Queen(s) of Esrolia before Bruvala?

[jeffjerwin]

I take it that the name of the predecessor of Bruvala, who reigned till 1461, is not named anywhere? (or any other queens from the first half of the 15th century)?

Just wondering: my campaign is in 1450 and will probably swing by Nochet.

[metcalph]

I don't think there are any.  Bruvala's predecessors were merely Queens of Nochet.  How Bruvala transformed her position into a title for the whole country is unknown but probably required the consent of the Grandmothers Council and the backing of Belintar.

That said, there may have been Queens of the whole country before Belintar's time but that the title fell into disuse.

[jeffjerwin]

So some anonymous 'Queen' of one of the old houses rules Nochet alone, probably not Norinel.

Maybe Bruvala's triumph is somehow connected to the connecting of the Lyksos to the Creekstream and there consequent 'acceptance' of Nochet as the seat of the grandmothers mentioned in the Esrolia book.

This is the period when Nochet's population begins to increase precipitously (in c.1200 it had 20,000 people, and by c.1600 it had 100,000). I can see it also swelling because of the Tarshite Civil War, the troubles in Hendrikiland and Quiviniland, and the Grazer civil war.

Rhigos, ruled by the Delainaeo, is its main rival, and it is the submission of that city that probably allowed Bruvala to claim the moribund title of High Queen - maybe seizing power even from Belintar's official Governor?

Edited November 15, 2018 by jeffjerwin

[jeffjerwin]

BTW, after we discussed the Sar- phoneme in Sartar and his parent Ernalsar's name, I kept my eyes open for further repetitions. There are the Sarings in the HotHP, who kept the roads and markets, but were associated with Sorcery and Arkat and were wiped out in a war by the Hendriki king in the 400s; there the name seems to contain the same phoneme as in Issaries. There is also the Esrolian Sarl, a name for Orlanth as the good lover (Tol). I think the meaning might be 'going, wandering, path-taking' (the best kind of Esrolian lover doesn't hang around too long, but keeps coming back when he's wanted). So Ernalsar could be Ernalda+Sarl or 'wandering Ernal[da]' - the gender of the parent is still opaque.

[Sir_Godspeed]

I'd be careful to compare Saring and Issaries. The "i" in the former is most likely not a part of the sar(i) element, but of the -ing element, as with Old Norse from which it is borrowed. As with Hendrik - Hendriking, Alakor - Alakoring, Arkat - Arkating, and so forth.

Edited November 15, 2018 by Sir_Godspeed

[jeffjerwin]

4 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I'd be careful to compare Saring and Issaries. The "i" in the former is most likely not a part of the sar(i) element, but of the -ing element, as with Old Norse from which it is borrowed. As with Hendrik - Hendriking, Alakor - Alakoring, Arkat - Arkating, and so forth.

? Sar- is the word in Sar-ing, whereas SARL is the word in Esrolia, that is, Sar-el, a diminutive of Sar. Compare Norina and Norinel.

Or do you mean Is-sar-ies?

Edited November 15, 2018 by jeffjerwin

[Sir_Godspeed]

Sorry, I thought that since you were deliberately comparing Sari-ng and Is-Sari-es that you intended to incorporate the i in both, which now that I look again, you evidently did not, as the i's were not italicized. My bad.

I still don't know however, why you say that the Sar- element in Saring and Issaries are the same, but then don't include all the other Sar-names we have? (If my impression of your use of the word "there" is correct)

[jeffjerwin]

25 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Sorry, I thought that since you were deliberately comparing Sari-ng and Is-Sari-es that you intended to incorporate the i in both, which now that I look again, you evidently did not, as the i's were not italicized. My bad.

I still don't know however, why you say that the Sar- element in Saring and Issaries are the same, but then don't include all the other Sar-names we have? (If my impression of your use of the word "there" is correct)

Well, let's see; I'll focus on it as a starting element for now. In HotHP, we have Sartar, and all his descendants. Let's set them aside: the name element is going to mean the same thing for each.

There's the ancient royal name Sarlanth, where we have Sar+l/anth. Associated with Sarl, most likely.

These are the only Sar[l]- names in the Heortling Mythology book as well.

Interestingly, in Fonrit, the city of Sarro worships Orlanth as their main deity.

Since Is-sar-ies and Orlanth share the Movement Rune, it makes sense for Sar-el, Sarro to signify movement, a shared quality, and one which is closer to the Esrolian 'Orlanth the Lover' than his Air/Storm affinities.

Sar(l)+ 'moving beloved' + tar (high, rising, cognate to Dar, chief) = the king of rushing/movement, a likely 'lesser' name for Orlanth...?

 

 

[jeffjerwin]

I'm thinking the queens of Nochet (the city only) would be 'river queens' from the Evaeo and Oraneo, who had claim to the lands close to the embarkment on the Lyksos, and thus would have profited the most from the trade from the Creek-stream. They would be rich enough to bribe their way into the queenship for a few generations.

