Time-Crossed Lovers

Fanfiction
Title:	Time-Crossed Lovers
Author(s):	Jane Carnall and Ann Johnson
Date(s):	1990
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	The Professionals
Relationship(s):	Bodie/Doyle
External Links:	online here at The Circuit Archive and on Jane's website
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Time-Crossed Lovers is a Bodie/Doyle story by Jane Carnall and Ann Johnson.

The authors note that it is "dedicated, affectionately, to all writers of "hysterical historicals" (don't you realise what you've been putting the poor sods through?)."

It was printed in Espresso #1, as well as being a circuit story and online.

Homage

Some readers believe that this story pays homage to several other Pros historical AUs. Possible candidates include:

• Rhiannon's "Veils of Morning"
• HG's "Rediscovered in a Graveyard"
• Meg Lewtan's Scarlet Pimpernel story
• Tarot's "Leap in the Dark" trilogy
• Dee's "Clan of the Aurochs"
• Jane's "A Madrigal" novel
• Cassie Ingaben's "Non Nobis, Domine"

More discussion about possibilities is here.

The Author Comments

I wrote this story, um, about 17 or 18 years ago? and it still makes me smile. You have to know that in Profs fandom there was this habit of writing what I dubbed "hysterical historicals" - stories in which Bodie and Doyle, and sometimes Cowley, appeared under their own names - however improbable that was - in some vaguely historical setting or other. This story brushes over a lot of such stories, and probably only makes sense even as a conceit if you've read as many of them as any fan of the circuit had. But I don't care. I adore it to bits, especially all the obscure jokes I wrote in that I am prepared to bet no one else but me got. Not all of them, anyway.

Reactions and Reviews

This one’s a quickie but, as it pokes a little fun at the many “hysterical historicals” in Bodie/Doyle fan writing, it is still in tune with the general theme I intended to develop this month: the premise, which is not to be taken too seriously, is that Bodie & Doyle have lived many, many lives and have always found their fates intertwined. There is a deliberate mistake in one paragraph – if you want to find out, read behind this link:

I figured it out for myself, but had it confirmed later by one of the authors on Pros_Lit (Yahoo Groups): it’s the part of the story set in the Bastille. At the time (very vague in the story, but presumably sometime between the period around the Battle of the Heights of Abraham in 1759 and the storming of the Bastille in 1789) there were very few prisoners in the Bastille, and they were all housed in single cells, so they would not have been put in one together.

It’s good fun.