The rest of the world

[Cronanbor]

We have had a few fan fic authors writing stories about Deryni Families on several different islands off the North sea and around the Norselands.

I know this has been "Long Ago", but any chance of you giving specifics about where to find these?  I would love to read them.
Cronanbor

[Laurna]

One set of stories that I was thinking of was by Aerlys. I got to enjoy reading several chapters, however I don't believe she ever finished it enough to post her story here. Periodically, she says hello in chat. It was an adventurous story about a Deryni village in the Norselands.
The other stories I was thinking of would be Jerusha's tales about the Cameron family on Isles, which is an island north of Claibourne. Scattered details emerged about the Barony Isles in the Game/Story Ghosts of the Past. Jerusha has ideas about expanding the family's story line. Some day.

[Evie]

My island kingdom of Llyr that pops up in some of my fanfic story arc is a non-canonical kingdom that is somewhere to the West or Southwest of Gwynedd. In my personal head canon, Llyr was primarily settled by a group of survivors of whatever catastrophe befell ancient Caeriesse. They were some of the fortunate few who either were outside of that kingdom when it was destroyed (possibly having sailed away to trade with other lands and then returned to find their home destroyed), along with some who heeded the early warning signs and left Caeriesse before it sank into the sea. (I always assumed what happened was along the lines of a volcanic eruption like the one that destroyed Santorini.)

[Frère de Saint-Gabriel]

My impression of the Forcinn states and their immediate neighbors, particularly given their geographical proximity to R'Kassi, is that they are analogous to the Christian kingdoms and principalities in the northern Iberian peninsula who represented the survivors of the Visigothic kingdom who were pushed into the northern reaches of the peninsula by the Muslim Moorish invaders, represented broadly by the R'Kassans to the east of the Forcinn. But rather than Iberian or Spanish or even Catalan, the names in the princely and ducal lists found in the Codex suggest southern France (the Languedoc or Gascony or southern Aquitaine). The names of at least four of the principalities—Logréine, Vezaire, Joux, and Thurie (Thuria)— suggest this Gascon/Aquitainian/Languedoc parallel.

The Andell Mountains are also not a little suggestive of the Pyrenees, with Andelon's being of a sort with Pyrenean lands like Roussillon, the northern reaches of the principality of Catalunya, and Andorra (which, if you squint just right, has a bit of orthographic similarity to Andelon/Andell). And as DesertRose noted over six years ago in this thread, Andelon also (and more strongly) bears an orthographic resemblance to Andalusia, and that principality, along with the emirate of Nur Hallaj, provides a tantalizing suggestion of what a Christianized Moorish principality in Iberia might have been like.

Thuria, also referred called by the more French form "Thurie" in the Codex, appears to have a German flavor, given the name of its chief city or town, viz. Kranburg. In terms of real world geography, this makes that part of the Forcinn sort of like that lower eastern border between France and Germany (or Alsace-Lorraine), where German place names are found in France and where French family names are found in Germany.

The northern extreme of the Forcinn, represented by Orsalis and Tralia, seem more suggestive of the eastern Adriatic coast, viz. Dalmatia or Istria. Of course, the Ile d'Orsal suggests more the French flavor of the middle and southern coastal Forcinn states. But the family name of the Orsalian princely family (d'Horthy) duplicates the family name of Miklós Horthy, the Hungarian admiral (in the Austro-Hungarian navy) who ruled the kingless Kingdom of Hungary as Regent from shortly after the First World War until the end of the Second World War. It's also worth noting that there are late medieval connections between France and Hungary, not least in the form of the Angevin kings of Hungary, so the name "Ile d'Orsal" and the French names of the Horts of Orsal still fit that vaguely Magyar/Dalmatian feel that I perceive in the northern Forcinn.

This makes sense, given the proximity of Orsalis and Tralia (and Thuria) to Torenth, with its Slavic/German/Magyar-flavored names and culture.

