Roger Mackenzie Wakefield from The Outlandish Companion
Copyright © 1999 Diana Gabaldon, The Oulandish Companion. All rights reserved.

NB: This excerpt will eventually be accompanied by a full drawing of Roger’s family tree. The family tree isn’t shown here, because I haven’t yet completed it. However, there are references to the family tree in the text, and there will be one supplied, in the final book.

Now, I don’t know whether I haven’t explained adequately, or whether perhaps some readers were simply too caught up in the story to notice the details, but I have had letters and questions from a number of people who are confused over the parentage of Roger (MacKenzie) Wakefield.

The questions are most often phrased as follows: “If Roger is the son of Geilie Duncan and Dougal MacKenzie, how did he get into the future?” (signed) Confused. “P.S. What’s all that stuff about Jeremiah?”

This is pretty simple to answer--he isn’t the son of Geilie Duncan and Dougal MacKenzie, and it beats me how anyone could possibly have concluded that he is, though any number of people evidently have. I can only assume that some readers, in their haste to find out what happens next, overlooked the explanations of Roger’s family tree that occur in every single one of the books, {sound of author ripping her hair out by the roots} and/or somehow failed to grasp the distinction between “descendant” and “son.” (A son is a descendant, all right, but a descendant is not necessarily a son. Got it?)

Roger is in fact the great-great-great-great-great-great- grandson of Geilie and Dougal--a fact which he explains in some detail to Brianna on their wedding night, in Drums of Autumn. (I know, I know, you were busy laughing over “Jug-butt,” or you were caught up in the...er...less intellectual aspects of that particular interlude, but pay attention now, and I will explain it to you. Again.)

In Outlander, where we first meet Roger, the Reverend Wakefield explains to Claire and Frank that Roger is his great-nephew; the son of his (the Reverend’s) niece, who was killed in the Blitz. The Reverend also explains that though he has given Roger his own name (Wakefield), he has drawn up Roger’s genealogy-- hanging on the cork board--in order that Roger will not forget his true name (which happens to be MacKenzie) or lineage.

In Dragonfly in Amber, Claire uses this same genealogy (still hanging in the Reverend’s office) to explain to Roger exactly what happened to the child Geillis Duncan bore to Dougal MacKenzie--and thus why it is a matter of personal concern to Roger whether they find Geilie Duncan in time to prevent her disappearance into the past.

OK, about that son. Geillis Duncan gets pregnant (accidentally) by Dougal MacKenzie [in Outlander]. She’s condemned to burn as a witch, but allowed to live until the child is born. Dougal takes the newborn child and gives it to one of the MacKenzie clansmen to raise as his own (this sort of fostering was common in the Highlands at the time).

As Claire explains to Roger in Dragonfly, Dougal gave the boy to a family who had recently lost a new baby to smallpox. This would have been the reasonable thing to do, since the mother of the dead child would be able to feed the adopted child (no formula in the eighteenth century). And, as per the common custom of the times, the family gave the adopted child the same name as that of the child they had lost--William Buccleigh MacKenzie. (Claire didn’t know this from her own experience, since she had left Leoch before Geillis was (presumably) burned. She did, however, learn the names of the parents to whom Dougal gave the child later--and in the process of checking out Roger’s family tree [in Dragonfly], would have been able to find out about the dead child/adopted child replacement by means of baptismal records, as these would show both baptisms in the same parish.

Allllll right. Now, below is the relevant part of the genealogy which the Reverend wrote out for Roger [not shown in this excerpt, because I haven’t finished drawing it up yet]. See William Buccleigh? He’s the changeling. That is, he is not the son of George Buccleigh and Tabitha MacKenzie; he is the illegitimate son of Geillis Duncan and Dougal MacKenzie, who was given to George and Tabitha to raise. Since the Reverend Wakefield naturally wouldn’t have known this (he may have known--from the baptismal records--that the child must be adopted, but would have had no way of knowing who the true parents were), William simply appears in the family tree as George and Tabitha’s son.

