Cat Aquino and Dominique Duran Talk Champion of the Rose Vol. 1

Champion of the Rose is a new manga series by Cat Aquino and Dominique Duran from Viz Media, described as a “bold reenvisioning of the colonial history of Spain and the Philippines through an epic anti-imperialist fantasy about fighting for freedom in the face of empire.” The series follows the trans swordsman, Rey, as they get caught up in a dangerous game and fight for survival, with the series deconstructing the princess archetype and offering a new kind of hero!

Check out the text solicit for Champion of the Rose Vol. 1 with an interview with Cat and Dominique below.

In the arena, where life is cheap and spectacle is everything, Rey must decide what kind of game he’s willing to play.

As the largest kingdom in the Known World, the Empire of Sagrada is built on the keystones of conquest: gold, glory, and the Dying God. But when Princess Rosa unexpectedly finds herself the next heir to the throne, she is determined to change Sagrada for the better—until her father announces a glorious tournament of gladiatorial fights and blood magic, with Rosa’s hand and her throne as the prize.

In a desperate bid to win her own hand, Princess Rosa chooses Rey, a trans swordsman from the colony of Himala, as her champion in her father’s tournament. Kidnapped by Sagradan conquistadors and raised as a fighter, Rey is equally desperate to win his freedom and return to Himala with his partner, Teo. But, haunted by the past and his own quest for revenge, Rey is soon caught up in the destructive spectacle of the games, where the cost of power is blood, and the true prize is yet to be revealed.

How did this story come to be? Did any other manga or other stories inspire the book?

Cat: I started writing Champion of the Rose when I was 13, so it’s been with me for 15 years! 

It used to be a novel inspired by European fairy tales, Disney movies, The Hunger Games, and the action fantasy books and movies I’d loved growing up in Manila—which unfortunately meant that all the characters used to be white and straight. 

Because of 333 years of Spanish colonization and decades of American colonization and influence, the Philippines is a heavily Westernized country, and many Filipinos like me are conditioned to believe that American and European cultures are the gold standards that we need to imitate in order to succeed. Statues of “heroic” conquistadors are spread out across our archipelago. Our laws are written in English. Churches and schools still preach about how we should be grateful to Spain for giving us Christianity and to the US for giving us democracy and public schools.

The idea to turn Champion of the Rose into an anti-colonial fantasy only came when I started learning about the 1896-1898 Philippine revolution against Spain, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, and the history of decolonization movements in college. When I traveled to Seville, Spain with my family for the very first time in December 2019, I saw just how much gold and wealth had been taken from the Philippines and Latin America. I was also distressed at how instantly gorgeous I found Spanish cathedrals and baroque architecture to be, when it had taken so long to find any beauty in my own culture and home. I locked myself in my accommodation for a night and a day and rewrote Champion of the Rose to revolve around Sagrada (fantasy Spain), Himala (fantasy Philippines), and six more colonies based on other lands Spain colonized across Latin America and the Pacific Islands. 

While worldbuilding and researching Champion, I realized that it would work best as a graphic novel, as it needed to visually showcase Sagrada’s opulence and the Philippine martial arts-inspired fights that I kept picturing in my head. Graphic novels, manga, and comics are also way more accessible than novels in the Philippines, so it made sense for an unapologetically Filipino story to be in a medium that more Filipinos could read. 

But to create a graphic novel, I needed an artist to partner with. Luckily, I met Dominique online thanks to mutual comic writer friends, and we’ve now been working on Champion for 6 years. 

Dominique: We got connected back in 2020 when the pandemic hit. We instantly hit it off. Our initial two hour call went on for four hours instead. By then, I’d been making comics and self-publishing for about five years and was floored by Cat’s idea to make a fictional version of the Spanish empire featuring Filipino characters and a religion-inspired magic system. We put our heads together and began gathering visual resources to conceptualize Sagrada’s world, religion, and peoples.

It didn’t start out as a manga though. Our initial idea was for it to be a traditional colored graphic novel and so we pitched with fully colored pages and an aesthetic inspired by League of Legends’ RISE music video. Our former literary agent, Paloma Hernando, had the idea to pitch it as a manga to VIZ and the rest is history.

We were already big manga fans by then (and anime is HUGE in the Philippines) so we were excited to dive into remaking the story into a manga! We’re really inspired by Fullmetal Alchemist, Vinland Saga, and Hell’’s Paradise (upon our editor’s recommendation). Art-wise, I drew from Gokurakugai and The Bugle Call. We were also inspired by other media like the Gladiator film, Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere—the 1887 novel that inspired the Philippine Revolution against Spain—and the video game Blasphemous.

How important was it to center a trans character and explore their identity in this time period?

Cat: It was so important to us! When I first wrote Champion at 13, Rey was a girl who disguised herself as a boy to enter the tournament, like Mulan. But as I got older, I kept thinking about how someone like Rey would love presenting as a boy and wouldn’t want to transition back into being a girl. 

