ficnotes: the student prince

I know, I know ... last time I did one of these I promised more femslash! And now here I am bringing you more yaoi. What can I say? My friend Minerva encouraged me to check this one out and it was so totally and completely charming that I simply have to share it with you.

Title: The Student Prince
Author: FayJay
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin (AU)
Rating:G to NC-17 depending on chapter.

Length: 35 chapters (navigable through drop-down menu)
Available At: Archive of Our Own and Audiofic(swoon!!)

So I don't know how many of you have seen any episodes of the new BBC series Merlin but Hanna and I caught about half the first season two summers ago, back when we were still getting the channel that broadcast the show here in the U.S. and...yeah. This was a show that frickin' wore the slash right there on its sleeve. The whole show played like a massive in-joke between the actors playing Merlin and Arthur, who were clearly egging one another on to make every single interaction between the two characters be so brimming full of subtext that the subtext just gave up the damn ghost and became text.

Every person I've informally surveyed about this show agrees with the above assessment. And if the fanfic and fan art are anything to go by? This state of affairs totally meets with fan approval.

So what can I say about "The Student Prince"? Broadly speaking, it's an AU ("alternate universe") fic set in modern-day England, largely at St. Andrews University, the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland, where all the major players are first-year students at university. Arthur is the only son of the nation's ruling monarch, Uther Pendragon, whose mother died in childbirth. Merlin is a scholarship student from Cardiff studying Physics and (a bit more covertly) Magic. Gwen, a fellow first-year Merlin meets on the train to Edinburgh, is an Engineering student who is nursing a major crush for third-year student and kick-boxing instructor Lance. Morgana, reading Magic alongside Merlin, is Arthur's cousin the Duchess of Edinburgh and next in line after him for the throne.

There's a dragon. There's a kitten. There's Raisin Weekend, evil plots, skipped lectures, stolen kisses, not-so-stolen kisses ... as Minerva succictly put it in an email, "The Student Prince is quite adorable most of the way through, then it gets smokin' hot, then angsty, then adorable again."

Oh, and have I mentioned that the Great Dragon wants an iPod?

Have fun everyone!