Royal Academy/Library

The Royal Academy Library is located in the Royal Academy and managed by the mednoble librarian Solange. It is said to be the second-most extensive library in the country of Yurgenschmidt.

The main purpose of the Library is to hold books that might prove useful to the students. As a result, the majority of books and documents are directly related to the curriculum of the Royal Academy. However, it also contains information of research of past and current professors and a small assortment of writings for the purpose of entertainment.

The library is supposed to be managed by a staff made up of multiple archnoble scholars, supported by lesser nobles. Though due to the effects of the recent civil war and the following purge, the only person currently employed as a librarian in the Royal Academy is the mednoble Solange.

Right before the civil war, the Royal Academy library was run by three archnobles and two mednobles, though some previous generations had even more librarians.

The archnobles work at the Royal Academy only during the winter season and then move the to royal palace library during the other three seasons. Librarians of the lower ranks stay in the royal academy all year long.

In the past when the library was still fully staffed, the Royal Academy library would be closed soon after the last student left and all librarians, regardless of status would move to work in the royal palace library. Once Solange was left as the only librarian and had to do all the work by herself, she was forced to stay in the Royal Academy all year long in an attempt to get all the work meant for an entire team done on her own. When Rozemyne learned that the archnoble librarians used to go back and forth between the librarians and Solange staying in the Royal Academy the entire year, she apparently misinterpreted this as an issue of status, rather than a necessity due to the lack of staff it really is.

In Rozemyne's third year at the Royal Academy, the Sovereignty appoints the archnoble Hortensia as a librarian. Apparently that decision was at least in part made to see whether Rozemyne would hand over mastership of the royal heirloom magic tools Schwartz and Weiss without issue and thus help allay fears of her and Ferdinand having designs for the throne.

When Rozemyne is informed of the new appointment and asked to visit the library for the turn-over at her earliest convenience, she comes right on the same day and allows Hortensia to register with the shumil without issue, albeit due to there still being far more of Rozemyne's mana in the magic tools than Hortensia's, the latter is only a secondary master for the time being. Rozemyne states that to avoid accidentally supplying the pair with mana out of habit she will reduce visits to the library to a minimum until the switch has happened.

When the professor of a course changes, the successor can decide what to do with the documents their predecessor left in the library, either having them freely available in the library itself or moved to the closed-stack archive. The only exception is if the predecessor has been executed as a criminal, in which case their documents can not be made public.

The Royal Academy library is fitted with a variety of magic tools both to protect its content and help in its purpose.

These tools are built into the structure and substance of the library itself.


 * Humidity Management - A magic tools used to keep the humidity of the library at a certain level, to prevent moisture-related damage to the books and documents.
 * Light Magic Tool - A tool shining down multi-coloured lights shortly before the ringing of the bells to alert students too engrossed in their reading to hear the bells.
 * Ground Cleaning Magic Tool - Tools to keep the floors clean.
 * Sound-dampening Magic Tool - Tools to reduce the noise in the library.

These tools are built directly into certain shelves.


 * Time-Stopping Magic Tool - A tool to prevent old documents from rotting away.
 * Sunlight Protection - A tool to prevent scrolls from being damaged by sunlight.


 * Schwartz and Weiss - Two magically animated dolls fashioned after the appearance of large Shumils, created to work as assistants to the librarians.
 * Grutrissheit Replica - A Magic Tool in the shape of the Grutrissheit held by the statue of Mestionora. It is currently unknown what this magic tool does, but it absorbs large amounts of mana.

Once the library opens with the beginning of the classes, new students are allowed to register at the library. This would grant them permission to enter the library and borrow books. There is a registration fee of one small gold per student. The introduction for new students would proceed according to the duchy's ranking and after that it is freely accessible.

If a student decides to register at the library, they have to get in touch with a librarian. The current librarian Solange prefers to register many students at once, making new students of the same duchy getting an appointment together. The librarian would hand out a wooden board acting as an invitation to register at the library. When arriving at the library, there is an opening in the door meant for the wooden board to be put in. It would inform the librarian of the arrival of unregistered students and open itself.

Behind the first door lies a bright hallway ending in a second door, illuminated by the sun shining through the windows. The librarian would await the students behind the second door. Another door towards the left would lead to the reading room, the heart of the library. The registration would be executed in the librarian's office which is located to the right. The Library is split into two floors.

