Through A Looking Glass Darkly: Author's Notes
I'd wanted to write this story for a while, partly because I've always had a fondness for delving into the lives of bad guys, and partly because most of the 'Alice grows up in Wonderland' stories also change Wonderland so that she can live a happy, sheltered, fairytale-esque life. It works well for fluffy romance storylines, but I've always been more of a fan of 'change one thing and see what happens' stories.
SUITS
Of course, because I changed something that happened thirteen years before canon, I then had to do some worldbuilding to figure out what would shape the characters and what the characters would change in turn. For the most part, this involved trying to come up with some idea of how Suit society works. In canon, their support of the Queen went out with the Casino, which meant that they were getting something out of living there. The Casino is where the Tea comes from, of course, and that would certainly be the big reason, but we've also seen that it's the seat of government, that at least Jack (and, by extension, the Royal Family) lives there, it contains a fitness center, and is really, really big. My first thought was that it was a nicer place to live than the City; then I remembered that as nice as the place appeared, it was also the place where the Queen could order your head off at any time, and judging from the King's pointed use of the words 'dearly departed Agent White' and Nine's reaction to his sentence, those orders must be carried out at least some of the time. That doesn't mean that the logic that the Casino is a nicer place to live is faulty, exactly, but that does mean that the City would need to be pretty bad, and/or the number of Suit casualties would need to not be common knowledge. So I added some basics to the pros of joining the Suits: safety, food, and medical care as well as good housing and greater access to Tea. In return, you'd have to live with the fact that you were supporting someone who could and would at any time have you killed because she was having a bad day.
It does seem like a situation that would still breed some resentment, though, so there would need to be more than just carrots to keep them in line. The Tea, of course, is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it feels good, on the other hand, if your job is to kill people or collect them or drain them, your life when you're off is going to feel even worse by comparison. And, of course, from the point of view of the King, sometimes it's just not a good idea to have your minions perpetually steeped. I figure there's probably a rule somewhere about not drinking Tea while you're on duty, or showing up to work steeped, but it's unevenly enforced. In general, the more attention to detail your work requires, or the greater the crisis situation, the less likely it is that you'll be able to get away with it. It would be an unspoken fact that the Diamonds who worked in the game rooms, whose jobs pretty much consist of dancing and going "YOU'RE A WINNER!!!!! :D :D :D" would be steeped pretty much their entire lives- same goes for Hearts, who would be spending their days with the Queen being flattering. Because their jobs are so technical, the Eggmen wouldn't supposed to be steeped, but because they have such ready access to Tea, no one can really stop them. For most everyone else, it's a matter of either repressing, learning to enjoy your job, or hitting a Tea Shop as soon as you get off work. On an individual level, if someone higher up had a problem with your behavior, they could start enforcing the whole "no Tea at work" thing, which would make you miserable enough to stop whatever it was you were doing to piss them off in the first place.
Then, of course, you have home grown feelings. Guilt's a big one, as far as binding everyone together goes: the implication being that when someone was executed, it generally wasn't only because they'd done something wrong, but because someone in their family the Crown considered to be more valuable than the executed party was doing something wrong. Carol would have been executed not just because she'd been helping people wean themselves off the Tea, but because Robert had been so reluctant to do the work they gave him. Feeling responsible for the death of a loved one would be enough to encourage people to redouble their efforts to at least come off as loyal, so they wouldn't lose anyone else. The other big one would be fear: fear of the Queen, of course, but also fear of out-of-control assassins or the Tweedles. If you aren't performing well, then they could arrange for you to work with an assassin that hasn't killed anyone recently, or send you in for a full debriefing. You probably wouldn't die, but the possibility would be there, and it would scare you enough to fall back into line. There would also be fear of the Resistance. The main line of thinking amongst the Suits is that the Resistance would be more focused on getting revenge against anyone who had been a Suit than trying to recruit them. Once you've become a Suit, or are closely related to a Suit, the line of logic goes that you're a target for reprisals whenever the Queen does something like firebombing agricultural villages. This has a pretty big basis in reality, I think, but it wouldn't be as inevitable as most of the Suits would assume.
