What's in a name?

The book was to be called The Dark Warrior, a name that really appealed to me. I love double meanings and the hidden meanings in ``dark’’ just summed up the book, I felt.
Unfortunately I was too late!
Someone else had already nabbed the name and I needed to change it - and fast.
To add insult to injury, my title for the second book, The Golden Queen, had also been taken.
Luckily my title for the third book, The Radiant Child, was still free but I had to come up with some new titles - and fast.
After thinking about the book as The Dark Warrior for so long, to change titles seemed unfair - as well as difficult. But I had to put it into perspective. It’s a problem many would-be authors would like to have - change your title so our book gets published.
I racked my brain for weeks trying to come up with something good. Obviously the three titles had to relate to each other, as well as to my original idea of the first book title relating to the warrior, Martil, the second to the Queen, Merren and the third to the child, Karia.
And the first title was the most important. I might have the world’s greatest title for book three, but if the first in the series was only bought by six friends and the crazy lady down the road who lives with 27 cats, it’s not going to do much good!
I had to have a word as evocative as ``dark’’. That was my problem.
Guardian, with its dual implications of a protector and also as the legal protector of a child, ticked all the boxes.
Wounded, with its meanings of someone hurt in spirit, as well as body, struck me as being the way to go.
I tried Wounds Of A Guardian but it went on too long and didn’t jump out. Wounded Guardian sounded good but I really wanted the `The’ in the title to nail it down to the one character.
Book two gave me even more trouble. I knew it had to have Queen in it but how to describe her in a way both accurate and interesting?
Lots of work with the thesaurus gave me The Risen Queen.
Now, looking at it, I like them better than The Dark Warrior.
And if the title gets just one person to pick up the book, then it has done its job!