#heartshaven's headcanons

[daughterofheartshaven]

Using the Doctor Who EU to show how Gallifrey survived the Chibnall era

So. I'm actually a big fan of the Chibnall era of Doctor Who. That being said, I still don't like some of it's plot points, and so, consequentially, I have a handful of headcanons that use the Doctor Who expanded universe to address those, and I feel like they are worth sharing. We're gonna start with Gallifrey's destruction at the hands of the Spy Master. I don't like it for a number of reasons, but I think the biggest one is, like, how did the Master even do that? How did he destroy Gallifrey so completely while also leaving enough bodies behind to make the CyberMasters?

Well, let's find out. Buckle up, because this is gonna get complicated.

Okay, ground rules first. Anything seen on tv, happened. I can recontextualize as much as I want (and I'm gonna do that, believe me) but it still has to fit with everything we see onscreen. I also have to use all of an EU source if I use it. No picking and choosing bits.

With that out of the way, let's meet the stories that are our players:

Ascension of the Cybermen / The Timeless Children: the tv episodes that gave us the most details about the Master destroying Gallifrey. I'm gonna assume if you're reading this, you're familiar with.

Hell Bent: the other big Gallifrey episode of the new series. I'm assuming familiarity with it, too.

The Time of the Doctor: The only other tv episode I'm going to reference, again for Gallifrey reasons.

Down the Middle: a prose short story collection first released in 2020, and the crux of all the arguments I will be making here. While not licensed by the BBC, it does feature licensed use of prose companion Chris Cwej (among many other things) making it a valid part of the expanded universe. The first installment of the Cwej series. I will be talking about pretty heavy spoilers for Down the Middle here, so go away if you don't wanna see that.

The Dark Path: a book featuring the Second Doctor and, notably, the Master, released in 1997.

Alien Bodies: a book featuring the Eighth Doctor, released in 1997.

The Taking of Planet 5: a book featuring the Eighth Doctor, released in 1999.

The Book of the War: a... book (it's hard to define) that is styled as an in-universe guide to the world of Faction Paradox. If you're not familiar with, Faction Paradox is a sci-fi series that spun out of elements of Doctor Who books. It contains nothing owned by the BBC, but does contain elements and characters from Doctor Who books (specifically the Eighth Doctor Adventures book series), making it also a part of the expanded universe.

The Clockwise War: a comic serialized in Doctor Who magazine, and later released in a collection of the same name. Features the Twelfth Doctor and Bill Potts.

And Today, You: an installment of the Cwej series released in 2023. Set some time after Down the Middle from the perspective of Chris Cwej and the Time Lords.

Okay. Let's get started. Because of copyright restrictions, different parts of the expanded universe use different terms for concepts, events, and characters that are or could be interpreted to be the same. I'm going to go through some of the books I just mentioned and define how they approach these terms and the lore/worldbuilding they establish, so when I actually start making arguments, I can refer to these concepts in a consistent manner.

The only thing The Dark Path brings into this is that it established that Koschei was a name the Master used before calling himself the Master. That book does a lot of other great stuff, but that's the only thing relevant to this discussion.

Alien Bodies was the first book to introduce an arc about a future War (called the War in Heaven) across time between the Time Lords and some unnamed Enemy. While the Gallifrey of the Doctor's present was not yet a part of the War, they were aware of the war and trying to prepare themselves for it. This thread gets continued throughout the series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures book series, with Gallifrey becoming more militant and dangerous in preparation for the War.

So, uh... this sound familiar to anybody?

Legally speaking from the perspective of copyright, the War in Heaven as introduced in Alien Bodies and the Last Great Time War of Doctor Who's new series cannot be confirmed to be the same conflict. That being said, I totally think they're the same thing. Mostly just because "a massive war in space and time that was after the start of the Eighth Doctor but before the Ninth Doctor in which Gallifrey and the Time Lords went from a passive people to warmongering maniacs and the universe was nearly destroyed in the process" is a description that fits both the War in Heaven and the Last Great Time War and, like, the fact that the show and the expanded universe never references there being two conflicts like that. Not everything works perfectly together, but that seems reasonable in a War that heavily involves changing time and history. I'll hopefully do another big post like this weaving all of the War in Heaven stuff with Last Great Time War stuff together a bit more seamlessly, but for now, I'm going to take it as stated that the conflicts are the same.

That tangent aside, one of the books that was seeding Alien Bodies' upcoming War in Heaven was The Taking of Planet 5, which notably introduced the idea of the Nine Gallifreys. More specifically, the idea was that the Time Lords had made at least nine identical copies of Gallifrey to be used as decoys in the war - and that it was possible that multiple Gallifreys thought they were the original.

If you're thinking "oh, so the Master destroyed a copy of Gallifrey, not the original," then, well, yeah. So did the guy who came up with the idea of the Nine Gallifreys in the first place. And that is where this is going. But that actually doesn't answer how the Master was able to raze a Gallifrey. We've still got a lot more digging to do.

The Book of the War was the first release of the Faction Paradox series, and it took the War in Heaven idea and divorced it from Doctor Who. It still had the same players and was explicitly set in the same continuity as the Eighth Doctor Adventures books it had launched from - just with some things renamed to avoid having to get license from the BBC. The Time Lords became the Great Houses, Gallifrey became the Homeworld, and so on and so forth. But this is still the same War in Heaven, and so I consider it still an account of the Last Great Time War.