[Sir_Godspeed]

2 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

Well, let's see; I'll focus on it as a starting element for now. In HotHP, we have Sartar, and all his descendants. Let's set them aside: the name element is going to mean the same thing for each.

There's the ancient royal name Sarlanth, where we have Sar+l/anth. Associated with Sarl, most likely.

These are the only Sar[l]- names in the Heortling Mythology book as well.

Interestingly, in Fonrit, the city of Sarro worships Orlanth as their main deity.

Since Is-sar-ies and Orlanth share the Movement Rune, it makes sense for Sar-el, Sarro to signify movement, a shared quality, and one which is closer to the Esrolian 'Orlanth the Lover' than his Air/Storm affinities.

Sar(l)+ 'moving beloved' + tar (high, rising, cognate to Dar, chief) = the king of rushing/movement, a likely 'lesser' name for Orlanth...?

 

 

This sounds plausible and reasonable. "Movement" might also be translated as related concepts, such as activity, change, etc. I suspect that veterans of Glorantha might have fairly definite understanding of specific runes, but from an outside perspective I don't personally see a problem with the "movement" name element also denoting something like "vitality, virility, energy," etc. (even if those concepts are denoted by different runes, at least in a modern post-God Learner era), depending on how ancient Theyalan-speakers viewed the interrelatedness of those concepts. My own RW name can for example be translated as both "full of life" and "sole inheritor" depending on which root one assumes it is derived from, and you have some bizarre cases in the RW, for example where "sinister" can mean both "left" and "evil", so you know... language is weird like that.

Additionally, we don't know if these names were compound names that were compounded at a time when both were dynamic, ie. it might be that Sarl and Barn are much older names, and that "tar" was added to them much later as suffixes after the initial name had ceased to be thought of as a common word. It's not a great example, but Caesar started off as a nickname for someone with a scruffy beard, then became a family name, and later became in imperial title, and by that point few people could probably tell its original meaning. Poseidon initially meant Earthshaker, but was later transplanted to be a sea deity. Mars' etymology has a similar trajectory of transplanting from one context to another (shepherding to warfare in this case), by which point the original word-meanings were obscure and archaic. There was a linguistic revitalization movement in Scandinavia in the 1870s-1900s that produced a lot of new names from old names whose meanings were sometimes obscure, for example, by simply putting traditional suffixes on to already existing names, like "Oddvar" (a combination of "Odd" ("pointy end", a man's name) and "-var" (a phoneme whose meaning would not be readily understandable by modern speakers of any Scandinavian language, although originally meaning "warrior").

We might also have a case where people make compound names not necessarily because they have a deep meaning, but because they're selecting two positive traits they want to bestow upon a child, or combine two ancestors' names in one descendant, or just like them aesthetically - this is how you get a lot of the Old Norse names, for example. "Thorgeir" (Thor-Spear) isn't really a reference to some myth or entity, it's a combination of two positive attributes that are largely unrelated. Sartar might therefore not be "the rushing chief", but might just be "someone who is both energetic and elevated, and may those qualities bless them in life".

I realize that much of what i'm doing here is mostly foggying up an attempt to dig into and find some sense in an area that doesn't have an answer, and I hope it's not taken as pointless contrarianism or needless overcomplication, I guess I just enjoy tossing out ideas and see where it might lead us.

 

Edited November 15, 2018 by Sir_Godspeed

[Sir_Godspeed]

1 hour ago, jeffjerwin said:

I'm thinking the queens of Nochet (the city only) would be 'river queens' from the Evaeo and Oraneo, who had claim to the lands close to the embarkment on the Lyksos, and thus would have profited the most from the trade from the Creek-stream. They would be rich enough to bribe their way into the queenship for a few generations.

I'm not entirely sure about how the Esrolian politics works, but if they were sufficiently rich, they might've been able to bestow neighboring rulers with enough gifts for it to be natural (or desireable) for the others to recognize them as suzerains, Pacific Big Man-style. Not so much a bribe as a legitimate (and quite possibly widely popular) use of wealth.

I assume that if this is true, then at some point the gift-tribute-relations were marginalized and gradually or possibly dramatically replaced by a more institutionalized form of paramount rulership.

[jeffjerwin]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I'm not entirely sure about how the Esrolian politics works, but if they were sufficiently rich, they might've been able to bestow neighboring rulers with enough gifts for it to be natural (or desireable) for the others to recognize them as suzerains, Pacific Big Man-style. Not so much a bribe as a legitimate (and quite possibly widely popular) use of wealth.

I assume that if this is true, then at some point the gift-tribute-relations were marginalized and gradually or possibly dramatically replaced by a more institutionalized form of paramount rulership.

Yes, by Bruvala.

[jeffjerwin]

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I realize that much of what i'm doing here is mostly foggying up an attempt to dig into and find some sense in an area that doesn't have an answer, and I hope it's not taken as pointless contrarianism or needless overcomplication, I guess I just enjoy tossing out ideas and see where it might lead us.

 

Yes, me too.

"Energetic" is certainly an excellent quality for a lover from the perspective of Esrolians.

