Royal-Sovereign
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| Royal-Sovereign (Christopher Veidt) | |
|---|---|
 Royal-Sovereign (on left) pictured with his mate Volk, as specially commissioned and drawn by Tiggstar | |
| Born | 10th March 1986 in West Virginia, USA |
| Profession or hobby | Writer |
| Species | three-tailed Kitsune Therian |
| Website | |
Christopher Veidt, known as Royal-Sovereign (born 10th March 1986) is a three-tailed Kitsune Therian originally from the state of West Virginia, USA. He is an author of poetry, fan fiction, and prose -- most notably Phillipe, a study of teenage anthropomorphic canines set in an alternate universe. He is mated (married) to Volk.
Contents |
Nomenclature and spelling
The name "Royal-Sovereign" is often, but not always, spelled with the hyphen.
Known elsewhere as Royal Scottish (two words or one) as a play on his Scottish royal descent and often still plainly Royal in informal speech to encompass both of his two current (official) usernames and for ease of conversation, his most famous moniker, Foxboy, was adopted as his nickname since he was thirteen.
Earlier names
Royal has admitted a proclivity for choosing aristocratic-sounding user handles on various forums and other websites. Royal was originally known as The Duke of Argyll, taken from the Scottish duchy in 2003 -- he had planned on being called "Duke of Aberdeen," but the naming field at Europa Universalis, the first forum he had registered at, was not long enough. Looking over other alternatives beginning with the letter A, "Argyll" became the most logical choice.
Royal later abandoned Duke of Argyll, which had Un-intentionally but inevitably become his universal moniker, saying it had become "an unhealthy persona" and reminded him of a person he "once was" and "wasn't proud of being." The last vestige of this title is his PhotoBucket account, and an abandoned LiveJournal under that name.
DoA, (as it was often referred to as) was dropped in favor of another Scottish flavored username in the Spring of 2004: Lord of the Isles, or LotI, (pronounced "low-tee"), taken from the Scottish noble title of the same name. The title recalled an "aquatic" feel to Royal, fitting his affinity for water -- he was a member of the Varsity swim team and high school, and was born a Pisces.
It was under this name that Royal wrote a handful of reviews for OverClocked Remix.
Final form
In the summer of 2004, as an active member of the Shining Force forum SFC LotI (as he was then known) temporarily adopted a new user handle: Royal Sovereign.
The name was chosen from several sources: Royal had maintained a very keen interest and hobby in naval history, particularly that of the British Royal Navy, and had become enamored of the name of the battleship HMS Royal Sovereign, because of the "grandiose, imperious, serene tone" it seemed to conjure up, and because of similar associations he had held, as a "casual Trekkie," with the Sovereign-class, the build of the Enterprise-E.
The new name was almost immediately met with a storm of hostile reaction -- having changed his name once already at SFC, the new name was doubly perceived as a distastefully egotistical display of attention-seeking (one member quickly, and unkindly, dubbed him Royal Shitbrick).
Although the title at SFC would eventually be changed back, in the meantime Royal had already created an account on DeviantArt using the current name -- however, because of the technical restrictions DeviantArt imposes for creation of usernames (no spacing or symbols) a hyphen had to be added to avoid the two words "Royal" and "Sovereign" unattractively mashed together.
(This circumstance would, however, eventually come to pass when Royal registered his account at y! Gallery.)
While the username at SFC was soon changed, the one at DeviantArt never was -- using the account to post the bulk of his poetry, prose, amateur photography and t-shirt designs, Royal soon found his new moniker synonymous with all of his creative endeavors. Being still very fond of the phrase Royal Sovereign, he decided to keep the username as-was -- including the hyphen -- as his official nom-de-plume.
Species
Royal-Sovereign's fursona is a golden-blonde three-tailed kitsune with silver headfur and tail-tips. A silver beard and goatee, a silver edging to the body fur, and a tuft of silver chest fur complete Royal's fur form.
His alter-ego who doubles as the protagonist and titular of the Phillipe project, Phillipe de Rohan, is identical to Royal himself save that the silver parts of Phillipe's body are a slightly lighter shade.
The form that Royal's fursona takes is the exact form he believes, as a Therian, he truly is.
