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sThe Orphan’s Code takes place in a rich, vibrant world based off of Renaissance Europe. It’s full of political intrigue, clashing cultures, and thousands of years of history.
Luckily we can ignore all of that because the entire story takes place in Bermeia, that little city down south.
That’s better.
THE CITY
Bermeia is the capital of Alronelin. It is accessible only by the water or via a single well-guarded bridge. The city is walled and full of soldiers who have free reign to be as harsh as they please. The stronghold, Stormbreaker Castle, is the main residence of King Romero Sangor.
Bermeia consists of three districts:
- The Lower City: This part of the city contains the docks and warehouses of Bermeia. It’s where the poorest citizens live, and tends to be overcrowded and seedy. Several gangs currently fight for control of different areas.
- The Upper City: This part of the city was built nearly a thousand years ago. It quickly ran out of room, so the people of the city started building upward. It now resembles an above-ground rabbit warren, or perhaps a tangled pile of string. The very lowest levels don’t get much light and tend to collect a lot of wastewater and rubbish, so they’ve become home to taverns, gambling dens, brothels, and other sketchy establishments. At the very highest levels, close to the sunlight, are the wealthy merchants and other well-to-do citizens.
- The Gardens: This street, overlooking the coast, is named for its beautiful gardens and parks. The nobles of Alronelin each have a manor here. The Gardens open onto the upper city right in front of the castle for direct access to the king.
Each district is separated from the others by a wall, with gates closely guarded by soldiers. Only those with explicit permission are allowed through the gates in either direction.
Bermeia is known as an Unconquerable City: a city built by the Conqueror so securely and with such thick high walls that no army has taken the city since the Conqueror ruled. To reach the castle, one must cross a long bridge and climb several long steep switchback paths, all the while exposed to archers. Stormbreaker Castle was originally the home of the Conqueror, and over a thousand years it has been rebuilt, remodeled, and added onto many times. But the Conqueror’s throne remains unchanged: a seat hewn from the raw stone of the cliffs, with a plunging drop to the sea at the king’s left side.
THE KING
Romero Sangor came to power amidst suspicious circumstances fifteen years before the events of The Orphan’s King. He is widely believed to be a bastard or a fosterling adopted into the royal family by the much-beloved king and queen. At the time, they had just lost the crown prince to a hunting accident, which left their son Rafael as their only living heir. Romero and Rafael grew up as brothers.
When Rafael was 17 and Romero 18, the king took ill and died. Rafael was crowned shortly afterward in a dual coronation and wedding with Serena Colline. Their marriage was quite scandalous, as Serena was from Savilla, which had a long and tense relationship with Alronelin, and wasn’t of royal blood. Though charming and kind, she was also outspoken and bold, leaving the conservative Alronelinian nobles unsure what to think of her. Serena and Rafael had a son in the second year of their marriage, and rumors spread across the Peninsula that as a half-Savillan, he would one day take the Savillan throne as well.
A year after the birth of his child, Rafael was assassinated by a member of the Gailgich Ruaine, a guild of spies and assassins believed to be under the control of the Courman crown. Romero took the throne as a regent for the prince until he came of age. But shortly afterward, both Serena and her son disappeared.
Romero’s first act as king was to go to war with Courma as vengeance for Rafael’s assassination. Within a few years he successfully conquered first Lyrma (a puppet state of Courma’s), then Courma. He married the Courman princesss, Marisa, to solidify his rule.
His next act was to banish the Divinae, religious leaders and healers who were rumored to have supernatural abilities, from Alronelin.
After Serena’s disappearance, Romero converted an empty space once used by the Divinae into an orphanage. He commanded that every child that might be parentless be placed in the orphanage’s care. The city guard followed this law so mercilessly that several children who did have parents were taken, and rumors claimed that they had to fight hard to get them back, especially the boys.
Over the first few years of his reign, Romero recruited aggressively for the army, abandoned many public works projects, and gave the city guard more recruits but little oversight. As a result, the citizens of the lower city fear the guards as much as they fear the gangs selling drugs and fighting for territory. Without the Divinae, and with female healers forbidden to practice, many have struggled to afford healing and medicine. The public bathhouses and toilets as well as the sewers in the lower city have fallen into disrepair, polluting the drinking water in the lower city. Homelessness and crime have become much more common. It’s rumored that the slave trade, long since abolished, is quietly returning to Bermeia’s harbor.
Romero is thirty-six years old. The Sangor Heir is nowhere to be found. Things are looking dire, with no end in sight.