One thing The Book of the War introduced was the Cwejen. To make a long story very short, the Time Lords spliced the timeline of one of their agents, Chris Cwej (former companion of the Seventh Doctor, although that's not actually relevant to anything happening here). By doing so, they were able to start manufacturing time-clones (look. I'm doing a lot of simplifying here) which were then considered a new species called the Cwejen. The Cwejen were used as agents and as foot solders during the War. (This is basically Doctor Who's equivalent to Star Wars's Clone Troopers.)

Okay, now we're ready for Down the Middle. This is where things get really fun.

Down the Middle is set after the conclusion to the War in Heaven, which I am claiming was the Last Great Time War. Thus, from Gallifrey's perspective, it is set after Gallifrey returns to the universe, as shown in Hell Bent. It features the Time Lords, or, well, the Superiors. Much like Faction Paradox, the Cwej series can't explicitly say things like "Time Lords" or "Gallifrey" without getting copyright struck by the BBC, so they say "The Superiors" and "The Base of Operations." I'm gonna stick with the BBC terms for sake of consistency though.

Down the Middle follows Chris Cwej, still as an agent of the Time Lords, as he does missions for them. It also spends a lot of time looking into the Cwejen and what their life was like after the end of the War. The first like 80% of the book is very good but also not relevant to what I'm doing here, but towards the end of the book, the High Council of the Time Lords decides to execute Chris for... reasons (look I'm trying to not spoil stuff). However, Chris proves harder to kill then expected, and he guns down the Time Lord President before escaping. This would be bad already, but the Time Lords decided to broadcast Chris's execution to all the Cwejen to make an example of him or something.

This backfires. Badly.

The Cwejen, outraged and inspired, rise up against the Time Lords. The Time Lords are completely blindsided by this, and by the time they get their act together the rebellion is too big to be stopped. Chris Cwej, exhausted from the events of... previous stories in the book... and not wanting to be in a second war following his survival of the War in Heaven, takes a stasis pod to an empty planet and puts himself into stasis without any real intention of ever coming out of it. In Chris's absence, a Cwej named Thomas Mackeray becomes the leader of the Cwejen Uprising.

This brings us to the last story in Down the Middle, Rebel Rebel.

The plot of Rebel Rebel is as follows: The Cwejen uprising has been raging for fifty years. A Cwejen named Tina visits the ruins of Gallifrey's Capitol and finds the head of a cyborg - in the first edition, it was a Cyberon and in the second edition it was a Cryptopyre (I'm gonna circle back around to this) - and uses it to access the data from the cyborg's hive mind. This data contains the resting place of Chris Cwej. Tina and her girlfriend Frey use this information to travel to Chris Cwej's resting place, where they dig him up and revive him. Tina and Frey want to escape the warzone raging between the Time Lords and Cwejen, so they take Chris Cwej to Thomas Mackeray, hoping Mackeray will grant them safe passage from the war in return for Chris giving official support to Mackeray's rebellion.

The problem is that Mackeray is a bloodthirsty tyrant who has become no better then the Time Lords. He's currently held up on a former Time Lord structure called simply the Tower. The Tower has the power to change history, and Mackeray wants to use it to destroy Gallifrey from before its natives became the Time Lords to wipe the Time Lords from history (It's implied that some Time Lords are still around, although they are fighting a loosing battle against the Uprising). Mackeray can't use the tower himself, but Tina and Chris both could. When Chris refuses to give Mackeray support, Mackeray throws Chris down to the bottom of the Tower. Frey is able to save him from falling to his death, but in doing so, she uses up much of her life energy and is left near death and also at the bottom of the tower. Chris and a dying Frey explore the bottom of the tower, and they find there is actually a Time Lord down there. He seems to be imprisoned. He claims Mackeray has no idea he's down there. And he's only identified as Koschei.

Oh and btw the copyright page of Down the Middle says that the character of Koschei is copyright to the person who wrote The Dark Path (David A. McIntee). Chris and Frey just discovered the Master.

The Master tells Chris that he can save Frey's life and give both Chris and Frey safe passage to the top of the tower if Chris promises to listen to the Master's words at a time of the Master's choosing. Chris is aware that it's a trap, but it's Frey's only hope, so he agrees. The Master heals Frey, then hypnotizes Chris. Chris blacks out. When he wakes, the Master is gone, but he is able to get back to the top of the tower.

It's not specified which incarnation of the Master this is, but the dialogue fluctuates rapidly from polite conversation to unhinged mania in a way that feels very Spy Master. He goes on a rant about how he wants to painfully murder all the Time Lords, then tries to pass it off as a joke. He also claims to have been locked in the Tower after trying revolt against the Time Lords, but also claims he would rather them in power over Mackeray. Visually, he is described as being blurry and painful to look at, which is explicitly a result of being in the core of the Tower with all the intense time energy being thrown around. I don't have conclusive proof that this is the Spy Master, but I think it fits.

