Issues of Continuity in Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle
As I read through Blackwood Farm, I noticed issues of
continuity that were tipped off by the viewing of movies of all
things. Throughout the novel, Mona Mayfair is said to be fifteen
years old at the time she and Quinn Blackwood meet at Mayfair
Medical. She was thirteen years old in the Lives of the Mayfair
Witches.
Mona Mayfair's Age
The time setting for The Witching Hour, Lasher and
Taltos was 1989-1990. Rowan and Michael married in
November, 1989 - the same month that Mona later tells Michael she
turned thirteen during. Gifford Mayfair notes that Rowan Mayfair
had been missing for sixty-seven days at the start of Lasher -
counting from December 25, 1989, that would set the time and date of
the beginning of Lasher to be on or about March 2, 1990.
If Mona Mayfair was thirteen in early 1990, she would be fifteen in
1992. And herein lies the problem.
Lynelle, Immortal Beloved and the Grand Tour
Quinn tells Lestat that by the time he met Mona, Lynelle was
already dead. In fact, he asked the doctor if he remembered
Lynelle, who was to study at Mayfair Medical, while he was
hospitalized there after his encounter with Petronius. The
doctor told him that Lynelle was indeed remembered and made mention
of the car accident that had killed her. This is the
hospitalization during which he met Mona Mayfair.
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| Immortal Beloved on Internet Movie Database |
While Lynelle was alive, she, Quinn and Goblin watched a film
called Immortal Beloved. This film starred Gary Oldman
as Ludwig van Beethoven and was released in theaters in January,
1995, making its video release (DVD did not exist then, only laser
disc) occur later that same year. Quinn could not possibly
have seen this movie as early as 1992 or before.
If Quinn took his three and one-half year tour of Europe from
1993/94 to 1997 and was turned into a blood drinker shortly enough
afterward for the concierge at the hotel in Italy to remember him,
it seems the time between his turning and his contact with Lestat
would not have taken another three or four years, especially with
Goblin getting more and more vicious. Again, remember that
Quinn could not have seen Immortal Beloved before January,
1995 at the earliest and certainly not on video at such an early
date.
Aunt Queen and Gladiator
Why do I object to the more than three-year difference between
Quinn's vampirization and his contact with Lestat, besides the obvious
reason of Goblin? If you recall, on the night Lestat was
introduced to Aunt Queen (which was also the night she died), she and
her little party were preparing to watch the movie Gladiator,
clearly identified as the film directed by Ridley Scott. That
film was released to theaters in May, 2000, meaning it would not have
been available for rental or purchase until late 2000 or early
2001. Again, the action at the end of
Blackwood Farm was within months of Quinn's return from his
tour of Europe with Aunt Queen.
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| Gladiator on Internet Movie Database |
In Blood Canticle, reference is made to the time of year, which
is summer. The action in Blood Canticle is a direct
continuation of the action in Blackwood Farm, placing the action
in BC in the summer of 2001 - at that point long enough from the
original stories of Lasher when Rowan Mayfair would concievably have
aged enough for her blond hair to naturally show streaks of gray as
Lestat notes early on. The only other possibility is that the
birth of the Taltos caused her to show signs of premature aging, but
this seems unlikely if the Taltos breast milk restored her completely -
enough to wake her from an almost certainly fatal coma.
Could Mona Mayfair have been fifteen when she met Quinn
Blackwood? Not unless we move the action in the first three books
up by about five years and place Quinn and Mona's first meeting to be in
or about 1996 or 1997 or different movies had been used in the
book to set the themes that influenced the character's lives. Mona
was said to be about twenty when she was made a vampire. That
would have been late 1996 or most of 1997 if we keep to the timeline of
the first three books. Since Gladiator would not be
released for a few years, this seems impossible, unless, like I said,
the timeline were reset to a few years later. This is because
Mona Mayfair was made a vampire after Aunt Queen died, and
after the viewing of Gladiator, which would most certainly
have been available for rental or purchase by the summer of 2001.
This means Mona was actually about twenty-four years old at the
time she was made a vampire, not twenty.
Mona being age twenty at the time of her becoming a vampire would only
work if the action in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches were moved up in
time by four or five years. That would be inconceivable since
The Witching Hour was first published in or about November
1990. Lasher was first published in 1993, and
Taltos was first published in 1994.
