About Fred (Romana)
CHARACTER INFO
CHARACTER NAME: Romanadvoratrelundar (Romana)
SERIES: Doctor Who
PERSONALITY: Romana's personality has been softened to a degree in her travels with the Doctor, though she still has an underlying unconscious smug superiority toward Humans-even to the Doctor himself, to a certain extent. She has a strong personality, necessary for being the Madam President; like many Time Lords, she rather enjoys the sound of her own voice. She tends to sharpen her tongue on those that annoy her.
She loved wandering around with the Doctor, and though she served her people faithfully and well as their Madam President, there was always a part of her that wished she was still traveling with the Doctor in his old Type 40.
She may act a bit differently than she does in canon for a short time; a large part of Romana is her confidence level, and until she regains her footing somewhat and understands how this world works, that confidence is going to be at an all-time low.
ELABORATION: When Romana first started traveling with the Doctor, she was rather cocky and condescending; she thought that her grade in school made her smarter, and therefore better, than him. She quickly realized that book smarts didn't count for much when encountering alien life-and how little she really knew about life in the universe apart from Gallifrey.
Once she accepted that the Doctor actually did know what he was talking about (at least some of the time), she started listening to him. She was a fast learner, and soon adjusted to her new life-although she was still apt to do silly things, like wear ridiculous shoes while wandering around Scottish moors. Of course, she was still headstrong about things, but she usually obeyed his suggestions; though she sometimes had a few suggestions of her own for the Doctor.
After the Key to Time series, she changed her appearance, altering her personality at the same time. This one seemed to temper her headstrong tendencies, and even though it can certainly rise to the occasion, her sarcastic wit is not as evident. S he certainly knows her own mind and will make her opinion clear, but she is more than willing to listen to other people's ideas, especially if they seem like sensible people.
If the person in question acts the fool she can get a bit sharp-tongued with them.
Another important difference is her attitude toward the Doctor. Her former self seemed to view him as a necessary, but not exactly welcome, fact in her life. She would listen to him, but often argue; obey him, but very reluctantly and only after trying things her own way first. This new Romana only argued if his suggestions were actually foolish; and though she didn't obey his decisions blindly, she has learned that he has reasons, and good ones, for making those decisions.
Romana I would have gone back to Gallifrey without looking back, if they had ordered her to; Romana II didn't want to go back. This also clearly shows the difference between their personalities.
TIMELINE: After her death at the end of the Last Great Time War.
BACKGROUND: (aside-I'm mostly drawing from the TV episodes and the audios, with only a couple books thrown in; at a certain point, the books and the audios go off in different directions canonically. Just trying to keep it simple… at least, as simple as this INSANE fandom ever gets XD)
When she first started traveling with the Doctor, she was in her first incarnation and nearly 140; he was in his fourth incarnation and 759. Or 756, depending on who you believe… Romana graduated from the Prydonian Academy like the Doctor, but where the Doctor barely graduated with a 51% (on his second try…), she achieved a triple first in her field of study; at first, this fact combined with his careless, amiable manner made her look down on him, but she soon warmed to his unique style and became quite fond of him.
She traveled with him while they did the bidding of a vastly powerful being known as the White Guardian. They had to collect all six pieces of an artifact known as the Key to Time; because certain natural forces upset the balance of time, the Guardian claims, it is occasionally necessary to stop time for a brief moment in order to restore that balance. The White Guardian also warns them to avoid his polar opposite, the Black Guardian, who is also trying to get the Key, but his reasons are evil ones. When they finally have all the pieces, they nearly hand the Key over to the White Guardian-before the Doctor realizes that it is really the Black one masquerading as the White. They barely manage to get away with the TARDIS, and the universe, in one piece.
After that messy business, Romana apparently decided to regenerate (I say 'apparently decided' because there was no life-threatening event shown onscreen, just a rather lulzy session where Romana tries on different bodies). The form she finally settled on for her second incarnation was the body of a woman from their last adventure, the Princess Astra. The princess had sadly died in the Key affair, as she had been a piece of the Key to Time. Despite the Doctor's protests, Romana went ahead and regenerated into this form. For some reason she did not suffer the usual problems the Doctor encounters when he goes through regeneration… (perhaps because she instigated it rather than waiting until the last second to do it like he does? But that's fanon… moving on!)
Now in her second incarnation, Romana and the Doctor made use of a Randomizer the Doctor had rigged up to allow them to avoid feeling the Black Guardian's wrath. She traveled with him a while longer; it's quite hard to say precisely how long, really. Since they are both Time Lords, it could have been as long as a hundred years (though it probably wasn’t).
But all things must end. The Time Lords eventually demanded that the Doctor bring Romana back to Gallifrey, and for once in his life he listened to the voices of authority. He was going to go against her wishes and return her to their home planet when fate oh-so-helpfully intervened. They passed through a strange phenomenon and ended up in a sort of pocket universe known as E-space. After a few adventures there-and picking up a stowaway/companion in the form of a young boy named Adric-Romana decided to stay in E-space. The Doctor was sad to see her go, but he gave her his dog-like robot computer K-9 as a parting gift. Romana left the Doctor to continue his journey back to normal space, or N-space, with only Adric for company.
Romana used her self-imposed exile to help the peaceful lion-like Tharils, who were being exploited by humans as navigators to get them through the time winds-a process which was killing the Tharils. After this, she sort of falls off the radar until the Seventh Doctor rescues her (in the Doctor Who novel Blood Harvest).
Over the course of a few other novels, she becomes the Madam President of Gallifrey-just in time to be captured by the Daleks. She spends the next 20 years working for them, a slave, before she escapes/is rescued yet again by the Doctor, now in his Sixth form (the Audio book Apocalypse Element). Yay, messed-up time lines…
She has since then interacted with the Doctor on a very few occasions, mostly because he tries to stay away from Gallifrey as much as he can. Now in his Eighth incarnation, he has persuaded her to travel with him on one occasion (Audio book Shada); there were also the rather disastrous events that unfolded as a direct result of the Doctor saving a woman who should have died (Audio books Neverland and Zagreus). Because he became possessed by a creature of anti-time in the course of this adventure, Romana was forced to banish the Doctor to a universe of anti-time to prevent the destruction of our universe. She thought she was banishing him not only to exile, but to his death; because anti-time has never been properly studied, she thought that he would have to stay in that universe for the rest of his natural life. She was wrong. He eventually freed himself of the anti-time entity and escaped. It is unclear if she ever found out he came back to this universe; although of course she would have found out when the Last Great Time War happened if she didn’t know before that time.
The Eighth Doctor would have had to go back to Gallifrey for the Time War, because he's the one that ended it; it is unclear if she or the High Council ordered him to destroy Gallifrey, or if it's something he decided was necessary on his own. Either way, it's more than likely that she died with the rest of the Time Lords in that War. (The Time War is tricky, because it is canon and yet has never been canonized properly; but RTD has said that Romana was the President at that time, and of course that the Doctor was the one that ended it. His word is almost as good as canon, since the Time War is his brainchild).
It is difficult to tell her age by this point, as there are all sorts of timey-wimy things that affect it, but going by the Doctor’s age (8 should be well over 1,000 by now, because 7 stated his age to be 953 when he first regenerated), she’s probably something like 550-ish.
ABILITIES: She has a typical Gallifreyan physiology-two hearts, able to tolerate temperature extremes, enhanced senses, able to absorb certain kinds of radiation in small amounts, a very long lifespan, and the ability to regenerate into a new body when mortally wounded or otherwise close to death. Or, you know, when she gets bored. She can also sense other Gallifreyans.