Miscellany

Ready to Rumble with the Tectonic Tumble

I completed the code that was splitting the world into tectonic plates, and I've started work on the tectonic-based elevation generation.  Alas, while I had a good concept, I found a minor problem with my initial approach - it only impacted the cells directly adjacent to the plate boundaries.  This isn't what we want - major collisions of plates generate widespread uplift.  Uplift limited to the two pixels on either side of the boundary isn't cutting it.  The world map does at least show all the plates in pretty colors (blues for ocean, browns/reds/tans/greens for land).

The blue plate special

So I thought to myself, why not check out what was done by Andy Gainey on his Experilous planet generator.  And after all of a minute I found the code I was looking for, and remembered his code is a vector-based 3D approach implemented in JavaScript, while mine is a raster-based 2D approach implemented in C#.  The concepts still apply, but I need to compile much more data before I can use anything resembling that approach.  I need to know which cells are the borders of each plate, and for every other cell (pixel) I need to know which border cell is it closest too.  Then I can use the Gainey's technique, or mine with a few modifications, to make mountains and rifts.  So that's where the plate tectonics work stands right now.

Reading

I am currently working my way through As Told at The Explorers Club: More Than Fifty Gripping Tales Of Adventure, edited by George Plimpton.  While I'd hesitate to agree that every tales is truly gripping, they've all been interesting so far, and several really have been gripping.  I'll have a more in depth review when I finish.  I really need to remember to renew the book through the library's website.

That's the book that sits in the car, for lunch time or when otherwise out and in need of reading.  On my Nook I've been reading a classic adventure tale, Talbot Mundy's King of the Khyber Rifles, which I obtained from Project Gutenberg.  That book has been gripping.

Ruritania

My planning and outlining for the Ruritania story continues, and a couple stumbling blocks cleared up yesterday, thanks in part to a blog post by Sarah Hoyt at her blog, According To Hoyt.  There are some social factors I'd forgotten (only tangentially related to what was discussed in that blog post) that post brought to mind, whose resolution cleared up a number of stumbling blocks in the plot outline.  Hopefully that means I'll find time to make some rapid progress on that front.

Why does Ruritania exist?

In the strictest sense, the realm of reality, of course Ruritania does not exist.  It is fictional country invented by Anthony Hope, which he wrote of in a three novel series, the most renowned of which was "The Prisoner of Zenda".  But for the sake of argument, assume that it really did exist in Central or Eastern Europe.  Assume further that the other microstates mentioned in Hope's "The Heart of Princess Osra", such as the Grand Duchy of Mittenheim and the Kingdom of Glottenberg, are also real.  How do they exist?

"The Heart of Princess Osra" is definitively set around 1734, per the first sentence of chapter two.  The other two novels, "Prisoner of Zenda" and "Rupert of Hentzau", could be set anytime from about the time Zenda was (1894) to a decade or two earlier.  In 1734, it would perhaps be plausible for all three microstates to exist.  Italy and Germany were both collections of states at the time, and the Holy Roman Empire was still a going concern comprising portions of both, as well as what would later become the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  So two extra kingdoms and an extra grand duchy in 1734 fit easily into the realm of possibility, geographically.

Over the next century and half, however, most of those smaller states disappeared as sovereign entities, subsumed by  larger nations.  The unified Kindom of Italy and the German Empire replaced, respectively, the previous collections of small Italian and German states, in 1861 and 1871.  As my previous Ruritania post mentioned, the location of Ruritania lies within a day's train ride of Dresden; Wikipedia suggests between Saxony and Bohemia.  I suggested an area just slightly further east, in a small part of southern Silesia (now part of Poland) and small parts of what is now the Czech Republic (once the Duchy, later the Kingdom, of Bohemia).

Ruritania circa 1648, from a public domain map

Control of Silesia was contested, by arms, lawyers, and diplomats, for several hundred years.  Initially it was part of Poland as the Duchy of Sileia, and disintegrated into the Duchies of Silesia, which via various inheritance and treaty agreements ended up under the control of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Bohemia in turn fell under control of the Habsburg crown.  In the middle of the eighteenth century most of Silesia was acquired by Prussia in a series of wars against Habsburg-ruled Austria.  The Sudetes mountains largely formed the border between Silesia and Bohemia, though it moved at at times - sometimes by war, sometimes not.

A bit of change to the fabric of history could alter these facts a little, but Ruritania is more-or-less set in the real world, so the fabric shouldn't be disturbed more than necessary.  How do we get Ruritania in Silesia?  Intermarriage between the House of Elphberg, the Ruritanian dynasty, and the Piast dynasty, founders of the Duchy of Silesia and subsequent rulers of the various Duchies of Silesia, can help with the land coming under Elphberg control.  Perhaps the Battle of Legnica, which took place against the Mongols in Silesia in 1241, played a part - battles are nice at messing with normal plans for inheritance and succession.  So maybe an Elphberg succeeds to rule one of the duchies, or part thereof.  That's the land portion dealt with.

