Chapters Ascension in the East Foreword
This story is set in the Sukhothai Empire, a fictional South-East Asian country, based roughly on Thailand in 2030. Sukhothai was once a real, albeit small kingdom in our world and, in this imaginary alternative, it resisted the influence of the Burmese and Ayutthaya Kingdom in the 1400s, and allied with and much later took over the dying Khmer Empire, allowing for a slowly growing presence over the next 600 years, much like how dynastic China annexed many small kingdoms early on. The 1900s brought constitutional rule, leaving the royalty as figureheads, and the nobility has heightened their reliance on decorum ever since. Currently, this country is locked in a long-term economic rivalry with the People’s Republic of China, and to a lesser degree, the Second Japanese Empire.
In Sukhothai, ladies show their status by modifications. Poor ladies are not allowed to modify their bodies, the middle class only moderately, the aristocrats far more so, whilst for the royal family the modifications are nothing short of extreme and ridiculous.
This story centres around two unsuspecting foreign teens who, by an extraordinary twist of fate, become the next Emperor and Empress of Sukhothai.
This is the second story that we have collaborated on.
— Dave Potter and Cafter Homme