I was rereading the book Magician (Raymond E Feist) lately.

As we all know from Oblivion, Martin is the illegitimate son of the Emperor, Uriel Septim and heir to the throne.

Meanwhile, in Magician,

Meaningless coincidence? Or an easter egg in character naming?

WARNING: THIS THREAD CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MAGICIAN, WHICH ARE NOT CONTAINED IN SPOILER TAGS.

Are any of the devs known as fans of the book/author?

I see it as a coincidence.

Well

The book was first published in 1982 and has been incredibly popular since. It outdates TES by 10 years. The author is American and the book has had a largely positive reception - it was voted number 89th of the top 100 books of all time back in 2003. The series also spawned a game back in 1993, which received extremely positive feedback (it won an award from Computer Gaming World for being The Best Game of the Year) and was "first role-playing game to offer a 3D environment and...one of the first games to use digitized images effectively in the context of a role-playing game." - So those two facts combined mean that that Feist is unlikely to have flown under the radar of the dev team.

It's a bit too coincidental, don't you think?

Martin Septim is the brother of the player character (the protagonist). He is heir to the throne. He is illegitimate.
while in Magician, Martin conDoin is the brother of the protagonist, is heir to the throne, illegitimate. Of course, he never does assume the throne, despite the death of his father.

Anyway mate, it's 10:00 where we are, here in NZ, and I'm off to bed . Night.

Seems a bit to unlikely to me, maybe one of the writers had been reading it and accidentally wrote the MQ in a very similar vein. Also, doesn't this belong in the spoilers forum?

Hardly. It's a spoiler for Magician, not Oblivion. And let's face it, if that is a "spoiler" for you you haven't read the blurb on the back of the packaging of Oblivion, never mind got three-quarters through the tutorial dungeon. It's a bit like saying that the fact that Harry Potter's parents are killed is a spoiler. Sure, if you haven't read the blurb or the first chapter.

Actually - thanks for pointing that out. I removed the Oblivion spoiler from my post.

interesting stuff. I don't know if its coincidence. Perhaps the Magician story inspired the Oblivion saga, though. That seems likely. It's all speculation, though, of course.

Maybe back when they were making Oblivion, someone had read that book and decided, "Hey! Let's do it this way..."

Martin Septim was my Bosmer Knight's brother? :blink:

I have no idea the answer in this case.

As a fiction writer however, I assure you that honest coincidences in fiction occur frequently and can be somewhat frustrating for writers. Long before Bethesda announced any details on TES V, I had planned and storyboarded a distant storyline involving ice dragons at the top of the world (Skyrim). Now, I shall hold off until Skyrim is out and evaluated. I don't fault Bethesda at all; after all, they beat me to publishing. Lol. Nevertheless, whenever I do present that storyline, it will absolutely appear to be influenced by TES V when the concept was not at all. Oh well.

It is slightly more pronounced in fan fiction where the common theme of a game is somewhat ever present. Fan fiction writers often tease each other about coming up with similar ideas to explain things that are not addressed in the game. As I said, I have no idea in this case, but trust me - coincidence in fiction is alive and well. :dance:

Unconscious and unintended influence also happen. We may think we're coming up with something original, forgetting that we read something 10 years ago about a similar character with the same name.

In my youth I tried my hand at writing. I once wrote a short story that included a character I thought was unique, with an unusual name and an unusual occupation (harpsichord builder) -- I discovered to my horror (fortunately before submitting the story to any publishers) that there was an actual harpsichord builder with that name! I had probably read about him in the newspaper, or some such, and had unconsciously held onto the information.

Indeed, back in my P&P role playing days a friend of mine named one of her characters Scott Ashton, believing it to be completely original. Months later I was driving to her house and noticed that I passed a street named Ashton. I pointed it out to her and she was stunned. She had never even consciously noticed the street name, but she must have gotten her character name from there, as she passed it every day.

Yeah! His name is Brother Martin. He's not a blood brother, obviously, but a spiritual brother.

While in the Magician book, the protagonist has his name placed on the conDoin family tree. It doesn't actually state where he is placed, but on the official Raymond E Feist site a family tree is provided where he is the adopted son of Borric, making him the spiritual brother of Martin.


On unintended influences and so on, SubRosa and Glargg your stories were enjoyable to read.

At Acadian, I see what you are saying. Tall elves are said to be Tolkien's invention, but really elves being some kind of faerie was a change that came about in the romantic period, and before that, in Germanic Mythology, they were taller. Their name comes from a word that means short in ancient German, but I think that that is more likely to be because they were less than Gods then because they were shorter than people. Likewise the distinction between dark elves and light elves is again attributed to Tolkien, but it has been a part of Norse mythology for much, much longer.


Out of interest, what kinds of things would they be?