THE PENINSULA
The Peninsula is based off of Europe, and this story takes place in the European equivalent of 1600 CE, or the early Renaissance period.
Cultures don’t stop at borders. Cultural influence spreads like diseases (and usually by the same people, i.e. conquistadors), and even brief invasions by other cultures tend to leave a mark.
700-800 years before this story takes place, a man named Jon (more often referred to as The Conqueror) was taken as a slave by a matriarchal tribe. A few years later, that tribe came back to his village to take it over properly, and Jon, the tactical mastermind of the combined group, drove them to conquer the entire island chain known as the Isles of Myvanwy. Then they moved on to the mainland. The Conqueror took over most of the Peninsula (only the mountains remained), but stopped when he got to Bermeia. He ruled his empire for a bit, then left it to his children, who fractured it immediately and broke it into three distinct areas.
The Conqueror not only set new rulers in place for everywhere he conquered, but also had a profound cultural influence. For one thing, he sired so many children that rumor has it that one out of every four people in the Peninsula is related to him by blood. For another, the religion of the matriarchal tribe that took him in spread to every corner of his empire, and still remains the main religion to the current day. And lastly, the cultures of those who opposed him were suppressed, in some areas more forcefully than others, and the indigenous people were forced to assimilate and let their culture be erased, or be killed.
Riazli, the Peninsula’s name for the large empire to the south, also invades frequently. It’s been around for a few hundred years, and has skirmished with Alronelin many times over Saltreach, invaded Yazmin and parts of Savilla off and on, and taken over Khal Aleen outright. Their cultural influence (primarily Arabic or Middle Eastern, comparable to the Persian empire) is also significant.
So while Alronelin is based off of France and Germany (The French and Germans both would be really annoyed with me for blending their two cultures like this, but honestly, they have a lot in common), Courma is based off of Ireland and Scotland (again, they’d hate being squished together, but again, inevitable), Savilla is based off of Italy and Spain (y’all, I don’t like it when people compare Texas to Alabama either but it doesn’t mean they’re not kind of right, don’t even start, it’s fantasy), and Kedarth, Kypris, and Yazmin are roughly Slavic, there are a lot of competing influences going on. Much like Spanish culture has some African influence from the Moors, Savilla is influenced by Riazli as much as it is by the Conqueror’s former empire. Et cetera. You get the idea.
Savilla is also heavily influenced by its indigenous population, even if very few of them are around now. They don’t even realize how much. Throughout the book you’ll get the idea that while the rest of the book is living in 1605, the Savillans are living in 2105. While they have the same technology, they’re very culturally progressive compared to Alronelin and Courma for several reasons, but it all traces back to the cultural battle between the indigenous Savillans and the Conqueror and his army. They did a lot better than most at preserving their culture, which influenced the mainstream culture over time. Combined with the difficulty Alronelin and other big countries had invading Savilla, it’s clear that their culture evolved in a different direction. Their governing bodies will often cling to a more Alronelinian style culture (because their governing bodies are royalty that’s been interbred with Alronelinian royalty) and insist that women need to know their place, fornication is a sin, all that boring stuff, but the women of Savilla are known for being pretty feminist. With that feminism comes liberalism in a lot of personal matters, such as sexual liberation, acceptance of gay and trans people, and just acceptance of differences in general.
[A brief note here: Savilla is based off of mostly Italian culturally, but it had a large indigenous population and those genes still remain. So the population looks more like that of Mexico: mostly indigenous, with a little bit of Spanish thrown in for bad conquery reasons. It’s also culturally similar to Mexico regarding the honestly impressive blend of the indigenous cultures with Spanish culture. Savillan culture retains a lot of its indigenous roots and has a lot of influence from them even after years of foreign invasion. When I draw Kayo and the other Savillan characters, I use references from Hispanic men.]
THE TIME PERIOD
I specifically chose this time period because of the shoes. Please just…don’t ask. Scholars of the Middle Ages will understand, you can’t take anyone seriously in those shoes. And don’t get me started on codpieces.
The Renaissance (1400-1600 roughly) is known now for its development of the arts and sciences and for revitalizing the culture of the classical period. It came after the Middle Ages, which was a long period of history defined by feudalism and the Catholic Church as a governing body spreading across Europe. A big part of what defined the Renaissance was the plague. A third of the population died out at the end of the Middle Ages, and once Europe got back on its feet, they were determined to rebuild better than ever.
All of this led to a big rise in colonialism, which led to just…a big mess. So I chose the time period before the Americas were discovered, right at the beginning of Europe’s obsession with expansion, after the plague but still feeling some of the effects from it.
