Lord John Grey Biography
Lord John born as Lord John William Grey is a fictional character created by Diana Gabaldon. He is a recurring secondary character in Gabaldon’s Outlander series of novels, and the main character of the Lord John series of historical mystery novels and novellas. Secretly homosexual “in a time when that particular predilection could get one hanged”, the character has been called “one of the most complex and interesting” of the hundreds of characters in Gabaldon’s Outlander novels.
Lord John Grey Chronology
In 1745, when Grey is sixteen, he informally joins the 46th Regiment, which Hal had raised to restore the family’s reputation. Grey mainly serves as a forager and a scout during this time. During the events of Dragonfly in Amber (1992), he comes across Highland warrior Jamie Fraser and his wife Claire in Scotland while exploring the hills surrounding the English campsite. In the mistaken belief that Claire is an English prisoner of the Scots, Grey tries to “save” her; Jamie breaks his arm but spares his life. Information gleaned by Jamie from the encounter leads to the Highlanders defeating the English forces at the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745.
As related later in Voyager (1993), to most of Grey’s own regiment he subsequently “had been a pariah and an object of scorn.”[45] Around this time, Grey is raped by an unknown fellow soldier, but keeps silent. Grey’s first lover is Hector, a twenty-year-old lieutenant in his regiment. Grey is still with the 46th Regiment at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, but is prevented from fighting by his brother Lord Melton. Hector dies in the battle. The English are victorious and the Scottish forces are slaughtered; Lord Melton spares Jamie’s life in gratitude for his sparing Grey’s, and allows him to flee persecution as a Jacobite rebel.[28][46]
Around 1747, Grey’s cousin Olivia Pearsall is orphaned, and becomes Hal’s ward. She moves in with Benedicta and lives there until marriage, and Olivia and Grey become very close. At eighteen, Grey enters into a relationship with George Everett, who takes him to the Lavender House—a discreet club in London that caters to homosexual men.[47] In 1755, a scandal involving Everett causes Grey—now a major—to be reassigned to Ardsmuir Prison in Scotland, where he serves as Governor for a year and a half. At Ardamuir, Grey is reunited with Jamie. After Culloden, Jamie had lived in hiding for seven years, but had finally turned himself in to the English so that the starving people at his estate of Lallybroch could collect the reward on his head. Grey and Jamie begin having weekly dinners, playing chess and exchanging information related to the prisoners. Grey falls in love with Jamie, who rejects his advances. Still, Grey cannot dismiss his feelings. In 1756, after the prison is successfully rebuilt into a fortress, Grey arranges for Jamie to be paroled to Helwater, under the eye of family friend Lord Dunsany, instead of being transported to the American colonies for seven years of indentured servitude.[46]
In 1757 during the events of Lord John and the Private Matter (2003), Grey begins investigating Olivia’s fiancé, Joseph Trevelyan, whom Grey suspects to have syphilis. During the course of his investigation, Grey visits the Lavender House and has a one-night stand with a young man there.[48] Grey also meets and is joined in his adventure by the handsome Hanoverian Captain Stephan von Namtzen, Landgrave of Erdberg, and takes young Tom Byrd into his employ as his valet. In addition to puzzling out the Trevelyan mystery, Grey helps solve the murder of a fellow soldier who had been suspected of espionage.[28]
In Lord John and the Succubus (2003), Grey is in Prussia serving as the English liaison officer to the First Regiment of Hanoverian Foot. Briefly stationed at the town of Gundwitz with a group of English and Hanoverian soldiers, Grey is at first skeptical when he receives reports of a local succubus victimizing a number of men and murdering a Prussian soldier. While attempting to solve the mystery, Grey tries to navigate his perhaps-mutual attraction to the dashing von Namtzen, as well as to deflect the advances of the beautiful young widow Louisa, Princess von Lowenstein, at whose castle both men are staying.[29]
Later, in Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (2007), Grey becomes romantically involved with Percy Wainwright, the stepson of General Sir George Stanley, Grey’s new stepfather. The scandal of the Duke of Pardloe’s death is reignited, and despite Hal’s prohibitions, Grey investigates. Secretly knowing that his father had been murdered, with Jamie Fraser’s help Grey finds that his father had been innocent. He is also reunited with Stephan von Namtzen, who has married Louisa. Percy is discovered in flagrante delicto with a Hanoverian soldier by Grey and two of his men. Faced with hanging for this capital crime, Percy escapes to Ireland with Grey’s assistance. Percy’s Hanoverian lover allows his commanding officer, von Namtzen, to kill him rather than face the shame of dismissal.[30] Grey returns to the 46th Regiment, which is assigned to fight under Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick and chases French and Austrian troops around in the Rhine Valley for weeks until the Battle of Krefeld. During the battle, Grey takes charge of a gun crew that had lost its commander, and the cannon blows up after a few shots.[49]
Subsequently, in Lord John and the Haunted Soldier (2007), the Royal Commission of Inquiry opens an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the cannon explosion, and Grey is called to stand before a tribunal. He begins his own investigation as accusations threaten him and his half brother DeVane.[27] In The Custom of the Army (2010), it is 1759 and Grey finds himself both about to be promoted within His Majesty’s Army and fresh from a gentlemen’s duel in which his opponent was killed. He gladly accepts an urgent summons from his old friend Charlie Carruthers, who is facing court-martial in Canada. There Grey meets and becomes romantically involved with a Native American man named Manoke.[32]
In 1760 in The Scottish Prisoner (2011), Grey and Jamie Fraser find themselves traveling together to Ireland to try to bring back an English soldier with the intent of instigating court-martial procedures against him. During this process they manage to begin to rebuild their friendship. Grey and Stephan von Namtzen finally consummate their long-simmering attraction.[35]
Grey later marries Isobel Dunsany, in part to take care of Jamie Fraser’s illegitimate son William by Isobel’s deceased sister Geneva.
In 1765 Grey, by then a lieutenant-colonel, has retired from military life and is appointed the Governor of Jamaica.[45]
During Grey’s journey to Jamaica, he meets Claire Fraser again, and is later re-acquainted with Jamie in Jamaica. Afterwards, Isobel and William go to join Grey in Jamaica, but Isobel dies during the sea voyage. At the end of his governorship, Grey takes William with him to visit Jamie at Fraser’s Ridge, en route to a Virginian plantation that belongs to William. Later, Grey goes to North Carolina to visit Jocasta Cameron, Jamie’s aunt, and is introduced to a very pregnant Brianna Fraser, to whom Grey is temporarily engaged so that she would not be bombarded by suitors.
While in Virginia, Grey keeps up a correspondence with the Frasers and brings for Claire several of the ingredients she needs to create ether. Grey also becomes involved again with Manoke, who takes a job at the plantation as his cook. After the American Revolutionary War breaks out, Grey goes to Philadelphia to check on the status of his nephew Henry, who had been wounded in the war. Claire, also visiting Philadelphia at the time, is able to operate on Henry and save his life. Grey and Claire then receive the (erroneously reported) news of Jamie’s death, and John later marries Claire to keep her from being arrested as an American spy.