The official cover for the story with our four protagonists.note
"Four kingdoms exist - The Colubri: the snakes, The Scrofa: the boars, the Aves: the birds and the Equus: the horses. Four characters from each kingdom lead separate lives, but all come together to protect all that they love."
— The official summary of the first part
Four
Kingdoms is a Web Serial Novel by Wanda Walker on FictionPress. It follows the journey of four protagonists, each from a different kingdom centered around a specific animal, that each lead separate lives only to come together to face mutual threats to their safety.
The story has been renowned for its expansive world-building, well-developed characters and romance between two of the leads, Jabali and Cal.
Tropes that apply to this novel include:
- Animal Motif: One of the selling points of the story is how each tribe/kingdom in the story is based around a specific animal, centering their religions, appearances and lifestyles to said animal. For example, the Scrofa are based on the boars and as such, they're unruly, prideful and are more sturdily built while also living underground in burrows instead of in houses, much like boars do. Even the smaller tribes like the Lupus, which are based around the wolves, are structured like this.
- Arranged Marriage: Jabal ran away from one with Karju, which mostly kickstarts the events of the story. The Aves people are also partial to using these to marry, including the royal family.
- Happily Married: Cal's and Jabali's relationship eventually evolves into this.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage: In an interesting spin on the trope, instead of it being the original two arrangees that fall in love with each other, Ardea instead swaps herself for Jabali in order for her to get married to Cal in Ardea's place so she can run away from the Aves to the Colubri. Neither of them are happy about this at first for different reasonsnote but eventually, Ardea's selfish motivations brings happiness to Jabali and Cal who, once the truth is revealed that he didn't marry his half-sister after all, genuinely fall in love with each other.