This was supposed to be a brief note. Anyway.
People of this time period (and the ones before) have a reputation among modern people as being dirty. But just because they didn’t take baths very often (because it was difficult to do) doesn’t mean they didn’t wash. They washed all the time. They took sponge baths about as often as we take showers. They also washed their clothes a lot–just not the outer layer. They wore underclothes specifically so those could get washed, and the outer clothes could be washed about as often as you wash your jackets. (I’ve seen how often some of y’all put your jeans and bras in the wash, okay? Don’t judge.)
This was not in the corset time period, it was in the stays time period. Or you could just put some structure in your dress and let it do all the work. Underneath a woman’s dress, she would wear a chemise, with long or short sleeves (but definitely covering the armpits). Men would wear undershirts. The approach for underwear at this point, for men and women, seemed to be a boxers type of affair. Shoes were usually made of thin leather that didn’t hold its shape, and it would probably still have the animal’s hair on it. They’d cost as much to buy as boots cost now–if you remove all the cheap, pleather, factory-made options and just buy handmade specialty shoes. The orphans rapidly discovered how hard it is to make shoes yourself and bought or stole most of theirs.
The laundry setup Alysia has is accurate. The blue stuff is starch. That metal thing she uses is an agitator, which hasn’t been invented yet technically, but Kayo made it for her and it’s a simple enough machine.
Grain has some protein in it, so you can indeed just live off of porridge [some of you may be wondering what porridge is–it’s just oatmeal made out of a slightly different grain) or stewed beans. The biggest issue would be a lack of vitamins. Food in this time period wasn’t bad if you were rich (and if you can cook decent food without tomatoes, potatoes, or sugar, which I am skeptical about), but if you were poor, it was pretty dull. Meat was expensive, so it was rare (unless you went and got your own) and while salt would have been cheap this close to the ocean, other spices just weren’t happening. In a crowded city like Bermeia, it would also be difficult to get greens or produce, since they’d have to be carted in. They’d be cheap, but not as nutrient-dense as grains. In Europe, before the potato was imported from the Americas and domesticated, turnips, parsnips, onions, and garlic (a.k.a. ransom, the wild variety of garlic) were the roots of choice. Bread and beer were staples because it was another way to consume grain, which, again, was a big source of protein for poor folks.
Cities like this would often have communal kitchens. Basically just an oven or a cookfire, placed every couple of streets so everyone could use them. It was a way to cut back on fires. Bermeia’s lower city has them, but not nearly enough.
They might also have communal baths and toilets. In the late medieval period, these were all the rage – but then a very odd version of disease theory combined with a morality crusade, and the public began to view bathhouses as places full of sin and prostitution. Syphilis did tend to spread there in one way or another, so bathhouses were shut down by officials. But this meant that people had to find alternative ways to bathe, and alternative places to get rid of waste. People still kept as clean as they could, washing daily with basins of cold water and washing out chamber pots regularly, but without the ability to boil the water or the infrastructure to dump out chamber pots directly into a septic system, washing became more difficult, and the streets tended to fill up with waste. With no system for garbage disposal, cities tend to accumulate midden heaps, where garbage gathers until someone eventually carts it away and throws it into the river or out of town. Midden heaps usually had animal remains (like unused feathers, bones, gristle, etc), rotten or uneaten food, broken glass or pottery (which couldn’t be repaired), and human waste. They’d carry signs of whatever shops and homes were nearby, i.e. an apothecary would throw out spoiled herbs and elixirs, a potter would throw out broken ceramics, and a baker would throw out spoiled grain. When you can’t throw things out easily, you end up recycling and reusing more, especially if you don’t have a lot of money, so the orphans typically save everything except organic waste, which they dump into the garden. They’re not sure what to do with all that broken stuff, but it may be easier to fix it or repurpose it down the line than to buy something new.
On water: some people insist that Europeans drank only beer and wine in this time period because the water wasn’t clean, but that’s not really true. Poor folks would have had no other choice but to drink water plain. If people could, they’d likely mix in some wine to the water for the same reason you’d hydrate with juice instead of water: because it gets old. And if the water wasn’t clean, like Bermeia’s, roughly the same percentage of people knew what to do then as they do now: boil the germs out of it. They didn’t know what germs were, but they knew that worked. Boiling water is a pretty energy-rich activity, though, so many people wouldn’t be able to do it all the time. But clean water, fresh from a flowing source like a river or aqueduct, was definitely a common drink and was perfectly safe the vast majority of the time. Romans had fountains and aqueducts well before the birth of Christ, and a lot of those are still in use today–and perfectly safe to drink from! I know! I have done it!
