It was back in August 2003 that I re-discovered The Lion King. I was bored one summer's day so was rooting about, looking for something to watch, and I found my old Lion King video. I hadn't watched it for ages, so I decided to put it on to pass the time, and almost immediately, I began to fall under its spell. No sooner had the film finished that I picked up my pencil and began to draw the characters again, and this led me to taking a gander on the Internet, to see if it had anything to offer the budding LK enthusiast. I soon found my way to The Lion King Fan Art Archives, a great website for LK fan-artists to display their talents and their love for Disney's greatest film, and here I found that people didn't just draw canon characters, they also drew their own original chars and - more significantly - crossover characters. The crossover images fascinated me, and as I browsed I saw the likes of characters from Harry Potter to Pirates of the Carribean through to Lord of the Rings all depicted as Disney-fied lions. This was something I had to try my hand at, so I went ahead and drew me a leonine Saruman and a leonine King Henry VIII with his six wives, and then, finally, I produced my first Discworld lion, a rather proud-looking Havelock Vetinari.
It may be worth noting that, at this point in time, I had only recently been introduced to the Discworld, but I was already very much in love with Pratchett's absurd universe and its colourful cast of characters, the Patrician being one of my very favourites. As I practised my leonine sketches, I felt that I could draw Vetinari alot more successfully in this form - I achieved more of the look about him that I wanted - and, because of this, I decided to experiment with other chars from Terry Pratchett's series. Consequently, my sketchbook played host to the likes of leo-Captain Carrot, Angua, Samuel Vimes, Rincewind, and even Drumknott. This was just a fun game for me until, having read the novel "Guards! Guards!" one day, I suddenly saw that many of these characters could just about slot into place in a Lion King-esque story all of their own!
I began work straight away. The plot for The Lion King provided the basic framework of the story, and, with this in mind, I started by displacing every LK character with a Discworld one. I already knew that I wanted Havelock Vetinari as my king - or Patrician in this case - but this left several problems in its wake, which I shall come back to shortly. I also knew, without a doubt, that Lupine Wonse was to be my villain; he fit perfectly in the role of the sly usurper, mirroring Scar from the original film, with the aim to overthrow the Patrician and replace him himself. My original intention had been to simply play-off the "Guards! Guards!" plot against the traditional Lion King one, fitting the two together like an unlikely jigsaw, but I soon found that I couldn't get everything I wanted from these two stories alone - I was going to have to pick-and-mix many a facet of the Discworld before I got the story I wanted, including bits-and-bobs from the realms of fanfiction as well...
So, I so far had Mufasa replaced by Havelock and Scar replaced by Wonse. This left the rest of the original Lion King cast waiting to be displaced.
Some of the characters weren't hard to mix-and-match. It only seemed right to make the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night akin to Scar's army of Hyenas, a group that also took on some of the burdens faced by the Mimes in the Discworld novels in that they are so hated by the Patrician that they are outlawed. Any species of animal whose natural call is laughter can only mean trouble, afterall...
I was never sure whether I would find a place for the loyal clerk, Drumknott, in the story. I originally designed him as a lion, like many of the others, but I felt that perhaps he would best fill the role of Zazu, Mufasa's 'secretary' bird. I'm sure, like most of my problems, that I won't resolve this until the final draft... time will tell.
Rafiki is something of an enigma - a wise shaman and primitive artist, but also something of a joker when he wants to be. Ultimately, I could only imagine him being replaced by the wonderfully dotty character of Leonard of Quirm, the super-intelligent inventor that Vetinari keeps locked in the attic for everyone's good. Though Leonard doesn't look set to inherit all of the roles and duties of Rafiki, he is perfectly suited in the role as far as some of the mannerisms go, and, of course, Rafiki is the only character who is something of an artist, which would be perfect for Leonard.
I decided quite early that Timon and Pumbaa would be well complimented by the characters of Cuddy and Detritus, a comical, mis-matched pair, originally a Dwarf and a Troll, who despite their differences, are the best of friends.
Already I'm sure the knowing Discworld reader will see that I've fished into "Men at Arms" as well as "Guards! Guards!" for my cast. And so far any Lion King fans shall realise that I've almost replaced every member of the LK cast - except the three major posts occupied by Simba, Nala, and Simba's mother, Sarabi, as well as the minor part that Sarafina, Nala's mother, plays.
