Jane Austen meets Nirvana in Fire
Jun. 1st, 2020 04:17 pmThis is entirely ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azdak's fault for the sentence Three or four families at an imperial court is the very thing to work on! Anyway, NiF is making me think of missing works from the English literary canon, so here is one of them. I am absolutely not writing the rest, although I quite fancy somebody's else's version of what happened when Lin Chen found himself in Highbury
Lin Shu
Lin Shu, handsome, clever, and brave, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty years in the world with very little to distress or vex him.
He was the eldest of the children of a most affectionate father and mother, and had, in consequence of the General's military genius and his own early promise, moved rapidly up the ranks of the army from a very early age. His fiancée was an excellent young woman of good family and similar temperament, and though he had no brothers any want of this nature had been supplied by his cousins, in particular the seventh son of the Emperor, Prince Jingyan, who had fallen in no way short of a brother in affection.
Despite these circumstances, the real evils indeed of Lin Shu's situation, were not, as the reader might be naturally inclined to suspect, the power of having rather too much his own way and a disposition to think a little too well of himself, possessed though he was of these qualities. Rather the disadvantages that threatened alloy to his many enjoyments were a paranoid autocrat for an uncle and a number of individuals who were all too keen to have the noble and honourable Prince Qi and all his supporters put out of the way for good. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that it did not by any means rank as a credible misfortune with him.
azdak's fault for the sentence Three or four families at an imperial court is the very thing to work on! Anyway, NiF is making me think of missing works from the English literary canon, so here is one of them. I am absolutely not writing the rest, although I quite fancy somebody's else's version of what happened when Lin Chen found himself in HighburyLin Shu, handsome, clever, and brave, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty years in the world with very little to distress or vex him.
He was the eldest of the children of a most affectionate father and mother, and had, in consequence of the General's military genius and his own early promise, moved rapidly up the ranks of the army from a very early age. His fiancée was an excellent young woman of good family and similar temperament, and though he had no brothers any want of this nature had been supplied by his cousins, in particular the seventh son of the Emperor, Prince Jingyan, who had fallen in no way short of a brother in affection.
Despite these circumstances, the real evils indeed of Lin Shu's situation, were not, as the reader might be naturally inclined to suspect, the power of having rather too much his own way and a disposition to think a little too well of himself, possessed though he was of these qualities. Rather the disadvantages that threatened alloy to his many enjoyments were a paranoid autocrat for an uncle and a number of individuals who were all too keen to have the noble and honourable Prince Qi and all his supporters put out of the way for good. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that it did not by any means rank as a credible misfortune with him.