Romana III
Romanadvoratrelundar's third incarnation was, like her predecessor, also President of Gallifrey. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, AUDIO: Enemy Lines) She led Gallifrey through its darkest hour. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell, AUDIO: Luna Romana)
Biography
A day to come
After Romana II returned from the Axis, she was aided by a Matrix projection of Romana III. This projection called herself "Trey" to distinguish herself from her predecessor.
Trey stopped Leela and Narvin from returning properly by trapping them in a Chronic Hysteresis. She then showed her younger self the results of the Pandora devastation. By offering her Capitol to her previous incarnation, Trey saved her thousands of years in rebuilding the planet. She had Romana exiled for the death of Kolspen of Unvoss. This occurred in the Matrix. (AUDIO: Renaissance)
When Romana disappeared, she went with Narvin and Leela to the Archives, where they met Tallan. She helped Narvin and Leela escape the Matrix before it collapsed. Trey later aided her second incarnation, after she left the Matrix, to defeat the Daleks, who were invading Gallifrey from the Matrix. She created a plan to have the Daleks return to the Matrix and trap them there, thus stopping them from invading Gallifrey itself. After their return, she stopped the invasion force from leaving the Matrix by closing its doors from the inside. (AUDIO: Ascension)
This Matrix projection of Romana III claimed to be the last of her people. (AUDIO: Renaissance)
Gallifrey's darkest hour
During her final term in office, Romana III had to deal with an anomaly near Earth, created using the Hand of Omega. A secret society, known as the Adherents of Ohm, were trying to gain power on Gallifrey, and she suspected that Narvin might be part of it. There was an attempt to assassinate her though Tauras managed to save her. She travelled through a black hole after Narvin tracked Ace there and found out that Tauras had set Omega free from the anti-matter universe. She tried to travel back into her own universe again but was stuck in the black hole as the type 160 TARDIS she was using ran out of power. She accepted that she along with Narvin and Ace wouldn't see Gallifrey again, until Irving Braxiatel saved her and went after Omega. (AUDIO: Intervention Earth)
After Omega returned, a war devastated Gallifrey. (AUDIO: Enemy Lines) As Gallifrey faced its "darkest hour", Romana began to clear sections of the planet in order to make room to build Battle TARDISes. She personally attended the decommissioning of Quadrigger Stoyn's workstation. (AUDIO: Luna Romana)
War Queen of the Nine Gallifreys
A potentially separate third incarnation of Romana became War Queen and President of the Nine Gallifreys in preparation for the upcoming war. She had a harder personality than Romana II and was less friendly towards the Eighth Doctor. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon) Mother and Father saw that the War Queen's Homeworld was only a sheath echo believing itself to be the original. (PROSE: The Story So Far...)
She dispatched Cavis and Gandar to Avalon and eventually turned up herself to take possession of Compassion after Compassion transformed into a TARDIS. Romana believed Compassion could give the Time Lords a tactical advantage in the War. Instead, the Eighth Doctor and Fitz fled inside Compassion. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon)
As the War approached, the Edifice appeared in the skies of Romana III's Gallifrey. The structure created temporal pulses that began washing over the planet, causing civil disorder and mass superstition. In her 150th year as President, she was challenged by former President Greyjan in a Faction Paradox scheme to take over Gallifrey and re-write its history. The Eighth Doctor destroyed the planet to prevent this. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) Marnal later showed the amnesiac Eighth Doctor these events, where Romana and one of her soldiers, Mali, tried to restore Gallifrey from one of the Nine Gallifreys. They discovered that Faction Paradox had wiped their Nine Gallifreys from history. Romana wept, knowing that her planet was doomed, and she sent K-9 into the Doctor's TARDIS to kill the Doctor and prevent his future self from destroying Gallifrey.
Soon after, Faction Paradox skulltroopers closed in on Romana and Mali and fired two shots. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)
Death and regeneration
Romana III survived and lived to be an old woman. She visited Ponch on a planet orbiting the last sun before the universe's heat death, where he lived among the last humans. She described it as a "godless age". She hadn't seen the Doctor in centuries, and she didn't know where he was.
Romana disguised her TARDIS as the inn Janua Foris so she could tell Ponch about his past life as Huvan during her earlier incarnation's encounter with Valdemar. She used a psychic attack to convince Ofrin to let her keep telling the story, though she died in the snow before she could finish. Later, Ponch found her in her TARDIS in a younger body. (PROSE: Tomb of Valdemar)
Rewriting of the timeline
Irving Braxiatel went back in time and stopped Romana II from regenerating, saying that Romana III had sent him to change her past to avert the conflict that devastated Gallifrey. Romana II then stepped down from the Presidency to ensure that that future would not take hold. In the wake of Braxiatel's intervention, Romana II was uncertain whether she would eventually regenerate into the same third incarnation or not. (AUDIO: Enemy Lines)
When Romana decided to run again for the Presidency during the first months of the Last Great Time War, she promised to promptly regenerate if she received the public vote, as she was barred by law from serving another term in that incarnation. However, she was instead defeated by Valerian. (AUDIO: Desperate Measures)
Personality
As a projection, she appeared to have a sunny and perky disposition, and was prone to wanting to give people hugs. (AUDIO: Renaissance) Despite this, she could be manipulative and ruthless, justifying her actions as doing the best for her people, and acting as a servant of history. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon, AUDIO: Renaissance, Intervention Earth) She was wistful about her first incarnation's naivety, (AUDIO: Luna Romana) and a part of her was guilt about her actions, musing whether corruption was the curse of the Presidency. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon)
Appearance
As War Queen, Romana was petite, with black hair and a snub nose. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) She had a fringe, green eyes, and a tattoo of the Prydonian Seal on her left ankle. She wore pearls. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon)
Romana told Ponch that she had copied her appearance from Miranda Pelham, noting that she'd done it before and would probably do it again and that Miranda was "such a lovely-looking woman". Ponch (PROSE: Tomb of Valdemar) and Cuthbert Simpson both regarded Romana as "beautiful"; (PROSE: The Banquo Legacy) the Eighth Doctor noted that she looked like his mother. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell)
In the last days before her death, this incarnation still had fierce eyes and thick chestnut hair, but her skin was pale white and covered with dark creases, and her movements were hindered by arthritic pain. (PROSE: Tomb of Valdemar)
Behind the scenes
- Writers involved in the future War arc of Eighth Doctor Adventures novels based Romana III's described appearance on that of the American silent film actress Louise Brooks, although upon meeting this incarnation for the first time the Eighth Doctor noted that she now looked worryingly like his mother.
- James Goss created Juliet Landau's "Trey" incarnation of Romana for the Big Finish audio stories. It was unclear which incarnation of Romana she was, and Goss initially contrasted her with "other future Romanadvoratrelundars" such as the "brilliantly glacial flapper", Romana III, who first appeared in Paul Cornell's The Shadows of Avalon. (VOR 56) However, Lady Trey was later definitively shown to be the third Romana in Enemy Lines.
- Romana is the second Time Lord, after the Bruce Master as played by Eric Roberts, to be portrayed by an American actor. Unlike Roberts, Juliet Landau plays her role with an English accent.
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