So I accidentally elected Jacqueline Carey president for 2012.

[snarp]

I was just re-reading Kushiel's Dart, and it was really good, and it just kind of happened. I really apologize to anyone who was looking forward to campaign season. I hope her platform's not all weird or anything.

I don't know why it took like five years for this to occur to me, but: the Kushiel series, which is largely set in France-equivalent country Terre d'Ange, has no Germany-equivalent country. Now that I have noticed it, I am weirded out.

I mean, England and Scotland are also missing, and it's impossible to imagine French history without them, either, but Germany's non-existence seems even stranger to me. Probably this is because my grim hobby of Medieval Anti-Semitism Studies tends to land me in France and Germany more than in other places. I'm accustomed to being able to assume that if there's a France doing something insane on the left, there's got to be a Germany trying to one-up it on the right. It feels unbalanced that this competition is not taking place.

Comments

[manifesta]

I really apologize to anyone who was looking forward to campaign season. I hope her platform's not all weird or anything.

AHAHAHA I just... I just don't even have the words.

I assume, then, that prostitution will soon be legalized and we'll all be screwing in dark corners and drinking joie in the streets?

[snarp]

Absolutely. Also, Santa Olivia suggests the possibility of some boxing- and mutant superheroine-related reforms.

[manifesta]

I still can't see any downsides.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I, for one, welcome our new horny semi-angelic overlords.

[nicki]

There are germanic tribes, though, they just aren't very unified which sort of makes sense if you eliminate Charlemagne and so no "Roman" emperors after the Roman empire fell, and so no Holy Roman Empire. You know, ish.

[snarp]

In terms of geographic location/ethnicity, there are some equivalent dudes, yeah, but it is the cultural identity thing which is bugging me. I don't want to call the dudes yelling about Odin "German" because that is just not an identity that existed back when dudes were yelling about Odin. Terre d'Ange, Aragon, and Caerdicca Unitas are pretty recognizably late-medieval France, Spain, and Italy, and the dudes yelling about Odin do not play the role there that Germany would.

It's like if you had Saiyuki, but instead of Saiyuki-Goku there was Dragon Ball Z-Goku.

(I am posting this comment in response to a couple of different people because I am a lazy person.)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

It's like if you had Saiyuki, but instead of Saiyuki-Goku there was Dragon Ball Z-Goku.

I hope you realize that with this sentence, you have just called into existence any number of awesomely horrible crossover fanfic and/or doujinshi, on the odd chance that they didn't already exist, of course.

[holyschist]

By my vague memories, the Germanic stand-ins weren't the only one at a further-back point in society/technology than Terre d'Ange. I'd even go so far as to say Terre d'Ange was the only Renaissance country, but I could be misremembering.

[royalarchivist]

"I really apologize to anyone who was looking forward to campaign season."

Yay! Thank you so much for sparing us from that!! ^_^

[starlady]

Well, England and Scotland are sort of missing--Ysandre's husband's country is pre-Norman England, essentially, and his cousins are the unconquered Irish.

So, yeah, some countries get to have their normal histories, and others (hello, Crete! Egypt! What's up!) have been seriously monkeyed with. It's interesting.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

It's not the Skaldi (who never got Romanized)?

[snarp]

In terms of geographic location/ethnicity, yeah, but it is the cultural identity thing which is bugging me. I don't want to call the dudes yelling about Odin "German" because that is just not an identity that existed back when dudes were yelling about Odin. Terre d'Ange, Aragon, and Caerdicca Unitas are pretty recognizably late-medieval France, Spain, and Italy, and the dudes yelling about Odin do not play the role there that Germany would.

It's like if you had Saiyuki, but instead of Saiyuki-Goku there was Dragon Ball Z-Goku.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, but same goes for England/Alba and Ireland/Eire. It's pretty clear that in Phèdre's world the Tiberians got sent home a lot earlier than the Romans did in ours, and so their barbarians are a lot closer to the gate. No Hanseatic Guild that I've run into!

[snarp]

This is true about England/Ireland. What's going on in my head here is, I think, that my knowledge of the late medieval era is very Jew-focused? So I have this cast of characters for the Western Europe of the era in my head, and Germany (I'm going to keep calling it Germany even though it's not technically accurate), France, Spain, and Italy have specific personalities in my mind, but England/Ireland are kind of in the background, because they didn't have enough Jews in them to get much character development.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

yeah I thought they were the Skaldi (Germandinavia?)

[(Anonymous)]

I think the single biggest difference is the presence of the Master of the Straits. The Master's presence ensures the absence of the Tiberian (Roman) conquest, and the absence of the later Angle/Saxon/Jute/Viking incursions. Thus, the Maghuinn Dhonn (Picts) are eventually supplanted by the Cymric peoples, who are never pushed into Cornwall and Wales but remain the dominant culture in Britain. The notable exception is Dalriada, which is what would become Scotland but without the Norman/Viking elements.

With a strong Terre d'Ange, and the absence of Britain as an alternative, the Germanic tribes we see as Skaldia seem to have largely warred amongst themselves, rather than having found a prior Waldemar Selig to unite them. Unlike France and Britain, Germany became a nation-state comparatively late in European history. There were German countries--Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, etc--but Germany as we know it today really didn't exist until the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. So the absence of a unified Skaldia, as opposed to a conglomeration of Skaldian tribes and principalities, didn't seem incongruous to me at all.

Re: England/ Scotland

[(Anonymous)]

Alba is supposed to be England and that area, was my opinion. Drustan as Cruarch of Alba... And the Dalriada (Grainne, Eamonn and Eamonn, Grainne's son) were from Ireland (Eire) so you have the West of your concerns covered.

The Skaldi themselves identify as a whole but with many tribes in it. So Skaldia, again in my opinion represent the German portion that you are missing.

In Naamah's Kiss, Pre-Russia is represented via Vralia (USSR version, since there are not many 'countries' listed in the map).

Those are my interpretations of the maps and her writing.

Oh, well...

[(Anonymous)]

I'm German myself and feel fine with Ms Careys world. :-)
There never was much of a cultural identity in the German-speaking part of Europe most of the times - and when they tried to force one, it went more than wrong, didn't it?

[hollyxu.livejournal.com]

I thought the England-analogue was Alba? Though you're totally right about the lack of Germany. The closest would be the Skaldi, and they're more Scandinavian Viking types.

Then again, my European history is fairly shaky.