This fic is interesting because it required the least amount of editing of anything I've ever written. I could c&p the first draft of this scene and the only difference is a very few minor changes in phrasing. I don't know why this story flowed so easily, but man, I wish all my fic worked like that.
I came up with the general idea because I had "dungeons" as one of my prompts, and New Orleans is really not a good place to try and put anything underground, much less, like, whole dungeons. So I was thinking of some place else to set it (I considered a, like, D&D AU for a while) but I happened to have just read two different books that mentioned Salerno - which was a real place at the time, with a famous medical university that accepted women and people of all races. So obviously Ben had to be from there, and since nuns/monks were pretty much the only educated people, obviously that was Rose's place, and then OBVIOUSLY Hannibal is a troubadour because Hannibal. Here are my very earliest notes on the story:
In dungeon, scene setting. Ben feels all shaky because no food for long time. Scared of being forgotten? Then Rose comes, comfort. Escaping, meet up with troubadour Hannibal?
X scene dungeon, set up X Rose comes talking (more than one scene?) Explain Salerno, getting closer X maybe flashback/dream Ayasha? X escape X meet up with Hannibal, helps them hide X another happy scene? X some happy scene, Hannibal playing, eating? X Rose/Ben carrying Hannibal X Mountain, happy X hiding from knights X arrive in Salerno, Ayasha
Anyway, so it's all very straight-forward and I just needed some reason for Ben and Rose to let Hannibal travel along with them, and therefore he saves them from the knights. Also because Hannibal enjoys being sort of sneakily difficult in ways that look polite but really aren't to people he doesn't like, and that kind of stuff is fun to write. I don't really know why Hannibal doesn't like Leopold; maybe he flirted with Leopold's wife once and got in trouble.
The man’s voice might have been a lord’s, but his clothes were wool and well-worn. Hay stuck to his tunic and in his hair, and he seemed to have been sleeping in a pile of it that Benjamin had dismissed as fodder. That was a mistake which might have cost him dearly, though perhaps this once it had been good luck. I like to keep things as similar as possible in AUs, so Hannibal has a background much like his canon one: some sort of aristocratic family, probably a wife, then changing his name to wonder homelessly about. I did think about changing his disease from TB to leprosy (because leprosy feels more like the 'medieval disease of choice'. Well, really, plague feels like the most medieval disease, but then the fic would be three days long and everyone would die), but I couldn't make up my mind, so I mostly left him as 'vaguely ill in unspecified ways' in this fic. If I do ever get around to writing a sequel, I'll have to figure that out. I feel sort of bad about the way I wrote it, because I feel like it might come off as "Hannibal's not sick at all" which is not what I wanted, but eh, I wrote this too close to the deadline to come up with a way of fixing it.
“Well, you don’t look like any nun I’ve ever seen,” said the man, “so I suppose you must be the Saracen.” “I’m a Christian,” Benjamin said defensively. And again, in making parallels to canon, I wanted Ben to deal with some sort of prejudice, but since race didn't function in the same way at the time, he's dealing with religious assumptions instead. (Though, like, people are still making the assumptions based on his appearance, but that's just how identity categories tend to work.)
“Excellent. I suppose God will refrain from striking me down, then. Unless you did defile the nun. I quite like nuns.” Proto-feminist Hannibal!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2014-10-10 10:14 pm (UTC)I came up with the general idea because I had "dungeons" as one of my prompts, and New Orleans is really not a good place to try and put anything underground, much less, like, whole dungeons. So I was thinking of some place else to set it (I considered a, like, D&D AU for a while) but I happened to have just read two different books that mentioned Salerno - which was a real place at the time, with a famous medical university that accepted women and people of all races. So obviously Ben had to be from there, and since nuns/monks were pretty much the only educated people, obviously that was Rose's place, and then OBVIOUSLY Hannibal is a troubadour because Hannibal. Here are my very earliest notes on the story:
medieval AU
Ben in a dungeon
Rose nun
dungeons
hypoglycemia/low blood sugar
nervous breakdown
wild card: relevant prompts: combat, comfort food or item, exhaustion, homesickness, hostile climate,
In dungeon, scene setting. Ben feels all shaky because no food for long time. Scared of being forgotten? Then Rose comes, comfort.
Escaping, meet up with troubadour Hannibal?
X scene dungeon, set up
X Rose comes talking (more than one scene?) Explain Salerno, getting closer
X maybe flashback/dream Ayasha?
X escape
X meet up with Hannibal, helps them hide
X another happy scene?
X some happy scene, Hannibal playing, eating?
X Rose/Ben carrying Hannibal
X Mountain, happy
X hiding from knights
X arrive in Salerno, Ayasha
Anyway, so it's all very straight-forward and I just needed some reason for Ben and Rose to let Hannibal travel along with them, and therefore he saves them from the knights. Also because Hannibal enjoys being sort of sneakily difficult in ways that look polite but really aren't to people he doesn't like, and that kind of stuff is fun to write. I don't really know why Hannibal doesn't like Leopold; maybe he flirted with Leopold's wife once and got in trouble.
The man’s voice might have been a lord’s, but his clothes were wool and well-worn. Hay stuck to his tunic and in his hair, and he seemed to have been sleeping in a pile of it that Benjamin had dismissed as fodder. That was a mistake which might have cost him dearly, though perhaps this once it had been good luck.
I like to keep things as similar as possible in AUs, so Hannibal has a background much like his canon one: some sort of aristocratic family, probably a wife, then changing his name to wonder homelessly about. I did think about changing his disease from TB to leprosy (because leprosy feels more like the 'medieval disease of choice'. Well, really, plague feels like the most medieval disease, but then the fic would be three days long and everyone would die), but I couldn't make up my mind, so I mostly left him as 'vaguely ill in unspecified ways' in this fic. If I do ever get around to writing a sequel, I'll have to figure that out. I feel sort of bad about the way I wrote it, because I feel like it might come off as "Hannibal's not sick at all" which is not what I wanted, but eh, I wrote this too close to the deadline to come up with a way of fixing it.
“Well, you don’t look like any nun I’ve ever seen,” said the man, “so I suppose you must be the Saracen.”
“I’m a Christian,” Benjamin said defensively.
And again, in making parallels to canon, I wanted Ben to deal with some sort of prejudice, but since race didn't function in the same way at the time, he's dealing with religious assumptions instead. (Though, like, people are still making the assumptions based on his appearance, but that's just how identity categories tend to work.)
“Excellent. I suppose God will refrain from striking me down, then. Unless you did defile the nun. I quite like nuns.”
Proto-feminist Hannibal!