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Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2025: Week 29
Victorian AU, short for Victorian alternative universe, is the most commonly used term for fanworks that take characters from a modern or future-set fandom and relocate them to a stereotypical Victorian romanticism era setting. It is a form of historical AU.
No fandom is safe from this trope, from The Sentinel to Harry Potter to some other, even more unlikely, fandoms. Unlike canonical Victorians, historical accuracy is not a necessity. Some fans will put in the research to make their fanworks as accurate as possible, while others will use the setting as merely a backdrop or aesthetic for their fanworks.
The Victorian period lasted for 63 years. There is some variation, but it seems that very few fanworks are set in the early Victorian period. Fanworks seem to be more generally set in either the middle Victorian period (also sometimes referred to as High Victorian), which is very Dickensesque in tone or feeling, or the late Victorian period which has a slightly more modern feel.