Phoenix Court (series)

Phoenix Court was a series of novels and short stories written by Paul Magrs.

The series was notable for its introduction of as we know her (an earlier version of Iris, depicted a dying elderly woman, was seen in his short story Patient Iris prior), and the series comprised of four novels: Marked for Life, Magrs' first novel, published 1995; Does it Show, the sequel, published 1997; Judith's Do Round Hers, a short story printed in Magrs' anthology, Playing Out, also published in 1997; Could it be Magic?, the third novel installment, published in 1998; and finally, Fancy Man, published two decades later in 2018.

While it predated Magrs' first piece of licensed Doctor Who prose, Old Flames, Magrs has explicitly affirmed that Iris from the Phoenix Court series is one and the same as the DWU Iris - perhaps most notably in the afterword to The Scarlet Empress, where he wrote how he "injected" Iris into the DWU, and while she wasn't a Time Lord originally, she was still the same character.

The series predated Magrs' DWU work and acted as a partial prequel to his EDA story The Blue Angel.

Connections with the DWU
In Bafflement and Devotion, the ' appearance was described in such a manner reminiscent of Iris from the Phoenix Court series, it was implied they were the same incarnation.

The Blue Angel was the first direct crossover with the Phoenix Court series, where it was shown that Phoenix Court (the titular council estate in Newton Aycliffe) existed in both the Doctor's universe and the Obverse. The novel went out of its way to tie the continuity of the series together, going so far as to have one of the characters pass meta-fictional commentary on fiction where he said all reality was essentially fiction, and were equally valid.

Hospitality, a short story printed in Iris: Abroad, continued the story of from the Phoenix Court series.

In the stories Dog Days of Summer and Dark Side, an in-universe version of Marked for Life appears, and in The Story of Fester Cat, the in-universe Paul Magrs recounted to his cat about the book.