Drunkenness was just as frowned upon as it is today. In modern-day Europe, drinking is pretty casual thing, and a lot of people have a drink with lunch and dinner every day, but being visibly drunk is still rare and might get one arrested. It was the same back then. People partied, but being visibly drunk in the middle of the day, or being aggressive, would get you judged and maybe arrested. Not in Alronelin, no one cares there unless you’re a woman, but other places.
Linen would have been the most common fabric at this time for undergarments, and wool for outergarments (which may also have been linen depending on the weather). Striped fabric was pretty common, it was a pretty easy way to jazz up cheap fabric. It’s harder to find examples of what poor people wore because no one painted them and their stuff wore out more quickly, but their clothes seemed to have been colorful and full of variety–it just didn’t look as new all the time, probably.
Clothing back then was very expensive. Only richer folks could afford to hire someone to make it for them, and those dresses cost the 2024 equivalent of about $10,000 USD. Everyone else made their own. Poor women would only have two or three at the most, and middle class women would have four or five at the most, and those would have to last them years. If they gained or lost weight for some reason, the dresses would have to be altered. If you’re making the dress yourself, that isn’t that hard to do, especially with dresses that can be adjusted with laces on the back or sides or front. A dress was very often in two pieces, with sleeves that could be tied on to the top.
In this time period, poor men wore breeches (high waisted, close-fitting pants) and a shirt or tunic (a shirt that falls down to the mid-thigh or the knee and usually has no sleeves), and maybe a vest or a jerkin, or a belt around the waist. Rich men wore hose and puffy sleeved doublets and a lot of ridiculous things. I toned down the rich men’s clothing a little because Romero just isn’t very scary in tights and big ruffled sleeves and a codpiece, okay. People wore stockings instead of socks (just high wool socks basically, but they didn’t have elastic so they’d probably be tied at the top) and both men and women would wear pockets underneath their clothes, little pouches tied around their waists above their underclothes. Slits in the clothing would allow them to be accessed. Many chose to wear their pockets on the outside, in the form of purses or pouches on the belt or tied to the dress.
Haircuts and facial hair are based on trends, and people had scissors and straight razors, so the only thing stopping them from shaving and getting haircuts was the fashion. In this time period women didn’t really cut their hair, and men wore theirs shoulder-length or longer too. Beards and goatees were very common, as it’s easier to trim facial hair than shave it. Women wore their hair up and covered usually, but experimented with different styles, usually braid-based.
[A note: indigenous Savillans had a cultural practice similar to certain dynasties in China where the hair was not cut. The reasoning is slightly different, however. And unlike those Chinese men, or certain indigenous men of North America, they didn’t wear it in particular hairstyles: they kept it loose, just like the women.]
People wore hats like all the time back then, but I don’t like hats, so instead married women wear head coverings as a preservation of modesty, and men wear hats about as often as modern men do.
The thing where they come of age at 16 is not historically accurate. It wouldn’t really matter historically. I’ve read that the marriageable age of women was 12 and men 14 during this time period, but nobles and royalty can do whatever they want, and do. Rich families married their daughters strategically; middle class and upper middle class families sometimes married off their daughters too, but not for political reasons, just because the match made sense and you’d want to get your daughter off your plate. But poor people could pretty much do whatever they wanted. Couples who were free to marry whomever they wished had an average marriage age of about 20. Marriage was usually more empowering for a woman than the alternative (switching father’s authority for husband’s authority but you get to run your own household) and the only other option was being a spinster and working for a living. If you could choose between running an Etsy shop for a living or being a trophy wife, the choice would probably be pretty easy.
Women didn’t have a lot of power, but neither did men. Adultery was punishable by law for both sexes and in many places spousal abuse was frowned upon and punished. In a lot of places, women couldn’t own property. Nobody could vote, and you just kind of had to live with whatever the royalty wanted to do. In Alronelin, women are worse off than they would have been during this time period. They can’t own property or run a business or join a guild, adultery is a capital offense for them but not men (it’s a matter of who’s enforcing it, like most things), and women can very easily be accused of infertility and divorced and abandoned. There are very few professions that they can have, and many women in the city have only one choice: to become a prostitute, or a beggar.
