zeborah

I've known this for a while, but have been able to ignore it until now.

In the Scandinavian Story, the ending was easy because, although the story kind of exploded and flung everything outwards, it still had sufficient gravitational energy to pull everything back together, blackhole-like. It was like:

* Spider
* Spider+Queen
* Spider+Queen+rebellious rebels
* Spider+rebellious rebels go on a Quest over large chunks of Scandinavia
* While deceiving rebellious rebels, Spider discovers Awful Troof about who the antagonist is
* Spider+rebellious rebels come home to Kjøbenhavn, catastrophe ensues
* Spider+Queen+rebellious rebels
* Spider+Antagonist
* Spider

See how that works? Is that so hard? Apparently, because the Scandinavian Sequel goes like this:

* Spider
* Spider+Princess
* Spider+Princess+Queen declares war
* Spider+Princess+Queen's side actually consists of many factions
* Spider+Princess's side also consists of many factions+all the Queen's factions
* all the factions interact, split, ally, change sides, get tricked, see through the tricks, win, lose, realise the Awful Troof, etc. Oh, and while this is happening they also conduct a war.
* the seven-year-old King gets sick of all this so starts his own faction consisting of two people (just to be clear, one of the two is the King himself)
* the Spider has a religious experience
* leaving me with two chapters in which to bring together, from several different cities: the Spider, the King, three regents, five Knights of the Realm, a lady-in-waiting, a chaplain, a tutor, a wife, a father, a sister, and a loyal servant; in order to conclude a convincing peace and satisfying resolution.

And every time I think, "Well, I could get *him* to go *there* in such a way," (some of which are truly awesome cool ways!) I then realise that doing so would leave two or three plot-threads unresolved.

<glares at map>

ETA 2 hours later: Ooh, I just might have something here....