I've also imagined that the coast of the Forcinn more nearly resembles the eastern Adriatic coast, with the Ile d'Orsal suggesting the beauty of Dubrovnik. The trade prowess of Orsal is also suggestive of the great merchant city-states of the Adriatic sea on both coasts, such as Venice, Ragusa (Dubrovnik), and Ancona. Perhaps that eastern Adriatic flavor extends into the southern inland Forcinn as well, given that the original princely family in Andelon were the Vastouni, which is a Greek name found not only in mainland Greece but in the island of Corfu. (So does that dynasty then have an Ottoman Turkish feel, with Arabic given names and a Greek surname?)

Finally, there being no Circassia on the maps, though there is a reference in at least one of the books (if memory serve) to "Circassian lancers" in the Torenthi royal guard, does the name R'Kassi represent a sort of contracted form of Circassia (Circassia—>Circassi—>R'Kassi)? Of course, the ethnic identity of the real world Circassians isn't Moorish, but that doesn't mean the name couldn't be redolent.

[Frère de Saint-Gabriel]

As I think about it more, a similarity of the Forcinn and the eastern Adriatic cost fits the idea of a Christian/Muslim interface in much the same way that the Christian and Moorish kingdoms of northern Iberia do, given the invasion of the Balkans by the Ottoman Turks.

[Evie]

This is along the lines of what I've been thinking as well, at least as far as the Forcinn States, R'Kassi, and Andelon are concerned, since the lands between Bremagne and Fianna appear to have all originally been part of Grand Bremagne, IIRC their respective histories from the Codex. In my 1464 Eleven Kingdoms story in progress, I am modeling Andelon loosely on Andalusia, so it's heartening to see someone else drawing the same parallels. I had thought (based on the Codex description of the landscape, I think?) that the coastal area of Tralia might be more similar in some ways to Flanders, but your concept of it also works.

By the Forcinn States, the Codex seems to be referring to all the states starting from the Bhutti River and going northeast of there up to Tralia. To the Southwest of the Bhutti, you have Bremagne, Fallon, Fianna, Autun, and Jaca, which seem to have a different sort of culture or set of cultures.

[Frère de Saint-Gabriel]

I think that the cultural influence of "Grande Bremagne" is still seen in the toponyms and the regnal names of the Forcinn states, though the cultures in Thuria/Thurie, Tralia and Orsal, Nur Hallaj (and Andelon, if one counts that as part of the Forcinn) have evolved through closer proximity to Torenth and Lorsöl on the one hand and to R'Kassi on the other.

This raises regionally a question that I've long wondered about, and that I suspect has previously been addressed in these fora, viz. what languages are spoken in the Eleven Kingdoms and environs?

Concerning the region under discussion, is Bremagni the language not only of Bremagne proper, Fallon, Fianna, and Jaca but also of the Forcinn states, perhaps with regional and local dialects and influence by the R'Kassan (Moorish?) and southern Torenthi languages and regional dialects in the northern and western Forcinn?

Some time ago, someone (perhaps it was you?) wrote that Fianna had a sort of Italian feel to them—though I think its more reminiscent of Provence than Italy (though the name itself conjures the warbands of early medieval Ireland—what if the name derives from bands of Connaiti warriors who settled that part of the kingdom of Bremagne early in its history?). Could it be that if Fianna be Provençal in flavor, the folk in the coastal Forcinn states with French names speak something more like a Fiannan (Fiannese?) dialect of Bremagni, or a Fiannan language that is a distinct but closely related language to Bremagni? Against that idea is the fact that the names in all the regnal lists in the Codex are French, not Occitan.

Of course, the names in the regnal list of Bremagne itself have some Breton and not strictly French flavor—unsurprisingly, I would say.

(Which raises the question: why the demonym "Bremagni" and not "Bremon" on analogy with "Bretagne" and "Breton" in the real world? Admittedly, Bremagni rolls better off the tongue.)

Yes, these are the flights of fancy that I spent part of my free time engaged in. But I feel as though there are kindred spirits here!

[Evie]

The Codex is iffy about Andelon being part of the Forcinn States. For the most part it treats it as being separate, though it acknowledges in at least one entry that some people consider Andelon as being part of the Forcinn. If it is, I think it might differ from the other Forcinn States in not being under the Hort of Orsal's suzerainty.

