Because the story of In Darcy’s Place centers around Mr. Collins and his complicated relationship with the Bennet family (and their estate), I thought to spell out the nature of this relationship and the background which might have caused his father to “disagree” (as Jane Austen put it) with Mr. Bennet. In my version, Mr. Bennet was a late-in-life son of the heir of Longbourn, supplanting Mr. Collins’s father, who had long believed he would inherit. Mr. Collins and Elizabeth are therefore second cousins. This is, of course, entirely my own imagination, but it worked well for the story.