Greetings;
I used to say that WordPress.com had ONE fantasy/medieval/book-style theme: Quentin. But then they made Quintus and killed off Quentin. If you have Quentin on your blog and are not sure you will like switching to Quintus… be very VERY careful, because once you take Quentin off, it will be GONE FOREVER.
Now, it’s not that I hate Quintus. It has a more modern width, it has all the new WordPress.com features, like the post Format thingies and all. But it just doesn’t have the same flavor and feel of Quentin.
On this blog, I have loaded Quintus and have attempted to change it to look more like Quentin. You judge if the result is to your liking or not. If you do like this look, the image files used are here for your download and use. I created them from scratch (it wasn’t that hard), and I hereby release them into the public domain and yadda yadda, because I don’t care how or where you use them.
What I could not change was the actual post/page background, to go back to the book-style shading on the edges. Sorry, you’re stuck with that, unless you purchase a customization upgrade. Also gone is the thin vertical line that separated the posts from the sidebar. And for some reason, they added a very distracting squiggle into the background of the pages, that makes the text over it hard to read. These are stylistic decisions I don’t care for. You may not care one way or the other.
I was just going to get a link to the “Quentin is Retired” page for this post… I swear, it came up in the Theme search just 15 seconds ago. But now it is GONE! If you want a refresher on how it looked, Whuffie’s blog is the only one I know that uses it. It’s not even in the theme showcase. You can also preview Quintus at its showcase; keep in mind, the previews are all in the standard colour, not the “Archaic” colour scheme used here.
Okay, I found it in my browser history. Quentin Retired Page.
How To Set Up “Quentin Lives” On Your Blog
1: Load the Quintus Theme. Under Theme Options, select “Archaic.” This is the buff-coloured background.
2: Load one of the Quentin Lives header images. Either the brown-edged one, or the plain buff one that matches the rest of the page. The dark brown text colour code is #3D2204
3: Load the Quentin Lives bg leather image for the background. This isn’t based on the original Quentin, it’s supposed to look like a leather book cover with an embossed gold thing down it. Set it to alignment Left, Tile Vertically.
Quentin Lives Images
Click the thumbnails to open and save the image.
Header
Header, plain
Background Leather
–Enjoy!
Quentin Lives (maybe) 
I see here that the ‘annoying background decoration’ is not under any of my text. I DO tend to use blank lines at the start of my posts, for whitespace breathability. If you do the same, the squiggle will appear at the top. If you don’t, it will appear under your text. See the Quintus preview page for details.
Another thing I just noticed, the Post A Comment boxes for the previous post are very near the header to the next post, and I’ll lay odds that many visitors will end up commenting on the wrong posts because of this. Just the bottom of the previous post ‘things’ look like they are associated with the next post title.
Thanks a million. I’m using it!
Today, the sub-title of the blog appears bolded, and is NOT fading into the background. Perhaps they have fixed that? That would be nice.
PS: You’re welcome! Uh, and I guess you’re not a poster page for Quentin any more ;D
I use Quentin for a Victorian themed blog and I agree that this is the only vintage looking theme available. Ugh. While I understand themes need updates there are a LOT of vintage looking themes on other sites, like blogspot, but EVERYONE uses the same ones, lol.
Bold Life and Choco are “ok” for the old book look, but definitely too modern. :-(
Oh my blog where I use it is http://pastperiodspress.com in case anyone needs to see it in action.