Notice also the name of the woman whom William marries--Morag Gunn. Now, you, the reader, have not seen this name before, but Claire certainly has--and remembers it. In Dragonfly, she prepares for her quest in part by having Roger’s family tree researched. Owing to circumstances, she will have paid particular attention to the changeling and whatever can be found out about him, so it’s not surprising that when Roger asks her much later [in Drums], she recalls Morag’s name.

The important point here is that William Buccleigh is Roger’s direct ancestor. Likewise, Geillis Duncan is Roger’s direct ancestor (as is Dougal MacKenzie). If one of these people (or anyone else in this family tree) were to die without having children, that would naturally eliminate all the descendants below them on the chart--including Roger. Hence Claire’s concern [in Dragonfly]; if Geillis doesn’t go back and get burnt at the stake, she doesn’t produce William Buccleigh either--so does Roger cease to exist?

OK. Now, in Voyager, we don’t deal directly with the questions concerning Geillis, but she and her connections with Roger are mentioned, just to keep events in mind for her surprise appearance toward the end of that book. Look. See? There’s that genealogy chart again, still tacked to the corkboard in the Reverend’s study.

Then we reach Drums of Autumn. Now we make a Big Hairy Deal out of Roger’s antecedents, in several different places. We mention Geilie and her son (William Buccleigh, remember?), and Roger takes down the genealogical chart with a fair amount of ceremony, as the final act in clearing out his (adopted) father’s study. Later, when he takes Brianna to the Celtic Festival, he reminisces about the Reverend, and about his family tree, telling her the anecdote about his great-grandmother Oliphant and her “bonny lad,” Jeremiah--in the process, getting it across (or so one would think), that a) Jeremiah is an old family name, recurring several times in the family tree, b) Roger’s father was named Jeremiah (called Jerry for short), c) Roger’s own middle name is Jeremiah, and d) his mother called him “Jemmy” for short, as a child.

Now, the point of all this is to make the reader more or less pay attention when they later see the names Jeremiah or Jemmy, and I gather most did--they just didn’t all make the expected leap: “Jeremiah/Jemmy...say, I wonder whether this person has anything to do with Roger’s family?”

So. Now we come to the chapter of Drums where Roger finds himself aboard the Gloriana, trying to get to the Colonies. He sees an unknown young woman on the dock who attracts him--he envies the closeness between her and her husband, and observes that they have a child (watch that baby). Later, in casual conversation, he learns that her name is Morag MacKenzie (notice the woman who suggests that they might be related? (“Perhaps your man is kin to him.”) This is a Clue, awright?).

All right. Some of the passengers--several of them children--contract smallpox. In an effort to keep the contagion from spreading, the crew throw the affected persons overboard (this scene was directly inspired by the story of just such an occurrence, told by an eyewitness, in one of my historical references). Fearing that her child’s rash will be mistaken for pox, and the baby put over the side, Morag MacKenzie hides in the hold, her escape covered by her husband, who attacks Roger on deck during the melee.

You still watching the baby? OK. Notice, then, that his mother calls him “Jemmy,” hm? Jemmy MacKenzie. Are we beginning to suspect anything here? Well, that’s OK, Roger didn’t notice, either. However, moved by compassion, he saves mother and child, risking his own life in the process.

A good deal later, contemplating names for his own son, the name “Jeremiah” is mentioned once again. Roger makes the connections that have been brewing in his subconscious for lo, these many months (he’s seen his own family tree often enough, after all). To confirm his memory and realizations, he asks Claire if she too recalls the name of William Buccleigh’s wife, which she does--Morag. Morag Gunn.

A fair-haired man with green eyes, named MacKenzie, with a wife named Morag and a son named Jeremiah. Don’t look now; you (and Roger) have just met Geilie and Dougal’s son, William Buccleigh, in the process of emigrating to America--and Roger has just saved his great-great-great-great-grandfather Jeremiah from a watery grave (incidentally saving himself from presumed extinction in the process, and giving those readers so inclined food for thought as to why some people time-travel, the circular nature of things, and whether history can be changed).

And that’s why all the fuss about Jeremiah (if you want to observe that Jeremiah was also the name of a rather well-known Biblical prophet with a penchant for unpopular predictions, and draw conclusions regarding Roger and what he knows about the oncoming Revolution, that’s fine with me, too, but it won’t be on the test).