Before StarDates there were years; and before the Q judged humanity they studied it. Humanity grew, crafted, and designed their future; they took their fate in their hands and molded it. The Q had always been, there had been no growth, no development, no change in all of memory. One Q in particular found himself enamored with the species, it represented everything his people weren't and it thrilled him. He reveled in the change and chaos, lived vicariously through them and spent far too much time in their presence.
So fond of humanity was that one Q that as punishment the Continuum decided it a particularly cruel form of punishment to bind him to Earth, a modest castle that once belonged to a Lord long since departed not far from a small and completely uninteresting hamlet in France. He was to stay there until he grew out of his infatuation with this lowly species and only then could he be free. Locked from the centers of culture and invention this one Q quickly grew frustrated and malcontent. He grew to resent the only branch of humanity that was left to him, that mundane hamlet, just as stagnant as the Q themselves. Never growing, never changing, content with things just the way they were. But he never grew disinterested, he was still consumed by humanity, and so he stayed, and generations grew and died until one day fate smiled on him.
An old sea captain, recently retired, came to the hamlet with his young adopted daughter one year to settle down. His name was Jean-Luc Picard and his daughter of 20 years was Kathryn Janeway.