Issues using lettrine within a Tikz environment

Question

I'm relatively new to LaTeX, and I'm typesetting a friend's coloring-in book. I'm using the "memoir" class. I want to include "Medieval" looking text under the pictures, so I'm using the lettrine package, but having to use lettrine within a Tikz environment (because of how I'm inserting the illustrations).

My issue is that within the Tikz node, the lettrine isn't working properly (that is, the text after the dropcap isn't aligning properly, but in a funny way as shown in the minimal working example).

What I really want is to get the text to wrap around properly after the dropcap instead of all aligning "underneath" the rest of the writing as in the minimal working example.

\documentclass[12pt]{memoir}
%%%%%%Here the packages %%%%%%%%%%%%%
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{tikz-cd}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\usepackage{Carrickc}
\usepackage[absolute]{textpos}
\begin{document}
\begin{textblock}
{\paperwidth}(0mm,0mm)
\begin{figure}
\centering
\begin{tikzpicture}
\node[] at (0,0) {\includegraphics[width=0.71\textwidth]{picture.png}};
\node[text width=8cm] at (0.45,-2.3) {\renewcommand\LettrineFontHook{\Carrickc} \setlength{\DefaultNindent}{0pt} \lettrine[lines=2]{O}{n}ce long ago there was some random text, and I am writing it here now to make a minimal working example. Thanks for your help!};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{figure}
\end{textblock}
\end{document}

I don't know what other details might be important---I'm compiling with LuaLaTeX, and using TexWorks!

Thank you immensely in advance for any advice or assistance! It's deeply appreciated.

Answer 1

Here is a way to do it. Some remarks:

• I use a \def for the long text, as \newcommand doesn't seem to cooperate with Tikz too frequently
• the first example is normal LaTeX text, using the text twice
• with Tikz, the argument inside {} can be regular LaTeX text
• you need a \parbox to make lettrine behave correctly
• see Ch. 17.4.3 in the pgfmanual to learn about manual and automatic breaks
• potential problems may arise from setting both widths of node text and \parbox to the same value

P.S.: Using a style definition like mine is the way to go, when you pass a text of unknown width to a node in Tikz.

However, using \parbox inside already determines the text width, and Tikz adjust the nodes height.

So style mine is obsolete and \node {\parbox{..}{whatever}}; is enough.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lettrine,tikz}
% ~~~ shortcuts ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
\def\nce{nce long ago there was some random text, and I am writing it here now to make a minimal working example. Thanks for your help!}
% ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
\begin{document}
\noindent \lettrine[lines=2,realheight=true]{O}{}\nce{} O\nce{}
\bigskip\bigskip
\begin{tikzpicture}[
    mine/.style={text width=5cm,align=flush left},
]
    \node[mine] at (0,-2) {
        \parbox{5cm}{
            \lettrine[lines=2,realheight=true]{O}{}\nce{}
            }
        };
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}