Julia Fraser
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Julia (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
Julia Fraser was the granddaughter of the Victorian Colonel Malcolm Fraser, and his only direct heir. By 1885, she was living with him in his house overlooking Portman Square on London's West End. She assisted the Time Lord Rollo and his companions in their investigation of her grandfather's contact with alien technology, and one possibility was that she subsequently joined Rollo on his travels.
Biography[[edit] | [edit source]]
In 1885, Julia was 17 years old, placing her birth around 1868. By then, her parents had perished "some time back" in a fire that had destroyed her childhood home. Though raised with "the strictest propriety", she always exhibited a wilder, rebellious side. Chafing against the staid expectations upper Victorian society had of a person of her gender, she "often wished that she could have been a boy" when she was a child.
As typical of a high-born Victorian woman, she had learned a number of skills over her teenaged years, including singing, playing the piano, sewing, "gourmet cooking", and horsemanship. Perhaps less typically, she was also an adept swimmer and knew how to pick locks. (GAME: "Non-Player Characters" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Non-Player Characters","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
After Colonel Fraser's behaviour became erratic and unpredictable as he became obsessed with the Iytean energy weapons he had been sold by Jack Bannister and Bert Jenkins, Julia grew concerned about his sanity. (GAME: "The Colonel's Granddaughter" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Colonel's Granddaughter","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) When Rollo and his companions dropped in on the West End house and tried to talk to him about them, and the Colonel lost patience with them, (GAME: "Encounter with Fraser" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Encounter with Fraser","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) she followed them back to Rollo's TARDIS; undeterred by its disguised appearance, she knocked on the door through which she had seen them entering, and demanded to speak with them again. She told them what she knew and promising to share any further information she gleaned in exchange for the mysterious travellers doing the same for her. (GAME: "The Colonel's Granddaughter" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Colonel's Granddaughter","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
Indeed, one possible subsequent event was that she eavesdropped on a further meeting between the Colonel and the pair of Bannister and Jenkins, then reported its contents to the time-travellers. (GAME: "The Meeting" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Meeting","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) Increasingly concerned, she may then have asked the time-travellers to watch the Fraser house outright, though another possibility was that they did this on their own. (GAME: "The Attack" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Attack","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) After the time-travellers identified Ned Hines as their true enemy, Julia may have assisted them in their plan to entrap him by feeding him a spurious tip about the location of Bannister and Jenkins, though this role might also have been carried out by Thomas Carruthers — the son of Colonel Fraser's old friend Sir Reginald Carruthers, who had been murdered by Hines — or by Bannister and Jenkins themselves. Another possible development was Hines getting the drop on the time-travellers and capturing Julia as a hostage. (GAME: "Player Options" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Player Options","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
Ultimately, the time-travellers succeeded in unraveling Hines's plans, though Colonel Fraser was killed in the course of these events. Julia's fate presented several possibilities, (GAME: "Tying Up Loose Ends" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Tying Up Loose Ends","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) all of them accounting for the historical fact of her disappearance from the historical record in 1885, which had meant that her granduncle's children inherited the Colonel's estate instead of her. (GAME: "Colonel Fraser" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Colonel Fraser","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) One possibility was that she had developed a romantic interest in young Thomas Carruthers over the course of the adventure, and eloped with him out of England to marry him. (GAME: "Tying Up Loose Ends" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Tying Up Loose Ends","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) However, another was that, noticing how aggrieved she was by the death of her only remaining family in Colonel Fraser, Rollo's companion Verika had convinced him to let her join him as a new companion, granting her a welcome change of scenery and lifestyle. (GAME: "The Hunters Home from the Hill" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"The Hunters Home from the Hill","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"}) There were other paths to her becoming a companion of Rollo's, including her sneaking aboard Rollo's TARDIS unnoticed before he took off from 1885. Indeed, it was also possible that she and Thomas both joined the TARDIS crew. (GAME: "Tying Up Loose Ends" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedep":"Tying Up Loose Ends","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
Physical appearance[[edit] | [edit source]]
At 17, Julia appeared as "a strikingly beautiful young woman" with long, dark hair worn in a bun at the back of her head, and large brown eyes. She was of average height and wore clothing typical of a Victorian young woman of her social class — "long, ruffled, and many-layered", with "a small hat perched at an unfashionably rakish angle". In her manner, she attempted to fit the Victorian canons of demure timidity, but often let her inner enthusiasm and dissatisfaction with her lot in life shine through. (GAME: "Non-Player Characters" [+]Part of The Iytean Menace, Loading...{"namedpart":"Non-Player Characters","1":"The Iytean Menace (game)"})
Behind the scenes[[edit] | [edit source]]
The cover art of The Iytean Menace was a repurposed version of Gustave Caillebotte's 1877 painting Paris Street; Rainy Weather. The most prominent female figure was clearly used as a design reference for the further illustrations given of Julia Fraser within the book, making the identification clear. There is somewhat greater difficulty in identifying the moustache-sporting gentleman with whom she is seen walking on said cover: as he is walking arm-in-arm with Julia and sports a drooping moustache, the intent may be that readers should interpret him as her grandfather and guardian, Malcolm Fraser, but his hair and moustache are clearly brown instead of white. Alternatively, if interpreted as a paramour to the woman, he might be interpreted as Thomas Carruthers, Julia's only love interest in the plot, but although the fashion fits, Carruthers is depicted and described as clean-shaven.
