Behind the Manuscript: Lux Belanger
"We wanted to be married before the next round of drafts happened, in case Grant has to fight. Who knows when this war is going to end? I don't want to wait for our life to begin." - Lux Belanger, Primrose
Sept 20, 2021
Lux Belanger is the main character in my published book, Primrose: Because I Can't Live Without You, but who is Lux Belanger and where did she come from? What was the inspiration for the creation of this character? There is always so much the readers don't know about the characters created in an author's book. The mystery is sometimes fascinating.
The idea for Lux Belanger began with watching the movie, The Virgin Suicides - for those of you who haven't heard of this, The Virgin Suicides is a book written by Jeffrey Eugenides that follows the mysterious life of the four remaining Lisbon sisters after the tragic death of their younger sister and the events leading to their own suicides.
When the inspiration settled in, I never imagined Lux to become a character in a novel. Her creation was for an online Harry Potter Role Playing site but her history was similar. There were five Belanger sisters. The eldest, Auralee, had died tragically due to the restrictive lifestyle they were forced to live under their parent's rule. Their mother was a Sunday School teacher, their father was Chief of Police and feared the outside world was too dangerous to allow his girls the freedom to explore. Lux was the first muggleborn witch in her family to attend Hogwarts after she was rescued by Uncle Izzie. Her parents didn't believe in magic and thought she was suffering from some sort of mental illness and wished for her to be assessed properly. Uncle Izzie stopped her from being committed and took over as her Guardian.
Throughout the years, writing the magical story of Lux Belanger attending Hogwarts and growing up to become a fine young witch in JK Rowlings world, the idea to write a book that focused on Lux's love life (which was very dramatic over her years at Hogwarts) came to mind.
Taking the basic background of Lux that I had forged when creating her for online role-playing, the story began to unfold.
Lux Belanger is the seventeen year old daughter of Burke Belanger - High Ranking official in the Lilles Guard - and Rhea Belanger - who volunteers with the church. Lux has two older sisters, Auralee who passed away tragically when she tried to experience life outside of their restrictive household and was killed, and Kaye who prefers to quietly hide in the shadows and not face the big scary world beyond her home. Lux also has two younger sisters, Nikki who desperately wants to experience life but is too afraid of the stories their father has told them about the dangers of the world for young women, and Myla who does everything in her power to break the bonds holding them back and experience life alongside Lux.
Lux's story has always been about escaping the confines of her childhood home and discovering who she is without the shadow of her parent's expectations.
By meeting Grant Westwood at a holiday party she wasn't invited to or permitted to attend, Lux's journey to discovering herself begins. She develops from a young girl who believes her parents' rules are unfair and unjust to an independent woman who must make her own way in the world, eventually succeeding and being able to rebuild the tarnished bridges between herself and her parents after her rebellion for love. Lux learns about love, true family, and responsibility by disobeying her parents and deciding her own fate.