In any case, Chris and Frey return to the top of the Tower, where Chris confronts and defeats Mackeray and accidentally begins the Tower's destruction. He then tries to use the the Tower to change history to remove the Cwejen Uprising and the bloodshed it has caused from history, but the Master takes telepathic control of Frey and uses her to stop him from doing the job properly - and the Tower fully destructs before he can get another chance. The universe is left as a combination of how it was before the Cwejen Uprising and how it was after that.

Before I proceed, I need to circle back around to a few things. I totally believe that the Master was imprisoned by the Time Lords after a failed revolt - a revolt he started after stumbling across the secret of the Timeless Child in the Matrix. I think he's trying to play the Cwejen and the Time Lords against each other, and his telepathic gambit at the end was an attempt to leave both destroyed or subdued. Also, I promised I'd circle back to the Cyberon and the Cryptopyre. The Cyberon are an imitation Cyberman owned by BBV. When Down the Middle was first published, BBV and Arcbeatle Press (Down the Middle's publisher) were working together and sharing IPs. Since then, BBV has come under controversy for shady behavior, and Arcbeatle has cut ties with BBV - hence changing the Cyberons to the Cryptopyres. Arcbeatle plans to publish more stories with the Cryptopyres in the future, but with the information we currently have, I am going to consider the Cryptopyres to be a subset/offshoot of the Cybermen, much like the Cyberons are implied to be related to the Cybermen (or as strongly implied as BBV can get away with without being sued).

So, how did the Master destroy Gallifrey? The Cwejen uprising destroyed the place (while leaving enough bodies for the Master to use later), possibly with the Master's help. Then he used Chris Cwej to wipe the Cwejen Uprising from history, ensuring that the army that had ransacked Gallifrey couldn't turn against him without rewriting the destruction of Gallifrey itself, He would later bring the Cybermen to Gallifrey's ruins, leading to there being broken Cybermen on Gallifrey (after the events of The Timeless Children), and Tina would later find a Cyber-head on Gallifrey to lead her to Chris.

There's one small problem with this though. I still haven't recapped the final scene of Rebel Rebel (oh and btw I have actually managed to avoid spoiling some of it so if this sounds good please please check out Down the Middle I love it so much). After this whole mess, Chris is contacted by the Time Lords. They survived after all. The Time Lord who contacts Chris (who is strongly implied to be Romana, by the way) tells him that Gallifrey exists again and is really angry at him, but also can't do anything about it because they don't want to kick-start the Uprising all over again. Romana and Chris come to a basic agreement that Chris will work to help repair the residual damage left by the Uprising, and Romana agrees that Chris will no longer work for the Time Lords directly.

So... how did that happen? Well, do you remember what I said about the Nine Gallifreys Project? An earlier story in Down the Middle sates that even after the War, the Time Lords still have the technology to create Gallifreyan cloneworlds. So I believe that when the universe was setting itself into the new timeline that Chris was trying to create (and that the Master hijacked), the Time Lords were able use that technology to mean that in the resultant timeline of the universe, there were Gallifreys at the same time. One where it was destroyed by the Cwejen, and one where the Cwejen Uprising never happened, with the latter hidden somewhere and the former where you would expect Gallifrey to be. The Master was completely ignorant of this, discovered the destroyed Gallifrey, and concluded his plan had worked.

I have a couple pieces of outside evidence to support this. In Hell Bent, Ashildr/Me is seen in the ruins of Gallifrey right before the end of time with the implication that she had been brought to Gallifrey by the Time Lords; if the Time Lords had been wiped out by the Cwejen (or the Master, or whatever) then it wouldn't make sense for her to have survived. To paraphrase the Doctor, she's immortal. Not indestructible. Similarly, in And Today, You (set after the events of Down the Middle), Chris is aware of the appearance of the Fourteenth Doctor and the events of the Flux. It's possible that the Time Lords could have looked into the Doctor's future, but the general expanded universe consensus is they don't do things like that, so I take this as more evidence that Gallifrey and Chris survived through the Thirteenth Doctor's era.

Okay the last thing I want to do is talk about why the Time Lords handled this situation in the way they did. Why let the Master think Gallifrey was dead? Why let the Doctor? If the Time Lords know about the Fourteenth Doctor, then they would also presumably know that the Doctor thought Gallifrey dead. It does come up a lot in the back half of the Thirteenth Doctor's era.

I think the answer comes in Hell Bent. The Doctor shows up on Gallifrey, and then immediately leads a military coup that exiles the Time Lord government. Shortly afterwards, he shoots down General Kenossium, one of his biggest supporters, because Kenossium was trying to prevent the Doctor from breaking the laws of time. The Doctor is a hero to Gallifrey, sure. But he's also incredibly dangerous to it. Whatever government put itself together in the aftermath of Hell Bent has an excellent reason to fear the Doctor returning, because he could tear anything they do to shreds. And they know he would, because he has. Not too long after that, in The Clockwise War, Gallifrey is nearly brought to its knees by an entity known as the Absence. At the start of Down the Middle, an off-worlder manages to assassinate the Time Lord president. It was stated in The Time of the Doctor and Hell Bent that Gallifrey needed to hide from its many enemies, and it was clearly doing a pretty bad job of it.

