Is your protagonist super involved in politics? Why or why not?
Clementine and Citrine are both pretty aware of the political happenings in their kingdom. Not only is their dad obsessed with the newspaper, but their mom works in one of the palaces, and they're personal friends with Willow. (The crown princess.)
Hah, involved in politics is a way to say it. In the Wrath anthology, politics is a key part in nearly every book. The main character in the third book, taking place in 2004, Enrique Espinosa, was a U.S. Navy SEAL who was tasked with assassinating an African warlord, in a country called Darumo torn in two by ideological differences.
Now, the reason the whole war started was another reason (basically, they were receiving an import of many, many drugs, and once the import stopped, the country couldn't distribute it correctly, resulting in our African warlord, Manonet Il-Irice, assassinating the king, Cabinda, burning down the palace, and stealing their shipment of drugs.)
Eventually, Enrique's team of SEALS are dispersed across the country, goodness knows where, and he's on his own, eventually getting captured by Manonet Il-Irice, who he learns is actually a white man, as opposed to the typical African skin tone. He wasn't albino, or anything, he just looked and spoke like an Englishman.
After a long monologue, Il-Irice finds out that Enrique is his nephew (how they are connected is quite inappropriate to share here, I'll leave that to your imaginations.) Il-Irice also learns about Enrique Espinosa's son, Florencio, (who is a main character later, by the way,) and threatened to kill his son unless he helped to destroy South Darumo. He has practically no choice but to stay and work for Enrique.
But Enrique was tasked to be on the side of South Darumo. Not North Darumo.
Long story short, he assassinated the King's brother and indirectly killed millions. He knew if he returned to the States, he would have been viewed as a terrorist. So, Manonet keeps him for a while. And they travel to quite a bit of places.
Now, in 2024, when the fifth book in the anthology takes place, our main character, Florencio Espinosa, Enrique's son, had a wiped memory and was tasked with being the Army General of Tarana by Alamar Rojas himself, the president of Tarana. After he escaped, though, he quickly made plans to try and kill Alamar and prevent him from spreading his fascism to other countries. But he never gets to. Alamar's empire expands from Mexico to France.
Florencio eventually lies in place to assassinate Alamar, but was interrupted by a nuclear detonation, which resulted in nuclear war.
This is an incredibly long story, but in short, the drugs that were injected in Florencio and anyone else that received that, survived the blasts. As for what happened to Alamar and the rest of his comrades, well...
Super long story short, they've been in cryostasis for nearly 400 years, and Florencio and everyone else that received that specific drug experienced an anti-aging effect, so they didn't really age. The anthology ends with everyone from the previous stories meeting up to end the spreading of this drug and what it has done to the world. Whether it worked or not, I don't even know yet, dude.
But that's a long story, so of course you may get confused. To be fair, I am sometimes too. But yeah, politics is quite a big player in most of my main character's lives.
Due to her family’s constant involvement in political affairs and government stuff, Azra is very interwoven into the political world. She is descended from Queen Ariane Voss, who was murdered by her sister, Ilona, shortly after the her coronation and birth of her first son, Prince Sören. Naturally, Queen Ilona declared any and all descendants of Ariane were no longer considered royals. However, Ariane’s son married a fay woman—Khadijah Umar—who was the leader of the Fay Force—a group of warrioresses who “governed” Abendrotia’s southern province, Phantasmagoria. All the women in Khadijah’s family and all her descendants had been/were part of the Fay Force until King Silvan put a brutal end to it when Azra was about eleven years old.
So yes, politics are definitely a big part of Azra’s life.
In The Fiendish Roses, Lennard never really cared for politics, but, since his dad is president, he knows his stuff. Felicity, on the other hand, is kind of clueless. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a massive book nerd, and loves her history, but she isn’t the best at current affairs. She’s interested, but more interested in other things, and no-one else in her family is into politics so she never had anyone to talk to about it.
In Allure of the Depths, Nerida knows a fair bit about siren politics because of her upbringing, but lots of what she ‘knows’ isn’t really true. As for human politics, she’s oblivious. Azul doens’t really follow politics. Later in the story, however, he begins to care about the black market of underground siren-hunting.
In The Secret Extremist, Nikolai and Anastasia are the politics- on completely different sides of the political spectrum. Nikolai is your ‘ideal citizen’ of Strana (I’ll change the name eventually); a believer in all of the government’s policies; a loyal follower of the leader; and a DSI agent to top it off. That is, until he learns the truth. Anastasia, meanwhile, is a member of a rebel group, and knows all too well of the corruption and cruelty shared by most of Strana’s ministers.