Whenever I Mention That Romanadvoratrelundar Is From House Dvora, Someone Inevitably Mentions The House

Whenever I mention that Romanadvoratrelundar is from House Dvora, someone inevitably mentions the House of Heartshaven, and up until now I’ve explained the relationship between Heartshaven and Dvora as being analogous to that between Lungbarrow and Prydon or Meddhoran and Xianthellipse: in other words, Heartshaven is a sub-bloodline of Dvora. I’ve recently come up with an alternate solution, though, and I think it’s far more satisfying.

I am Romanadvoratrelundar, mortal heir to the House of Heartshaven, inheritor of the House of Dvora, and custodian of the House of Everston.

— Romana, Panacea

I was an only child. I didn’t have many friends.

— Romana, Neverland

When Romana visits the House of Heartshaven at the beginning of Panacea, she finds it completely deserted, laying in ruins and infested with pig-rats. Nothing could be more dissimilar to the House of Lungbarrow from Lungbarrow, which belongs to an active bloodline with many living members. Heartshaven isn’t some modern experiment with new biodata; it’s a fallen House, like Catherion or Ixion from The Book of the War.

And Romana acknowledges that Heartshaven is dead: there were no other children in the House; she’s not just a member, she’s the bloodline’s “mortal heir”. The last person with any claim to Heartshaven’s property and legacy.

[Eighth Man Bound] is never played by Time Lords of those ‘newblood’ Houses for whom a change of body is as trivial as a change of fashion, and who come straight from the loom with a secondary heart.

— Christmas on a Rational Planet

The Imperator crisis was the moment of catastrophe for the Houses. … From that point on Dvora was known as a Newblood House, the first House to have bred such an obvious mutation despite its reasonably long lineage.

— The Book of the War

When Christmas on a Rational Planet introduced the idea of a Newblood House, it specifically did so by contrasting Romana and the Doctor: the First Doctor had only one heart, per The Edge of Destruction and The Man in the Velvet Mask, whereas Romana I had two hearts and also seemed to casually regenerate in Destiny of the Daleks. (The novelisation of City of Death goes so far as to suggest that she regenerated “for the fun of it”.)

The Book of the War then introduced Dvora as the first and oldest Newblood House, being deemed as such after the Morbius crisis. Assuming that Romana is a member of Dvora, this means that Romana was from the generation right after Morbius’ rise to power, which does match the timeline: she’s about one generation younger than the Doctor, who himself was loomed around the same as Morbius.

The Faction Paradox series actually introduces us to one of Romana’s cousins, another child of Dvora from the generation after the Imperator: Larissa. Larissa graduated from the Academy and was recruited into the Order of the Weal when the “worldquake” and the “goblin infestation” were still recent events, which matches perfectly with the freshly-graduated Romana we see in The Ribos Operation. Their timelines are perfectly aligned, and by peeking into Larissa’s childhood, we can get a hint of Romana’s.

They had separated her from her playmates and marched her over the mountains. This was punishment, but not for her. There was madness in the family, a taint in the blood, so the children were scattered to the nine corners of the world for their own protection. She was still too young to understand the reasons, the scandal and disgrace her elders had left behind. She had been carried everywhere all her life, and hated walking. Her new and temporary home was a small house in the mountains, so tiny it was forgotten and flew no sovereign banner.

— Larissa’s childhood, Newtons Sleep

The bloodline of Ixion had already vanished in the Diaspora, leaving only a line of caretakers to manage the affairs of the House. … Following the death of Thessalia and the decline of the Order of the Weal, Ixion became an empty, desolate House.

— The Book of the War

After the Imperator crisis, the children of House Dvora were scattered around Gallifrey, and just as Larissa went to live in the long-empty House of Ixion, Romana was sent to the House of Heartshaven. Just like with Ixion, the death of the caretaker would later prompt the chapterhouse’s collapse, as we hear in Panacea; but, just as Larissa returned to the House of Ixion as an agent for the Order of the Weal, Romana gained a sense of belonging with Heartshaven during her time there that lasted long after she left for the Academy.