Before we get too deeply into that, I also have to confess that I wasn't satisifed with simply filling preoccupied spaces in the LK story with DW chars. I wanted to flesh out and change the story to suit, and I wanted to bring in more characters as I did so. The Discworld has too many wonderful personalities ready to use, and I wasn't going to let the opportunity slip.
Samuel Vimes and Sybil were the first to come in: as head of the Watch in the books, Sam would become responsible for keeping order in the Pridelands of Ankh (and Morpork, if he must), whilst Sybil would take on something of a new life and become an important, almost matriarchal figure in the community, the lioness who leads and organises the hunts, and one who is infamous for keeping a load of crocodiles in her backyard (making up for the dragons I had to cut).
This brought me to the solution for filling Nala's space in the cast list. Readers up-to-date with their Discworld will recall that Sam and Sybil's son, also called Sam, has been a recent addition to the canon Discworld family, and I decided that I should use him in the story, too. Obviously, I have no material character-wise to work with for Sam Jr., so his character has evolved out of my own imagination, and he now looks set to be one of the main characters. If you're LK-savvy, I reckon one might feel that Sam Jr. show hints of Kovu, character-wise, a cub from the second LK film, Simba's Pride. So I now had Nala's place in the story occupied, with Sybil somewhat taking the place of Sarafina, and Sam Snr the place of Nala's absent sire.
I felt that there was also room with Cuddy and Detritus for two more 'outcasts' - and so I introduced Carrot and Angua (the lioness with a lupine problem) into the story, making up the numbers of the team which would one day aid the rebellion against Wonse, and, in the end, become part of Samuel Snr.'s 'Watch'.
So far so good - but there still remained the primary obstacle of having our Patrician as ruler of the Pridelands. It wasn't a problem in itself, but for the crossover to work, Wonse needs to have a weakness in the Patrician to work on, and this weakness has to come in the form of a cub. When first faced with this little dilemma, I sat and thought for a long time how to get round it. The DW canon could not answer for it in any way whatsoever, so it looked like, for the first time, I had to make up a character, one who could fill Simba's place. But as I worked on this, I also had to fill the place of Sarabi, Simba's mother in the film. So not only did I now have to give the Patrician a child, I had to give him a wife, or at least a partner. This is where Mercator's fanfiction comes in.
I confess that I actually read Mercator's Discworld fiction before Terry Pratchett's. I can't recall the exact circumstances of it, but I think my friend Merrymoll and I had been talking about Christopher Lee, or something, and she mentioned she could see a younger Lee as making a suitable Vetinari. Me being ignorant to this character completely, Merrymoll pointed out Mercator's fanfic, which showcased a particularly fine Vetinari, and advised me to take a gander and see what I thought. I did indeed read this and, curious, was led onto actually reading the real Discworld books, and I've never looked back since. Back to the point, though, Mercator's fanfiction is that rare kind that is wonderfully written, beautifully plotted and always ultimately completed. Her tales centred on the Patrician and his relationship with a seamstress named Hanna, who I think I may safely say is one of the most popular non-canon characters in the entire DW fanfic circle. Through her (now four-part) Seamstress series, readers became witness to the ups and downs of Hanna's life as mistress to the city's most powerful and mysterious men. You will have to read it for yourself to get the jist - I could go on forever here - but it was because of Mercator's Hanna that I could imagine no other female - either canon or original -as a suitable partner for Havelock, and consequently, when I arrived at my problem, with needing a DW or original char' to fill the Sarabi-shaped hole in my LK/DW crossover plot, I knew it could be filled by no one but a leonine Hanna.
This was all cool, and Merc was kind enough to give me permission to use a leonine shade of Hanna in my story, but this left me with the sticky problem of the Simba-substitute. For the story to now work, Hanna would have to become a mother, and I was never sure about allowing this to happen. If it did, it would work for my crossover, but I never really felt comfortable with it because I didn't know whether it would work for Hanna as a character and, more importantly, because Hanna wasn't my character, even in lioness form, I wasn't sure it'd be a good idea to risk doing it. A long time has passed since I started work on this, though, and whereas Mercator's 'Hanna' stories started as just one, they have since grown to four, and suddenly, in these stories , there was a miraculous twist of fate. The unstable ground was now safe to tread because, lo-and-behold, it now seemed, by the end of the fourth Seamstress tale, that human-Hanna was to have the Patrician's baby. The final puzzle-piece had clicked into place and, after over a year of dallying, my crossover finally looked set to work! All that was left was the baby in question, in this case an alternative-Simba that I would name 'Autumn'.