In my story-in-progress, I have Spanish and Arabic as being spoken the languages in Andalon, since I am (extremely loosely) basing it on Andalusia, and I have French spoken in Fianna. (Since my story is set in 1464, I also have Fianna and Fallon more or less united into one kingdom now since the marriage of a Fallonese heiress to the Fiannan heir a few generations back.) I used to think of Fianna as being more Italianate, but that was before I went through their list of rulers in the Codex and saw that they have more French sounding names, so I think your guess of Provence is likely more accurate. It could simply be that the names in the regnal lists are in French rather than Occitan because our writers of the Codex didn't happen to be as familiar with Occitan.

[Frère de Saint-Gabriel]

Evie, you noted that you're writing a Deryni story set in 1464. I'm curious re: the level of technology, culture, etc. Will that level in your story be roughly that of mid-15th century real world Europe, or will it be later than that (15th or even early 16th century real world)?

I can now recall neither when nor where I read it, nor who wrote it, but I recall reading speculation that regarding Anno Domini, the technology of KK's world of Camber and Kelson was a century or perhaps two ahead of our world. That is, the technology (in cathedral construction, for example) of the early 12th century in the Eleven Kingdoms was more like that of the early 13th century (or later) in the real world.

Wondering about this some time ago, I consulted the regnal list of the Kaisares-Autokratores in Byzantyun, wondering whether when that empire had embraced Christianity might give some hint. The Codex (nor, I think KK) never says when that occurred. The Codex entry notes that Gwynedd, Bremagne, and Fallon were all evangelized by missionaries from Rûm—hence the use of Latin in the "Western" Church in the Eleven Kingdoms and surrounding lands—but no date is given. In any event, that wouldn't be dispositive, because in our world Christian missionaries had reached the limits of the Roman Empire and beyond by the end of the second century, and the empire wouldn't legalize Christianity for another two hundred years, and it wouldn't become the "state religion" for another seventy years after that.

The regnal list of emperors of Byzantyun includes no Constantine the Great nor any clearly analogous figure, but the name of an early third century kaisar suggests that he may have been the first Christian emperor: Ióannes I (r. 218-223). The names of all of the preceding kaisares are found in pre-Christian Latin and Greek (the Latin names are obviously Grecianized in the list), but Ióannes is a Greek name derived from Hebrew, Yohannan (John).

Was Ióannes I the first Christian kaisar and autokrator of Byzantyun? If so, that means that in KK's world, the Christianization of empire (more specifically, imperial government) began at least a century earlier than in our own world. That might have sped up the further development of technology.

I'm not taking a position one way or the other regarding the technological level of KK's medieval period—just interested in what you're doing with it.

[Evie]

Right now, since I still want to preserve a mostly late medieval feel to the world (mainly because I don't feel comfortable venturing past the equivalent of Elizabethan tech or culture since I'm much less knowledgeable about any of the periods beyond that and want to spend more time writing than researching more than I'm already needing to do), it is mostly consistent with our world's 15th Century, but with some wiggle room just as KK has in her canonical Eleven Kingdoms. I have handgonnes in a scene, but don't want to venture any further than that into the gunpowder age, for example, because then I'd have to take into account heavy cannons and adding heavier fortifications, and that moves further from the aesthetic that I am more familiar with and love. So I'm writing in a time that is verging on discovering all that, for better or for worse, and that has just recently begun to use the printing press, but that hasn't fully caught on everywhere yet. A world that has a slightly more Renaissance feel than Kelson's world, but without becoming too unfamiliar, and where maybe innovation in tech advancement has slowed down just a tad because with the rise of Deryni scholae and greater acceptance of and coexistence with Deryni, innovation in magical applications might have become more of a thing instead.

BUT it's not even fully consistent with a late medieval aesthetic, since I've also thrown in Vikings (Eistenmarckers), so there's that.... 

[DoctorM]

Yes-- this is how I've been seeing R'Kassi and some of the eastern Forcinn in my fanfic pieces: a liminal zone between Christendom and whatever variant of Islam the novels present, with some religious and linguistic syncretism.