Great and now that horny angel is stuck in a Scottish Jesus body. But that would be crazy if he came back as Alwy...holy pie balls that would stir things up. Or what if he came back in a girls body and then hit on Flann? THAT would be awesome but Lothere can't do girl on girl, cause I wanna do it first in my story! Not to give anything away.

I can't really think of any other influential guys that Araphel could come back as. But he already screwed up by coming back as Egelric's dead son. Poor Egelric, he has had so much drama lately, I wouldn't be surprised if he flew off the handle and burned some stuff down. After he wrecked the boozer of course.

There could be tons of what ifs....what if Egelric and Gunnilda had gotten together, maybe he would have finally had a wife that wouldn't die since Gunnilda is the only original woman left from the beginning families. And what if Vash and Iylaine had gotten together, what would've happened to Malcolm?

Its fun to think of these things. Does anyone else have any what if scenarios that they think about?

Yeah, the Alred & Matilda one is the one I wonder about the most too, although it tends to make me depressed if I think about it for too long.
I think they would have. I think if Matilda had snapped out of it, had moved on past her crisis and not just faded into death the way she did...who knows, but I think she could have gotten past it. And if she had gotten past it, I think they would have worked it out.
As much as I loved Egelric and Gunnilda back in the day, I can't really wish they'd gotten together, because that would have meant his marriage to Lili would never have happened. And I just can't wish for that.

That is not a random wonder! That is a really excellent question. I thought about making it happen, way back when, but I could not imagine Maud leaving her children, nor taking them away from Sigefrith.

If she had not had Caedwulf and Brit, perhaps she would have gone, though I am not certain that Malcolm was serious about taking her when he asked her then. I don't think he really figured out he was in love with her until he came back a year later. Until then he thought she was just another fling, nothing special. But later...

I can't remember where, but I am almost positive he said somewhere, in later years, that they would surely have come to hate each other in the end. I can imagine then fighting (viciously, as is the way of both of them), and Malcolm would end up walking on out her, taking off for romps of days, and then weeks, and then months, until one day he doesn't return, just like he did to Maire. Nevertheless:

"There was a time when I had to make a choice between doing the honorable thing and the dishonorable thing, having already done more than the devil’s own share of dishonorable things.  I chose to do the honorable thing.  I shall regret it until I die."

Supposing they had run away together, with Cubby (though not with Sigefrith's children... Sigefrith obviously would have hunted them down to the ends of the earth if they had taken his kids) they both would have been outcasts of a sort. Colban had already threatened to ban Malcolm from his house forever if he went to Maud more than that one last time he was allowed. And obviously Lothere would have been off-limits.

I suspect the political fall-out would have been minimized if Colban had gone through with that, though it probably would have broken his own heart to do it. Sigefrith is a diplomat, and though I admit he had a big weakness where Maud was concerned, he knows he needs Aed's support. And in fact, Colban and Aed are usually not on the best of terms themselves, so Sigefrith might have just ended up putting Colban's clan on his blacklist and continuing friendly relations with Aed and the others.

Ha, sometimes I forget that not only is this just a what-if scenario, but even the what-actually-happened scenario is not real at all.

Well, we wondered a bit above what would have happened if Matilda had lived, though it is a rather sensitive subject. I think Alred would be a much happier man now if she had. It was almost enough for him to love her, even if she didn't love him. (Which she did! She totally did!)

I really don't think anything further would have happened between Leof and Matilda, though Leof would surely have wanted it. On the other hand, Matilda would have kept Peleia around, which would have been very awkward to say the least. Leof probably would have lost his mind trying to get to her. So maybe he would have contrived to "get to" Matilda at the same time.

OK, actually I don't know what would have happened. But I don't think Matilda loved Leofric the way he loved her, so the outcome might have ended up being an actual Leofric vs. Alred combat and I would imagine that Alred would have won. And if Leof had been enough of an adulterous villain about it, I don't think there would have been any legal consequences, so don't bother theorizing about that.

As for Maud, she would have gone utterly mad and Sigefrith would have been obliged to lock her up, à la Jane Eyre. It's better for everyone that she died, I think.

Maud would have gone mad either way, Devin, with or without Sigefrith. It might have taken a different form, but that's why her uncle kept her at the abbey and didn't let her marry.

I don't think Lili would be too thrilled about Sela's elf sister moving into her castle, but then again I don't see any likelihood of that happening any time soon, so the question is not germane.

Why I killed Lili...

Now, now, that castle wasn't built for Sela... Egelric didn't even fully comprehend he was building it for himself. All he wanted was his cabin by the lake, which he asked for and got. I am not sure he would ever have taken Sela to the castle, though it's really, really hard to say.

And he would not have agreed with you about that being Lili's castle. It certainly became so -- it was Lili who made it seem like a home to him. When she first arrived, in "Alred brings a harp":

Lili laughed and went to sit at her harp, which stood now in the windowed alcove where a torch had lately been.

“You don’t mind that we put it here?” she asked her husband.

“It is your own hall, Lili,” Egelric sighed.  “I only ask that you leave my desk where it stands.”

And she's buried there now, beneath a stone slab on the chapel floor, so she will dwell in it forever.

Since Sela didn't like living in a small cottage (she tolerated it for Egleric), I think she'd have really felt confined in a stone castle with very few windows.

I don't think Sela ever really did feel comfortable in the house, though she got used to it after a while. Remember at first she used to stay outside whenever Egelric was not home and only came in when he was there. Perhaps after some years she would have gotten comfortable enough to go live at the castle, but perhaps not. Living "wild" all your life until you're 20 or so, it might be hard to adapt to castle life.

We now know that on the night Egelric took Sela away, she was probably thinking of her sister, and that was at least one of the reasons why she hesitated. But once there she stayed. So I don't know what we should think about that. Anyway no one will ever know what she thought about leaving Aia -- Egelric never knew about Aia at all, and Aia never knew the circumstances under which Sela left. She probably thinks Sela just abandoned her one night -- just decided to leave. But since she so worshiped Sela and thinks so little of herself, she was surely willing to overlook that.

It will be interesting if Aia and Egelric ever compare stories and try to guess what Sela was thinking. Egelric always has felt a bit guilty about that as it is.

I don't know whether Matilda would have survived another pregnancy anyway. From your descriptions in the story, she seemed to have suffered gestational diabetes. She and Alred were never exactly "careful." So the only way she could have lived is if Alred died like history was originally supposed to go and she didn't have any more children for the rest of her life. On another note, Lothere, your plot about using willow bark to cure fever was veeeeeeery clever. You really did your research for this story.