At the same time, the Cwej series shows that the Time Lords are actively trying to rebuild their powerbase after the War. They don't want to just run and hide, they want to hide while climbing back up to their former glory. And the best way to keep Gallifrey safe was to fake its death. Now the whole universe thinks Gallifrey is dead and gone - including its two most dangerous renegades. So long as the Doctor thinks Gallifrey is dead, he can't confront Gallifrey's underhanded power grabs. So long as the Master thinks Gallifrey is dead, he can't ever threaten it again. So long as the universe thinks Gallifrey is dead, they won't try to destroy it. Gallifrey is safe to rebuild its powerbase.

If you have any thoughts on my theory, please do let me know! And I'm hoping to be posting more in-depth headcanons like this tagged under "heartshaven's headcanons" so keep an eye out for that if you enjoyed this. I really enjoyed typing all this out, so thank you for reading!

[daughterofheartshaven]

I kinda think about it like.

Death and Time chose their champions because they could see who they were going to be. In Flux, Time makes reference to events in the Doctor's future. I don't see why Death couldn't do the same. Death didn't make the Master into who he was, she just kinda looked at who he would become and said, "dibs".

And she then proceeded to not tell anyone about that because, like, why would she? And in that one audio story where she removes her influence and the Master isn't that bad of a guy, that's not actually what's going on, that's "how badly can I gasslight this one dude who thinks he's important enough to standoff against me?"

Because Death is an Eternal. And Eternals, as we see in their first onscreen appearance (tv story Enlightenment), are always deeply bored. Death's games with the Doctor are just her entertaining herself.

That's my take on it anyway. Because I think if we say the Master is evil because of Death or Rassilon or the cosmic energy forcing himself to be Like That, then he becomes a very boring character. But a Master who slowly lost their morals after realizing that her best friend left Gallifrey and didn't take her with him is a much more interesting character to me.

i'll be real with you i think the backstory of the master being marked out as death's champion and the doctor as time's champion is a fun but boring explanation of how the master and his ideology came into being but whatever it's fine

[magicofthepen]

not sure if i'm late for the character asks but... braxiatel and sartia?

Sorry for hanging onto this ask for ages — you weren’t too late, I was just trying to figure out an answer to one (1) question and then I waited so long that I forgot about this ask….and I still don’t have an answer to that one (1) question, but I figure I’ll just post what I’ve got, it’s been so long already 😄

SARTIA

favorite thing about them: she’s so hard to pin down, I’m fascinated! she’s such a good actress and has all these masks, and it’s so interesting to try to pick apart how much is true? she leaves Romana to die and then later wants the guy on the crew to rescue her, she tries to tempt Romana into ruling the universe with her and then says she wants it all to herself - she’s bitter but really good at pretending to be sweet, she’s a mess of contradictions and layers and we get so little time with her that there’s so much open space to analyze and headcanon!

least favorite thing about them: I should say ‘left my favorite character to die and emotionally traumatized her’ but um. that’s one of the interesting bits. so really it’s that she’s only in the two audios? she has such an interesting slash horrifying dynamic with Romana, bring her back!

brOTP / OTP / nOTP: I’m condensing the relationship asks into one because Sartia really only has one important relationship in her actual episodes — her relationship with Romana. and I have a lot of feelings about the toxic, abusive mess of their friendship! I want to know more about it! I love thinking about their dynamic in school together and the many possible outcomes of them meeting again when they’re older, and the ramifications of this relationship on Romana’s life. and I also love thinking about a teenage crush turned sour as part of that history (aka i do kinda ship them but in a fucked up way because hey. there were gay vibes in Sleek). and I think Romana needs to absolute stay away from Sartia, holy shit. so it’s uhhhhh complicated. (it gets even more complicated when you throw AUs into the mix — long story short, I have a lot of feelings about their relationship, but what exactly those feelings are, and how much I’m rooting for their relationship vs. wanting them to stay away from each other, depends on the universe. ….and yes this is partially about Romana The Promise by @presidentromana, highly highly recommend this fic, it will break your heart.)

random headcanon: Sartia and Romana got up to Shenanigans together during their Academy days. we know Academy era Romana decides to wander down to the catacombs. we know Sartia finds forbidden places exciting. Sartia definitely goaded Romana into poking around some weird places where they weren’t allowed. and yes, Romana was willing to go along with Sartia’s plans because Sartia was the only person who would hang out with her, and she didn’t want Sartia to drop her because she wasn’t interesting enough….but also Romana was into it. Sartia was also good at convincing Romana to take the blame if they ever got caught because Sartia knew that Romanadvoratrelundar, heir to the House of Heartshaven and top student of their year, could get away with a lot more. and she liked knowing that she could make Romana do things for her. (and this is how we get Romana instantly covering for Sartia in Sleek.)

unpopular opinion: I don’t have any, so instead you get an unoriginal Sartia opinion (but one that’s very important to my view of her character): I don’t believe Sartia’s friendship with Romana was always an act. yes, she does end up stringing Romana along and enjoying her suffering, but Sartia’s so bitter at Romana. it feels raw, personal. she’s cruel, but she’s also angry, and that anger makes it seem like she had some kind of genuine attachment to Romana. but Gallifrey doesn’t teach its children how to process jealousy and anger in a healthy manner. (related: I’m ridiculously attached to @presidentromana’s Sartia backstory, also highly highly recommend The Most Arrogant of the Species, aka The Fic That Made Me Sympathize With Sartia.) 