Origins
It might be said with some accuracy that Royal's final arrival at the (correct) assumption he was not altogether human could have been predicted from the time of his early life. Throughout his childhood, Royal had gravitated toward the lurid stories of werecreatures and lycanthropy, he found in both fiction and horror movies -- in particular those of mammals, such as felines and canines. The idea of human-to-animal transformation fascinated him, and many of his early written works up until he was well into junior high centered on the idea of werecreatures, and their interaction (both positive and negative) on normal humans.
Genesis
This fascination began to take an altogether strange turn when Royal hit the age of twelve, and by extension puberty -- he began associating his friend with a black-furred werewolf (the memory of which would be echoed many years later with the creation of the Phillipe character Edward Blackwood).
The character and nature of the friend in question played a role in the strange developments that followed: the boy thus associated as being a werewolf was one of Royal's closest friends, someone who he trusted -- and was trusted by -- implicitly. Most importantly, however, his best friend was a very gifted athlete, possessing an astoundingly well-toned and muscled body.
This was something Royal never truly attained, although many of his fans insist that he has at least come close -- at any rate, he felt inferior, as well as in love, with this best friend, the werewolf.
Since, to Royal's mind, a wolf is a strong and powerful creature, the canine immediately below it -- small, lithe, but intelligent and clever -- was a fox. Royal thought, at the time, that the association was an extremely fitting one, that he should class himself, and thus be classed in turn, as a werefox.
This association, so strongly made as it was, was brought to a new intensity by a strongly vivid, surrealistic clairvoyant dream involving watching himself (from behind) taking "The Oath of Fox" before a mirror. A voice commanded that he should go through the mirror to complete the "Oath" and become a fox -- as he doing so, he awoke.
(The romantic and physical attraction to wolves and werewolves Royal has since termed an integral part of his personality as a whole -- part of what led him, by fate, to his mate Volk.)
By age thirteen, Royal's self-identification with the Vulpine species was complete. The last stage of what is noted in Therian terminology the "M-Shift" occurred when Royal recognized another friend of his -- named Phillip, later the direct inspiration for a French-descended character of the same name -- as being a fellow-werefox.
So it was, that from the time he was barely thirteen years old, he would be known by himself -- and soon amongst friends and strangers alike -- as "Foxboy", giving rise to his later somewhat tongue-in-cheek assertion that he was (and is) "The Original Foxboy."
Crisis and re-affirmation
This identity as "Foxboy" began to fall apart unexpectedly when Royal was seventeen, as he began to drift away from the vulpine mindset toward that of the wolf. Originally, this was part of a dubious, universal identity-crisis that included dabbling in dark magic and (infamously, as it would turn out) Neo-Nazism, but which eventually snowballed into the final assertion that he was not a fox, but rather a wolf.
Throughout 2005 and into early 2006, thanks to more "intuitive soul-searching" (his words) Royal re-affirmed that while he was indeed a fox, he was also a Kitsune, with three tails (which he promptly termed tricolæ, literal Latin for "three-tailed").
As a strong believer in Numerology, Royal has held that the Number Three appears over and over again in many aspects of his life, and has given the reasoning that his three tails are an actual product of this phenomenon -- an affirmation of himself as an individual, and a triumph over his past conflicts and crisis.
Personal life
A former student at Marshall University, Royal now attends Virginia Western Community College, majoring in political science with an additional concentration in history.
Royal currently works as a lead cashier (a quasi-managerial position) at Stein Mart, a regional chain of upscale department stores. He previously worked as a cellphone salesman for One-Stop Cellular, having found his niche selling the product, as well as gaining an extensive knowledge on phone design and cellular networks, during his nearly year-long stint at Radio Shack. Following the company's financial collapse, he was laid off when his store was closed in December of 2008.
Previous to Radio Shack, Royal was employed from 2005 to 2006 with Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch, jobs which he greatly enjoyed but resigned from in search of something new. This lead him to a summer (2006) gig at GameStop before returning to Abercrombie & Fitch for the Christmas season of that year. He was hired at Radio Shack in February of 2007.
Royal has considered himself a "Prep", owing to his previous (Abercrombie & Fitch Co.) and current (Stein Mart) employers and various aspects of his family background, a fact that is reflected in the setting and characters of his novel Cardinal Orange.
Royal has been mated to Volk since 25th February 2007.
