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About
the Characters
The Frequently
Asked Questions about Diana Gabaldon and The Outlander Series have
been taken from her answers to the questions from her online fans (America OnLine
and CompuServe). In most cases, the answers are direct quotes from Diana's posts.
In others, she has edited the original answer to include more information.
Readers be cautioned
that some of the answers to these questions will contain SPOILERS. If you don't
want to know anything about the future books, be cautious in your reading. I will
try to note which questions contain spoilers.
How
do you develop your characters? Do you keep charts or index cards to keep track
of them?
I don't keep charts
of characters--I don't write down anything but the text of the book, and I don't
even write that in a straight line. I write in scenes; lots of little pieces that
eventually get glued together.
In the later books,
I do have to sort of count back and see what month of what year it is when a given
scene takes place, so I'll know what the weather should be like, but that's about
as far as it goes. I don't forget the characters, because I can "see" them.
As for where the
characters come from:
There's a local group of fans here in Phoenix who have been taking me out to tea
every spring for the last few years. There's a resort that does a full formal
English tea, with scones and clotted cream and finger sandwiches and all kinds
of goodies--we all have a good time and they get to pick my brains about the book
in progress.
Anyway, at one
of these teas, the readers got onto Jack Randall, and what a horrible, terrible,
nasty, loathsome, repellent....etc. he was. And all the time, I was sitting there,
quietly sipping my tea, and thinking, "You really don't have any notion that you're
talking to Jack Randall, do you?"
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Are
any of the fictional characters based on real historical figures?
There's a "real"
female witch (late 16th century) named Geilis Duncane in Daemonologie, a treatise
on witches by King James of Scotland (later James I of England....)--the book
is about the trial of a coven of witches whom James believed tried to assassinate
him via black magic.....(You know how women are always teaming up with the devil
to do things like that...). I figured anybody up on Scottish witchcraft would
know the name, and for anyone who wasn't, it didn't matter.
It is, of course,
not Outlander's witch's real name--we meet her in Dragonfly
under (what we suppose is) her original name of Gillian--she took Geillis deliberately
as a name, because of the original, whom she of course was familiar with, owing
to her researches into witchcraft.
We'll hear a bit
more of this when Roger finds his ancestress's grimoire. Jack Randall is not real--so
far as I know. I add that proviso, because quite frequently in the writing of
these books, I've written someone, presumably out of my head--and then found them,
in the historical record. Mildly eerie when it happens, but it always reassures
me that I'm on the right track.
Now, Mother Hildegarde
was a real historical person, though she lived in the 12th century, rather
than the 18th. Likewise, M. Forez, the hangman of Dragonfly, was
a real public hangman in the Paris of the 18th century. Bonnie Prince Charlie
and many of the Jacobite lords were naturally real people {cough}
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Who
is the ghost in Outlander? (SPOILER)
The ghost is Jamie--but
as for how it fits into the story, All Will Be Explained--in King, Farewell
which is Book Five {running and ducking}
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How
is Sassenach pronounced?
SASS-uh-nak. It's
actually a little guttural on the end, a bit like the German "ach", but not quite
so throaty. That's close, though.
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When
is Jamie's birthday?
May 1. I had one
reader argue with me about this, insisting that he had to be a Leo, but
I assure you he isn't. My husband and kids are all Tauruses, and I know what they're
like {grin}. May 1 it is.
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Is
the story of the Dunbonnet and the laird who hid for seven years true?
Leap o' the Cask
is real--so is the story of the laird who hid in the cave for seven years, whose
tenants called him the Dunbonnet, and his servant, who brought the ale to him
in hiding. His name? Ah.....James Fraser. Really.
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Who/what
is Master Raymond? What is his significance? (SPOILER)
Who he is, is a
prehistoric time traveler. I think he came from somewhere about 400 BC or perhaps
a bit earlier (not technically "prehistoric," but they certainly weren't using
written records where he started out), and the 18th century is not his first stop.