song i associate with them: ….I may have spiraled and made a whole Sartia playlist. but if I had to pick one song: Ignorance by Paramore was the first song I added to the playlist. “If I'm a bad person, you don't like me / Well, I guess I'll make my own way / It's a circle, a mean cycle / I can't excite you anymore / Where's your gavel? Your jury? / What's my offense this time? / You're not a judge, but if you're gonna judge me / Well, sentence me to another life” - for Sartia @ Romana vibes, these lyrics especially remind me of the end of The Thief Who Stole Time

favorite picture of them: there aren’t any pictures other than the audio cover :(

BRAXIATEL

I’ve only heard Brax in Gallifrey, so this is going to be about that version of the character!  

favorite thing about them: his….theatrical-ness? I’m not sure what the exact word I’m looking for is, but it’s some combination of the voice acting and his sense of humor and flair for the dramatic that makes him a really interesting personality for the other characters to bounce off of and a very entertaining character to have around. (this is very poorly described and I’m thinking more of the early seasons here, but idk Brax just has a Vibe that makes him really engaging to listen to?) (this is what happens what I get asked about characters I haven’t thought a lot about, you get vague statements about Vibes 😄)

least favorite thing about them: please Big Finish stop using Brax as a deus ex machina….I’m really tired of Brax being used as a plot device to get Romana out of trouble, it does a disservice to both characters. (if there was more complex emotional follow up - especially when Brax is overruling her own choices to save her - that could be interesting! but they never explored that in any satisfying way, so it’s just deeply irritating.)

brOTP: Brax and Romana -  in a “this friendship is deeply complicated and kinda messed up and very interesting” way. the mentorship dynamic is so intrinsic to their relationship - Brax guides her and believes in her but also puts her on a pedestal (the image of her as this Magnificent President), Romana leans on his guidance and also puts him on a pedestal in a different way (as someone who has answers, who can get her out of trouble). they both have so many masks - and some they let slip around each other, but others they put on for each other. she is more than his shining student-turned-president, and he is more than her trustworthy teacher-turned-advisor, but they want to be seen that way. and so, inevitably, they fail to live up to those masks and it hurts. but there’s a history of trust and affection that’s hard to shake, no matter how much hurt is in the way, and that creates such a complex dynamic! (it’s a fascinating relationship that I think I would be much more interested in if there wasn’t that overt layer of one-sided romantic interest.)

OTP: none. I can read and enjoy shippy fic with him, but I don’t really ship him with anyone? 

nOTP: romantic Brax/Romana, sort of, except for when a fic Hits Me (I went into more detail here and here)

random headcanon: this was the question that was killing me because I realized….I’m not sure I’ve spent enough time thinking about Brax to develop any solid headcanons? My lack of knowledge about Benny has made me super hesitant to develop any definitive opinions and headcanons even about Gallifrey!Brax, so I probably have a Brax headcanon somewhere, but I keep drawing a blank whenever I’ve gone to answer this question, oops.

unpopular opinion: …I’m not super interested in him? I found him an entertaining and interesting character to have around in the early seasons, but then I kinda lost interest once I realized he wasn’t actually a main character and his relationships with the other characters weren’t going to grow and develop as the series continued (I also talked more here about how I felt like I should ‘reserve judgement’ on Brax, but that ended up resulting in me just….not forming any major opinions about Brax or interest in his character). although I am interested in hearing him in the Benny stuff - maybe because it seems like he’s a more important part of the narrative there?

song i associate with them: I don’t really have one, although I remember liking this playlist by @patrexi!

favorite picture of them: this one by @stillthesunkenstars and this one by @nighthair-art

[theladyofspaceandtime]

I wanna continue with my meta’s concerning the Great Houses of Gallifrey, especially with Oakdown, although I think it will mostly be headcanon on my part. I even wanna make the House Emblems and what not. 

I was even planning some for Dvora and Heartshaven too. 

[presidentromana]

Braxiatel?

A Realistic Headcanon: Romana can’t stand Braxiatel’s moustache and is personally responsible for the fact that it’s appeared on only like one CD cover. 

A Headcanon Which, While Possibly Not Realistic, Is Hilarious: Drax’s next regeneration is Miles Richardson and he uses this to his advantage when he ends up mistaken for Irving Braxiatel, the incredibly rich owner of the Collection. To be fair to him, it might have started as an accident, mishearing Brax as Drax but then quickly spiralled into another Get Rich Quick scheme. But I also wouldn’t put it past him to have regenerated into that body completely on purpose, all for the sake of another overly complicated heist. 

Brax is horrified by the mix-up. Of course, almost everyone knew, they were just messing with him, the Doctor especially/Drax was a better employer, I mean I haven’t listened to enough of Benny but I’m pretty sure Drax wouldn’t pull any of the shit he does. 

A Heart-Crushing and Awful Headcanon: Braxiatel is usually all about the big picture, the end justifies the means and all, but Romana seems to be his exception. Suppressing the Pandora in Romana’s mind behind an all too fragile barrier is an imperfect solution, but his future self assures him it’s worth the risk, it’s Romana after all. 

