of them expected when the journey began.

Alexander’s transformation also changes the relationship in ways that are not always obvious at first. The stronger and more dangerous he becomes, the more important it becomes for him to remember why he wanted strength in the first place. For Alexander, much of that comes back to Elizabeth. She gives him something worth protecting when power, fear and ambition begin pulling him in other directions.

Discovering Valentine Kingdom

Alexander knows very little about his own history when the story begins. That changes slowly. There is no single moment where somebody explains everything to him. Instead, pieces of information begin appearing from different places. A letter reveals a name. That name leads toward a family history he never knew existed, and eventually toward Valentine Kingdom itself.

This discovery changes much more than Alexander’s understanding of his family. Until then, many of the strange events surrounding him can still feel disconnected. Once his bloodline begins becoming clearer, some of those pieces start belonging to the same larger story. Alexander is no longer only asking what he is becoming. He has to begin asking where he came from.

A World Becoming Larger

As Alexander learns more about himself, the scale of the story expands with him. The journey reaches different kingdoms, rulers, armies and conflicts that existed long before he became involved with them. I like that contrast between the personal parts of the story and the much larger world surrounding them.

Alexander can be standing somewhere beautiful while unknowingly walking through the remains of an old conflict. A kingdom can appear peaceful while carrying a history that changes how everything there should be understood. The same is true of power. A crown may look like a reward from the outside, but ruling also means responsibility, difficult choices and consequences that cannot always be avoided. Alexander gradually begins discovering that becoming powerful and becoming worthy of that power are not necessarily the same thing.

Only the Beginning

The Eternal Prince introduces Alexander, Elizabeth, his transformation and the first discoveries surrounding the Valentine bloodline. It also introduces the reader to a world that is deliberately much larger than the first book can reveal. There are places Alexander has not reached yet, people whose importance he does not understand and pieces of history that will only make sense later.

Some mysteries introduced early will be answered relatively quickly. Others will follow him much further. That is how I want Valentine Kingdom to unfold. The reader should not receive a map of everything before the journey begins. The world should become clearer through Alexander’s experiences, mistakes and discoveries. The Eternal Prince is simply the point where he takes the first steps into it.