My Estimation of the Timeline of Events
My estimation is that Mona Mayfair could not have been only fifteen
years old and Quinn eighteen when they met, despite Michael Curry's
assertion that Quinn was that age at the time. My estimation is
that Quinn met Mona - after Lynelle died and well after the release of
Immortal Beloved - in late 1996 or early 1997. He then went
on his three and one-half year tour of Europe with Aunt Queen and their
entourage.
Quinn's return from Europe and subsequent vampirization by
Petronia/Petronius would have occurred around late 2000 or early 2001,
if he had spent months being barred from Mona's bedside and then hiding
his vampiric state from Mona, then managed to be informed that
Gladiator was being viewed in his home. It takes us to
Quinn's ultimate decision to seek out Lestat and ask for his assistance
with Goblin in the summer of 2001.
Mona would, in this timeline, be about twenty-four years old at this
point, because if we keep with the timeline of the Lives of the Mayfair
Witches, her twenty-fifth birthday would not have been
until November, 2001.
Since Quinn is older than Mona, he would have had to be about
twenty-two or twenty-three when they met.
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| Abelard and Heloise by Jean Vignaud, 1819 |
Mona Mayfair and Quinn Blackwood: Immortal Lovers
In Blackwood Farm, Mona and Quinn signed their emails and
messages to each other "Ophelia" and "Abelard". These two
characters represent the tragedy of the love affair between a dying
witch and a seer of spirits because their love, while deep,
profound, and utterly romantic, is also doomed.
Mona, already wasting away from the illness brought on by the birth
of her Taltos daughter, cannot have children for the same
reason. Quinn learns, too late to avoid falling in love with
Mona, that he is in fact too closely related to her to ever marry
her. It is not because the Mayfairs do not condone marriages
between cousins; it is because those marriages between cousins too
close and who each possess the 92 chromosomes required to possibly
reproduce Taltos offspring have resulted in disaster - the near
destruction of the Mayfair legacy and the threat to the continuation
of the Mayfair line into future generations. A marriage
between Mona and Quinn would almost guarantee disaster, even if Mona
were healthy and able to bear at the time she met Quinn.
Unlike Ophelia, who drowns herself most memorably, or Abelard, who
does not die, but is painfully separated from Heloise, Mona and
Quinn's story becomes different. Quinn, like Abelard, is
separated from Mona because her family (Rowan and Michael) has taken
her access to her computer, her only means of contact with Quinn
while he is abroad. She is ill, dying, and the computer only
excites her and taxes her already waning resources. Quinn
unwillingly becomes a vampire, and at that point, he deliberately
separates himself from Mona, not wanting her to know what he has
become.
Mona knows she is dying, but not because she intends to commit
suicide. She has no idea that Quinn has become a vampire but
at the end, leaves Mayfair Medical and has her limo driver help her
collect all the flowers she can find to take to Blackwood Manor so
she can die in Quinn's bed, on a bower of flowers, just like
Ophelia.
What Mona also does not know is that Goblin, the doppelganger whose
presence she immediately witnessed and understood (the catalyst for
the beginning of Mona and Quinn's romance) is, at the moment of her
flight from the hospital, being exorcised by Merrick with Quinn and
Lestat in attendance. When Quinn finds Mona in his bedroom,
among the flowers, waiting to die like Ophelia after he was sure he
would never see her again, he has to reveal to her what he has
become.
This is the moment that turns their romance away from Mona
dying like Ophelia, cut off from the man she loved by that man
for her own sake, as Abelard apparently did. Quinn was, up
until that very moment, ripped away from Mona both by her family
and by Quinn's own vampirism.
It is Lestat, the Brat Prince, who instead transforms Mona from
a wasted waif of a being who was the most powerful witch her
family had ever produced to an even more powerful vampire.
Quinn had never "turned" anyone and did not understand that in
Mona's weakened state, the tragedy of both Ophelia and Abelard
would have been realized. Mona would not have survived the
attempt, and if she had, the two of them would not be able to
hear each other as maker and makee cannot do this.
The vampire who turned Quinn, though old, had not received the
blood of Akasha, formerly the Queen Mother of the
vampires. That vampire was not taken by Memnoch to witness
the crucifixion of Christ and also take in the blood of
Christ. Lestat did both of these things and he is only
about 200 years old. Even so, he had to be careful and
prepare her to be strong enough to survive the
turning.
Thus, the tragic lovers were given a chance that their
chosen literary/historical counterparts did not
have. To remain together forever, to never die, to be
able to speak without words, to enjoy freedoms they never
could in their human lives, perhaps for all
eternity.
Abelard and Heloise Website http://www.abelardandheloise.com/