Drug addiction is a much bigger problem in Bermeia and Alronelin than it would have been then, because tar (opium) is much more common and cheap than it would have been (for a lot of reasons we’ll go into later). Opium and similar products weren’t uncommon at this time period, however, and were marketed as remedies for all sorts of ailments. Dreamweed is just marijuana, which was smoked at this time along with tobacco. They have a pain reliever called poppyseed oil that’s just opium, basically.
I’m sure many readers wonder how the orphans can possibly take care of twenty kids on their own, with such a limited budget. After having my son at home with me for two and a half years, I wonder the same thing. The answer, though, is that we have higher expectations of parents today than we did back then. Keeping a kid fed, watered, and more or less alive isn’t the hard part. It’s trying to keep them from getting sick, taking care of them when they do get sick, keeping them clean, being emotionally supportive, teaching them various things, and most of all keeping them entertained. Poor people just…didn’t do those things. Even rich people had a hard time. Back then, kids got sick and died a lot, especially babies. The orphans are doing their best, but that doesn’t mean those kids aren’t being neglected in a lot of ways.
Blackwater is, in fact, cholera. If you’re thinking it’s odd for a city in this time period to have cholera outbreaks, that is not the case. They happened in Europe even into the 19th century. If you’re thinking it’s odd for a city to have them all the time, then you are correct. Cholera comes from having waste in the water supply, and that isn’t supposed to happen. Structures for clean water and sewage have been around for a long time. Rome had aqueducts and the like well before the birth of Christ. Bermeia got a great sewer system early on (as we can see), so these problems are really unusual. Savilla is judging the hell out of them for it.
This may come as a shock to some, but if it does, I encourage you to read up on queer history. People were hella gay in this time period and every time period. Gay and trans people have always existed. So have all kinds of diversity. Autistic people, disabled people, different races and cultures–they all existed, and intermingled more than you’d think. If bigots went back in time and saw how absolutely wildly diverse the past was, they’d have a stroke. Just because there is not a word for something doesn’t mean that thing didn’t exist in abundance! The breakdowns for the current population are 1% transgender or intersex, 1% autistic, 10% gay, roughly 10-15% disabled (with about 15% of them born disabled), and there’s no reason to believe that all of this is not genetic and wouldn’t also apply to people back then. They might hide it or deny it but that doesn’t make them any less queer or disabled or autistic.
Disabled people obviously had a rougher time back then than they do now, and while wheelchairs were technically possible, they were not invented until the mid 1600s. While more disabled people died of their disabilities than today, that didn’t mean that people loved them or cared for them any less. Now, parents aren’t legally allowed to abandon their disabled child, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that child is well cared for; it depends on the parents. It did back then, too. And disabled people have severely limited job opportunities today, so that hasn’t really changed. A disabled person would have to do their best to blend in and have a normal life, and if they couldn’t, it was a constant struggle to try…but that isn’t very different from the modern day. Please see my nonfiction book for more information about the history of disabilities and more guidance on where to go to learn even more.
[A note here: it’s important to many people to have labels like Autistic, gay, trans, etc., and it’s important to many people to see those labels in the books they read. And while I get that, and labels would probably be helpful to a lot of these characters, they didn’t have them. A big part of the struggle of being different is not having labels to use to identify yourself. The characters don’t have those labels, they do not exist in their world, and they’re going to have to deal with that struggle. It doesn’t make Rose and Kayo (and probably tons more of them) any less autistic. It doesn’t make the bisexual characters (and however many you think there are, there are more) any less bisexual. It just kind of makes you read them and scream at the page that they are just asexual and it’s normal and why do they insist it’s not.]
This book also has a lot of people of color in it. This would actually be totally accurate for a big port city like Bermeia in this time period, especially so close to Riazli. Plus, the Riazlini Empire is trying to spread slavery back to the Peninsula, so there will be a lot of trading humans from continent to continent. I hope this book disabuses people of the notion that Europe was 99.9% white back then, because that’s just not the case. Traders from China and other parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa were all over the place. And immigrants have always been a thing. The whole point of the book is to focus on the outcasts and the poor and the non-rich-white-people of the world, so that’s what we’re doing.
THE DIVINAE
Religion is a huge cultural thing, and this world follows those same rules. (I am not the best person to talk to about religions in a non-historical context, so take that into consideration.)
Whatever religion most people are in this book (they don’t have a name for it, as long as people worship the Goddess that’s just normal and doesn’t need a name), it’s similar to Christianity. It’s monotheistic, it has important historical religious figures (saints, but they aren’t called that), it has a hierarchical structure of leadership, and it has similar heaven-and-hell, good-versus-evil imagery that manifests in different ways depending on culture. The primary difference is that there is no Jesus figure. It still remains pretty Christian despite this very obvious Jewish feature, though there’s a lot of variation between their countries.