Politics
Royal describes himself as a Communist, of the Marxist-Leninist school, having been a Democrat for some years and a self-described Social Democrat from about 2008 to 2009. His conversion to Communism was more or less tacit and personal, having come to that conclusion through a variety of studies and influences. He only hinted through his FurAffinity journal that a conversion had taken place[1] using an esoteric reference both to an [adult swim] bump and a Ladytron lyric. Sometime later he became explicit about it in a somewhat jocular manner on the same website, noting that his very free market-oriented mate Volk, despite loving him, was not amused at Royal's politics[2], again using song lyrics (this time from the song "Baby's a Red" by House of Heroes) to make his point.
Royal has since aligned himself with the Soviet Furs, although he rejects their anti-ideological and anti-confrontational standpoints (to groups like the Nazi Furs, for instance).
Body of work
Under the guise of "Royal-Sovereign", Royal has produced a litany of astonishingly varied works of art, writing, photography and design. While literature can be said to be his creative forté, with 270+ pieces of various poetry and prose on his DeviantArt site [1], Royal has also undertaken serious forays into other fields -- most notably, nature photography and t-shirt and logo design.
Fashion
Using a JNES emulator and later other tools, Royal would take screenshots of various games (later moving onto those on a Sega Genesis and Game Boy Advance platforms) and tweak their content into witty, clever, or double-entendre t-shirt designs. Of particular interest was his usage of images from the Mega Man series, which he found especially rich in inspiration and possibilities.
While originally intending these t-shirts to be of a commercial nature (some early designs were even gender-specific), Royal has recently admitted that the undertaking was mostly an outlet "for fun".
Literature
Poetry
Having started writing poetry in earnest for the first time circa 1999-2000, Royal has since produced over 200 separate pieces, with at least a dozen more either lost or discarded. In 2005 he wrote what he has considered to be "his greatest masterpiece", The Color of Time. The piece is an epic work consisting of six "staves" with nine verses each -- multiples of three that Royal carefully chose as part of his superstitious associations with the number "3" (see below).
Covering an extensive array of topics -- Royal's former Catholic beliefs, mythology, philosophy, and history, among others -- the poem has garnered almost universal praise. Royal claims that the original draft, which was more free-form and less organized, only took him an hour to write.
The poem underwent yet a third major overhaul in December of 2007, completed (with many delays) in 2009, which included an occasionally severe re-wording of verses to adjust to Royal's more "subdued" literary taste.
Prose
Although Royal's main project has been, and will remain to be, his novel Phillipe, which the first part of, as of 2009, has been officially published on Lulu[3], he has also written a variety of other works, both in the fiction and non-fiction fields. While many of his projects are defunct for one reason or another, more still have had the possibility of continuation or completion (contemporaneous to Phillipe) seriously considered.
Royal has recently undertaken a major project, attempting to publish a horror anthology featuring as its centerpieces a droll piece set in a universe inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and written in the form of an e-mail, appropriately titled RE: Hey Ma!. Originally scheduled for publication in November of 2007, the project was shelved and replaced, in April of 2009, with a loosely related story called Anaphylaxis, the title taken from the medical term for a severe allergic reaction.
A companion piece very loosely set in the same universe as both of those these stories, Polybius inspired by the urban legend of the sinister arcade game) has already been published separately on Lulu.[4]
All of these stories, in addition to several pieces of Royal's "darker" poetry will be combined with an essay on "urban secrets" and the first part of an unfinished ghost story titled The House On the Corner to form a single book, A Horrible Night To Have A Curse, owing its title to Royal's distinctive "Poetry & Prose" tag (see picture).
Royal at one point delved into writing fanfiction for South Park, originally begun on a dare from some close friends. The resulting story, entitled The Art of Falling Apart (taken from the Soft Cell album of the same name) was met with enthusiastic praise on y! Gallery and a more subdued but equally positive reaction on Fanfiction.net. After three episodes, Royal has (as of March 2008) put the story on permanent hiatus and has more than once disowned and disavowed as something of an inconvenient embarrassment.
