Stacy Brown

Spoiler warning!
Ahead are significant details from Be the Serpent (2022). Read at your own risk!

Stacy Brown
Lineage
Classification	Changeling
Type of Fae	1/4 Barrow Wight 1/2 Gwragen
Personal Information
Born	c. 1950s
Died	June 2022
Appearance	appx. 5'3"
Aliases	Titania Anastasia Brown
Allied With	Kingdom in the Mists Home (former) Summerlands (former)
Family and Friends
Partners	Mitch Brown
Children	Cassandra Brown Karen Brown Anthony Brown Jessica Brown (deceased) Andrew Brown
Extended Family	Fullblooded Gwragen grandparents
Companions	October Daye Kerry Julie (former; reconciled) Devin (former, leader)
Family Trees	Brown Family Tree
Series Appearances
Novels	Rosemary and Rue A Local Habitation An Artificial Night Late Eclipses One Salt Sea Once Broken Faith The Brightest Fell The Unkindest Tide When Sorrows Come Be the Serpent
Short Stories	And With Reveling
Novels (mentioned)	The Winter Long A Red-Rose Chain

Anastasia "Stacy" Brown is a thinblooded changeling with Barrow Wight and Gwragen blood. She is married to Mitch Brown, mother to Cassandra, Karen, Anthony, Jessica and Andrew, and is October Daye's longtime friend.

She first appears in Rosemary and Rue.

About

Stacy Brown had been one of Toby's changeling friends since they were both teenagers in Home. She enjoyed beauty tasks such as helping Toby with her hair and makeup.

Stacy was perceived as thinblooded enough that she only had basic illusion magics and the ability to See Faerie. Toby has never identified her magical signature within the series, and never noticed this anomaly.

"Stacy" is short for "Anastasia," which means "resurrection".

Appearance

Stacy is described as dainty, only 5'3" tall. She has gently pointed ears tipped with tufts of black fur. Her hair is thick, an elegant chestnut color, and well behaved. She has a healthy peach complexion.

Identity

See also: Titania

Stacy is a heavily geased incarnation of Titania, who Oberon punished to walk the earth as a changeling until learning to be a better person. Stacy never knew that Titania was within her, although Titania claims she influenced Stacy's decisions when possible, such as spending more time around Toby. Titania's consciousness emerged after Stacy learned that her son Anthony had a girlfriend; Oberon's geas forced Titania to kill any children she produced during her punishment lest they create new descendant races.

Once Stacy's identity is known, her loved ones begin realizing further oddities they had never paid attention to:

• Two of Stacy's grandparents are fullblooded Gwrargen, and she is a quarter Barrow Wight, which doesn't fit mathematically with being thin-blooded.
• Once, one of the children told Stacy that they needed two dozen cupcakes for school the next day. Stacy shouldn't have had enough time to make them and go to bed on time, but she did.

There are other strange discrepancies in her life as well:

• Her children Karen and Cassandra do not demonstrate any abilities of their ancestral fae races, but both have the gift of prophecy and tufted ears.
• Cassandra says Stacy is irrationally against the idea of her children dating. This is mainly because her children are Firstborn and any child they produce with their partners would begat a new race, which would violate the terms of Titania's geas.
• Toby has never identified her magical signature, even with increased Dóchas Sidhe abilities.
• Andrew's birthday party begins close to midnight. At the end of the party, Toby is exhausted and falls into bed....close to midnight.
  • McGuire announced that there are details in An Artificial Night that seem like author mistakes but are not.^{[citation needed]} Mitch says Stacy was able to bend time to her whims, though he never noticed or found it strange.

• Stacy and Mitch get permission to leave Home to start a family, even though Devin is notorious for holding tight to his underlings.
• Toby remarked that Stacy's suspected Barrow Wight heritage was distant enough that she had no second face to hide, but she and Mitch were aware of Stacy's grandparents being Gwragen, which should've been a huge hint that she was never Barrow Wight to begin with.
• Maida Sollys notes that she cannot identify Stacy's bloodlines. Stacy avoids responding.

Biography

Stacy first arrived in Shadowed Hills as an unexpected ward of her Gwrargen grandparents, who didn't particularly seem to care about her.

Stacy worked at Home for a while, although she was bad at pickpocketing and thieving, and unwilling to sell her body. She worked as an amateur medic. There she met and fell in love with Mitch Brown. They requested and received permission from Devin to leave Home to start their family.

In the Series

Strangers in Court

Stacy and Mitch have received Devin's permission to leave home and start a family together. They help Toby complete her quest to find the Queen of the Mists a new knowe.