Autumn was, in reality, made up at the very beginning of the project. I knew that I needed a character, a child of the Patrician, and I knew that, seeing as none existed, it would have to be a char' of my own creation. And so, Autumn was (technically) born. I decided, in contrast to Samuel Senior's cub, that she would be a female character, and I decided to make her an attractive little thing, but with those ice-blue eyes we know all-too-well, to mark her out as her father's daughter. The one thing that caused me trouble was her name - I couldn't think for the life of me what a child of the Patrician should be called, especially when he had this wonderfully ancient-Nordic-esque name, 'Havelock'. So I sat and I thought... and I looked at female Nordic names, shook my head at them all, then thought some more, until my brain hurt... and I was at the point of giving up and sticking a pin in the phone directory when one day I opened one of those tacky magazines full of 'real life' stories (you know, those that women wrinkle their noses at, but read anyway) and saw a tale about a man and his daughter, a girl whom he called his 'autumn flower' because he hadn't been young when she was born. And the gong struck - I had hit the jackpot! We know the Patrician, even though his age is uncertain, isn't young, and so this seemed the perfect way to go. I therefore named the cub 'Autumn', the Patrician's 'little flower'.
As a character, she looked set to be interesting - a combination of Havelock and Hanna could only be explosive, and, as things progressed, she turned out to be (TLK-wise) a mish-mash of Simba, Nala and Kiara. She's the dominant one in her friendship with Sam Jr., even though he is larger and older than she is, and is the one unafraid of getting into trouble, and never sees the danger in things until it truly is too late. Her relationship with her father is key to much of the tale, and it isn't an easy one. She is led astray by her selfish misconceptions of what a father should be, something which isn't helped by the fact that she constantly has Sam Jr.'s father to compare hers unfavourably with...
Any how, now the characters were set, the story then had to take shape. I already had my outline ready, of course, but, as with any crossover project, some things from this framework had to go, whilst others would be kept, altered, or even added to.
As I went through the story of The Lion King, I first decided on what I needed to scrap. Almost instantly, the incident of Mufasa's death sprang to my mind - one thing I point-blank refused to do with my Patrician was kill him off. It would be out of character, if nothing else. As we can see from the Discworld novels, Havelock and Death don't seem to have an appointment any time soon, and I wasn't about to start down that path. My Patrician was going to remain the kind of character who somehow eludes Death at every turn, and so, Havelock was allowed to live. This also ruled out any scene of the likes of Mufasa's spirit's visit to Simba, but it gave me scope to do some re-plotting of my own.
Whilst on this trend, one must note that Mufasa in the films teaches Simba many important little lessons about life and faith, but to have this translated onto Havelock on the crossover seemed inappropriate; even if my leonine Patrician isn't the same character as the man upon whom he is based, he must be a good shadow of him, and if he and his daughter were to have any talks, I doubt they'd follow the same routine as Simba and Mufasa's. Seeing as there were some facets in Mufasa's character that I could not conceivably pull-off with Havelock, I decided to give the job of lesson-preaching to Sam Snr. instead. True, he would be more straight-to-the-point and less mystical than Mufasa, but this is a crossover we're talking about.
As things are removed from the basic plot, things, in turn, need to be added to take their places, or just to fill out the story. Because this was a crossover, and because the Discworld is so vast, I had plenty of material through which to be inspired, as well as having the pool of my own imagination from which to fish.
Firstly, I had to think about the prospects of having Hanna as a 'Queen', in a sense. She would undoubtedly be a character much less-inclined to be noble than Sarabi before her, so, because of this, I felt I was given reason to create an atmosphere of utter dislike between her and the slimy Wonse. British history leant itself a little to this scenario, too, I soon realised, with Hanna and Wonse's dislike for one-another mirroring the antipathy between Anne Boleyn and Cardinal Wolsey, whilst Henry VIII sat between them, alike the Patrician, forced to choose or rally against either his mistress or his minister.
Inspiration kept coming from far and wide for my crossover, and it was because of the Broadway version of The Lion King (which I haven't actually seen, but you get the jist of it through the soundtrack) that another change came about. In the Broadway TLK, Scar attempts to seduce an adult Nala to be his queen, so I felt that, in turn, and despite their dislike, it wouldn't be inconceivable for Wonse to deem Hanna so much his property that he would decide to ultimately make her 'his queen'. This can only serve to bring out some rather 'interesting' reactions in her, of course.
