Renault Times

The Renault Times is a fictional newspaper associated with the maryrenaultfics LiveJournal community. It began as a way for the more active members to convey announcements to their peers in the form of supposed newspaper articles. However, while still continuing in this function, it evolved into a fictional newspaper that is delivered weekly to and read by the characters of Renault's books, who thus also keep up with events in the ITOWverse.

I do think the Renault Times was an inspired notion of Flo's. Not only is it an incredibly cute idea in its own right; not only does it allow one to try a different style of writing; but, on top of that, it affords the possibility of sweeping up a lot of tiny things that are informative and/or amusing, but couldn't possibly support ficlets in their own right.

Appearances of the Renault Times

The Renault Times was introduced on 20 July 2008 in fawatson's "Lead story by Michael Odell in the Renault Times". At the time, some of the members of the maryrenaultfics community had been compiling glossaries of the characters in each of Renault's novels. As a way of announcing the near completion of this project to the rest of the community, fawatson posted a news story that she had ostensibly "transcribed" from a newspaper called the Renault Times. The story had supposedly been written originally by Michael Odell, a canonical news correspondent in Mary Renault's 1953 novel, The Charioteer.

Screen capture of the webpage for "Greatest Regrets" showing the Renault Times.

In Greer Watson's "Greatest Regrets", posted to maryrenaultfics on 18 September 2009, the Renault Times was incorporated into the ITOWverse. Two characters from The Charioteer, Laurie Odell and Ralph Lanyon, read the Renault Times in an indeterminate time period post-novel when they are living together. They then discuss the pros and cons of the moderators' decision to close the community to non-members, which had been announced in the paper to inform Renault's characters in their various books. When Greer later included "Greatest Regrets" in The Complete ITOWverse, she illustrated the story with a rough mock-up of the front page of the newspaper, which she created by using a graphic of newspaper columns and topping it with a Renault Times logo.

Shortly thereafter, the Renault Times was again used to make an announcement to the maryrenaultfics community. "Renault Times Special Edition – Exclusive by Michael Odell: Summer Project Unveiled!" informed members of the articles on Renault fandom that had been written that summer for Fanlore Wiki.

More detail about the connection of the Renault Times to the ITOWverse was provided in two of Greer Watson's stories in the Autumn 2010 series of ITOWverse stories. In "The Fifth of November", it was implied that all characters receive copies weekly—apparently without any need for formal subscription:

Every week, there was a newspaper delivered. Mervyn never saw it arrive; and roundabout inquiry revealed that none of his friends’ families received it. Neither of his parents ever bothered to read it; but his mother found it quite handy for the canary. Once in a while, Mervyn was curious enough to have a look at it first: it was called the Renault Times, which was another mystery, since no such publication was ever available down at the shop, nor at any news stand in town.

It had begun to arrive shortly after Mervyn had got home from Hospital, that time when he’d nearly died.

— opening lines of "The Fifth of November

Mervyn is a young hospital patient in The Charioteer. Later in "The Fifth of November", he attends Guy Fawkes' festivities in the ITOWverse. The details are reported in "Lead story by Michael Odell in the Renault Times, Nov 6th", in the form of yet another article by Michael Odell (this time "transcribed" by Greer Watson). A copy of the Renault Times with the article is then taken into the world of The Charioteer in "New Thoughts".