So. AU where Braxiatel for whatever reason, isn’t like this.  He lets Pandora fully possess Academy!Romana, tricking her into becoming fully corporeal and thus vulnerable, and kills them both, in the name of protecting Gallifrey. 

…Or he really can’t make himself sacrifice Romana and nudges Sartia in that direction instead, knowing that all it would take is implying she’ll find a way to best Romana in the Vaults, and guessing that her ambition will be enough to satisfy Pandora, even though she’s not the perfectly engineered Heartshaven she wanted. Braxiatel knows Sartia’s most likely future is dark and twisted regardless, and uses that to rationalise sacrificing one of them to save the other. 

Unrealistic, but I Reject Canon and Substitute My Own: There’s a Universe where Brax manages to have a genuinely emotionally healthy relationship with Romana or even better, the entire OT4. 

[daughterofheartshaven]

Yeah, this exactly. I can get behind this

romana so clearly hates the idea of going back to gallifrey in series 18, it really makes me wonder if going back just... wasn't much of a choice, in the end. like, she's pretty much a renegade, by warriors' gate - perhaps even officially. there's only so many times she can save e-space, but if she comes back into n-space, she'll have the time lords on her heels. and she probably doesn't fancy being punished and killed, so perhaps she agrees to come quietly, only to find - as she expected - that gallifrey is miserable and stifling and hideously xenophobic. and, being practically a former renegade, nobody really trusts her not to run off again. nobody really trusts her, full stop. she's a social pariah. she's lost the freedom she has in e-space, and now she's stranded, alone, on a planet she hates, in a universe she's been apart from for decades. and it sucks.

so she throws her whole life into fixing it. she climbs up through the ranks. she's a remarkably adept politician; there's always that itch under her skin to do something, to fix things, the itch that drove her to e-space and back out of it. the restless boredom that used to baffle her in the doctor. she can't run into danger the old-fashioned way, but she can change things. she really can! she wins the presidency. she's an optimist at hearts. there is hope.

and then she disappears.

[magicofthepen]

💡☀️⭐ for knock the ice from my bones? (haven't read anything else you've written unfortunately)

send me questions about my fic! 

thank you for sending these!!

💡- What was the motivation behind the story?

ooh Backstory Time: so this is my first Gallifrey fic! (okay, All These Restless Ghosts is also my first Gallifrey fic, because that was the first one I finished and posted, but the first Gallifrey writing I ever did was for the fic that ended up becoming knock the ice from my bones.) 

I wanted to write a character study about Romana and relationships post-Etra Prime, continuing through the Gallifrey audios, but I hadn’t written fic in years and didn’t have a good understanding of the scope of such a project. so I ended up with about 3k of a post-TAE, pre-Gallifrey audios Romana character study before stopping. plus maybe an additional 15k of headcanons and notes and ramblings about Romana and her personal relationships. (fun fact: the og Romana Headcanon Doc ended up being the basis of a lot of my other fics, although many of the headcanons evolved over time.)

this was in summer 2019, for reference. so I set that fic idea aside to work on All These Restless Ghosts/Eye of the Storm/So Cold It Burns/the original Echoes Between Us. but I liked the idea of reworking the Apocalypse Element/Neverland/Zagreus stuff that I’d written into a character study just focusing on that time period. so that idea ended up on my long list of Stuff To Write Eventually.

skip ahead to summer 2020, when it landed on my list of Active Projects. but while the original idea was to focus on Romana’s struggles with forming relationships, I realized that identity should really be the main theme of this fic. (aka Romana struggling to figure out who she is after Etra Prime, as she’s constantly having who she’s not thrown in her face.) I re-outlined it and drafted the new version - which meant lots of new scenes, but also lots of fleshing out scenes that I’d already written, which were pretty sketch-like in the 3k version. (actually, if anyone’s interested, it might be fun to post a “before and after” comparison of a scene?)

that draft is pretty close to the final version - although the “italics” bits were the big thing I added later. I felt like it needed something to better tie the individual scenes into one cohesive character analysis…hence the “there was once” refrain, which shifts as Romana’s sense of identity is destabilized more and more, and shifts again to “there is” when she manages to claim a sense of identity at last. (one of the tricky bits of this fic for me was wanting to tell a story that had some sort of conclusion, while also knowing that the effect of Etra Prime on Romana’s sense of self lasts far longer than the scope of this fic. so I basically asked myself ‘how does she get from where’s she at post-TAE to where she’s at in Weapon of Choice?’ and went from there.)

☀️ - Was there symbolism/motifs you worked in?

the “there was once” sections (the storytelling motif)! these snippets of stories Romana tells herself about who she is, the story changing each time, until all of these contradictory, not right ideas are racing together in her head and is she any of these people? who even is she anymore? 

the “there was once” language is meant to evoke parables with simple characters and themes because Romana’s trying so hard to tell herself this nice, neat story…..but the effects of trauma are so much more complicated than that, and so the simple story never sticks. 

leaning on the language of storytelling was also important to me because telling herself a story about herself is something we actually hear Romana doing in the aftermath of Etra Prime. and I know the fanfic is a Fun Joke thing, but I also wanted to explore it (indirectly, the fic never explicitly references it, but the implications are there) as a kind of coping mechanism. 

