The Right Thing To Do

Afterthoughts

A critic, reading the Schooled in Magic books, complained that Emily was too nice, certainly when compared to the other characters. To which I replied, she’s the product of our world. She does not think she is inherently superior to everyone else, or that she has an inherent right to rule; she does not think her subjects are her chattels and that they have to do as she says; she has a modern system of values and regards practices like corporal punishment, arranged and forced marriages, slavery and aristocracy with entirely understandable horror. In a sense, unlike Elliot of Stuck in Magic, she has a certain degree of latitude to take risks, but it tends to pay off for her. She gets people, particularly servants, to like her because she treats them as human beings.

Emily also has a relatively strong morale centre, first shaped by our world and then by her experiences elsewhere. She would entirely understand why Professor Snape, for example, dislikes Harry Potter, but — at the same time — she would understand that his dislike is not an excuse for mistreating Harry. In Anoria, she would agree with Cordelia Cooper that the girl really shouldn’t have been spying on her, yet she would insist the girl did not deserve a de facto death sentence. It is entirely possible to have legitimate grounds for dislike — or anger — without justifying a massively over-the-top retaliation.

I seriously considered setting a novel in Cockatrice, between Lessons in Etiquette and Study in Slaughter. It didn’t work out — most of my original ideas wound up going into Work Experience — but I decided this story would fit in nicely. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.