Hello, everyone! I’m Izumi Sawano.
Thank you very much for picking up I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons!
For this story, I wanted to portray a young noblewoman who wants to escape and a prince who does everything he can to chase after her.
I also wanted this to be a simple, straightforward romantic comedy, so the story is peaceful and doesn’t really have any dark parts. There are no hidden agendas and no deaths, and even when there’s a kidnapping, nothing serious happens.
This isn’t exactly a secret behind-the-scenes fact, but when I finished writing the first draft, Leticia’s kidnapping wasn’t included. All she did was keep trying to escape the royal palace and getting caught by Clarke.
My original intention had been for the story to be just about that, but since the theme in my head was “a noblewoman who escapes, a prince who chases,” I thought, “Wow, she doesn’t actually escape much! But Clarke is way too vigilant. She can’t escape the palace by herself!” The end result was that she ended up being kidnapped by a foreign prince who wasn’t under Clarke’s orders.
I considered making Prince Louis a rival for Clarke, but I wanted to use the fact that Maria looks like Leticia somewhere. And if I’d made him a rival, I’d have ended up feeling bad for whoever didn’t end up with Leticia, so my parental instincts kicked in, and I dropped the rival idea.
On the other hand, Lyle’s role hasn’t changed at all from my initial idea. I wanted to keep him as a background character as much as possible.
This is the first book I’ve ever published, so I had no idea what to do. It was a major struggle, but somehow I managed to shape it into something. I can’t thank my editor enough for teaching me so much when I was so lost.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all those who have worked hard on the publication of this book. Thank you all so much!
And to those of you who chose I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons out of the countless books available out there: thank you so, so much.
Izumi Sawano
March 2019