Divinae and their extinct male counterparts, the Fortuni, are the equivalent of nuns and monks (but for various reasons, only the Divinae remain). The main difference is, not just anyone can be one. Back in the day, the Catholics took kids the same way they took donations, it didn’t matter who or why. Similarly, in every country but Alronelin, Divinae take in any girl that is sent to live with them, and train them all to be healers and scholars–but only a select few, born with the aptitude, can learn the secret arts of divination and become Divinae. In Alronelin, Divinae can’t recruit, as they’re outlawed, so occasionally girls with the gift are kidnapped. But mostly they’re left on their own.
The Divinae are exclusively women and so do a lot of things for women, like uterus-based healing services, providing support in countries where women don’t have rights, taking in girls with no other prospects, pushing the education and care of the entire population, and generally pressuring the population into treating women better. Male monarchs typically do not like this and suppress it as much as possible.
If you’re thinking it’s kind of weird for a world to have a female Goddess and female religious leaders and still be super sexist, it’s not. Men be mennin’ in every universe, and will use a religion to enforce the patriarchy regardless of what that religion is. Their strategy here has been to push the worship of the Goddess but only as a loving maternal figure who is the ideal mom and wife. Virtues that are pushed are obedience, humility, modesty, and overall being tolerant of bullshit. Meanwhile the Savillans did not accept the Goddess as a fetishized model of the patriarchy’s ideal woman (due to how much difficulty the Conqueror’s army had with them) and instead viewed her as a strong heroine figure. She empowered women there instead of helping to oppress them.
ALRONELIN
So by European standards, Alronelin–slightly larger than France–is pretty damn big. (You have to keep in mind that it was only very recently that places like Italy and Germany consolidated their kingdoms into the countries we know today. Large countries are hard to rule. That’s why Alexander the Great’s empire lasted like five minutes.) A lot of this is because Saltreach, the southeastern bit, was considered pretty barren and useless, so it was easy to take. Then it turned out to have a lot of gold 2-3 generations ago.
Alronelin’s culture is based off of early Renaissance France and Germany, with some England thrown in (but only because I read and write primarily in English and a lot of information in English is about English people). Being so close to each other, there tends to be a lot of cultural mixing. It might even be hard for the French and Germans who end up reading this to tell what’s what. The names are English and French, mostly, but the architecture is pretty German, the food is unfortunately very German further inland but more French at the coast (if you’re wealthy), and the mountainous regions have the same problems that Germany has with resources, whereas closer to the coast is a practical Garden of Eden.
BERMEIA
Bermeia isn’t based off of any city in particular. If it were, it would probably be London, because it’s a huge bummer. (Kidding! It’s not London…the weather is WAY better). As of the final editing of the story, I’m in Porto, Portugal, and this city reminds me of Bermeia more than any other ever has. But the upper city’s architecture is unique. It’s so clear in my head I thought I must have stolen it from something, but I can’t think of it. It was probably inspired by something like Goron City in Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask, who knows.
Bermeia’s weather is based off the weather in my hometown, Beaumont, TX, because the weather there is dramatic as hell. We’ve had about twelve hurricanes in my lifetime so far. But more fog and less industrial pollution.
Bermeia’s a pretty good example of what happens when you structure the setting around the plot instead of the other way around.
LANGUAGES
Most people in Alronelin speak Courman, which reads as English (or whatever language the book ends up translated into). Puns have been adjusted accordingly.
Savillan is based off of Italian. Like, a lot. Basically, I just write what I think is accurate Italian, and it has enough mistakes to be its own language, I am very rusty.
Lyric is based off of Scots Gaelic, very loosely. Ancient Lyric isn’t much different, but it’s like reading the Canterbury Tales for the modern Lyric speaker. Only very educated nerds speak Ancient Lyric.
When anyone mentions “Riazlini” as a language, they’re being racist. Riazli has many different languages that we’ll get into as the story moves along.
CURRENCY
Cuprums, argents, and aureals (the coins they use) are copper, silver, and gold respectively. It’s roughly 75 cuprums to an argent and roughly 75 argents to an aureal. A cuprum buys you a loaf of bread, a couple of apples, a handful of candy, an egg…etc. In my head it is equal to $1, but my understanding of what a dollar is is heavily based on the grocery store in the ‘90’s, so. Grain of salt. Artemis makes about three and a half aureals a month, and she’s underpaid–the dresses she makes cost about twice that much apiece. They also don’t pay rent. But they have a lot of kids and there’s five adults so they’re still struggling.
