Before And After

In The Rebel Worlds, Commander Flandry visits the Virgilian System where the humanly colonized planet is Aeneas although Flandry spends his time on the inhabited planet, Dido. There are later consequences both for Aeneas and for Flandry. However, the difference is that, whereas The Day Of Their Return, about later events on Aeneas, was written after The Rebel Worlds, the Captain Flandry series, with the single exception of its culminating novel, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, was written before the Young Flandry Trilogy which culminates in The Rebel Worlds. Thus, The Day Of Their Return can and does refer to the mutiny in Sector Alpha Crucis, which had been the subject matter of The Rebel Worlds, whereas, until it reaches A Knight..., the Captain Flandry cannot mention the important facts that Flandry had loved Kathryn McCormac but had nevertheless defeated the mutiny led by her husband, Hugh McCormac. The author has retconned these events. The parts of the future history series fit together and, by comparing both the publication dates and the contents of the texts, we can see how they were put together.