Then there would be propaganda, which would mostly serve to make people feel better about their actions. As you might have guessed, I belong in the (very small) fandom camp that thinks that most of the idea that Oysters feel more strongly than Wonderlanders is built on this: after all, with the possible exception of Caterpillar everyone had what I would consider to be a pretty normal emotional range for their situation. It would also be pretty hard to disprove when more or less every Oyster anyone would run into would have been drugged to the point where the people who work with them every day are confused when they realize they can speak. So, as far as anyone in Wonderland knows, that's their normal state: it would make draining them easier to justify, because they weren't thinking people like everyone else they met. As long as the Oysters are dehumanized, it's a lot easier to catch them, drain them, and drink their feelings.
And, on the off chance that you aren't addicted to Tea, don't have any family members to threaten, aren't really sure about the propaganda, are too valuable to execute, and seem to be looking to take your chances with the Resistance, rest assured they can always have the Tweedles brainwash you.
RESISTANCE
When it comes to writing about the dynamics of the Resistance, I'm mostly pulling from my family's experiences as a part of the Dutch Resistance during WWII; namely that I really should say they were part of a branch of the Protestant Dutch Resistance, rather than the Catholic Dutch Resistance, or the Royalist Dutch Resistance, or the Communist Dutch Resistance, or…
You get the idea. It was very much a "but we are struggling together" situation. Yeah, there was a loose hierarchy, especially after the SOE started sending back trained operatives with better equipment, but it was very, very loose. I model off of that system because I tend to think that after one hundred and fifty years, there would be in-fighting, and branches that wouldn't talk to each other unless it was absolutely necessary, and cells no one really had a handle on.
Caterpillar might be at the head of the Resistance as a whole, but I don't think his control would be absolute. It would vary from branch to branch and from situation to situation, and wax and wane depending on how many resources were at his command. As in canon, he managed to get Jack to work under him, had agents working close enough to Carpenter to kidnap him at a moment's notice, and set up his headquarters in the Hospital of Dreams (which looked like a pretty well-funded place), he probably has control over intelligence about the government's activities. This would be Very Important, enough that he can keep the other branches in line (after all, if you piss him off enough, he can just not warn you next time you're going to be raided) but not enough that he wouldn't have to compromise now and again. Also in canon Dodo has control of the Great Library, which in addition to holding information about everything Wonderland had been before the Queen of Hearts came to power, was also a safe house for people on the run from the Suits. Someone else must be in charge of food, as we know that Hatter's job is to smuggle that in to the Library (I tend to project that food is somewhat scarce in Wonderland in general, not just if you're living in what amounts to a refugee camp) and that can manifest as a source of political power itself. There would be other players too- people who supplied weapons, and medical supplies, and kept the lines of communication more or less functional- but as everyone needs food and to know when they're being watched whether they're operating safe houses, drop points, illegal printing presses or what have you, they aren't as powerful as the others.
Once I had the environment all set up, it was time to figure out what the deal was with the characters.
ALICE/JELLYBEAN
She would have changed to most noticeably out of everyone, because her formative years would have been so different. Alice was raised on Earth by a single mother after her father seemingly abandoned them. Jelly was raised in Wonderland by a single father after her mother was seemingly executed. There were a whole lot of differences that sprang from this.
Alice grew up mistrusting people in general and men in particular, gained confidence and self-possession through her work at the dojo, and felt like the hole left by her father's disappearance and her apparent inability to keep a man was a sign that something was very wrong with her. Jelly grew up with an inability to ask others for help, gained some sense of control over her life through her ability to play politics, and between her work and her politicking, didn't have the wherewithal to reach out to people, even with suspicion.
Carol, in my head canon anyway, was always trying to get her to connect with people, which influenced her desire to have a steady boyfriend, as well as her determination to find her father. Carpenter was always trying to make a positive difference whenever he could, and she followed his example, which is why her life is a series of trade-offs between right thing/right for my men/right for my family's safety.
There are smaller differences (Jelly has a better handle on her phobia of heights), and small similarities (both Alice and Jelly have a habit of giving themselves pep talks). I really hope that they were recognizable as the same person.
CAROL/TORTOISE
As I said earlier, I see Carol as someone who was always urging Alice to go out and connect. I also have a tendency to write her as a psychiatrist. With head canon firmly in place, I tried to figure out how she would cope with Wonderland.
I knew she would have to bow out, preferably early enough in Jelly's childhood that she would have felt some pressure to look after her own security from an early age. I'd also settled on Jelly's parents being Not Happy with not only being kidnapped, but with the environment they were now expected to raise their daughter in, so they would be doing their best to change it. Combating Tea addiction seemed like the natural choice; she had the opportunity to learn about the stuff at detail by being married to the Carpenter, it would be severe enough that no one would question that she would be executed, and it would be relevant enough that the Resistance would go through the trouble of smuggling her out.
