User blog comment:Nep-Nep/Sei Shōnagon/@comment-24978536-20190403122039/@comment-24978536-20190404065657

Basically, yeah. When I was planning her backstory, I thought Shōnagon would be someone who'd have received a high-grade education due to her family circumstances, yet she'd only learn those skills she was taught, such as court manners, onmyōdō, poetry and other arts respected during those times, but nothing "beyond" that. As a person, she would be missing "something" that was more important than those skills, something that would allow her to "function" as a normal person. That something is things like humility, love and care for an another person, enjoyment, basic things that make people who they are and bring the most happiness to one's life.

Her family basically wanted her to be the most skillful as she could be, but never bothered to actually love her and teach her as a human being, resulting in her arrogance. Admittedly, this is a cliche what I don't even like, but in the end I went with it and I do know from life experience this is something that can actually happen, as it happened to a person close to me.

Shōnagon's relationship with Tachibana no Norimitsu would have been that of best friends, but more similar to that of a brother and sister and in a way, teacher and a student (I ended up choosing the historical view I liked the most really). Through Norimitsu, Shōnagon learned things that she didn't from her family, and it's through him she learned to love poetry and the other arts. All in all, this relationship would make her personality less broken and help it develop to the point she has in servant form. This is the main difference in her in comparison to Elizabeth - Elizabeth never had anything like Norimitsu was to Shōnagon. I view this difference would allow them to befriend each other more easily however, but with some inevitable conflicts at some points of their friendship.

As for whether Shōnagon is good with children, I didn't think of that honestly. I imagine she'd be good with them though, able to resonate with them on some level to play with them. And regarding Murasaki, I would have originally wrote a lot about them, but then Murasaki actually did become a character in the game. I play NA and I prefer leaving actually getting to know about future servant's personalities for later when I can actually see them in the story, so I ended up not really including Murasaki when planning for Shōnagon, aside from the fact they'd still be rivals. In my plans, Shōnagon would not have been a student of Seimei's, but in retrospect, it would make it a lot more interesting if she was...