These are the words with which Iris Brandt, director of the Taraxacum Institute for Young Offenders (boys and girls aged 13 to 18), greets her new employee Jonah Resnik in my upcoming mystery-drama novel At the Feet of Justicia, the first installment of the Taraxacum Trilogy.
You're probably wondering what "Taraxacum" means and I how came up with such an odd and obscure name. When I first conceived this trilogy (which was originally supposed to be a single novel at the time), I needed to find a name for the institute/boarding school in which the main story took place. I wanted it to be something that was both original and had a deeper meaning to it. This proved easier said than done. After several long-winded and (mostly unsuccessful) brainstorming attempts, I eventually came across the Latin word Taraxacum, meaning "dandelion". Why I picked the name dandelion? Well... several reasons, most of which I'd prefer not to disclose just yet and give my readers a chance to draw their own conclusions. (Yes, that's the kind of writer I am... ^_^)
Suffice it to say that a dandelion is versatile. A simple plant with many properties. Some see it as nothing more than a weed that needs to be uprooted. Others are fascinated by its herbal and medicinal qualities. Others again, especially children, just love picking and blowing at them once they've seeded. The relevance of the dandelion in this trilogy will become clearer as the story progresses and will provide the key to understanding some of the main themes and character arcs.
"If you'll come with us, we'll take you up to the Castle..."
Coming back to the setting itself, the idea for Taraxacum the Institute was born out of several forms of inspiration. I was always a big fan of boarding school stories. Especially where the schools were enchanting castles or stunning mansions. Naturally, J.k. Rowling's magical world of Hogwarts will come to mind and I must admit that having read the Harry Potter books, watched the films and played the video games when I was young, that certainly was an unavoidable source of inspiration that weaved its way through my imagination in the creation of this trilogy.
However, there were other sources of inspiration as well; the 2004 French film Les Choristes (The Chorus) being chief among them. Whereas the Harry Potter franchise tells the story from the perspective of the student, Les Choristes tells it from the perspective of the teacher. In this instance, this teacher is a failed and disillusioned musician by the name of Clément Mathieu who begins working in a boarding school for difficult boys, ominously called "Fond de l'Étang" ("Bottom of the Pond"). This is partially how the premise of the Taraxacum story was conceived. But there was also another fictitious boarding school that has also left a lasting impression.
The school in question was the Ohtori Academy from the anime series Shoujo Kakumei Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena), which I first came across in 2014 while I was working in Denmark (in a secondary school no less). Classed as a postmodern fairy tale, Utena is definitely worth discussing in its own right (which I intend to do in the near future), but for now I just want to focus on its setting (Ohtori Academy), which, as previously mentioned, is a boarding school. And not just any kind of boarding school; it's literally modeled after the palace of Versailles and sits majestically on the top of a hill overlooking the ocean. The mere thought of this place makes my mouth water... (Yep, I'm a sucker for aesthetic scenery and architecture)
Ohtori (which means "Phoenix" by the way) is run by a chairman and hosts a Student Council made up of the most prodigious (in the sense of remarkable) students in the school. The dynamics between the student council members at Ohtori gave me the idea of creating a similar grouping for Taraxacum. Although here it is not a council of students, but of teachers. I was going to flesh out a more intricate hierarchical structure within the institute but that proved too difficult in the end. The four "senior teachers" (one of whom is an important supporting character) are all that remained from this endeavour.
Taraxacum is a faculty that is part of the Neukonstanz Academy which consists of many castles and mansions scattered around a wooded hill. The administrative office is located in the main castle which also hosts the "Royal Residence" home to the Lord Mayor and other prestigious figures. I always imagined it looking something like this:
A bit cliché perhaps, but I love it! (That's Burg Hohenzollern in Germany, just in case you were wondering). Taraxacum is another castle located about twenty minutes from this magnificent beauty. And as we saw earlier, it's basically a boarding school. But only basically...
"Taraxacum may be many things, but a jolly boarding school for sweet and innocent youngsters it is not!"
As Iris Brandt sharply explains in Chapter 3, there is more to Taraxacum than one might at first expect. In fact, it has the shape of a boarding school but in effect, it is run like a prison (as the new teacher Jonah Resnik is soon going to realise). This is where my keen interest in prison dramas comes in. One of these is a (now embarrassingly badly aged) German TV show called Hinter Gittern - Der Frauenknast ("Behind Bars - the Women's Prison"). Spanning 403 episodes across 16 seasons, the show ran from 1997 to 2007 and was quite iconic in Germany at the time. Although regarded as "cringy trash TV" by its contemporaries, the show did have some very interesting and well-written characters, especially among the wardens and guards. But I'll talk about my characters and their inspiraitons again another time.
Other prison movies and dramas that I thoroughly enjoyed include: Prison Break (just the first four seasons, thank you very much), The Shawshank Redemption and the classic British sitcom Porridge. The guards working at Taraxacum are a force to be reckoned with and, unlike the teachers, are not very sympathetic to the youths under their care...
And finally, a third element that found its way into the Taraxacum universe was the subtle surge in mental asylum-oriented media that seems to have made a comeback in the first half of the 2010s. I cite them here as a source of inspiration mainly for the stunning buildings in which these were set (Big Neogothic/Victorian mansions, that kind of thing). Key players here were Season 2 of American Horror Story (appropriately subtitled "Asylum"), the 2014 film Stonehearst Asylum and the popular (but terrifying) video game Outlast.
Before I give the wrong impression, I just want to clarify that Taraxacum is not a horror story. I'd classify it more as a mystery drama that slowly develops into a thriller towards the climax in the third novel. Again, it's the eerie setting of the above asylum-based stories that partially found its way into these novels.
So, in conclusion, we take the typical boarding school genre, partially reshape it into an old-school prison drama and mix in a tiny dose of the mental asylum craze and out comes... Taraxacum. An institute for young offenders located in the city of Neukonstanz in the German Alps. German Alps? Yes, I suppose I forgot to mention that part... So, why don't we talk about that next time? Then I'll discuss matters of geography and the various cultural influences that characterise this new trilogy. In the meantime, thanks for stopping by and I hope your interest has been piqued. Any questions? Just ask!