rachel2205

1. On the ballet that inspires this story, you can read the plot summary here if you’re not familiar with it. It’s not necessary to know the ballet to read this, but it might aid your enjoyment. Tchaikovsky’s ballet was first performed in 1892, which inspires the late nineteenth century setting of this story. 2. On the location: as the men of the North in Game of Thrones have been given northern English accents, and Sean Bean is from Sheffield, it made sense to me to set the story in that city. Sheffield, a centre of the steel industry during the Industrial Revolution, grew rapidly in the nineteenth century, but industrialisation did not come without price: pollution, cholera outbreaks, and overcrowding were characteristic problems. 3. By the later Victorian period, mourning had become highly ritualised. A brief introduction to Victorian mourning wear and custom is given here, though you don’t need to know all this to follow the story! To boil it down: widows were expected to wear full mourning for two years (with deep mourning being worn for a year and a day of that) and adult children to wear mourning for a parent for a year. (Young children wore modified mourning, or no mourning.)

I wrote a fragment of this a couple of years ago, but never ended up doing anything with it. But now I am festively inspired once again, and so have revisited it. More chapters to come in the run up to Christmas!

Rating: PG-13

Pairings: Eventually Jon/Robb

SUMMARY: Robb Stark's father has been dead for a year, and running his business is a burden on a boy now barely eighteen. But a gift from Father Christmas brings unexpected changes.

rachel2205

rachel2205

stark_n_snow

dahliaxxx

There were half-a-dozen pairs of eyes gazing at Jon, but he looked only at his king. The moon was very bright, bleaching Robb’s face into bone-shade and shadow. This far up the wind was strong, and it whipped his hair across his face. Jon glanced over the edge of the watchtower, far down to the moon-gleamed surface of the Tumblestone, and breathed in hard.

“Jon,” said Robb, voice calm but urgent, “if you’re not sure, don’t do this. I’d not have you dead on the basis of a poor hunch.”

Jon straightened up.

“It’s not a hunch,” he said. He shrugged off his cloak and his shoes and climbed up onto the parapet.

“Jon,” said Robb, and his voice was rougher now, “are you -”

But Jon had already jumped.