Once that was done, I couldn't see her just sitting around while her family was still under the Queen's thumb. So she would have made herself useful in whatever local branch there was near the safe house she'd been taken too, and from there would have started trying to grow her influence out to stretch to the Casino. Along the way, she became a bit more invested in the Resistance than she'd originally intended, enough that she was willing to let her family walk back into the Casino in order to take it down (as opposed to whisking them away to the Looking Glass and never thinking about the place again) but not enough to not drop everything when she heard her family had gotten themselves out, or to be tempted into staying in Wonderland once she was assured that there would be someone to take her place.
ROBERT/CARPENTER
The big difference between canon and this version is that in canon, Robert is brainwashed, and here he isn't. If Carol's big thing is connecting with people, then Robert's is doing what's right. That kind of makes his job as Carpenter a bit uncomfortable.
He dealt with this in a couple of ways: noticeably by really enjoying explaining to people what it is they're doing wrong. Before Carol was 'executed', he did this basically all the time; afterwards, mostly to protect his daughter and in part because the Tweedles did a number on him, he generally kept it behind closed doors, and when it was provoked. The other way was, of course, to make what trouble for the Crown he could get away with. He was told early on that if he was caught mucking around with the Tea that would be the end, but unless it was something the Queen was breathing down his neck about, he considered it fair game.
It was sort of an open secret amongst the higher ups that he'd rebel given the slightest chance, but because his failure rate never applied to the Tea and could never be proven to be the result of deliberate action on his part, it was decided that he'd remain as he was. After all, it was pretty easy to bring him to heel by threatening his daughter. As long as that worked, it was better to keep on reluctantly than risk something going wrong with brainwashing him.
JACK
Jack was fairly different from canon as well. In canon, he was more or less an emotional cripple, which given what we saw of his home life isn't really that surprising. He didn't really seem to have a lot of control over his life, so when he was away from Court he acted all the more arrogant to compensate, and as the closest thing he had to a role model was Caterpillar, he was patterning himself off the stoned Vulcan model.
In this fic, Jack was a lot more snarky and angry than haughty and repressed. This is in part due to his childhood friendship with Jelly, and quite a lot more to do with the fact that he was patterning himself after an unbrainwashed Carpenter as well. This, naturally, did nothing to help his relationship with his parents. His parents, in turn, brainwashed Grace in an attempt to control him. It backfired spectacularly, driving him to be more committed to the Resistance and driving the wedge between him and his parents in even further. That's why Jack's stunts during the food riots were so conveniently timed, and why he's so much more eager to distance himself from his parents than he was in canon. Fic!Jack is much more bitter about his life than Canon!Jack, and it's pretty warranted.
He's still a pretty self-involved person- his angst about Grace is centered more on his loss of her than her loss of herself- but he's got a better appreciation of the problems facing Wonderland and some better interpersonal skills to help him fix the place.
GRACE/DUCHESS
The biggest difference between canon and fic here is the brainwashing. I go back in forth about whether or not she underwent any sort of reprogramming in canon, but I tend to think that the driving force behind her actions was threats to both her safety and Jack's. Here, the Crown didn't give her the chance to pull a Robert and sabotage her work whenever they weren't looking; they used her to send a message to Jack.
From then on in she really stopped acting as her own person. Jack stayed with her in the hopes on finding something to cure her at first, and then after running into several metaphorical brick walls with the words 'if she's not coming out on her own she's not in there at all' written on them, he stayed because it would be more trouble than it was worth to break up. Duchess acted under the Queen's direct orders because doing so ensured that she would get the throne one day.
Grace herself wasn't really cognoscente of anything directly after her ennobling; then she was aware but not really able to do anything. Then she was aware and able to talk to Duchess about what was going on, which Duchess found more than a little annoying. From then on, Jack's comfort became sort of a source of leverage over Grace: sort of along the lines of "if you don't stop nattering when I'm in Court, then the next time the Queen wants me to get a straight answer out of him I won't be so civilized about it". It's why when Jack's away Grace began to chip away at Duchess, and why after Jack had been out of Court for a few days she can regain control of herself.