LAST RITES
Throughout the series, the subject of the dead and how to put them to rest comes up often. Certain in-universe texts give more information about how the dead are treated in various cultures.
“Be ye ever diligent and thorough in thine care for the dead. For the soul to reste, adhere ye to the crucial steppes.
When the last breath leaves the body, all present must sing the hymn of the fallen and guide the soul to the waiting Goddess.
Bless ye a basin of water with the Three Prayers and anoint with a rose. Bathe ye the bodye and hair with the water and remove all trace of sickness. Collect ye the soiled water and feed it to the death-tree.
Take ye raw wool and anoint with a rose, and fill the mouth and cavities of the bodye with it.
Dress the bodye in the clothing most favored by the deceased. Cover in fabric any lesions or sores. Take ye great care not to soil the cloth with the bodily fluids. Close the eyes of the bodye and brush the tangles from the hair, and rest the bodye in a position of sleep.
Present the body to the familye and allow them to say their farewells. All present must join in the Three Prayers and the hymn of the fallen. Sing ye the song of summoning and the song of passing and recite ye the seven rites.
A bodye must be interred in the grounde encased in wood or cloth from the tree and fibers of the homeland of the deceased. Bury ye the bodye within a sunrise and a sunset of the last breath, facing the sunrise. The burial place must remain forever undisturbed.” – from Rituals and Rites, a practical guide for Kyprian Divinae
“In the area of Seareach, where wood is uncommon and the water table is high, crypts are the fashion. They are dug shallow or above the ground, and each body is encased in stone and marked with an engraved plaque with the name of the deceased. The stone must be sealed to prevent odors of the foulest sort. Items of personal meaning are often buried with the body, though items of true value such as jewels are often too sorely missed to be parted with. Families share a crypt, with spouses and children buried within arm’s reach of the head of the family–or wherever there is room. Every prayer and song for the deceased is said to all.
This seems a near identical adaptation of the practices common in the Conqueror’s homeland. It seems that the heathens who inhabited this land before its Conquering let the bodies lie on the rocks to be eaten by birds in a grand but profane ceremony. Thank the Goddess they have agreed to be civilized. ” – from the journal of Miranda, a Divina of Alronelin
“In Alronelin, the common folk bury their dead on their land, but the nobility still adopt the fashion of the Conqueror, burying their dead in stone. In Yazmin, this is the norm for all, and the crypts of the wealthy are like vast temples. In Seareach, the crypts are aboveground, dotting the land. In Kedarth and Kypris, where wood is plentiful, the dead are burned on pyres, and the ashes scattered to the wind. Many in Courma have adopted the practice–though the Isles remain devoted to the old ways. Others in Courma and Lyrma inter the body in soft, fertile earth and plant the seeds of an oak or pine in the hands of the deceased, hoping a tree will grow. In the west of Savilla, bodies are also burned, but in the east, bodies are buried facing the water or buried in the water itself, set adrift on rafts or small ships that are then burned. Interestingly, in the city-state of Bermeia, which has struggled to retain its independence from Alronelin for three centuries now, the practice of burying the bodies facing the water has taken hold, and water-burials are common amongst those who do not own property.
In Khal Aleen and the heathen wastes of Riazli, multiple shocking practices have been reported such as bodies being blindfolded or the eyes removed, a tall open tower where the dead are laid to be devoured by vultures, a practice of burning to ash everything the body touched, a practice of turning the ashes or bones into adornments worn by the family, interring the dead in hollowed trees, or dangling the bodies off the side of cliffs, much like Courma and Alronelin’s warnings to criminals, only this is meant to bring honor and closeness to the heathen gods. The dead are paraded through the streets or posed as they acted in life, the funerals feature suicides or feasting or dances or riddle contests, the living dye their skin or wear bone masks to hide from evil spirits, the mouths of the deceased are filled with silver…what a strange and chaotic nation! And one I pray no civilized being shall ever pass away within, lest these heathen practices separate them from the Goddess.” – from the travel journal of Helgah, a Divina of Courma
“How we care for the dead is, I believe, crucial. The common folk may believe the deceased to be simply gone, and the body an empty vessel, but the Divinae know better. Once the soul is separated from the flesh the Goddess gave us, a swift and direct return to her is our last gift to the deceased, and should we fail, the consequences are dire. In our mission to protect the people in our care, it is vital that we adhere to every step of the burial process.