If the Daleks never existed, who would she be? A young student who took to the stars and decided the whole universe was worth knowing? An experienced traveler who said that staying behind was worthwhile, too? A bold politician who believed that where you're from might be just as important as where you’re going? What would people mean, when they said Madam President, daughter of Heartshaven, Romana?

If she is destined to be the villain of this story, would she be the hero in a different one?

The walls of the presidential suite trap sound. If she screams, no one can hear. If she paces into the hours of the morning, feet wearing the same tired tracks on her rugs, no one will know.

If she tells herself a story, one where she made the right choices, where she didn’t fail, wasn’t trapped, never disappointed anyone who believed in her — if she tells herself a pretty lie because sometimes it’s the only thing keeping her breathing, who will ever care?

⭐ - What’s a scene/paragraph you’re proud of?

whoops I already posted an excerpt…and this is already so long so I’m going to go with a short-ish moment - the one time I let Romana have the catharsis of an emotional breakdown (and also the tragedy of the only person she can let herself cry around is her robot dog). 

A metallic whirring cuts through her thoughts, and she flinches, eyes darting to exits and potential weapons before a part of her remembers that sound.

“Mistress?”

“K9?”

Twenty years. He’s still here.

K9 rolls out onto the carpets of her sitting room and cheerfully explains how the interim president had his circuits maintained and found his databanks of knowledge useful at times for dealing with a minor crisis. She doesn’t speak for a full microspan.

Then she lets herself stumble, fall to her knees to reach out one hand to the robot dog who was her only companion for so many years. There is something bubbling in her throat that she can’t name, something she hasn’t let herself feel in so long. She presses a hand to his cool metal exterior and blinks and blinks.

“Mistress? Is something wrong?”

She shakes her head, but her eyes are burning and her chest is tight and she buries her face in her arms.

“I missed you,” she whispers, her voice breaking at last, “I missed you.” And here in her old rooms, next to the only old friend she has left, she cries for the first time since Etra Prime.

[presidentromana]

Sartia headcanons please!

A Realistic Headcanon: Sartia’s from a lowborn Time Lord house. Her family were furious she dropped out before graduating, in their eyes, she’d been their best shot at social mobility in decades, and immediately disowned her after she went missing. She was classed as a wanted renegade almost immediately, in contrast to Romana’s status as `poor Heartshaven tragically kidnapped by the Doctor, a notorious criminal, and being groomed into criminal ways` despite all evidence to the contrary. 

A Headcanon Which, While Possibly Not Realistic, Is Hilarious: Sartia, like the Master, is obsessed with her nemesis. She tries to outclass Romana by blatantly copying her clothes but with an edgy Hot Topic style. Romana is unimpressed. 

…Also Sartia was totally gay for Romana I’s aesthetic. Jealous, yes, but gay. Some part of her wants Romana to go back to the white floaty things.  

(It’s Mary Tamm, can you blame her?) 

A Heart-Crushing and Awful Headcanon: When it comes to manipulation, Sartia’s as much a prodigy as Romana. Her friendship with Romana was genuine, they had a real kinship and bonded over their contempt for the rest of their classmates. But she was still a mini Brax in training, with feelings of simmering resentment between them- though Romana was frustratingly oblivious to those, and their friendship was emotionally abusive. 

By the events of Gallifrey, Romana still hasn’t recovered from it, since she never really deals with it or tries to examine why all her perceptions of other Time Lords who seem to like her are now coloured with Almost Definitely Lying About That. Please someone introduce Time Lords to therapy. 

Unrealistic, but I Reject Canon and Substitute My Own: 

I mean, I wouldn’t want this to be canon but as a Terrible au: Romana takes Sartia’s offer at the end of Thief. Pandora’s attempted return was caused by the torture in Armageddon, the end of Sleek seems more than traumatic enough to plausibly cause a similar slip. 

To Romana, it feels like her whole world’s been turned upside down and she’s still desperately making excuses for Sartia. And her friend turns around and offers her everything back. They can be friends again, and none of the horrid things Sartia said before will be true, they’ll drown along with Funderell, and maybe the voice in her head will stop. 

It’s addictive, changing history like that. She doesn’t need Pandora’s influence to enjoy the power of it, and by the Doctor tracks them down, determined to stop his wayward friend, they’ve already gained control over Gallifrey, and have set their sights on mastery over the Web of Time. 

Pandora, at some point, starts to switch between Sartia and Romana, using both of them as vessels. In her moments without Pandora’s interference, she starts to wonder if what she’s doing is right, while Sartia starts to resent sharing power, sharing Pandora, even. To Pandora, this proves her to have more ambition than Romana, and she sides with Sartia. 

Realising just in time that she’s been betrayed again, Romana manages to get hold of the Orb for a second, and that’s all she needs. She unmakes her own life, going back to the point where Sartia left her to die. 

She makes sure her would-be rescuer is too late, and Romanadvoratrelundar dies in the sea, which while slow and soft like sand, is no kinder than any other, and knows only how to drown all it finds. She dies in obscurity, soon forgotten by her people, apart from when they need cautionary tales for their Time Tots about what happens when good little girls with stellar grades and bright futures rebel against society. 

