#Queer Agony

Jane Austen & the South Downs cottage...

I know the idea of Aziraphale already owning the South Downs cottage is a pretty commonly-discussed thing but I don't know if this aspect of it has been. Apologies if it has. I think S2 might possibly be hinting at the idea of the South Downs cottage maybe having ties to Crowley & Aziraphale's past a bit via Jane Austen and the timeline and backstory they established for her.

In real life, Jane Austen lived the last 8 or so years of her life in the village of Chawton in Hampshire in the South Downs. She died pretty young, even for the time, in July 1817. Her books only became successful a few years prior to her death so much of her literary fame is posthumus. One of the reasons Crowley doesn't know she's a writer (still, somehow lol) is that it sounds like the era in which he knew Jane personally was prior to her becoming a famous writer.

Crowley says that he knows her as the brains behind "The 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery"-- an event that Good Omens made up but gave a year to that's kind of specific on the timeline of Jane Austen's real life history. Even though Clerkenwell itself is part of London, Jane Austen was living in the South Downs in 1810 when she was crossing paths with Crowley and Aziraphale, as she lived in Chawton from 1809 until her death in 1817. Since Aziraphale associates her with regency balls so quickly (and because there's no way that if we ever get a Jane Austen flashback after Aziraphale's whole ball/meeting in S2 that the flashback won't involve a Regency-era ball lol), it's likely that even if Jane was running her criminal empire through London, at least some of the setting of a flashback would be at a ball at a cottage (estate) in the South Downs.

This would then help to fill in how both Crowley and Aziraphale knew Jane Austen and know the other knew her (implying they were around her together at one point.) By 1810, Aziraphale is a wealthy London land owner and businessman. Does he get invited out to one of Jane Austen's balls or go with her group to one of her neighbor's ones, where he crosses paths with rakish Regency diamond thief Crowley? Does he spend half the night pretending not to moon over him, pining for a dance he doesn't get until 2023? (Probably safe to assume yes lol.)

Did he and Crowley have some romantic moment that night on an old estate in the South Downs-- or some significant near-miss of one-- and then Aziraphale just went and bought the cottage at some point a billion years ago and didn't tell Crowley because this is Aziraphale's 'maybe someday' pipe dream and he was never going to tell Crowley unless they'd evaded all possible Armageddons and there was a chance they could have this? Why disappoint Crowley more, right? And he doesn't tell him after S1 because they both know it's not really over so he just still hasn't as of S2 and that would set it up for being part of the end of S3.

It would be very sweet if the cottage isn't a new idea and was actually a place that has significance to them.

Crowley's been through a lot. Let him find out Aziraphale bought Pemberley for him in 1810.