Wedding Preparations is another of those transitional stories where nothing very much happens but a little more Gallifreyan culture is introduced and the Alliance comes closer.

The diamonds on the wedding dress were first mentioned in an Unfinished Business story almost a year before this one was written. By the time the Marion and Kristoph series began, Rose and The Doctor had already had a full Gallifreyan wedding on Earth with the perfect wedding dress full of diamonds seen in its splendour. Marion’s dress came first, of course, by a thousand years, and hers is made on Gallifrey by and army of seamstresses. She is to have the ultimate Alliance, in the Panopticon. Quite how to top the one in Unfinished Business is another matter. Eventually, I also have to write about Chrístõ’s wedding to Julia and in the early spring of 2010, Davie’s wedding to Brenda in the New Lords of Time. All the stories will have to be different enough to hold the reader’s interest. How to do that is a problem for another time. But for now, the dress is nearly made.

The other preparations are well in hand, too. The visit to Mount Lœng House while it is in a state of transition highlights the idea that Kristoph, on his Alliance, will become Lord de Lœngbærrow, patriarch of the Lœngbærrow family. His father and mother will be moving to the Dower House.

A Dower House, of course, is an English tradition. The most famous Dower House would be Clarence House in London, where Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother lived after the death of George VI. It is so called because the ‘dowager’ or ‘widow’ moves into it while her son and heir takes over the principal property of the family. The same happens on Gallifrey except they don’t wait for a death to pass on the title.

As I have said before, the transition is something akin to the arrival of a new President and First Lady in the White House. The tradition of new carpets in the Oval Office was one I specifically adopted. But as last year’s arrival of the Obama family in the big house of Pennsylvania Avenue showed, there are a lot of other things that have to happen. Interviewing new staff is one of them.

I have mentioned in some of the Theta Sigma and Ninth Doctor stories, purely in passing, a butler called Caolin who was there when The Doctor was born and throughout his childhood. Having created the character called Caolin, however, and then said that the servants move on with the old Lord and Lady, I needed a new butler with the same name. Caolin junior, is the old butler’s son, and, of course, Marion is perfectly happy with that choice.

Rika, the maid from Lily’s household will also join the staff at Mount Lœng House. She and Caolin actually are the only servants regularly mentioned by name in future stories. Kristoph’s personal valet, Lozen and the housekeeper, Mistress Calitha are not mentioned again after this. That is an oversight. I intended that they would. But most of the scenes in which Marion is in the house, she is attended by her housemaids and Kristoph doesn’t use a valet to prepare for bed or to dress in the morning. The bedroom is private to him and his wife.

The ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ image of Gallifreyan society is well embedded in this story. When Marion questions the idea of Caolin following in his father’s footsteps, Kristoph puts the case strongly for that tradition of service.

“His father and his father before him were proud to serve my family in a position of trust. After all, Caolin has more of the house keys than I or my father do. He is entrusted with the codes to the family vault, and the burglar alarms, to the expensive sections of the wine cellar and much more. He is the most trusted member of the household and the respect is mutual. If I had been rude to Caolin as a child because he is merely a servant I would have been severely punished. And that is true of all the household.”

The brief visit to the Dower House establishes that building. And then, to round up, The Lodge gets another airing. The last part of the story is a sensual adventure with naked lovers and massages, and a distinctly risqué comment from Marion proves that she really has grown emotionally since she met her Professor of Literature.