One of the best things about DuTP is that it prompts me to look up the historical figures we meet in the stories. The downside is that I end up racking my head trying to figure out when some events took place exactly (because I’m terrible with remembering dates and numbers) and how old are the characters at the time of the story and so on. Sometimes it’s very easy, sometimes it’s not.
Case in point: The Perfect Storm. I found a few interesting things and I want to share, just in case someone wanted to write a fic on it or just out of curiosity.
First of all, I’m almost sure it took place in 1720 and I’ll tell you why.
Rackam’s mutiny happened in 1718 and his death, clearly addressed in the story as a recent event, was in 1720. Coincidentally, Mary Read died in 1721 (in real history she was part of Rackam’s crew, along with Anne Bonny) after being involved in the same trial as Rackam, at 31 years-old.
This lets us understand how old is Charles Vane when we see him in TPS. He’s supposed to be in his late 30s (almost 40, actually) as the story is set the year before he was executed! Also, he has been a captain on his own for mere 5 years at that point, meaning he got to his fame in less than 3 years. His bragging to Cordelia is sort-of moot because she rose to fame way faster than he did, lol. On the other hand, the age gap is huge!
We know the average age of marriage for women in 1700 was around 19 years-old, but it could go up to 25 (or down to 12, since the law allowed it). If we assume Cordelia’s parents didn’t have a rush to marry her off/ were looking for a good party/ allowed her time to grow, we could say she is around 23-24 at the time of the story, it sounds reasonable given the times. It also means she really is a kid compared to Vane, lol. This doesn’t mean I won’t ship them, I still ship them, especially because in DuTP Vane looks 35 at most but I’m willing to pull down his age further because, hey, that’s just a story! Also, with Cordelia involved, just like it happened with Queen Marie’s good endings, his execution won’t happen.
Sort of same with Keats, although he isn’t based on a real person (he shares his surname with the poet and that’s about it), as far as I found. Estabilishing Keats’ exact age is a bit more complex because without a set schooling system in place at the time we can’t be sure when he finished his official studies, plus, even if we knew, we aren’t given enough info on how much time passed between his graduation and the moment he decided to prove himself to the Royal Society through field research. Let’s say he’s in his late 20s/early 30s.
There existed an Admiral Hawke, actually two, in the British Army’s history, but both younger than Vane, one born in 1705 and another in 1726, so neither could have been his father, (although we can suspect of a brother with the same name? idk). The Admiral of the Royal Fleet from 1718 to 1733 was George Byng, in case you were wondering.
Thomas de Vere, as far as I found, was created specifically for the game’s plot. Same with Governor Hamilton (apparently there was never a governor named Hamilton in Jamaica). That, unless I didn’t look in the right places in my quick search, in which case I’ll be happy to be corrected.
In any case, those three (Hawke, de Vere and Hamilton) may be inspired by other historical figures but didn’t exist irl.
Anyway, since DuTP story world isn’t quite the same as ours, that it was estabilished ever since Queen Marie that the MC can and does change history and that some characters are different from their real life counterparts (in this case, to say one, Read has the same backstory up to a certain point, but was never in Rackam’s crew nor is pregnant during her adventures with us and actually seems to be still in mourning of her late husband and not have another lover, nor she knows personally Anne Bonny here), we can alter and play with ages and history as much as we want.
TL,DR: The Perfect Storm is likely set in 1720, where Read is 30 y-o, Vane is 40 y-o, Keats around 30-something, Cordelia is any age between 12 and 25 but most likely around 24. Governor Hamilton, Thomas de Vere and Admiral Hawke may be based on historical figures but not of that time/area and are more likely just characters.
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I redesigned Cordelia's wedding gown to be more historically believable!
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in historical clothing and the inspiration and info was mostly taken from historical youtube and paintings, but the process itself is really fun!
I chose the period around 1710-20s based on the only dates we get - Blackbeard's story, - and the general timing of the golden age of piracy. What she is wearing is somewhat le robe à l'anglaise, and I tried to save as much marine theme as possible (it is true that wedding gowns weren't always white) 👀
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Here's another highly ambitious experiment😳
This is a work of fan art, characters are Vane and Cordelia from The Perfect Storm, it's from this story game I like to play😶
This is the first time I've ever done two characters, full detail on their bodies and clothing all in colour, and then a complex background as well, tell me what y'all think!👍👀😜
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