Miranda and Corliss Eliadde: Portraits in Conflict
A candid photo of the Eliadde twins at the family's lakeside estate, taken a few years before their struggle for control broke into open conflict. It's plain that neither of them expected or wished for their conversation to have been noted; perhaps they were trying to come to some kind of solution to their rivalry.
Early in the Autumn of 2014, Rachel pulled a black dress out of the closet. It was the dress she had worn in the photo session, back in '07, that supplied the images for the original Into The Maelstrom series. In a moment came the idea of revisiting the Maelstrom story-line, only this time expanding that first notion and supplying a continuation. Since I had reached yet another mental stumbling-block continuing Sokolov's series, I figured "why not?", and started this "novelization" instead.
The story idea took an interesting turn as I worked through these: while working on the movie poster, I had considered that the then un-named sister would be neither any better nor any worse than her brother. However, unlike the other series' of book covers I've created, here the female lead, Miranda, became the antagonist. This idea was likely swayed by the imagery that Rachel created, as she had quite consciously gone further with the show of leg than in the photos taken in 2007. The resultant sauciness pushed her character (in my imagining of the story anyway) toward the grandiose show-off, the power-hungry machinatrix, the uncaring sibling that sees herself not only as the rightful inheritor of the Eliadde Legacy, but as the Family Head that would expand that Legacy into Empire.
For this, I needed yet more background images, and found them in and around the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning: large, Gothic, and stately, the architecture seemed to be well suited to the grand fantasy idea of an ancient culture that can draw inspiration from the universes that surround it.
Another photograph of Rachel taken during the session for these images is on the Direct Inspiration page.