As you can see, there was quite a bit going on between Jack and Duchess/Grace that I wanted to get across, but there was no way of doing it in detail without getting into Duchess' head with Grace, and I'd already figured that this was going to be more or less entirely from Jelly's perspective. I hope the gist of the dynamic across anyway.
HATTER
Out of all the characters that changed with this new universe, Hatter changed the least, because he isn't very well connected to Court. Most of the changes have to do with the fact that once Jelly climbed high enough in rank to be given responsibility for counter-Resistance operations, his job as a double agent became a lot harder. The challenge also deepened his involvement in the Resistance, to the point where by the time we catch up to him in the fic he was considering trying to break away from Dodo and start his own branch, hence his eagerness to recruit Spades, and his willingness to cut some of his ties with the Great Library.
They didn't actually meet face-to-face until Jelly decided to make an effort to endear herself with her superiors and go out for Tea after work, but he wasn't about to broadcast that she kept intercepting his shipments. He mostly had a sense of professional respect for her, with a little underlying attraction, which was why the had their normal pattern of affectionate banter set up by the time she defected. He didn't start becoming attached until he realized that she was putting herself at risk for her father, and by the time she'd stomped off into the woods, he'd fallen just as hard for her as canon!Hatter had.
Hatter's backstory was inspired by this deleted scene.
WONDERLAND
By and large not much else changed. The biggest influences on the country are the King and Queen of course, and with the Queen still very much caught up in her own warped view of reality and the King wrapped up in trying to keep her happy the addition of the Hamiltons didn't really change much of anything for them. Caterpillar is still running the Resistance, and still kind of emotionless, though his relationship with Jack isn't as easy as it is in canon. Charlie still lived in the woods on his own for an obscenely long period of time, so he's just as crazy as he was in canon. The Resistance had more power in this fic than I think it did in canon, because both Carpenter and the Ten of Spades sympathized with them. That's not to say that there weren't setbacks- Jelly did get Duck killed, after all.
BITS AND BOBS
I tried to mix and match the names of my OCs- some (Fletcher, Otter) follow the general pattern of the book, some are lifted from it directed (Fawn, Gryphon) some (Othello, Claude) are ripped from Shakespeare, some (Carlotta, Sheila) were mentioned in canon but never seen, some (Felicity, Honoria) from Victoriana and others (Morgana, Alban) from various flavors of Celtic. The meanings of the Tarot Cards each chapter is named after comes from this website.
SUITS
Of course, because I changed something that happened thirteen years before canon, I then had to do some worldbuilding to figure out what would shape the characters and what the characters would change in turn. For the most part, this involved trying to come up with some idea of how Suit society works. In canon, their support of the Queen went out with the Casino, which meant that they were getting something out of living there. The Casino is where the Tea comes from, of course, and that would certainly be the big reason, but we've also seen that it's the seat of government, that at least Jack (and, by extension, the Royal Family) lives there, it contains a fitness center, and is really, really big. My first thought was that it was a nicer place to live than the City; then I remembered that as nice as the place appeared, it was also the place where the Queen could order your head off at any time, and judging from the King's pointed use of the words 'dearly departed Agent White' and Nine's reaction to his sentence, those orders must be carried out at least some of the time. That doesn't mean that the logic that the Casino is a nicer place to live is faulty, exactly, but that does mean that the City would need to be pretty bad, and/or the number of Suit casualties would need to not be common knowledge. So I added some basics to the pros of joining the Suits: safety, food, and medical care as well as good housing and greater access to Tea. In return, you'd have to live with the fact that you were supporting someone who could and would at any time have you killed because she was having a bad day.
It does seem like a situation that would still breed some resentment, though, so there would need to be more than just carrots to keep them in line. The Tea, of course, is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it feels good, on the other hand, if your job is to kill people or collect them or drain them, your life when you're off is going to feel even worse by comparison. And, of course, from the point of view of the King, sometimes it's just not a good idea to have your minions perpetually steeped. I figure there's probably a rule somewhere about not drinking Tea while you're on duty, or showing up to work steeped, but it's unevenly enforced. In general, the more attention to detail your work requires, or the greater the crisis situation, the less likely it is that you'll be able to get away with it. It would be an unspoken fact that the Diamonds who worked in the game rooms, whose jobs pretty much consist of dancing and going "YOU'RE A WINNER!!!!! :D :D :D" would be steeped pretty much their entire lives- same goes for Hearts, who would be spending their days with the Queen being flattering. Because their jobs are so technical, the Eggmen wouldn't supposed to be steeped, but because they have such ready access to Tea, no one can really stop them. For most everyone else, it's a matter of either repressing, learning to enjoy your job, or hitting a Tea Shop as soon as you get off work. On an individual level, if someone higher up had a problem with your behavior, they could start enforcing the whole "no Tea at work" thing, which would make you miserable enough to stop whatever it was you were doing to piss them off in the first place.
