So I originally wanted to post my review of Pride & Prejudice: A New Musical, but I am still transcribing my notes and editing them. Instead I am posting on:
So it has been almost a year since I last reviewed one of these chapters from the Choices videogame. The problem was I was playing faster than I was reviewing and getting everything mixed up as what happened in each chapter.
So I resolved to not play another chapter until I finished reviewing what I already had played. Of course things came up and I got distracted by other things on my list to write/review/etc-so now I am getting to Chapter 1 of Book 1, while I think Pixelberry has already created book three or four of this videogame.
What am I going to do with all these?
Yes. Anyway, quick backstory since it has been so long. This game is storybook based where you have a story that progresses, but at times you make a choice what to do, say, who to fall in love with, etc. Some choices require you to spend diamonds to play, which you can earn every time you play a chapter or purchase from their store. Some “books” have different side quests, like i this one you want to become an accomplished woman and certain choices allow you to gain items.
It’s really fun as you have the power as to what path the story takes.
This game is set in the Regency time period, and of course is catered toward Jane Austen fans. In this game you are the illegitimate daughter if the Earl of Edgewater, something you had discovered on your mother’s deathbed. You met your father and he accepts you and wants to make you his legal heir, as your half-brother passed away.
You have an evil stepmother and conniving stepbrother Mr. Marcastle, with a dim fiancé, Miss Sutton. They are all plotting against you.
And a lot has happened since the beginning of the book: you have held a garden party (which you rocked), you are currently having a London season, you go to Mr. Sinclaire’s house (a suitor I am all about)-who has a sad Rebecca–esque backstory and he gifts you a book, you visited the Opera St. James where your mother used to preform, went to see an Opera and were stuck with the Duke who is a handsy jerk, took a walk in the rain with Mr. Sinclaire, learned to paint, helped your friend refuse a gross geezer, and have just learned that your father has fallen ill.
Wow!
Whew! That’s a lot. Now onto the next chapter!
So we start off where the last chapter left off-you just received a letter that your father is ill.
That’s not good.
I want to go back home and be with him, but my grandmother won’t let me.
Please, oh please!
I have a really bad feeling about this, that this illness will end in…death.
In his letter he has chills, but thinks he will be over it soon. I however am not convinced, as I want to go home and care for him.
But my grandmother, the Dowager Countess, says I have to be here. Finding a wealthy man is my main duty if I want to protect my claim of heiress of Edgewater. She decides the next course of action would be to go to the races.
And they’re OFF!
My grandmother encourages me to purchase a dress in the house colors, as it will boost morale, and I wasn’t going to, but changed my mind as the dress is beautiful.
I get a ride in the carriage with Prince Hamid who thinks I look gorgeous. That’s one really nice thing about this game, almost every other character compliments you and thinks you are awesome.
How sweet!
He wants to take a walk through Hyde Park as the carriages are moving oh so slowly, but I have no extra diamonds, I just bought my dress, so I refuse and we wait in the carriage until traffic continues and we can go to the track.
Oh, well.
We get to the track and Briar (my former friend and now lady’s maid) runs over with Mr. Marcastle, my evil stepbrother who is plotting against me. Why Briar, why? He’s engaged and trying to get with Miss Holloway (a Miss Bingley-esque lady), and messing around with Briar. Come on Briar, you are smarter than that.
I thought you were my friend?
Mr. Westonly also arrives, the geezer that is trying to get with my best friend Miss Parsons. She is also attending the race, along with Mr. Chambers, and ugh Miss Holloway.
Briar and Mr. Marcastle are looking cozy, too cozy. I decide to break it up and bring up his fiancé’s name Miss Sutton. They then step away from each other. Good, you two need to keep apart. I know that sounds mean, but Mr. arcastle is awful and plotting against me, and I need to do anything I can to protect my friend and her reputation. Plus, she’s my friend.
Later, the time has come for gambling. Miss Holloway bets on her horses, Bellington Hall-but I am not in fear. I know that Edgewater Estates has some of the finest horses. I’m betting on mine today!
The race is on-it starts off with Holloway’s horse in the lead and I’m biting my fingernails as they go down the track. I hope mine does well!
Please, oh please!
They keep going, and running and just at the end-the Edgewater horse pulls forward and wiiiiiiiiins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m excited, but before I can finish watching the races, the Duke comes and pulls me down next to him.
Ugh, not again…
Ugh. I hate him.
It was so awful!
If only he could just keep his hands to himself. And it is my fault as I’m “so alluring”. Ugh!
