Editing Jane Roland
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Jane and Wellesley shared a certain blunt practicality and worked well together during the invasion. Actions in which Jane and Excidium fought personally included the battle above Folkestone and the [[Battle of Shoeburyness]] in March 1808, which saw the expulsion of Napoleon's armies from Britain. | Jane and Wellesley shared a certain blunt practicality and worked well together during the invasion. Actions in which Jane and Excidium fought personally included the battle above Folkestone and the [[Battle of Shoeburyness]] in March 1808, which saw the expulsion of Napoleon's armies from Britain. | ||
− | After Shoeburyness, Wellesley (now the Duke of Wellington) had Jane named Admiral of the Air. He also sought to make her a peer. However, one of the unassailable privileges of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_peer hereditary peer] - the | + | After Shoeburyness, Wellesley (now the Duke of Wellington) had Jane named Admiral of the Air. He also sought to make her a peer. However, it was necessary to find a way in which this could be done without having her sit in the House of Lords, the upper chamber of Britain's Parliament (comparable to the US or Canadian Senate, except that membership was by inheritance rather than election or appointment). Membership in the Lords was one of the unassailable privileges of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereditary_peer hereditary peer] and remained so until 1999. The position of "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_peer life peer]" existed but was rarely used - 18 life peerages had been created during the period 1603-1760, all for women, who could not sit in the Lords. Thus, to appoint the Admiral of the Air as a life peer rather than a hereditary peer would make it all too scandalously public that the Admiral was a woman. |
− | + | Jane herself was rather unimpressed with all of this. However, she recognized that the times ahead would be dirty ones politically as well as militarily, so she was not unhappy when the government exiled Laurence and Temeraire to Australia, where they would be out of the mess. As three dragon eggs with captains and crews were also being sent, she was able to slip the remnants of Temeraire's crew in among them, including her own daughter Emily. She worried less for Emily's physical safety in a distant land than for effects on Emily's spirit if she were to be used politically against her mother. | |
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− | Jane herself | ||
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− | As three dragon eggs with captains and crews were also being sent, | ||