Then, of course, you have home grown feelings. Guilt's a big one, as far as binding everyone together goes: the implication being that when someone was executed, it generally wasn't only because they'd done something wrong, but because someone in their family the Crown considered to be more valuable than the executed party was doing something wrong. Carol would have been executed not just because she'd been helping people wean themselves off the Tea, but because Robert had been so reluctant to do the work they gave him. Feeling responsible for the death of a loved one would be enough to encourage people to redouble their efforts to at least come off as loyal, so they wouldn't lose anyone else. The other big one would be fear: fear of the Queen, of course, but also fear of out-of-control assassins or the Tweedles. If you aren't performing well, then they could arrange for you to work with an assassin that hasn't killed anyone recently, or send you in for a full debriefing. You probably wouldn't die, but the possibility would be there, and it would scare you enough to fall back into line. There would also be fear of the Resistance. The main line of thinking amongst the Suits is that the Resistance would be more focused on getting revenge against anyone who had been a Suit than trying to recruit them. Once you've become a Suit, or are closely related to a Suit, the line of logic goes that you're a target for reprisals whenever the Queen does something like firebombing agricultural villages. This has a pretty big basis in reality, I think, but it wouldn't be as inevitable as most of the Suits would assume.
Then there would be propaganda, which would mostly serve to make people feel better about their actions. As you might have guessed, I belong in the (very small) fandom camp that thinks that most of the idea that Oysters feel more strongly than Wonderlanders is built on this: after all, with the possible exception of Caterpillar everyone had what I would consider to be a pretty normal emotional range for their situation. It would also be pretty hard to disprove when more or less every Oyster anyone would run into would have been drugged to the point where the people who work with them every day are confused when they realize they can speak. So, as far as anyone in Wonderland knows, that's their normal state: it would make draining them easier to justify, because they weren't thinking people like everyone else they met. As long as the Oysters are dehumanized, it's a lot easier to catch them, drain them, and drink their feelings.
And, on the off chance that you aren't addicted to Tea, don't have any family members to threaten, aren't really sure about the propaganda, are too valuable to execute, and seem to be looking to take your chances with the Resistance, rest assured they can always have the Tweedles brainwash you.
RESISTANCE
When it comes to writing about the dynamics of the Resistance, I'm mostly pulling from my family's experiences as a part of the Dutch Resistance during WWII; namely that I really should say they were part of a branch of the Protestant Dutch Resistance, rather than the Catholic Dutch Resistance, or the Royalist Dutch Resistance, or the Communist Dutch Resistance, or…
You get the idea. It was very much a "but we are struggling together" situation. Yeah, there was a loose hierarchy, especially after the SOE started sending back trained operatives with better equipment, but it was very, very loose. I model off of that system because I tend to think that after one hundred and fifty years, there would be in-fighting, and branches that wouldn't talk to each other unless it was absolutely necessary, and cells no one really had a handle on.
Caterpillar might be at the head of the Resistance as a whole, but I don't think his control would be absolute. It would vary from branch to branch and from situation to situation, and wax and wane depending on how many resources were at his command. As in canon, he managed to get Jack to work under him, had agents working close enough to Carpenter to kidnap him at a moment's notice, and set up his headquarters in the Hospital of Dreams (which looked like a pretty well-funded place), he probably has control over intelligence about the government's activities. This would be Very Important, enough that he can keep the other branches in line (after all, if you piss him off enough, he can just not warn you next time you're going to be raided) but not enough that he wouldn't have to compromise now and again. Also in canon Dodo has control of the Great Library, which in addition to holding information about everything Wonderland had been before the Queen of Hearts came to power, was also a safe house for people on the run from the Suits. Someone else must be in charge of food, as we know that Hatter's job is to smuggle that in to the Library (I tend to project that food is somewhat scarce in Wonderland in general, not just if you're living in what amounts to a refugee camp) and that can manifest as a source of political power itself. There would be other players too- people who supplied weapons, and medical supplies, and kept the lines of communication more or less functional- but as everyone needs food and to know when they're being watched whether they're operating safe houses, drop points, illegal printing presses or what have you, they aren't as powerful as the others.
