hey, I'm new and I have a question ^_^

[misstumbledown.livejournal.com]

I have an urban fantasy story about a secret conspiracy of uber-rich, supernaturally gifted people who have been running the world from the shadows since Atlantis (from which all the magic comes form, and from which a portion escaped when it sank). Sort of like the Illuminati myth, only with 'kewl powerz'. Now, over half of the novel is set in real-world London, circa now, with a few minor (and not mentioned in the novel itself, I've just written it out for my own benefit) historical changes in order for some of the characters to be old money aristocracy. Nothing big, just additions of the characters' ancestors. However, at one point, one of my characters--a minor villain--manages to kill the entire royal family, the 50+ people who are above him in the order of succession and lots of innocent observers at a diplomatic function (without anyone knowing it's him orchestring it all), becomes King, plunges UK into chaos, blames another country for the slaughter, exposes the masquerade to the wider public and starts World War III. Voila, The End Of The World As We Know It!

The problem I have with this is that, if it's set in contemporary Britain, then the royal family I'm killing off is made of real people, and I'm wondering if it's illegal or libelous or something like that to kill them off for plot purposes. If it were set in America, I'd just replace the current president with some fictional fellow and then kill him, with the excuse that he was elected after the current one or instead of the current one without changing the setting an awful much, but this is hereditary monarchy, and I can't just say, 'Oh, hi, the whole dynasty doesn't exist in my world and the UK is ruled by the Randybuckles with Randy III as King.' I was thinking of just changing around the names, but I want it to be completely real-life authentic until the entire supernatural powers shtick is uncovered and the world turns to major mindscrew-ery.

Now, Alan Moore's V for Vendetta killed off the royal family in a nuclear war that supposedly happens in the eighties, while being written in from '82 to '85, and references 'Queen Zara' as the eldest remaining member. So I was thinking of either setting it 'five minutes into the past', so to speak, and having the slaughering happen in, say, 2008 or early 2009, in order to make it obvious that the world branches off into an AU at that point, or to make it 'five minutes into the future', the way Moore did it, what with trying to predict the '83 PM elections et all.

What of the above options should I use?

Beta?

[beres-ford.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, and if it isn't then if someone could tell me where a good place to go to may be then that'd be great!

If it is, then I was just wondering if someone had the time to go through the first volume of a graphic novel I'm writing. I'm hoping to get it up onto the internet (so it's a web comic really) in about March next year. But I'm in need of someone giving me some constructive critism, just over whether the story and character works in general really. And whether the story flows ect.

It's only the first volume and I'm in the midst of writing the second. And obviously getting a good opinion on the first one, and whether certain bits need to changed ect.

It's a PDF file because I wrote it on CeltX and havent' worked out how to convert it into anything else just yet, and it's about 102 pages long. Which is read surprisingly quickly over my experiances of other people reading it!

Does anyone want to have a look?