To make sure that even students deeply absorbed in their reading do not miss the sound of the bells by accident, the library has a magic tool that shines multi-coloured light down on the entire place at the chime of the bells.

According to the estimation of the current librarian Professor Solange, including the ones in storage for preservation, the library currently holds between thirty- and forty-thousand books and documents.

The library employs a number of magic tools, both for protection of the books and documents and for convenience. These include tools to manage humidity, protect from sunlight, and employ lights that are synchronized to the Royal Academy's bells. Currently, only the most vital magic tools are active, since Professor Solange lacks the mana capacity to keep the full complement running all on her own.

The books on the shelves, save for the chained books on the second floor, can all be borrowed and brought from the library to the dormitories for a deposit. It is also possible to request for the librarians to bring materials from storage, but those can not be taken out of the library and can only be read within its halls.

It is relatively common for students that aim for a career at the Royal Academy itself to start out as assistants to professors. Being sent to the library for errands is often one of the first duties fulfilled by such freshly minted assistants.

The first floor is where the main entrance and counter are located. Off to the side are office-facilities for the staff.

Going straight ahead from the entrance leads into the reading room and then the library proper, containing the bookshelves and carrels, providing the students with spots for reading and working on copies.

The first floor holds an estimated twenty-thousand books and documents - ranging from simple wooden boards to bound and leather-covered books - dealing mostly with class subjects, lending themselves as study resources. There is however also a small corner in which story books and bibles are kept. Due to most students and even many professors considering the Royal Academy library as a place only for studying and research, few ever learn of the existence of this corner and show open surprise if they end up finding out by change.

It also contains halls where the librarians can dine together without gender restrictions.

The second floor consists mainly of three-layer bookcases with attached writing desks. While some contain regular books, there are also many that contain barrels filled with scrolls.

There are also bookcases with chained books. Unlike most other shelves, in these the books are put horizontally. The reason is that the metal plates and rivets used to chain the books to the shelves could damage the neighboring books if pulled out carelessly, so they are put on stacks on top of each other, so the readers are forced to carefully lift the desired book off, without a chance to scrape the others. The chains are only long enough to reach to the attached desk. This way of storing, in addition to leather belts around the books, also help to prevent the parchment of their pages from swelling if exposed to moisture.

This floor holds mostly material pertaining to research from past professors. Since many of these materials were written by professors while they were doing the research, few take the time, effort, and tedium of transcribing their findings and binding them into proper books, preferring to instead just write everything down on scrolls. Apart from the bookcases, the second floor also contains the living quarters for the library staff and a large statue of Mestionora, the Goddess of Wisdom.

While the statue itself is made of stone, the book she holds is a magic tool with the appearance of a real, leather-bound book encased in many feystones of a variety of colours.

The living quarters on this floor are exclusively for male librarians.

This floor contains the living quarters for female librarians.

Closed-stack archives are places where the books and documents not currently displayed in the public areas of the library are stored. There are three of these archives, two of them accessible from the library and one in the central building rather than the library itself. Unlike the main library, these archives have restricted access.

The first closed-stack archive is in the central building of the Royal Academy. It contains documents and teaching materials for the archduke candidate course and is also used to store magic tools that are not meant to be seen or used by anyone other than archduke candidates. Since the knowledge taught in the archduke candidate course is highly restricted, regular librarians do not have access to this room, with the main key being in the care of a professor of teaching the course. There is a copy of the key kept inside the library, presumably for emergencies or should the main key be damaged or lost.

This place contains all the material that is so seldom asked for that it has been cleared off the shelves and put into storage. Unlike the other two archives, any guest of the library is able to enter it and able to browse the contents, but only if accompanied by a librarian. The main part of the second archive is accessible to nobles of any rank. In the back of this archive, there is another door that leads down to the underground archive.

The entrance to this archive is on the first floor of the library.

In the back of the second closed-stack archive is a door that any librarian can unlock and that is further protected by a barrier that only allows people of archnoble mana-level and above to pass through, leading to a stair down to a lower level. At the bottom of the level is a sizeable waiting room with tables and chairs, but completely undecorated white walls. Set into the far wall are three metal plates with indentations into which the keys can be set. To open the actual archive it is necessary to put all three keys into the indentations and channel mana into them at the same time. The keys themselves are magic tools and are connected in a way that makes it impossible for a single person to have ownership of more than one key at a time. If a person dyes a second key in their mana, they lose dominion of the first one.