For a long time, I felt very guilty for writing about a trans boy despite not being one, especially when #OwnVoices was strongly influencing publishing. But completing the first script of Champion Volume 1 helped me reflect on my relationship with gender. Rey is who I was when I was 13 and closeted, wishing that I were born a boy. It’s thanks to him that I now happily identify as nonbinary. It’s funny how sometimes writers need to write to figure out who they are.

Dominique: The Philippines also doesn’t have many surviving historical stories of Filipino trans men, even though there are lots of records of trans women and gender nonconforming people across the Philippine islands who were babaylans and asogs—priestesses, shamans, and healers who have been spiritual leaders across the islands for centuries. 

Trans kids have definitely been around forever, and the lack of historical references and the genre of fantasy has given us the freedom to speculate. With Rey, we wanted to imagine how a Filipino trans boy would have grown up in a dark fantastical world not too far from our own Philippine past and present, which is influenced by a culture of machismo and impunity. But we also wanted him to be a badass kid fighting tooth and nail for everything he loves, like so many trans folks do in order to live as who they are. 

Rosa represents both sides as her own heritage and rise to power are questioned by the Empire. How does she represent the struggle of power and class, and why is she a hopeful figure for those shunned by the Empire?

Cat: Rosa is our attempt to deconstruct the princess archetype often found in fantasy, which often feeds into the idea that monarchies are fine as long as whoever’s sitting on the throne has good intentions. She grows up believing that her divine birthright is the key to making her empire a better place, but the Tournament puts the monarchical system she’s entrenched in into question. She’s very dear to our hearts, but as a character, she’s also an exploration of how sheltered and privileged upper class children who want to save the world have a lot of learning to do before they can make meaningful change. 

While Rosa is also born with more power than most in the empire, her station is complicated by the racism she endures from the people around her—from her family, the Church, and even her own subjects—for being mixed race. Proximity to power doesn’t always guarantee it, especially when racism is a factor.

Whether or not Rosa will be a hopeful figure for those shunned by the Empire is something we’re exploring more in Volume 2, which we’re currently hard at work on.

The impact of colonization and class is a major part of the book. How does this book reflect the real world, and what did you want to say about those topics? 

Cat: We did our best to reflect as much of real world history and present day colonialism and class struggle as much as possible through the genre of fantasy, drawing from the Spanish empire’s past and Philippine cultures the way that A Song of Ice and Fire did from the Wars of the Roses and the way The Poppy War did from the Opium War and the Second Sino-Japanese War. We wanted to create a story that could help teens and adults unlearn internalized colonial mentality, especially for so many Filipinos like us who grew up with it. If Champion of the Rose can be even a small step towards a decolonized world, then we’ll count that as a success.

Much of the way class is depicted in the series also comes from our experiences growing up in Manila, a city heavily stratified by colorism and income level (or the lack thereof). 

Dominique: Another theme we wanted to explore as well is how religion has been wielded by colonizers to oppress populations. 

Cat: Yes. Religion was used to demonize so much local spirituality and culture across the world, and it continues to be used for control. Because Christianity is the Philippines’ most dominant religion, the country currently has no divorce, no same sex marriage, and prejudice against non-Christian Filipinos and queer folks runs rampant. Champion of the Rose is an exploration of how religious oppression has roots in history and does more damage than good when it encourages blind obedience and an overemphasis on sacrifice.

Dominique: While Champion’s blood magic and ancient spirits are in the realm of the fantastic, almost every character and location design I drew in Volume 1 does have a real basis in history too. The arena is modelled after the Roman Colosseum, the Archcathedral referred to real cathedrals in Seville, and we consulted with experts to choreograph our fight scenes and design some character details, such as Teo and Datu Kubin’s painted warrior tattoos. We really did our best to honor the history and cultures we drew inspiration from. 

What is it like to finally get this story into the readers’ hands, and what do you hope they get from the book?

Cat: It’s been such a huge relief to finally have Volume 1 out after working on it together for almost 6 years. It took so much research, writing, hand-drawn illustrating, and collaborating with VIZ editorial, our art assistants, and sensitivity readers to complete, so we’re very grateful that many people helped create the manga with us to ensure that it came out as the best version it could possibly be. 

Dominique: It’s surreal to finally have it on bookshelves. Our book launch and signing was held in the Philippines’ largest bookstore, in the middle of an awful rainstorm, but that didn’t stop readers and fans from coming and filling up the entire venue. And we sold out across the country instantly. We’re still waiting for the book to be restocked.

We really appreciate all the love the series has been getting. It really fills our hearts to know our story is reaching the hearts of lots of people. We hope people continue to connect with Volume 1’s coming of rage narrative and that even one kid can feel some gender catharsis from seeing Rey in action.

Champion of the Rose Vol. 1 is available at comic book and book stores now!