I HATE this character!
He won’t stop talking and I’m just so over it.
Like just leave me alone!!!!!
Mr. Sinclaire comes to my aid trying to block the Duke from accosting me, but the Duke won’t listen. He wants to do a race to see who will win me, really?, seriously?
Thankfully Mr. Sinclaire agrees with me, aw that’s why I like him. I hope I end up with him but as there have been three or four books, you know that means there will be lots of drama.
Wow!
Mr. Marcastle pipes up and the Duke goads him into racing him. I try to encourage him not to, but he won’t listen. Ugh, male pride.
Mr. Sinclaire doesn’t want him to race Duke Richards, as he knows nothing good will cone out of it . They race and Duke really gets in there good-making the turns fast and cutting him off. The Duke wins but Mr. Marcastle takes a tumble!
I may not like Mr. Marcastle, but I don’t want him dead! Briar and Miss Sutton rush out there to check on him. Mr. Sinclaire leaves, angry again at the Duke and how he plays with people and how Sinclaire has nothing he can do to stop him.
Mr. Marcastle is angry-and rude saying we are making a big deal out of nothing when he could have died. Oh Mr. Marcastle.
Th horse is wounded, but luckily it will heal with care. Mr. Harper, our horsemaster, invites me to the stable, but I can’t go check on the horses-I still have zero diamonds.
Oh, well.
That evening Miss Sutton tries to help Mr. Marcastle but he’s acting like a spoiled brat. Poor Miss Sutton. She deserves better.
Miss Sutton is worried the wedding might not happen as she hasn’t been as blind as I thought. I decide to try and gain her as an ally-turning her against Mr. Marcastle’s evil mother. Besides, I do feel for her. Poor girl, her fiancé is a jerk trying to get around with other women.
But while that is good news, there is bad news too. Grandmother has received a letter from father. It appears he has grown worse, he has fallen ill with yellow fever.
So I love history, and my time period is the 19th century, particularly America 1850-1900. For one of my college classes I wrote a whole paper on yellow fever during the Civil War. Yellow fever was horrible, in fact it did better against the Union troops than the Confederate soldiers. It is a thoroughly awful disease:
“Yellow Fever is an extremely lethal disease as it sweeps through the body, destroying it from the inside out in a short amount of time. Yellow Fever is named as such, because it interferes with the metabolic activities, especially the conversion of the yellow pigment in bile. Instead of the yellow pigment following its normal path, it circulates throughout the blood, turning the patient’s skin, eyes, and body fluids yellow[1]. The symptoms include chills, headaches, fever, backaches, leg pains, exhaustion, flushed face, light sensitivity, nausea, vomiting, and constipation. The fever disrupts the clotting of hepatic cells, which leads to internal bleeding, hemorrhaging, and deteriorating heart muscle.[2] At this point the system would purge itself of the deconstructed internal mass in the form of black vomit. When black vomit occurred, the doctors knew that the patient was not long for this earth. As Nurse Mary Phinney described it in her correspondence; “Till you are with it you can have no idea of this dreadful fever; nothing else approaches it…No one expects to live, and when the black vomit comes that look of despair…”[3] If one made it over seven days they were sure to recover, but most did not reach that point.”
-The Deadly Enemy: Yellow Fever in New Bern, NC, personal paper by author of this blog.
[1] Ethne Barnes, “Transoceanic Hitchhikers: Yellow Fever and its Dengue Cousin,” in Diseases and Human Evolution (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 304.
[2] ibid.
[3] Mary Phinney, “, September 30, 1864,” September 30, 1864, in Adventures of an Army Nurse in Two Wars: Edited from the Diary and Correspondence of Mary Phinney, Baroness Von Olnhausen, by Mary Phinney, ed. James Phinney Monroe (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1904), 149-152.
I am most certain he is going to die. Now the question is, will I make it back in time?
Please, oh please!
I guess we will just have to wait and see…
But thinking about it, I don’t think England had a yellow fever outbreak in the Regency era. It occurs in warm climates, so it does’t make sense in England. I suppose he could have traveled abroad to Haiti, Jamaica, or Gibralter and was bit by a mosquito and then came back. Hmm…
Hmmm…
For more Desire & Decorum, go to Desire & Decorum: Chapter 9, An Indelicate Proposal
For more Choices, go to Did the Bride Run Off Or Was She Kidnapped?: Veil of Secrets (2018)
For more stories at racetracks, go to For Darkness Shows the Stars
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