Dear Readers,

Hey, everybody! Check it out, check it out, check it out! You've all made it through Season I of Red Queen. That thing's actually longer than the first Twilight book, for comparison.

Season II, Roux Reine, can be found by copying and pasting the list of numbers below after the / that comes after the net in fanfiction's web address. (They literally found THEIR OWN WEB ADDRESS, decided I was spamming you guys, and deleted it from my document, despite the fact that they're supposed to allow links to fanfiction and fictionpress. UGH.)

s/11294986/1/

"Roux Reine" is "Red Queen" in French, except that "roux" is red as in the hair/fur color, as opposed to the color of a stoplight. I chose to use that version because Red Queen is a theory about relationships in nature (as explained in Chapter 1).

Now, a little something I'd like to mention about the OCs in Season II and onward: if you recognize some of them, that's because I recycled a few of The Originals's characters. I don't want to use too many OCs, because folks tend not to like them, but during the summer, Bonnie's dead, Matt and Rebekah are in Europe, Elijah and Katherine are off on a tropical island somewhere, Liz is dead, Stefan's trapped in a safe… I don't have enough characters to work with! But I wanted to do a lot of stuff during the summer that wasn't otherwise mentioned much in the series, so I had to improvise.

If you don't watch T.O., DON'T WORRY. They'll all be pretty AU, since, obviously, T.O. didn't happen in this universe. You don't have to know thing one about any of them for the story to make sense. If it's important, I'll tell you, just like I would if these were OCs. And THERE WILL NOT BE KLAYLEY, KLAMILLE OR HAYLIJAH! I might try putting Kol with Davina, maybe, if it ever comes up, which it probably won't. Not sure yet, to be honest. Point is, this is still Klaroline all the way. I know T.O. is what originally jeopardized that, so that's why I'm putting all these reassurances up.

One excellent example that I've already used is Sophie Dalmira, because I needed a witch for the whole Blood Tea & paralytic ash thing, and there weren't any canon ones available in the right context. Sophie Dalmira is Sophie Deveroux, from T.O.. But, clearly, she isn't a chef, she doesn't live in Louisiana, she isn't sleeping with Marcel, she isn't participating in a creepy human sacrifice ritual… well, you get the idea. The things that are the same are that she's a witch, and she's named Sophie. (Had to make her roommate from scratch, though. No college-age female werewolves whose names I remembered from The Originals!)

No worries, though. This is about Caroline and Klaus primarily, the other TVD characters secondarily, so the T.O. characters get little bit parts in third place. This will not turn into the story being about them!

Klaus: Unlike your author's note, which has unequivocally turned into a note about them.

Beth: … Yes. Very unlike that. I'm just trying to prevent panicked cries of "DOWN WITH KLAMILLE! DOWN WITH KLAYLEY!" I agree—'nuff said.

That all being taken care of, there's another "story" I'd like to introduce. (I admit up front, I totally ripped this idea off from .ryder.) I have several deleted scenes, one-shots, drabbles and what-ifs in mind for the Red Queen universe, so at random times, without rhyme or reason, entirely according to my whims and plot bunnies, I will be updating a story called Rubies and Pearls, which will just be a collection of these various one-shots. If you're interesting in reading those (well, the one I currently have up) add this after the / after the net in fanfiction's web address:

s/11295017/1/

Each one-shot has a title that's available inside the chapter at the top, like I normally include, but the "chapter title" in the dropdown box will be a numeric code, like this: "1.09." That code will tell you at what point during the Red Queen series each chapter occurs, so the example may contain spoilers up to and including Season 1, Chapter 9. This note is at the end of Season 1, so none of you reading this now would find a 1.09 chapter to be a spoiler, but 2.03 would be, at this point, so… precautions!

B. Nottingham