For this year's fkficfest, my original intention was to write the story I had failed to complete the last year—the more so since one of the three prompts was "déjà vu"; and I could clearly see a way to work it in. So I got out the newspaper clippings again, sorted them even more finely, and began to read. Sadly, just as last year, I found it extremely difficult to come to grips with my memories. In the end, therefore, I decided to write on a very different topic, i.e. Nick's relationship with his master, LaCroix; and I slanted my story to reflect instead the prompt "do over".

"Knight of the Rose" draws particularly on the flashbacks to the first-season episode "Dance by the Light of the Moon", in which LaCroix brings Nick across in 1228, and the second-season episode "Be My Valentine", in which LaCroix falls in love with Nick's sister, Fleur. In the latter, LaCroix agrees to give up the idea of bringing Fleur across, but only for a price: some day, Nick will give his own lover up as recompense. This ties in very nicely with events in the present day story. However, when one thinks about the actual terms of the bargain, they make very little sense. Why would LaCroix give up the love of his life for Nick's sake—the more so since, in "Dance by the Light of the Moon", he only brought him across because Janette asked him to?

From my first viewing of "Be My Valentine", I felt highly suspcious about the motives of TPTB. I'm sure other fans felt the same. If you got outside the secondary world to look at the primary-world motives of producers and writers, it does seem very much as though Fleur was created to be a "safe" (i.e., heterosexual) romantic substitute for Nick himself. And that was before I knew that, while Season One was in production, Nigel Bennett apparently thought LaCroix's obsession with Nick was sexually based. So do a lot of fans. In fact, there's a whole factionsworth who think that Nick reciprocates, if only in an on-again off-again manner.

With no disrespect to Fleur, who is a charming character in her own right, there is just something awfully convenient in having LaCroix fall in love with Nick's sister!

So "Knight of the Rose" was written to throw some light on all of this.

The association of Fleur with white roses in "Be My Valentine" not only gave me the title of the story, but also the theme for the webpage. The rose background comes from Silvia Hartmann Nature. Granted, the flowers are actually blush and ivory; but the hint of colour adds depth. It also meant that I slightly retinted the roses I used to decorate the page. These come from Flamin's Florals; but are old graphics that can be found elsewhere as well.

I decided that the border around the central panel should be contrastive; and, since flowers go with leaves, green tones seemed appropriate. The broad shimmery band is a variant of gold-refraction.jpg, a graphic that I got from Heather's Animations. The twists are one of many variants of 321Clipart's bg64.jpg. I usually use them with a mere one-pixel cellpadding as a substitute for the border feature on the nested tables; and, if you look closely, you can see that a light green variant has been used in this way to edge the shimmery green band. However, a dark green variant (reduced to half-size and used with thicker cellpadding) creates the appearance of a rope edging on both the inside and outside of the border.