Before the advent of Phillipe, now called Cardinal Orange, Royal also undertook efforts to write other novels, among them a horror-comedy that was to be titled Not Exactly Night, which contained several plot and detail elements that eventually found their way into Phillipe itself. Originally written in the fall of 2005, an extensively edited version of the first chapter appeared in June of 2007. Royal has not commented on whether or not Not Exactly Night will also be continued, although his friend "Doctor Andy" had expressed interest in turning the idea into a screenplay.
Royal-Sovereign and the Fandom
Royal's involvement with the Fandom outside of the Internet has been very limited -- among the only furs he knows in real life and keep in contact with are Tiger of the Wind and Angel Wolf Drake, both of whom live outside his city.
Royal has long held himself to be far closer to the more-specific term "Therian," as opposed to "Furry", and has expressed outrage[5] that he be labeled the latter and not the former (see below).
As with most public statements of being a Therian (or a Were, as his mate Volk professes himself to be), the idea was not met without initial doubt, even among his closest friends. However, his own insistence that he is indeed vulpine, has been eventually accepted and agreed upon by many people who, at the very least, have noted his face to actually "look canine"[6]
Royal has striven time and again to be recognized within the fandom for his Phillipe project, because of his claim that it bucks the trend of a Furry work of fiction being strictly in comic or visual art form.
To that end, he has regularly attempted to enlist other Furry and Therian authors on such sites as DeviantArt in order to gain better recognition for authors of both prose and poetry in the fandom that, he contends, do not get enough attention or credit for their efforts.
Conflicts
Royal has several times clashed with members of the Furry community, even some of his closest friends, because of his strongly professed distaste and dislike for many of the more controversial and esoteric aspects of the Fandom itself -- in particular its many deviant sex practices.
Some have labeled Royal a hypocrite, pointing out his own flaunted love with several "perversions" (as he calls them) -- amongst them: fraternal (and occasionally paternal) incest, sadomasochism, and, perhaps most controversially, zoophilia[7].
Despite his own history of sexual deviancy, Royal has still added choice sound bytes directed at babyfurs ("the basest depravity I can think of"), as well as being openly scornful derisive against macro, inflation, and plushophilia.
Second only to his aversion to babyfur is vore, and in fact, Royal was quoted as once saying that "people who think that vore is sexy are all fucked in the head," going on to say "all that shit is polluting Yiffstar."
Obviously, these negative public comments on controversial subjects did not earn him many friends, particularly on the Yiffstar forum itself, where he was once a regularly posting member (see below).
Outraging far more people than his opinions on sex-practices has been his publicly intense disliked of Fursuiting. The choice quote he provided on the matter is characteristic of his vitriolic style:
| Anyone who dresses up as animal, but doesn't believe they are one -- at least in part -- are stupid. Fursuiting reminds me of Disneyworld...I mean really, just randomly dressing up as something is totally missing the point. If you don't think, at least somewhat, yer [sic] the animal yer dressing up as, then what's the point? |
Perhaps the most severely controversial stance Royal had taken prior to joining Encyclopedia Dramatica was at first tacitly, and then vocally, supporting the banning of anthropomorphic art from y! Gallery, where he runs and maintains various clubs.
It was noted that he was not at all upset when he returned [8] to the site in 2007 after a year-long hiatus that the banning of such art had taken place, even if it meant his Phillipe works could not be submitted there. Rather, he has gone on to say, it was better for himself personally, as he now had a place where he could submit and promote his non-Furry works (see above). This was all seen as a grievous "betrayal" of Therians and Furries alike.
The "Anti-Furry" Journal
Although the origin of the above comment is fairly old, it managed to find its way as only one part of a very long, venom-spewing rant, originally posted on DeviantArt[9] as an incomplete apologia for at least partially why he abandoned his account there two months before.
The crux of the journal -- self-deemed The "Anti-Furry" Rant -- was intense outrage at the perceived behavior of the Furry community at large, the overuse of certain Furry-specific terms by people new to the Fandom, and the sullying of those (like himself) who had a spiritual or biological connection with animals (i.e., therians) by those who simply "dress up" like them. This last complaint was summed up in the "Disneyworld quote" used above.
While there were people who were in agreement with, or even supported the "Rant" both on[10] and off the site, at least one person called him out[11] on the potential hypocrisy for such criticism, and the weakness of arguing for a more wider gulf between "Furries" and "Therians".
