Temeraire Contest: The Soprano

I did this for the Temeraire contest!

The Temeraire books are one of my absolute favourite recent series of fantasy novels, nestled up there with Discworld and Christopher Moore's books (and his books totally do count as a series - except for Fool, and even then I'm sure there was SOME reference or Catch or Raziel was in there and I just overlooked). I'd been so keen on finding a good dragon series, and had been horribly disappointed by Pern and Eragon. HORRIBLY. Then I found Temeraire, which bears the happy distinctions of a) not being sexist b) being set in an alternate earth during the Napoleonic wars, and therefore EXCELLENT fanart fodder due to the epic clothing c) having a lovely, simple but elegant and completely enjoyable style of writing reminiscent of the translations of Dumas's work (the opening scene bears reference to the opening scene of the Count of Monte Cristo) and d) having the focus set on the central dragon - which it is, regardless of whether or not the thing is told from his rider's point of view. And Temeraire is such a fantastic character - brave, urbane, political, and loving. I adore him. Not that his rider, Laurence, isn't a very nifty character too. I love how...groovy he is, even if he doesn't really realize it.

Anyway, ever since I started reading the books, I started to have little visions of a dragoness opera singer. The contest seemed to encourage a creative setting, so I went with it! This is set after the war - in the 1820's - which is why Laurence has short hair (in case you're a fan and were wondering ). I kind of imagine the little songbird center stage is singing the Queen of the Night's aria from The Magic Flute.

I had to get a little creative with Temeraire's look, since like a good author, Naomi Novik doesn't spend pages and pages describing her characters. She never says categorically that the dragons have ears, but often she mentions the ears of the dragons becoming alert at a noise, which suggests to me that they do have them. I don't remember her saying that Celestial's have horns besides the ruff either, but considering Imperial's lack the ruff, and Celestial's resemble them exactly except for that and the "whiskers", I'm going to assume they have them, because if they didn't, the head of the Imperial would be entirely without distinction, and that seems doubtful to me, especially in such a highly prized Chinese breed.