He is--or was--a
shaman, born with the ability to heal through empathy. He sees auras plainly;
those with his power all have the blue light he has--born warriors, on the other
hand, are red (so yes, "the red man" is iconic {grin}). He has a rather strong
aversion to Vikings, owing to events that happened in his own time; hence his
nervousness when he sees Jamie. He's afraid of them, but he also realizes just
what a strong life-force they have--that's why he makes Claire invoke it (using
the sexual and emotional link between her and Jamie) to heal her.
His descendants--a
few of whom he meets now and then in his travels--have the blue light about them,
too; in large degree or small, depending on their talents. So he knows Claire,
when he sees her, as one of his great-great, etc. grand-daughters. And Gillian/Geillis
is another--you notice she has Claire's sense of plants, though she tends naturally
to poison, rather than medicines. {grin}
We'll see him again--though
not in Jamie and Claire's story, I don't think. Master Raymond should get his
own series of books, beginning at the beginning (Stonehenge) and going on through
his travels. So in fact, we'll see Claire, Jamie, and Geillis again, then-- but
as secondary characters in Master Raymond's story (you recall, Geillis mentions
having met "one other" (time-traveler) in Voyager, but doesn't tell
Claire who it is.
Heaven knows just
when we'll get to that--in about ten years, at this rate--but we will get to it.
{grin}
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Were
Jonathan Randall and the Duke of Sandringham lovers?
No, the Duke and
Randall weren't lovers, though the Duke certainly understood Randall's psychology,
and no doubt used it to control him.
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How
is Laoghaire pronounced? Where did the name come from?
I got Laoghaire
off a map. {grin} And no, I had no idea how it was pronounced, though I had a
guess. The nice actress who does the audiotapes of the books pronounces it "Leery."
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How
is Geillis' name pronounced?
Well. {cough} I
don't know. FWIW, the reader on the audiotape calls her GAY-liss or GAY-lee, and
the reader (Geraldine James) is supposed to be quite good with Celtic stuff, so
she may well be right.
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Why
doesn't Jamie use the endearment "mo duinne" in Voyager?
Er....well....{cough}.
He doesn't say "mo duinne" in Voyager, because between Dragonfly
in Amber and Voyager, I acquired the gracious assistance of
a native speaker of Gaelic, one Iain MacKinnon Taylor (who kindly advised on all
the Gaelic bits in Voyager). Mr. Taylor informed me that while "mo
duinne" had the right words for what I meant to convey, it wasn't idiomatically
correct--that is, the proper expression would be"mo nighean donn". So
I used that in Voyager, wishing (as always {grin}) to be as accurate
as possible.
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Who
were the Paleolithic lovers in Dragonfly in Amber? What was their
significance?
I didn't really
have anything specifically in mind about the Paleolithic lovers--they were simply
a metaphor for the briefness of life and the importance of love--but then again,
often I write something that I intend to be only colour, and it sort of turns
into something else in later books.
There's that ghost
in Outlander, for instance....{grin}
I got the lovers
from The National Geographic, as a matter of fact. {cough} The original
were a couple from Herculaneum (or possibly Pompeii) whose skeletons had been
found during the excavation, lying the manner I described in Dragonfly--his
arms around her, trying to protect her when the fire came down on them. One of
the most touching and dramatic pictures I've ever seen. It's stuck in my mind
for years and years, so it was there when my subconscious needed it as an image
of mortality and love. One reason why writers ought to read more than just their
own genre (whatever that may be {grin}).
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As
a scientist what do you really think about the Loch Ness Monster?
Well, my best guess
is the one Claire and Roger come up with in Voyager--that there's
a time-gate under the loch, and various creatures have come and gone through it
over the years, each staying in the present-day loch for varying periods. This
accounts for a) the occasionally conflicting descriptions of the creature, and
b) the fact that periodic searches by boat and sonar have failed to find any large-bodied
creature (not that this necessarily shows that there is no large creature there;
it's impossible, practically speaking, to search a large body of water with any
certainty).
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What
kind of dinosaur is Nessie?
Well, the one Claire
saw is probably a plesiosaur. I have one of the British Museum models of it on
my bookshelf. The model is blue...and so is Claire's monster. {grin} The small
details of appearance are based on a knowledge of basic reptilian anatomy, though.
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