Once I had the environment all set up, it was time to figure out what the deal was with the characters.
ALICE/JELLYBEAN
She would have changed to most noticeably out of everyone, because her formative years would have been so different. Alice was raised on Earth by a single mother after her father seemingly abandoned them. Jelly was raised in Wonderland by a single father after her mother was seemingly executed. There were a whole lot of differences that sprang from this.
Alice grew up mistrusting people in general and men in particular, gained confidence and self-possession through her work at the dojo, and felt like the hole left by her father's disappearance and her apparent inability to keep a man was a sign that something was very wrong with her. Jelly grew up with an inability to ask others for help, gained some sense of control over her life through her ability to play politics, and between her work and her politicking, didn't have the wherewithal to reach out to people, even with suspicion.
Carol, in my head canon anyway, was always trying to get her to connect with people, which influenced her desire to have a steady boyfriend, as well as her determination to find her father. Carpenter was always trying to make a positive difference whenever he could, and she followed his example, which is why her life is a series of trade-offs between right thing/right for my men/right for my family's safety.
There are smaller differences (Jelly has a better handle on her phobia of heights), and small similarities (both Alice and Jelly have a habit of giving themselves pep talks). I really hope that they were recognizable as the same person.
CAROL/TORTOISE
As I said earlier, I see Carol as someone who was always urging Alice to go out and connect. I also have a tendency to write her as a psychiatrist. With head canon firmly in place, I tried to figure out how she would cope with Wonderland.
I knew she would have to bow out, preferably early enough in Jelly's childhood that she would have felt some pressure to look after her own security from an early age. I'd also settled on Jelly's parents being Not Happy with not only being kidnapped, but with the environment they were now expected to raise their daughter in, so they would be doing their best to change it. Combating Tea addiction seemed like the natural choice; she had the opportunity to learn about the stuff at detail by being married to the Carpenter, it would be severe enough that no one would question that she would be executed, and it would be relevant enough that the Resistance would go through the trouble of smuggling her out.
Once that was done, I couldn't see her just sitting around while her family was still under the Queen's thumb. So she would have made herself useful in whatever local branch there was near the safe house she'd been taken too, and from there would have started trying to grow her influence out to stretch to the Casino. Along the way, she became a bit more invested in the Resistance than she'd originally intended, enough that she was willing to let her family walk back into the Casino in order to take it down (as opposed to whisking them away to the Looking Glass and never thinking about the place again) but not enough to not drop everything when she heard her family had gotten themselves out, or to be tempted into staying in Wonderland once she was assured that there would be someone to take her place.
ROBERT/CARPENTER
The big difference between canon and this version is that in canon, Robert is brainwashed, and here he isn't. If Carol's big thing is connecting with people, then Robert's is doing what's right. That kind of makes his job as Carpenter a bit uncomfortable.
He dealt with this in a couple of ways: noticeably by really enjoying explaining to people what it is they're doing wrong. Before Carol was 'executed', he did this basically all the time; afterwards, mostly to protect his daughter and in part because the Tweedles did a number on him, he generally kept it behind closed doors, and when it was provoked. The other way was, of course, to make what trouble for the Crown he could get away with. He was told early on that if he was caught mucking around with the Tea that would be the end, but unless it was something the Queen was breathing down his neck about, he considered it fair game.
It was sort of an open secret amongst the higher ups that he'd rebel given the slightest chance, but because his failure rate never applied to the Tea and could never be proven to be the result of deliberate action on his part, it was decided that he'd remain as he was. After all, it was pretty easy to bring him to heel by threatening his daughter. As long as that worked, it was better to keep on reluctantly than risk something going wrong with brainwashing him.
JACK
Jack was fairly different from canon as well. In canon, he was more or less an emotional cripple, which given what we saw of his home life isn't really that surprising. He didn't really seem to have a lot of control over his life, so when he was away from Court he acted all the more arrogant to compensate, and as the closest thing he had to a role model was Caterpillar, he was patterning himself off the stoned Vulcan model.
