Jane Roland

unknown artist

## Biography

Jane Roland is a strong, confident woman and an experienced aviator. Captain to the Longwing Excidium, she wore the three bars of a senior captain in the British Aerial Corps and a medal from the Battle of the Nile. She and Excidium led their formation at the Battle of Trafalgar. Excidium was approximately forty years older than Jane, having inherited the dragon from her mother Sarah Roland and grand-mother who was his original handler.

She has a distinctive scar across her face and neck that causes her left eye to droop. She won the scar during a boarding action during the *Battle of the Nile*.

As an aviator, she habitually wears a uniform, including trousers, and was characterized as having a "mannish" stride. She was uncomfortable in traditional women's clothing, finding long skirts to be inconvenient and annoying. The combination of her scar and her unfeminine manners often causes stares when she appeared in public among non-aviators, but Jane simply ignored them, seemingly perfectly comfortable with herself.

Jane has a daughter, Emily Roland, in 1795. She was not and had never been married to Emily's father, whom she apparently has not seen since Emily's conception. This was not an unusual situation in the Corps, and Jane was oblivious to or simply uninterested in the attitude of which society in general regards it.

It is expected that Emily would assume Jane's role as captain to Excidium upon Jane's death. Given that the tradition of familial captainship did not always succeed (e.g., Jeremy Rankin), Jane was concerned about Emily's prospects as an aviator and was relieved when Laurence, Emily's commanding officer, gave her a favorable report about Emily's character and progress.

### Early Years

Jane's mother Sarah kept Jane with her until she was eleven when she was finally sent to Kinloch Laggan for training in the Aerial Corps. She had nine years studying with----- and occasionally assigned to a decent crew before her mother passed away and she was allowed to captain Excidium. The Admiralty fully expected her to stay under the thumb of whatever First Lieutenant was assigned to Execidium but Jane had other ideas. When she was 17 she had Emily so that she could get her childbearing out of the way.

'-' detonates no information is given about the character in this book

'**†**' detonates character is deceased

### 1798

*Dawn of Battle*

Jane's new command of Excidium is challenged by her first Lieutenant whom expects to continue on in the role of Captain as he had for her mother, Sarah. But Jane isn't going to stand for it, she is the Captain and will be the Captain.

But not only does she have to prove to her own crew that she is the Captain of Excidium, she has to prove to her formation Captains that she can lead them well as none of them are willing to take orders or directions from a slip of a girl. Instead she discusses her idea with Excidium and he talks to the Dragons in their formation as the dragons will take direction form Excidium. Give their Captains a chance to decide for themselves if they are just going to be passengers or not.

### 1805

*His Majesty's Dragon*

Jane and Laurence begin an intimate relationship, on Jane's initiative, while both are stationed at the Dover covert in September 1805. Both had an understanding of an aviator's transient life and enjoyed their time together while they could, accepting that their duty to their dragons and to the Corps must be given priority. An interesting note: Jane said she would've "offered" herself to Laurence to provide for Temeraire's next captain except that she was too busy at the time (i.e. to manage a pregnancy); this was his introduction to some of the less public aspects of life in the Corps.

### 1806 - 1807

*Empire of Ivory*
In 1806, the Dragon Plague struck Britain. One of the victims was Obversaria, the flag-dragon of the Channel Division. Shortly afterwards her captain, Admiral Lenton, suffered a stroke and was reassigned to a quieter post at the Edinburgh covert. In the absence of any suitable and willing male candidates, the Admiralty is forced to make Jane Roland commander-in-chief of the Channel Division and Admiral at the Dover covert, a post in which she proved herself eminently capable. If her superiors outside the Aerial Corps are uncomfortable at dealing with a woman in a military role, Jane is not above using their discomfort to make her voice heard and achieve results.

In early 1807, Temeraire was exposed to the plague - but proved to be immune. This was thought to be the result of an earlier exposure and cure in Cape Town, en-route to China. Jane acted quickly in response to this information, sending not only Laurence and Temeraire but also the rest of Lily's formation to Cape Town to find the cure, a mission on which they were successful.

After his return from Africa in September 1807, Laurence asked Jane to marry him. Quickly and practically she refused, citing the difficulty of giving him orders as his commanding officer if she promised to "obey" him in her vows, as was traditional at the time.

Despite her position as commander-in-chief of the Channel Division, Jane was not informed of the Admiralty's plot to spread the plague to the French dragons. In fact, she did not learn about their decision to send the infected courier Sauvignon to the Paris covert until two days after the event. Quite aside from the ethical implications of the act - which was tantamount to genocide - Jane was furious because of the likelihood that once Napoleon realized what had happened, he would retaliate by attacking Britain while his dragons still had the strength to do so. As it was her responsibility as commander-in-chief to thwart any such attack, the Admiralty's failure to inform her was a serious insult.

### 1807 - 1808

*Victory of Eagles*

Jane was not much less furious, at least initially, when Laurence left with Temeraire to bring the curative mushrooms to the French, leaving behind a letter written to her as if she were only his lover and not his commanding officer. Of course, she had to turn the letter over to the Admiralty and then deal with the resulting sniggers. She was also temporarily demoted and her command handed over to Sanderson, who was far less competent. Although she agreed with Temeraire's and Laurence's act, she herself would have accomplished it much more quietly and practically by leaking the information to a Frenchman of sufficient rank and letting the French bribe the servants at the Loch Laggan covert, where the mushrooms were being kept.

### Napoleon's Invasion of Britain

When Napoleon invaded Britain anyway in December 1807, Jane sent Tharkay to find Laurence - who was being held prisoner in Dover following the sinking of the HMS Goliath - and brought him to command headquarters. With the support of Wellesley, the juniormost of the three generals in command, she managed to convince the others to send Laurence to the Pen Y Fan Breeding Grounds to retrieve Temeraire and to reinstate her as commander-in-chief of the Channel Division.

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 hereditary peer was membership in the House of Lords (the upper chamber of Britain's Parliament, which was illegal for women to be a member of.

Jane herself took all of this with a sense of humor. 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. She considered it not impossible that Temeraire's activist tendencies might lead him to raise civil war, especially given that his handling of the unharnessed dragons had demonstrated that he had a talent for organization and command.

As three dragon eggs with captains and crews were also being sent, Jane 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 as a political tool either for or against her mother.

## Historical Footnotes

Hereditary\_peer
wikipedia:Hereditary\_peer :the usual form of peerage in the 19th century - was membership in the House of Lords (the upper chamber of Britain's Parliament, comparable to the US or Canadian Senate). It was illegal for women to sit in the Lords.
Life peerages
wikipedia:Life\_peer :The eighteen life peerages which had been created during the period 1603-1760 were all for women. 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.
Men were not to be appointed as life peers until 1876.
Women did not sit in the Lords until 1958, and membership in the Lords remained a privilege of all hereditary peers until 1999.

## References

1. ↑ *Dawn of Battle*
2. ↑ Novik, Naomi. His Majesty's Dragon: A Novel of Temeraire (p. 251). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
3. ↑ *Dawn of Battle*
4. ↑ Novik, Naomi. Empire of Ivory: A Novel of Temeraire . Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.