But how can Ruritania become an independent kingdom no later than 1734?  That'll require something after Ruritania exists, but well before 1734, that either prompts the Holy Roman Emperor to raise Ruritania to the status of kingdom, or allows the Elphberg dynasty of Ruritania to assert there status as a kingdom and make it stick - probably by force of arms.  The latter seems more improbable than the former.  So likely the Elphbergs and/or Ruritania did something that the Holy Roman Emperor heartily approved of.  Maybe something during the Thirty Years War, or help to Austria in repelling an Ottoman onslaught, or something else in support of Austria or Bohemia in some conflict against Poland or a German state. Or something.

Ruritania also to survive quite a few years as a territory encapsulated inside the Habsburg lands.  Then it has to withstand the Silesian Wars between Prussian and Austrian, without being conquered by either.  Then in the nineteenth century it has to survive Prussian-led attempts at consolidation of northern German states into the German Empire.  On that last point, a few points may help Ruritania.  It is a largely-Catholic state, and it appears to have a Slavic population, based upon some of the names.  Certain Prussian elements preferred to avoid adding more non-Protestants and non-Germans to their empire.  It is also a smaller state, approximately twice the area of Luxembourg, and hence not a major threat.  Does it suffer unwarranted German occupation during the Great War?

More thought is required, but at least I've now done enough reading and thinking to know more.  I know the questions and the framework in which they'll need to be answered.  Answering them will help fill in the backstory for story I plan to tell.

Where is Ruritania?

“Where is Ruritania?”

That’s the question that popped into my mind shortly after I decided to write a story set there. If you’re not familiar with Ruritania, don’t be too hard on yourself, because it is entirely fictional. English author Anthony Hope created the country of Ruritania in a trilogy of novels. The most well-known of the three books, the 1894 adventure novel The Prisoner of Zenda, has been the subject of many adaptations of the novel for stage and screen, and numerous works have paid homage to it.

So why do I care where Ruritania is? Because I decided to write a story set there. I blame Sarah Hoyt. The comments following her August 6,2016 post brought up, among other things, Ruritania romances, giant anime-style mecha, and the lack of enough works featuring Communists vomiting blood in the gutters. Somehow that all came together in my head, and now I’m (intermittently) working on The Warlord of Zenda.

In case you’re wondering what a “Ruritanian romance” is, Wikipedia says that works in the genre are “set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe” and “are typically swashbuckling adventure novels, tales of high romance and intrigue, centered on the ruling classes, almost always aristocracy and royalty." The name of the genre was taken from that of Hope’s fictional country, Ruritania.

But a question came to mind as I started work: “Where is Ruritania?” At first glance, it doesn’t seem of great importance, and it wasn’t in most traditional Ruritanian romances. But given the time period the novel is set in (aftermath of the Great War), and that it may touch some way upon grand politics, I thought it important to figure out a plausible location. Hope left a few clues that help point the way to plausible locations.

In chapter two of the The Prisoner of Zenda, Rudolf Rassendyll, travels from England to Ruritania by way of Paris and Dresden. This pretty much requires that Ruritania be in central or eastern Europe, as if it were in western Europe or along the Mediterranean travel from Paris by way of Dresden would be utterly nonsensical. Rudolf spends the night in Dresden before catching a train to Ruritania sometime the next day. It reaches Zenda, “a small town fifty miles short of the capital, and ten from the frontier” that evening. Those could be air line (straight) distances or along the railroad route; I have chosen to assume the latter. We have no evidence as to when the train left Dresden, its speed, or how many stops it makes. If it is a slow train, somewhere in Silesia, Bohemia, or Moravia would be a good fit.

Another fact also clearly emerges from the quote above. Ruritania may be small, but it isn’t tiny. It has to be larger than European microstates of Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein, and Andorra. How do we know? Because of the sixty miles (by whatever measure) from the frontier to the capital at Strelsau. So it has to be a bit larger, perhaps on the order of Luxembourg or Montenegro.

The borders of countries are often based upon defensible borders and recognizable terrain features, such as mountains and rivers. For smaller states, that has often meant the states consists of a valley or series of valleys. Several still-existing examples of this include Andorra, Switzerland, Bhutan, Nepal, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. So I considered that as I went searching.

After about an hour of looking at Google Earth and measuring, I came to the conclusion that part of lower Silesia in the Sudetes Mountains would make a good fit. An approximate rectangle twenty miles wide and sixty-five miles long, encompassing the Polish counties of Kamienna Góra, Walbrzych, and Klodzko, plus tiny bits of the Czech Republic. The upper Klodzko valley and those of several of the Nysa Klodzko’s tributaries are included. Most of the borders for Ruritania follow existing international borders along the ridge lines of mountain ranges in the Sudetes Mountains, or county borders within Poland.

Zenda fits nicely at the location of Witków, about ten rail miles inside the border. Fifty miles further along the rail lines sits Bystrzyca Klodzka, where I’ve placed Strelsau. Strelsau is described as being the great city of Ruritania, so it will have to be larger and grander than the town of Bystrzyca Klodzka.

The real city of Walbrzych will have to be downsized or a be new center of industrialization since the time of the Hope novels. Perhaps Ruritania’s nascent industrialization has helped give rise to the Communist insurgents who threaten?

About the only question left in my mind with regards to the location is how the House of Elphberg avoided having Ruritania gobbled up by one of the larger imperial states nearby, prior to the time of The Prisoner of Zenda. Perhaps I should go read that first novel in the trilogy?

And there we have it.