The dead are more helpless than a newborn babe. They rely on us to shepherd them in death as we did in life. A soul ripped from the body suddenly or violently, or the soul of a child, or the soul of a heathen, is especially at risk. The spirit may linger on, and the soul may be tempted to do the same, but an earthbound soul can only be in pain. Comfort the spirit and release the soul, and we have done our duty.” – from the writings of Delilah Carlisle, former Highest of the Alronelinian Divinae
“In my vision I saw apparitions dancing to music I could not hear. I fancied that the ears of my spirit knew the song, though–I fancied it was the Goddess singing. Wherever they are, they are dancing with her.” – from the journal of Clarice, a Divina of Lyrma
“The soul of my father appeared to me many years ago. He demanded, “Why did no one sing for me? Why did no one ask the Goddess to claim me? Was I so evil in life? Did no one love me?” Weeping, I replied, “Father, we could not bear to let your soul slip from our fingers. Even if all wecould have of you was your phantom presence, we could not bear to relinquish it.” And he embraced me, and I swear to the Goddess herself, I felt the warmth of his arms. I believe, even now, that he walks with me. When I am gone, will he follow? ” – from the journal of Angelica, a Divina of Alronelin
Anachronisms
A lot of the differences between this story and real life stem from the choice to make a Goddess instead of a God. The downstream effects of this, unfortunately, don’t mean the world is no longer misogynistic (men be mennin’ no matter what), but the Divinae were able to acquire great power when their male counterparts disbanded because they played on the image of the Goddess and focused on women more than men. Anyway, their religion isn’t Christianity–there’s no Jesus figure–but it functions practically in a lot of the same ways when it comes to political and cultural influence.
They don’t use shillings or francs or anything in this world. Instead, in this world, they use cuprums, argents, and aureals (copper, silver, and gold respectively).
In this world, they actually have a concept of “coming of age”, which wasn’t much of a thing back then. Age restrictions on marriage didn’t matter that much, and were pretty low anyway – 12 for women, 14 for men. But while ultra-rich families married off their daughters at whatever age they liked, and sorta-rich families might arrange marriages for their daughters out of practicality when they were in their teens, poor people could do whatever they wanted, and that brought the average marriage age to about 20. In Alronelin, a lot of things are restricted by age, and a person comes of age at 16 (though a woman younger than that could marry–the age only matters for men, basically). A man who’s of age can carry a weapon, travel alone, own property, use a bank, and marry without permission. A woman of age still can’t really do those things. There’s some talk about the prince not being able to take the throne until he’s 16, but that’s a misconception–that’s the age in which he has to take the throne and Romero (the regent) can no longer rule for him. But he could rule at any time. Savillans don’t have a solid coming of age date, but if they did, it would be 17 or 18.
Alronelin is actually more repressive of women than many places were at the time. Adultery and spousal abuse was frowned upon and punished in most places back then, but in Alronelin, it’s a capital crime when women do it, and barely enforced when men do it. The actual written laws matter less than what the city guard will and won’t arrest someone for. Women can also be divorced or abandoned if they can’t produce children (and are always blamed for cases of infertility). But this is a pushback against the Divinae, who had significant power until fifteen years previously, and does not reflect how the country was under previous rulers.
The only anachronism regarding technology that I can think of is Alysia’s agitator (the laundry swirler thing that Kayo made for her). It’s a simple enough concept, it just wasn’t widely used at the time.
The Divinae are the most anachronistic element in the story. Their abilities are the only trace of magic in the world, and there’s a lot of room for doubt there. But fortunetelling is only a small part of what they do. They’re highly educated and have some pretty advanced medical knowledge.
Fosterlings have been a thing since before written history. Rich and poor alike have been recorded taking in other people’s kids, even just for awhile. A Song of Ice and Fire familiarized everyone with the concept how it existed for rich people in the middle ages: basically, you’d trade kids with your allies, or take a kid from someone you defeated. That way, that person won’t step out of line, because you’ll kill their kid. You’ve seen how often that works out with Theon Greyjoy. But in the Orphan’s Code world, fosterlings are more to help a kid get accustomed to a different culture or language, or to get used to a family they’ll eventually marry into. So in conclusion, it’s more Swan Princess than Game of Thrones. Romero, however, is not this kind of fosterling either. The king asked if any of his servants wanted to take him in, and the head servant’s family did. But Rafael, having no one to play with, took a liking to him, and the royal family grew to think of him as one of their own. Except when it came to the crown.