[jajagappa]

 

On ‎11‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 10:32 PM, jeffjerwin said:

I take it that the name of the predecessor of Bruvala, who reigned till 1461, is not named anywhere? (or any other queens from the first half of the 15th century)?

Yes, I have that too, just not yet published anywhere.  Here is my list of the pre-Bruvala Queens.  Note that all of them pale beside Great Queen Bruvala.

1.       Desalaina (ruled 1298 to 1313). House Norinel. Paid the Shadow Tribute with diminishing returns. Retired to become a Reverend Grandmother.

2.       Desarlanda (ruled 1313 to 1330). House Norinel. Niece of Desalaina. Last queen to pay the Shadow Tribute, but received nothing. She befriended the Stranger and betrayed the Only Old One. She retired to become Reverend Grandmother, and died in 1353. 

3.       Desaranis (ruled 1330 to 1353). House Norinel. Daughter of Desarlanda. She gave her magic to the Tournament of the Master of Luck and Death, and recognized Belintar's divine soul in Sethtalar, the winner of the tournament. She welcomed the ducks to the city, built the new temple to Lyksos, and directed the raising of Belintar's Wall. Upon her mother's death, she retired to become Reverend Grandmother until she died in 1373.

4.       Desorana (ruled 1353 to 1368). House Norinel. She forced the Antones Estate out of Nochet and reduced it to its original size, but in doing so, she made enemies of the dead.  Murdered.

5.       Evalta (ruled 1368 to 1370). House Evaeo. Evalta came to terms with the dead by opening the Gates of Life and Death and instituting the Second Feast. Killed in a magical ritual.

6.       Sarzengala (ruled 1370  to 1395). House Delaeo. Retired to become a Reverend Grandmother. Died in 1415.

7.       Desarzen (ruled 1395 to 1397). House Delaeo. Murdered. 

8.       Amantore (ruled 1397 to 1416). House Delainaeo. Period of Rhigos domination. Took power in a coup backed by Rhigos when the storms of Brolarant swept down from Orlanth's Hill and flooded the land to the foot of the Sacred City.  With the aid of Belintar she raised the Storm Wall once more and again forced Orlanth from Nochet. She fashioned the Market of the Jewels and made a home for the Trader Princes in the city. Retired to become a Reverend Grandmother. Exiled in 1430, died in 1436.

9.       Amanorina (ruled 1416 to 1430). House Delainaeo. Period of Rhigos Domination. With the aid of the merfolk and the ducks, Amanorina removed the hidden pilings of the Long Piers and, with those stones, fashioned the great steps of the Embankment. Murdered.

10.   Uraldartha (ruled 1430 to 1445). House Oranaeo. She warred against the Volsaxi King Darvanrolar.  She guided the shaping of the Heortland peace and secured her daughter Urvaresrol as Governor of Heortland. Uraldartha retired to become Reverend Grandmother. Died in 1451.

11.   Urorana (ruled 1445-1459).  House Oranaeo.  At first, Urorana is guided well by her Reverend Grandmother.  But the seeds of jealousy grew in Urorana against her own sister Urvaresrol, particularly after the latter defeated Darvanrolar of the Volsaxi, seduced his son Volvanrolar, and had a healthy offspring.  After Uraldartha died in 1451, Urorana schemed to have Urvaresrol driven out of Heortland and succeeded in 1453.  The conflict between Urorana and Urvaresrol increased with rioting between districts of Nochet.  Urvaresrol was killed in 1458, and it seemed that the conflict was at an end.  But during the great fertility ceremony of the Grace Temple in 1459, as Queen Urorana was to embrace her Chosen, she collapsed and died.

·         The Barren Year (1460).  No Queen emerged in the aftermath of Urorana's death.  The Houses fell into a stalemate and Ernalda's Bounty was withdrawn from the entire city.  No children were born to any woman in the city that year.  It took a great quest by Bruvala of House Norinel to reawaken Ernalda and restore her bounty to the city.  House Oranaeo fell into disgrace and withdrew from active politics.

On ‎11‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 1:12 AM, metcalph said:

Bruvala's predecessors were merely Queens of Nochet.  How Bruvala transformed her position into a title for the whole country is unknown but probably required the consent of the Grandmothers Council and the backing of Belintar.

Yes, I believe that is correct.  And it required great quests on Bruvala's part.  And the result?  Every Queen since Bruvala is descended from her.

[jeffjerwin]

jajagappa, I am in your debt.

[jajagappa]

10 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

jajagappa, I am in your debt.

The 1450's are a rough decade in Nochet as the fabric of order fails, even with the great Enfranchised Houses.  If you think of it as the start of a decade of gang warfare between the leading crime families including intra-family struggle (in House Oranaeo), you'll have the right feel.  

Bruvala Norinel herself is born in 1441.  In 1450 she is a precocious, vibrant, and charismatic girl with a wise and calculating mind, destined to incarnate the Earth Mother.  Perhaps the characters in your campaign will meet her!