Publishing History and Origins
John Flanagan stated that he first wrote the series as short stories for his son to get him interested in reading. This continued for about 20 weeks. Ten years later, John Flanagan found the stories again and decided to turn them into the first book, The Ruins of Gorlan. However, he never knew that the one book would be able to turn into so many volumes. He still does not know how many books there will be in total. Instead, Flanagan states "I haven't set a limit. If I have an idea that will progress the characters, I’ll write it. But I don’t want to find myself jumping up and down on the same spot, as it were."
The inspiration for the series comes from many sources, including family, friends and European times. Rangers are based on two groups of people, the Texas Rangers and the U.S. Army Rangers of World War II. Although the US Rangers were based on British Commandos, Flanagan felt it would be better to use Rangers because of the medieval setting of the book. The mythical world of the story is based on England, Europe, and Scandinavia because Flanagan was inspired by "English and European culture and history". Besides this, John Flanagan is also interested in military subjects, which helped him write the battle scenes. Celtica's mining culture is like Wales while Gallica takes its name and language from medieval France in its chivalric age around the year 1300.
Some of the books' characters were based on Flanagan's family and friends. Will was based on Flanagan's son Michael; both are agile, quick and quite short. John Flanagan also made Will small in size because he wanted to show his son that there's an advantage to being small. The exchanges between Halt and Will are taken from conversations between Flanagan and his son as a teenager. Horace was inspired by Michael's best friend Jeremey. In the original story however, Flanagan made Horace a villain at first, but then in the first book, Morgarath became the real villain and Horace was "rehabilitated" as a main character. Skandians were taken from Norse culture and Vikings, which Flanagan found interesting as a child. The gods and deities of the Skandians were taken from Norse mythology and Greek mythology. The god Loka mentioned a few times is based on Loki, the god of deceit. The Vallas, the trio of gods, are based on the Moirai.
Read more about this topic: Ranger's Apprentice
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