Day 4 (Team July)

[kerravonsen]

Yes, I'm butting in here to post, because it's evening of the 4th here, and there is no post! So join me in the boasting progress reports and encouragement for this day's creative work!

Comments

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to multitask, and it's really not my strong point. I am: re-reading canon, to find out how the drawbridge works and useful things like that ('moves on rollers', apparently); re-reading my own story and plotting events onto a timeline to make sure everybody is alive/dead/out of the country/pregnant/in love when they should be; still writing bits to fill in gaps. The trouble is that tasks one and two tend to spawn more plot-holes, so task three expands exponentially...

Here, for example, we have just buried the late Duke of Elbe, and we are going to ridiculous lengths to ensure that, should his Duchess produce an heir, it will be indisputably his heir. If you see what I mean....

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The meeting, then, was a risible sight. A barricade of chairs, sideboards and screens bisected the ballroom. On the one side, the Duchess sat with her ladies gathered around her; on the other, Uncle Sapt, the Duke and my brothers stood around in attitudes suggestive of profound discomfort. A gap had been left in the middle, through which I was handed with great ceremony to join the Duchess and her ladies – before three of those last-named, evidently deemed the hardiest, closed it with a Louis XIV sofa.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Your lot are worse than my lot with the inheritance thing.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

I have family trees and everything.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

I have someone working on a 900 year family history.

[jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com]

Hope you have fun rereading, and good luck sorting out the plot holes!

Great description in this - certainly sounds like they are taking all possible precautions!

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Part of me just wants it to be done - but the other part can't help getting sucked back into the sheer joy of swashbuckling!

[kerravonsen]

(grin) Ridiculous lengths indeed.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

I had to play this one for laughs, really. It is a ludicrous situation, but kind of vital, or my plot telescopes into about a week.

[saki101.livejournal.com]

...to make sure everybody is alive/dead/out of the country/pregnant/in love when they should be

Loved the way you put this! It's so important, but sounds so funny this way.

The common law legal time limit is within 10 months after death, allowing for conception on the day of death. A birth close to that limit would, no doubt, raise doubts among the population.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

I'm going on the assumption that it will at least be obvious one way or another by five months after the death - she may not even be pregnant.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Sorry I'm confused - the heir of the *late* Duke? Turkey baster? Necrophilia? My brain is breaking ;-)

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

They have to allow for the possibility that the Duke, having very recently married a young and presumably fertile wife, managed to impregnate her before he was mysteriously thrown from a horse and died at a very convenient moment for the rival pretender.

The Duchess is very well aware that her own chances of survival are greatly increased if she's not pregnant, so is being particularly cooperative.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

And when you say "The Duke" was present in the room, does that mean the dead guy? (just wondering, sorry)

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

No, his nephew, the provisional new Duke. If the Duchess isn't pregnant, then the nephew will be heir to everything, no worries, assuming nobody shoots him or blows him up. If she is, however, it all becomes a lot more complicated. Since one of the things he is heir to is the throne, they are all being very careful about it, and if the Duchess is pregnant they will have to work out whether having a newborn king or queen is really a good idea and decide where to go from there.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

That's pretty funny :) I hate to think what will happen when she moves to another room!
You're so close though. The overall story is in place.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

I think every single man will disappear from the household! It is a somewhat ludicrous situation (I have no idea whether that's how they'd actually have dealt with the situation, but I am going handwave handwave Old Ruritanian Tradition).

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

This is really funny! I'd always assumed that a couple of trusted chaperones would be enough to guarantee posthumous paternity. Keep on worrying at the thing, it sounds as if you're very nearly there!

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

When you're dealing with a potential heir to the throne, you have to be particularly careful about these things!

[akane42me.livejournal.com]

Good luck with sorting things out. I'm beginning to wonder if I've written a story, or a series of plot holes.