The kingdom that the player characters in the Order of the Raven trilogy hail from (or at least, currently reside in, and consider their home).
The demonym for the people of Asvidere is “Videran”.
Asvidere is a monarchy, ruled by a hereditary king. There is also a Council of Nobles.
Locations
- Mordentshire Town (and surrounding county) in the northern part of Asvidere.
- St. Annesburg The capital city of Asvidere.
Geopolitics
- Celdic Empire Remnant of a mighty empire, now of little consequence.
- Rem Kingdom that shares a border with Asvidere.
History
Asvidere was founded three centuries ago, when Marshal Tozin, along with his army, deserted from the Celdic Empire and went north to conquer the Videran lands. Having done so, Tozin crowned himself Johann I of the unified Kingdom of Asvidere. (The dynasty that Tozin founded has ruled Asvidere since, in an unbroken line of succession.)
Language
The language known as Common in Asvidere today is an amalgam of two tongues: High Videran and Celdic. The former is a descendant of Old Videran (a now-dead language which has not been spoken in Asvidere for centuries, but which may still be found in very old scholarly works), and is still the dominant language of some of the more remote, and less wealthy, provinces of Asvidere.1 Celdic is, of course, the language of the Celdic Empire; in the early years of Asvidere’s history, it was the language of the aristocracy, of the royal court (since the king, and many of his ministers, advisors, and other courtiers were Celdic). The “Videran dialect” of Celdic (which slowly gained an admixture of High Videran, as the conquerors mixed with the natives) eventually developed into Common as it is today.
Government
Asvidere is a strong monarchy, with power heavily concentrated in the person of the king. There is no land-owning aristocracy (the nobles were stripped of their lands after the conquest, though most received hereditary land exploitation rights and other privileges in return), and the Council of Nobles serves at the king’s pleasure. Provincial governors and county magistrates are appointed by the king, and the crown dispenses incorporation licenses for trading companies. The Ministry for the Defense of the Crown keeps a tight lid on political scheming by (potential or actual) rivals. In short, the society of Asvidere is hierarchical and stable; for three hundred years there has not been a revolt, succession crisis, or any other upset.2
1 High Videran is now considered to be a peasant’s language; speaking it is a sign of low breeding and low education. ⇑
2 Part of the reason, according to many historians, for this perhaps surprising stability is a pair of critical “technologies of monarchy” brought to Asvidere by the Celdic conquerors.
The first is the tradition of heir selection. In Asvidere, as in the Empire, the heir to the throne may be any child of the reigning monarch who was born in the royal chambers (in the palace in St. Annesburg or Celdanna respectively)—but in place of a rigid line of succession, the heir is chosen from among the eligible royal offspring (either by the king or queen, or—in the event of the former’s premature death—by a strictly defined series of officials, starting with the Royal Chamberlain). There is no gender preference, and a son may inherit the throne as easily as a daughter.
The second—a technology in a more literal sense—is alchemical fertility treatment (and, more generally, a highly developed body of medical knowledge). This ensures that the reigning monarch is never left without an heir—a circumstance which has led to instability and chaos in many other nations. In Asvidere, meanwhile, there are always heirs to choose from; the country’s kings and queens have, historically, had large families.
Finally, it has been pointed out by some historians that the intermixing of Celdic and Videran blood surely helped the royal line avoid the unfortunate consequences of inbreeding, which began to plague Celdanna in the Empire’s later days. Whether this problem has once again reared its ugly head in Asvidere (where no heir to the throne has married any but a noble in at least a century) is a matter for some debate. ⇑