Rothenia

A fictional Central European state which first appears in **HOP**. At that point (apparently the year 2005) it was a recent accession state to the EU, ten years after the fall of the Communist regime that had ruled it since 1948, and a long period of Cold War dictatorship under a certain Wittel Horvath, whose 'brutalist' mausoleum we later discover was erected in the industrial city of Zenden. The back history of Rothenia is explored principally in the quasi-historical novels, **GP**, **ISP**, **KM** and **UA**. However

   **CO** and **HOP** provides key links to the Hopeverse. In the course of the story we learn that the protagonist Oskar Prinz is in fact the scion and heir of the Tarlenheim dynasty engaged in a protracted and apparently hopeless struggle to reclaim the family estates. He tells his lover William Vincent over wine in the Strelzen Spa the story of the original Rudolf Rassendyll and the events that transpired in what was then called Ruritania on the death of King Rudolf IV, and how his throne was saved for Rudolf V Elphberg by the English adventurer Rassendyll. In **HOP** these events are set in 1862. In **HOP** just as an Englishman saved the Elphbergs in 1862 at the cost of his love, so Vincent goes on to save the fortunes of the Tarlenheims in 2000, but in doing so loses Oskar.

## Rothenian People and Culture

**HOP** and **CO** sketches out a history of a Rothenia which emerged from a *Kulturkampf* in later 19th century Ruritania.  The Rotheni

   an people (*Roteniskij*) were a Western Slavic offshoot, one of the neighbours of the kingdom of Eastern Francia.  The Slavic ethnic mixture in Ruritania is in fact implied in the Hopeverse in Hope's coining of place names in the kingdom, and Arram takes the idea to its logical conclusion.  The Rothenians were evangelised by St Vitalis, first bishop of Strelsau, and formed a stable duchy in the Starel basin during the course of the ninth century.  It benefitted from an alliance with the Emperor Otto III (980-1002) who first extended recognition to Duke Tassilo of the Rothenians and awarded him the diadem which became in due course the Crown and national symbol which carried his name.  Though unlike Bohemia and Pomerania, Rothenia avoided incorporation in the Western Empire.

From **CO** and **HFR** we learn that the Rothenians - like many European peoples - developed an origin myth.  This focussed on a legendary Slavic chief by the name of Ruric, whose warrior band and people populated the Starel basin in the *Volkwanderung* of the sixth century.  The medieval legend had Ruric as a descendant of wandering Trojan exiles (in much the same was as the Franks, Britons, Goths, and indeed the Romans, explained their origins).  It was from Ruric that the ruling house of Tassilo took the name *Ruritanides* and their family name of *Ruricic*.  The Ruritanid dynasty died out in the fifteenth century, the last ruler, Duchess Osra, marrying a member of the Swabian Elphberg family, who acceded to the throne.  However from **GP** and **ISP** we learn that the Elphberg accession was not uncontested. A junior male line survived as counts of the eastern city of Glottenburg and for decades fought the Rothenian Wars to expel the Elphbergs from the western duchy, which the Elphbergs called Ruritania, as a way of claiming legitimacy for their line. Eventually the Ruricics of Glottenburg settled for setting up an independent duchy, though not giving up their claims. In 1644 during the Thirty Years War, when Swedish armies were laying waste the Empire, Duke Rudolf VI Elphberg made an alliance with the Emperor that he would enter the Emperor's party if he could have him promoted to a king by the pope. The Emperor and Pope agreed, though they would not consent to Rudolf's other condition, the promotion of the Duchy of Glottenburg to a Grand Duchy. This was the product of a treaty between Rudolf and Glottenburg called the Peace of Orbeck, which had tried to settle the succession issue once and for all.

## Rothenia and Ruritania

The Elphbergs who progressively Germanised the ruling class and cities of Rothenia, coined the term Ruritania for their new realm, to distance it from its Slavic past.  It was as Kings of Ruritania that they received their crown from Pope Innocent X in 1644.

In the Hopeverse 'Ruritania' was a manufactured name from the Latin *rus* (gen. *ruris*) meaning 'countryside' and implying an agrarian and backward state.  In *Prisoner of Zenda* we are given the vague information that the kingdom was to be found south of Saxony (the 'Thuringia' of the Arramverse) and that Strelsau the capital was the next stop after Dresden on the line which presumably takes the express to Vienna. The Arramverse Ruritania is placed south of Bohemia (Czech Republic), west of Slovakia, east of Bavaria and north of Austria.

**AA** *After Alex* **AD** *Alike in Dignity* **BR** *Blue Rainbow* **CO** *Count Oskar* **CP** *Chav Prince* **GP** *The Golden Portifor* **GS** *The Green Side* **HaTE** Henry and the Eschaton **HBP** *Henry and the Balance of Probability* **HFR** *Henry in Finkle Road* **HHP** *Henry in High Politics* **HO** *Henry in the Outfield* **HOP** *Heart of Oskar Prinz* **HS** *Hide and Seek (formerly The Chav Prince)* **KM** *King Maxi*m **ISP** *In the Service of Princes* **ME** *Maxim Elphberg* **TF** *The Fall* **TR** *The Regency* **UA** T*he Unnatural Archeologist*