In this fic, Jack was a lot more snarky and angry than haughty and repressed. This is in part due to his childhood friendship with Jelly, and quite a lot more to do with the fact that he was patterning himself after an unbrainwashed Carpenter as well. This, naturally, did nothing to help his relationship with his parents. His parents, in turn, brainwashed Grace in an attempt to control him. It backfired spectacularly, driving him to be more committed to the Resistance and driving the wedge between him and his parents in even further. That's why Jack's stunts during the food riots were so conveniently timed, and why he's so much more eager to distance himself from his parents than he was in canon. Fic!Jack is much more bitter about his life than Canon!Jack, and it's pretty warranted.
He's still a pretty self-involved person- his angst about Grace is centered more on his loss of her than her loss of herself- but he's got a better appreciation of the problems facing Wonderland and some better interpersonal skills to help him fix the place.
GRACE/DUCHESS
The biggest difference between canon and fic here is the brainwashing. I go back in forth about whether or not she underwent any sort of reprogramming in canon, but I tend to think that the driving force behind her actions was threats to both her safety and Jack's. Here, the Crown didn't give her the chance to pull a Robert and sabotage her work whenever they weren't looking; they used her to send a message to Jack.
From then on in she really stopped acting as her own person. Jack stayed with her in the hopes on finding something to cure her at first, and then after running into several metaphorical brick walls with the words 'if she's not coming out on her own she's not in there at all' written on them, he stayed because it would be more trouble than it was worth to break up. Duchess acted under the Queen's direct orders because doing so ensured that she would get the throne one day.
Grace herself wasn't really cognoscente of anything directly after her ennobling; then she was aware but not really able to do anything. Then she was aware and able to talk to Duchess about what was going on, which Duchess found more than a little annoying. From then on, Jack's comfort became sort of a source of leverage over Grace: sort of along the lines of "if you don't stop nattering when I'm in Court, then the next time the Queen wants me to get a straight answer out of him I won't be so civilized about it". It's why when Jack's away Grace began to chip away at Duchess, and why after Jack had been out of Court for a few days she can regain control of herself.
As you can see, there was quite a bit going on between Jack and Duchess/Grace that I wanted to get across, but there was no way of doing it in detail without getting into Duchess' head with Grace, and I'd already figured that this was going to be more or less entirely from Jelly's perspective. I hope the gist of the dynamic across anyway.
HATTER
Out of all the characters that changed with this new universe, Hatter changed the least, because he isn't very well connected to Court. Most of the changes have to do with the fact that once Jelly climbed high enough in rank to be given responsibility for counter-Resistance operations, his job as a double agent became a lot harder. The challenge also deepened his involvement in the Resistance, to the point where by the time we catch up to him in the fic he was considering trying to break away from Dodo and start his own branch, hence his eagerness to recruit Spades, and his willingness to cut some of his ties with the Great Library.
They didn't actually meet face-to-face until Jelly decided to make an effort to endear herself with her superiors and go out for Tea after work, but he wasn't about to broadcast that she kept intercepting his shipments. He mostly had a sense of professional respect for her, with a little underlying attraction, which was why the had their normal pattern of affectionate banter set up by the time she defected. He didn't start becoming attached until he realized that she was putting herself at risk for her father, and by the time she'd stomped off into the woods, he'd fallen just as hard for her as canon!Hatter had.
Hatter's backstory was inspired by this deleted scene.
WONDERLAND
By and large not much else changed. The biggest influences on the country are the King and Queen of course, and with the Queen still very much caught up in her own warped view of reality and the King wrapped up in trying to keep her happy the addition of the Hamiltons didn't really change much of anything for them. Caterpillar is still running the Resistance, and still kind of emotionless, though his relationship with Jack isn't as easy as it is in canon. Charlie still lived in the woods on his own for an obscenely long period of time, so he's just as crazy as he was in canon. The Resistance had more power in this fic than I think it did in canon, because both Carpenter and the Ten of Spades sympathized with them. That's not to say that there weren't setbacks- Jelly did get Duck killed, after all.
BITS AND BOBS
I tried to mix and match the names of my OCs- some (Fletcher, Otter) follow the general pattern of the book, some are lifted from it directed (Fawn, Gryphon) some (Othello, Claude) are ripped from Shakespeare, some (Carlotta, Sheila) were mentioned in canon but never seen, some (Felicity, Honoria) from Victoriana and others (Morgana, Alban) from various flavors of Celtic. The meanings of the Tarot Cards each chapter is named after comes from this website.