In an act of defiance to public opinion, the same journal, with some edits, soon found its way onto FurAffinity[12] as well, where it was met with a far more lukewarm reaction[13][14] than it did on DeviantArt.
"RoyalShitbrick"
Starting in August of 2008 and beginning in earnest a month later, Royal joined the vitriolic anti-Furry (among other things) website Encyclopedia Dramatica, at first to overhaul the articles for the anime Code Geass (which he has since claimed, after many edits and revisions, to essentially be "his" page) and "Creepypasta". This caused a great deal of drama amongst furries he already knew, as they rightly regarded the site as more or less hateful toward the Furry Fandom in general.
Things were not helped when Royal designed and wrote the articles for Transformation, one of his favorite Furry topics, using veiled anti-Furry language and an extended quote from a Yiffstar author and former friend (CodyDreamPuppy) to that effect.
While thus far minor, the fact that Royal would even enjoy -- let alone actively edit and contribute to -- the site has garnered him at times strong negativity.
Yiffstar Forum
During the 2008-2009 period, when Royal was a regularly posting member at the Yiffstar forum, there were numerous incidents in which he would seem to deliberately antagonize or even troll certain members. A thread created in August of 2008, for instance, involved people having fursona that were totally unrealistic to who they were in reality. While this was done ostensibly because of Royal actual growing tired of, in one subsequent poster to the thread's words, "people [that is, furries] acting thin [in their fursona], while they are like a tonner in real" -- it in fact was a pointed (if indirect) jab at a fellow poster, Shay Feral, whose fursona was notably thinner and more attractive than the person actually was. Ultimately the matter became a healthy 8-page discussion (which Royal lost interest in after maybe the third page) that did not result in the flame war Royal had anticipated.
A little later, when Royal was more active at Encyclopaedia Dramatica, he changed his avatar to a cropped version of a picture of several barely dressed males with a girl in front of them; it later had to be taken down because even Luca Shoal deemed it "a bit much". The entire episode was a result of Royal's desire to rile the forum with controversy -- while he found the picture amusing, (particularly the original caption: "she_is_so_asking_for_it") he had no intention whatsoever of keeping it, and his Flash Man avatar, used on his FurAffinity account, soon reappeared.
Criticism as author
Royal has often been attacked for undermining his personal campaign to gain recognition for Furry and Therian writers (see above) because of his perceived narcissism and focus on his own works and himself personally, rather than those of others, in addition to what essentially amounts to cannibalistic and self-effacing attacks on the fandom itself, as described above.
Even his featured work, Phillipe, has come under criticism for its content and style. While reviews have been generally positive (in varying degrees of enthusiasm) for the various episodes Royal has thus far produced[15][16][17] the novel has been derided for its dense, heady subject matter, which one reviewer told Royal in private "actually gave [him] a headache."
The universe the book is set in has also been given critical comment because of its "canine-only" policy and lack of variety with other kinds of furs -- which some contend, amounts to glamorized speciecism or "even racism in disguise".
See also
References
- ↑ "Prez gorite, prez poliata, pod zvezdite, nad zhitata", 15th January 2010
- ↑ "My boyfriend hates that I'm a Communist", 21st July 2010
- ↑ "Buy Me!" 13 July 2009
- ↑ "Told Ya It Meant A Lot", 27 February 2008
- ↑ response by Royal to Spartan021
- ↑ comment by Rainy-Day-Fox on "The Foxboy -- Headshot"
- ↑ comment on "Furry Survey!" Spartan021's journal, 29th May 2008
- ↑ "Inexorability", 12th April 2007
- ↑ "The Anti-Furry Rant", 11th May 2008
- ↑ comment by Sirias
- ↑ comment by Spartan021
- ↑ "I've Got Anti-Furry Rants In My Pants", 19th May 2008
- ↑ comment by Nokemy
- ↑ comment by Onyx Tanuki
- ↑ comments for "Phillipe: I Remix"
- ↑ comments for "Phillipe: IV Director's Cut"
- ↑ comments for "Phillipe: V Director's Cut"
External links
| This person is a WikiFur user: | 
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- Royal-Sovereign on deviantART
- Royal-Sovereign on Fur Affinity
- Foxboy on MySpace
- RoyalSovereign on y! Gallery (kept private and not viewable by Un-registered users)