Once all three keys have been used, the entrance of the archive opens. It is protected by a barrier that only allows members of the royal family and archduke candidates inside, as well as enforcing an even higher mana capacity than the barrier at the entrance of the stairs. Additionally the barrier also acts like a sound-blocking magic tool, preventing any sound from inside to reach the waiting room.

According to information Ferdinand was told by Schwartz and Weiss in his Royal Academy days, the archive contains primarily outdated government document of previous governments and might also contain information on old rituals, like the blueprints of the prayer stages used in some Ehrenfest provinces. Viewed from the waiting room the insides look like any regular reading room, except that there are very few actual books and parchment scrolls, with the shelves being primarily filled with ivory tablets.

This is later confirmed when Princes Sigiswald and Anastasius are accompanied by Rozemyne and Hannelore to research the contents of the archive. Among other things, Rozemyne was able to learn the spell to turn her schtappe into Geduldh's Chalice and to find blueprints of the prayer stages used for Haldenzel's Spring Prayer.

Past kings up to Zent Trauerqual's father would enter the archive at least once a year during the Archduke's Conference. Upon his coronation, Solange sent invitations to the new king, but was rebuffed by officials each time on the ground of the king being too busy until she stopped in the fourth year of his reign. It is unclear whether it was the king himself who turned her down, or if the invitations were turned away by his retainers, without ever reaching him. Later Solange briefly came under suspicion of intentionally keeping the archive secret from the crown until she explained that she actively invited the king, but was refused multiple times.

When someone who obtained the tabelts from all seven shrines dedicated to the primary gods in the academy enters, Schwartz and Weiss will usher anyone inside out, and the person inside to what appears to be just another part of the wall and urge the person to "transcribe" without giving any more details. The usually translucent barrier turns opaque so nobody in the waiting area will be able to see what's going in inside the archive. When the zent candidate touches the wall, a magic circle appears there and mana is sucked from the person, until a passage opens up. At the end of the corridor is a door with a complex magic circle on it, protected by a barrier. According to the shumil, you need to be registered with the royal family to pass it. Anyone not thus registered, is rejected with a shock, the power of which is proportional to the amount of force they bring to bear, similar to how Schwartz and Weiss themselves are protected.

If a zent candidate brings enough force to bear for the backlash to cause injury, the two library magic tools with classify that person as an enemy and the feystones in their foreheads will begin to glow, but will immediately stand down, without any apparent negative consequence, the moment the zent candidate ceases their attempts to enter. It is currently unknown what they would do, if the person didn't relent, but one of the comments they made was "Must be eliminated."

Presumably what the shumil urge the zent candidate to transcribe is the actual Grutrissheit, or the first Zent's transcription, made directly from the book of Mestionora in ages past.

The third archive is a highly restricted place that contains documents that are classified in one way or the other. A large part of its current content are documents and teaching materials that are connected to professors that were executed as political criminals, mainly in the course of the post-civil war purge. This includes not only the documents owned and written by the professors themselves, but also student-made study guides pertaining to the syllabus of those professors. It also holds diaries written by the three archnoble librarians that were executed due to perceived connections with Werkerstock rebels.

Its exact physical location isn't known, since it is only accessible via teleportation circle. The door that grants access to the teleportation chamber is located in a corridor of the office area of the library staff and is cleverly disguised behind a relief of Schutzaria, with the keyhole hidden under a secret flap under the central feystone of the depiction of Schutzaria's shield.

The teleportation circle itself can only be activated in the presence of the library magic tools Schwartz and Weiss and if the person is wearing a special ring granted to librarians of the Royal Academy library when they are given the job. To activate it, the librarian must say a prayer to Mestionora, the Goddess of Wisdom, and pour mana into their ring, which will resonate with the feystones in the heads of the shumil magic tools and teleport all three to the archive.

Naturally with even the access to this archive being in the staff-only areas of the library, it is only librarians who can enter. Anyone wishing to access documents from there will have to state what they require and then wait for the librarian to retrieve it.


 * To reach the library, one has to leave the central building and walk south.
 * The building for the specialized course for apprentice knights is the furthest away from the library out of all three specialized courses.