Rosemary and Rue

Stacy and Mitch both reach out to Toby after she returns from the pond, but Toby refuses to reconnect. Once Toby has reconciled with her role in Faerie, she recovers from her injuries at the Brown house.

A Local Habitation

Stacy and Toby go drinking with Kerry.

An Artificial Night

Stacy and Mitch host a birthday party for their youngest child, Andrew. When Blind Michael steals Jessica and Andrew and puts Karen into a coma, they go to Toby for help. After the children have been rescued, she fully supports May acting as Toby's new sister.

Late Eclipses

Stacy stands with Toby, along with all her other allies, at the Court of the Mists when Toby is on trial for breaking Oberon's Law.

One Salt Sea

Stacy uses her magic to help Toby prepare for a Court function, speeding up the hair and makeup process and ensuring it will stay in place longer.

Once Broken Faith

Stacy drops off Karen for a sleepover at Toby's house.

The Brightest Fell

Stacy helps organize Toby's bachelorette party at a karaoke bar. She teases Toby for being so uncomfortable with the party.

The Unkindest Tide

Stacy gives Toby a ride to the docks so that Toby can visit the Duchy of Ships.

A Killing Frost

Though she doesn't make a physical appearance, Cassandra remarks that Stacy has issues with her kids dating and went ballistic when she saw Cassandra holding hands with a Hob.

When Sorrows Come

Stacy throws herself into the role of Toby's head bridesmaid. She and May take Toby's wedding dress around for all their friends to add magic to make it stain-repelling and indestructible. Stacy arrives at the High Court with the first wave of guests, ahead of Toby and Tybalt, and has already turned Quentin's room into a magic walk-in wardrobe. She is frenzied, snapping at Toby about proper attire and comportment at the High Court and having Toby close her eyes before revealing first her evening gown and then her wedding dress.

Stacy and Kerry beg off of appearing in front of the High Court, citing final wedding preparations.

Stacy attends the wedding as a bridesmaid.

And With Reveling

At the wedding reception, Stacy is annoyed with Toby for seemingly hiding from her wedding guests, although Toby and Tybalt had remained in the public eye and chatted with numerous wedding guests during the evening. She is also annoyed when she thinks Toby didn't consider her as one of the possible blessing-givers. Stacy presents Toby with one of the seven wedding blessings.

Be the Serpent

Stacy is mysteriously missing from her home while Jessica is murdered trying to protect her brothers from an unknown assailant. Toby and Quentin later find her casually drinking coffee in a Safeway. She is laced with an infectious form of a Llangefni screen that cuts off seeing Faerie and access to magic. Stacy makes Toby promise to find her daughter's killer, and Toby brings her to Muir Woods to reunite with the remainder of her family.

Toby realizes that Stacy is Titania, and Jessica's unwitting killer. After Maeve's broken Ride, Oberon placed a geas upon Titania to live repeatedly as a changeling and destroy all trace of her presence - including Firstborn children - until she learns to be a decent person.

Toby and Tybalt locate Stacy within the knowe and Stacy appears in denial of Jessica's death. When Toby confronts her, Titania takes over and escapes.

Later, Stacy briefly reclaims control of her body and begs Toby to kill her - and therefore Titania - in order to save the rest of the Brown family. She says she doesn't want to live in a world where she killed her own daughter.

Titania takes over again, and Stacy does not resurface until the battle of Muir Woods. Once she falls into her and Oberon's snare, Toby hesitantly tears away the binding on Titania in order to reconstruct it without the compulsion for filicide. Toby and Stacy both know this will erase Stacy's conciousness, and they bid a tearful goodbye.

Titania is rebound, but Stacy is gone forever.

“	I can feel what you're doing, and it's going to free her, and it's going to mean I'm not here anymore. I won't say you're killing me because you're not. You're letting me go. You're saving my children. You're saving the only thing that ever mattered in the entire world, and you're doing it because you love me. Well, I love you too. Remember that October Daye: remember that I loved you from the time we were children, and I still disappeared still loving you, and no matter what she says, it was always my choice. I chose you over and over and over again, even when you weren't a very good friend, even when you didn't think you deserved to be chosen. You did. You do.	”
–Stacy Brown, Be the Serpent

Trivia

• The online fan community long noticed increasing peculiarities about Stacy, leading many to believe she is a more powerful fae in disguise. This theory became especially popular after another minor character's true identity was revealed.

Quotes

• "Being your friend is like trying to get up close and personal with a natural disaster. Sure, we have some good times, but we spend half of them covered in blood. We just want to spend an evening making you as uncomfortable as you keep making the rest of us." -Stacy to Toby