You'd rather set your own themes. But a commission is a commission.
Rather than go home, it seems like it might be a good idea to find out about the King of Icemere. Fortunately, with the advance you're getting, you can afford to find a bookseller and buy a history.
By noon you're sitting at the desk in your room, the book before you and a substantial sandwich at your elbow to fortify you for your reading, a successful playwright working on commission. Ah! This is the life!
By dinnertime a wave of despair has hit. You actually know something about the King of Icemere now. He was a great warrior who grew paranoid and dangerous in his later years and eventually turned on both his sons, sending them into a hopeless battle because of his pride and his displeasure that one of his sons had fallen in love with a commoner. Both his sons were killed. In despair, the king rushed the enemy in one last charge and was slain himself. He and his two sons were laid together in a common tomb, and the realm of Icemere passed to a cousin.
A truthful history means comparing Cenone to an unbalanced and failing ruler. He won't be pleased with that or with the theater.
Or you could make the King of Icemere a misunderstood victim of entirely real plots. That's hardly less of a political statement, and you can't imagine Liathar and Falathar would appreciate it.
Or maybe you should just throw caution to the wind and write a satire mocking the ruler as a power-mad tyrant. You wonder exactly what happens to playwrights who persuade their audiences that the Raven is a power-mad tyrant, and suspect it's nothing good.
Is there some way to avoid all the pitfalls? You could focus on romance and play up the love story between the prince and the commoner. Liathar will probably love it. Cenone will assuredly not.
You flail for wilder sparks of inspiration. You could turn it into a slapstick comedy! These aren't tragic failings or evil plots, they're hilarious misunderstandings. Hilarious misunderstandings that end in the deaths of most of the cast. Are audiences ready for a comedy in which all the principal characters die? You have the sinking suspicion that they're not.
The pitfalls are clear. No matter how you write the play, it's going to come off as commentary on Cenone, Liathar, and Falathar. And you can't think of a single thing to say about them or Cenone's rule or Liathar's relationship with Pell that's entirely safe.
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