Last week, I finally decided to take the plunge and make my story as historically accurate as possible. Though I'll have to do some rewriting to reflect revised ages and backgrounds for the characters, there are too many tasty historical coincidences, with just the right dates, not to take advantage of them. It's funny how close history was to what I had originally come up with.

Last Saturday I made this awesome Excel spreadsheet, taking in the birth and death dates of all 27 of Emperor Gomizunoo's children who survived infancy, their genders, as well as their mothers, color coded by rank. It's a very neat, very colorful spreadsheet. Extremely pleasing to look at. You can tell at a glance who was still alive in any given year.

This morning, I cleaned up the timeline of background events, matching it to historical people and dates. Also, I simplified the chain of past events and deleted a dead character (deceased grandmother) who would have required too much explanation. A very productive two hours today.

Argh, research paper draft. What an ugly, incomplete draft. Die die die.