History abhors a vacuum and Gallifrey was meant to have a ex-renegade President, and there just be so happens to be someone who still fits the description, from Romana’s same year. Sartia rises to greatness and only Braxiatel knows what could have been. 

...Well, that became the awful thing. 

[presidentromana]

Romana

A Realistic Headcanon: Coordinator Romana and Deputy Coordinator Narvin try sharing an office. It doesn’t last long. 

A Headcanon Which, While Possibly Not Realistic, Is Hilarious: The reason we never hear of Romana’s literary exploits after Zagreus is that after meeting Leela, she abandoned the Theta fic to start Luandra and the Warrior Queen. 

Luandra and the Warrior Queen isn’t confined to K-9′s memorybanks either, it’s a popular book series, published under an unconvincing pseudonym. Either Fred or Astra Heartshaven, depending on how savvy she ends up being to romance genre pen-names. Brax, of course, has a full set of signed ARC copies. 

A Heart-Crushing and Awful Headcanon: While Intervention Earth might have been retconned, however Romana regenerates, it always causes a rift between her and Leela. She always becomes colder and harsher and pulls away from everyone, to deal with the war. In most timelines, it’s not a rift they recover from. 

Unrealistic, but I Reject Canon and Substitute My Own: When Rassilon shows up/gets reloomed during the Time War, Romana has much the same reaction to being commanded to give up her Presidency for him as she did in Zagreus. There Are Totally No Bad Consequences, No Public Executions Or Anything. 

[daughterofheartshaven]

Natequarter, you are surprisingly good at getting essays out of me.

Firstly, while I apricate your logic with Romana being of House Dvora, I assume she was Loomed from House Heartshaven, with her being "inheritor of the House of Dvora" as a result of her political position on Gallifrey. House Dvora is a much more politically active House that Romana was able to make an alliance with during her time as president, gaining the House's support for her policies and being considered an inheritor of it and not an heir to it since her connections to house Dvora are by politics and not blood/looms. I consider the name thing as a coincidence. That being said, I also do actually super appreciate your logic in the post you linked and think that is an equally valid interpretation, and what I'm about to say next should work for either interpretation.

I take familiar connections in Gallifrey being more of a social thing then a biological thing - Brax doesn't appear to be of House Lungbarrow as far as I can tell, but he's the Doctor's brother. So my guess is that the two became close enough on Gallifrey to consider each other brothers. (I also headcanon that the Doctor used consider the Master as a brother as well, but stopped doing so after the two fell out circa the events of the comic Flashback). So Romana's parents, they would be the people who raised her in House Heartshaven, if she was loomed there or not.

There's also a lot of time between Romana's introduction and her appearance on Gallifrey. Assuming that the same amount of time passes for Gallifrey and the Doctor (and this is very much an assumption but it's one I generally make), then there is a lot of time between Romana's childhood and the desolation of House Heartshaven.

When writing this up I went on a very unnecessary tangent about converting Gallifreyan years to Earth years, but the end result is that a Gallifreyan year is about 1.18 Earth years (I'll do a separate post with the math), and so when Romana says that she's 140 (presumably Gallifreyan) years old, that's about 165 earth years. The Fifth Doctor is 850 Earth years, so 720 Gallifreyan years (cite: The Ultimate Treasure), so there's at least another 150 Earth years / 127 Gallifreyan years between then and the Eighth Doctor era when the Gallifrey series takes place in.

My point is simply that in the space of at least 292 Earth years, there is plenty of time for House Heartshaven to decline or some disaster to happen. It's also worth noting that we know not all members of a house associate with said House - the timeline The Book of the War gives as to when Grandfather Paradox was out creating Faction Paradox puts it as during when House Lungbarrow hid itself, but Paradox is a member of House Lungbarrow. So since Lungbarrow considering itself a full house, it establishes precedent for Time Lords to abandon their house to an extent - I can see the members of House Heartshaven abandoning their claim to the House to join a new one - perhaps even House Dvora - and leaving the physical House to die.

some facts what are canonitous:

time lord houses are (or can be, at any rate) actual, literal houses. lungbarrow is one such house. these houses are both social (the doctor belonged to the house of lungbarrow) and physical (the doctor grew up in the house of lungbarrow)

lungbarrow is still alive by the doctor's seventh incarnation, and still has a full house (heh) of living members. likewise, the doctor's brother and granddaughter (who do not appear to be from lungbarrow) are still alive by the doctor's eighth incarnation

heartshaven is another such house, but when we encounter it in panacea, it is dead; romana is the mortal heir to heartshaven, and the last living member

romana was not born/loomed in heartshaven. romana originates from the house of dvora, hence romanadvoratrelundar, and spent at least the first few years/decades of her childhood at dvora. thus why she's an only child: she was separated from her original house and sent to another

this raises just a few questions for me:

when romana mentions her parents, what's going on there? gallifrey strongly implies these are her parents from heartshaven, so are they her parents in the social sense rather than the biological sense?

romana's parents, at least to me, are strongly implied to be dead by the time gallifrey begins, as are any other members of the house of heartshaven. by contrast, lungbarrow, despite having disappeared, is very solidly still alive. which begs the question: what the fuck happened to heartshaven?

does this mean romana was specifically sent to a dying house with only a handful of members as a child? because if so... :) :) :)