*waves Lady Catherine Fanclub sign*

I don't know why, exactly, but I've always had a sneaking fondness for Lady Catherine.  She's overbearing and ridiculous and not terribly bright, but I still like her.  Partly because she is so exactly everything that every conduct book said a woman shouldn't be, aggressive and managing and bossy, and enough force of personality that she gets most people to admire her for it.  Like Emma on crack, only with a lot more staying power.  (I feel reasonably certain that Lady Catherine never loses interest halfway through one of her plans.)  And part of it is because she's so demonised by fandom and academia - she's either aristocratic!Mrs Bennet or still worse.  LawfulEvil!Lady Catherine.

(Tangent - I think she's meant to be reverse!Mr Bennet, actually.  He's the parent who's brilliant but irresponsibly passive; she's the [surrogate] parent who is extremely proactive but so unintelligent that she does it all wrong.  Mrs Bennet is mostly just nervous and selfish and frightened.)

And partly it's because I actually feel rather sorry for her, esp after her icy statement that daughters never matter much to their fathers - it's rather sad, I think (*suspects that Lady Catherine and Lady Anne were not terribly important to Daddy the Earl*).  And even though the idea of planning the marriage of a pair of infants is silly (and was so by then), I still kind of love the image of two sisters leaning over their children's cradles and . . . yeah.  Anyway, I'm pretty much the a card-carrying member of the Lady Catherine Defence Society and I wanted to write something that was both sympathetic and . . . well, Lady Catherine. 

So this is a very long and meandering way of saying:  Lady Catherine fic!

( You know, of course, that Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Lady Anne Darcy were sisters. )