The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [88]
John replied that the fictional creation was really amazingly similar in appearance—beard, snaky locks, and all—to his own grandfather Quincy Myers, who had been a revenuer in the North Carolina mountains. He requested that I change the character’s name slightly, to include “Quincy,” as a small tribute to his grandfather—and thus, the character emerged into publication in Drums of Autumn as John Quincy Myers.
1However, the existence of bastard sons is quite consonant with what’s known of Lovat’s character
2Look, don’t blame me; I asked her how she wished to be described here and that’s what she said.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
now and then get letters or E-mail from people who cannot recall quite who one or another of the characters in the books is1—or recall the name, but not which book the character occurred in—or recall name and book, but not what the character was doing in the story. After considering for some time how best to organize a list of characters in order to make them easy to look up, and most effective in jogging errant memories, I finally decided to provide a simple alphabetic listing, giving a capsule description of the character and his or her relationships, and noting the book or books in which each character occurs.
On the other hand, there’s nothing really “simple” about an alphabetical listing, given the number of characters and the variety of their names. Still, that seemed the only reasonable approach, so I’ve adopted the following conventions, for the sake of consistency:
All characters are listed alphabetically 1) by their last name (if they had one), 2) by first name (if they were referred to by only one name), or 3) by the main word describing them (if they were nameless)— like “ghost.”
Characters who appear under different names at different points in the story (e.g., Claire Beauchamp Randall becomes Claire Fraser; James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser appears as Alexander Malcolm, Captain Alessandro, and a variety of other aliases; Roger Wakefield reclaims his original family name of MacKenzie, etc.) are listed under all their names, though only the main listing (the name by which the character is most commonly known) gives a description of the character; aliases merely refer the reader to the original name.
Characters who were real people existing in historical times (or at least my fictional version of them) are marked with a dagger(†). Characters who are real people, and friends of mine (or at least were before I began putting them—liberally embellished by my imagination—in books) are marked with a double dagger (‡).
Many characters do not appear directly in one book or another, but are mentioned with some significance—such as the ghost in Outlander. We never actually see the ghost, and yet Frank’s description of meeting him is sufficient to make the ghost a significant character. Likewise, Jamie’s parents,Brian and Ellen Fraser, never appear directly in the story, but are important figures, nonetheless. Ergo, characters who are mentioned in the story (and important to it in some way), but who do not appear directly, are listed with an (m) notation following their names.
Very Minor Characters, who are named individually, but appear only as members of a group and have no great importance to the story, are listed collectively at the end of the alphabetical listing (e.g., Dougal’s men, Monks at the Abbey of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, etc.). Minor characters who have no names, but are identified only by their office (e.g., “Le Havre harbormaster”), are also listed here.
A
Barnabas Abernathy (m)—last husband of Geillis Duncan, who died under mysterious circumstances, leaving her Rose Hall. [Voyager]
Mrs. Abernathy of Rose Hall—the last known alias of Gillian Edgars/Geillis Duncan. [Voyager]
Dr. Joseph Abernathy—Claire’s best