As far as heated relationships go, Wonse may also have to worry about Sam Snr., the lion he had grown up alongside in The Shades. Rather than have Havelock and Wonse dislike each other as Mufasa and Scar sometimes do, it seemed better, in my mind, to have Samuel Snr. and Wonse opposed in such a way, the two becoming as distrustful of one-another as they are in the "Guards! Guards!" book.
Another addition, which I still haven't finalized, is what will happen to Havelock when he returns from the stampede. Whilst Havelock is led to believe his daughter dead, Wonse seizes the moment to get rid of the Patrician, proclaiming to the citizens, with that typical traitor's gusto, that Havelock has proved himself to be little better than a murderer, a lion who let his own cub perish. Wonse may top this off with pointing out the failings of the democratic system around them, etc, etc...
But what would be the Patrician's punishment? We've seen Havelock on the end of all sorts through the DW novels, but which would best translate to the crossover? One path that looked most obvious, and which would mirror "Guards! Guards!" best, was that of imprisonment. With Havelock 'locked-up', in a sense, Wonse could coerce the crowds into making him their king.
Another option I have recently leaned toward is that of exile, inspired somewhat by Kovu's misadventures in "The Lion King 2". This would also give me the option of looking at the likes of "Jingo" and even Merc's "Vetinari in Absentia" fanfic for material, and is a suitably (at least outwardly) humiliating fate for our Patrician.
Returning to the subject of the stampede, this too looked set for a makeover. Rather than go for Scar's simple framing of Simba, I thought it would be more poignant if I could somehow write it so that Autumn clearly had a greater necessity to feel guilt at her father's 'death'. The early drafts I've written of this look likely to make it so that Autumn, stewing over some angry feelings she has toward her father, proposes to do a dare called 'Run the Gorge' in order to prove herself. Disclosing this unwisely to Wonse, the wicked clerk seizes the chance to manipulate this situation to his whim. He manages to convince the cub that she should do this dare at all costs, and Autumn does so. It is too late by the time Autumn sees the stupidity of her plight, and she instantly regrets it, even more so when her father, of all people, comes to rescue her himself...
Having then flung the Patrician to his seeming doom, Wonse convinces Autumn that her father is dead - and all because of her. He then has little trouble in further encouraging her to run away, and never return...
Moving on, and as mentioned above, Sybil's love of dragons shall be replaced by a love of crocodiles, a pond full of which shall exist behind her cavernous home. No doubt Sam and Autumn will find their fair share of trouble there, as they also will in the eerie Elephant Graveyard, the crossover's equivalent of the Morporkian Shades, the place where the Elucidated Brethren converge and where all the lowlifes hang-out.
The story also has to end on a different note than the traditional LK plot. With Havelock still being alive, it is partially his job to topple Wonse and restore some form of democracy to the lands. It is Autumn who instigates the uprising, talked into returning by her old friend Sam Jr. (whom she runs into by chance whilst he is in the process of fleeing the Pridelands, looking for aid). Along with Cuddy, Detritus, Carrot and Angua, the group infiltrate Pride Rock, and Autumn herself faces-off with Wonse.
Depending on whether the Patrician is exiled or imprisoned will determine the exact nature of his returning-entrance, but he will be given a brief moment of 'un-Havelockian' glory and shall have a chance to bring Wonse down himself, saving Autumn suddenly from what looks like death.
And then we shall have a typically happy ending, where peace is restored, and perhaps (to Sam Snr.'s horror) a link between Autumn and Sam Jr. is hinted at. A weary Patrician shall retake his place atop Pride Rock, and shall again wield control over the haphazard Pridelands of Ankh and Morpork.
And that is where the story shall end. All that remains now is to write the blasted thing...
-- Mercator's "Seamstress" fanfics can be found here:
Say Yes
Conspiracy of Beers
Vetinari in Absentia
His Lordship had a little Lamb
-- It's Track 13, "The Madness of King Scar", on the Lion King on Broadway soundtrack CD that inspired Hanna and Wonse's interesting predicament.
-- All image captures were taken and edited by me - if you want to use them, please ask first. No copyright infringements intended.
-- Special thanks go out to Merrymoll for introducing me to the Discworld - where would I be without it?