Yurgenschmidt/History and Story

Legend has it that the first king of Yurgenschmidt was chosen by the gods themselves to rule the country and act as their representative in the mortal realm. He was allowed to transcribe Mestionora's original Grutrissheit.

As such he was not only the head of the country, but also the highest religious authority. With the first king also acting as the head of the temple, his children often participated in religious ceremonies. At some point in history, the positions of political and religious leaders were split, with the former being held by the king and the latter being held by the newly instituted position of High Bishop, who was chosen from among the king's children. This also extended to the duchies, with the local High Bishop being one of the Aub's children.

Over the centuries, the practice of appointing the king's and aub's children to be the high bishops fell out of practice. Regardless of whether this was the cause or the consequence, the temple lost much of its influence, power, and respect. In living memory, the temples have been regarded as a filthy place, populated by those who were either unwanted or unqualified to become true nobles, barely above commoners, as well as a place to hide illegitimate children.

The country of Lanzenave came into being about 400 years ago.

Shortly before it's founding, Yurgenschmidt was ruled by Zent Ausbaur and three of his sons managed to obtain a Grutrissheit. Ultimately Ausbaur chose his son Heiland as his successor. Unable to accept being passed over, his brother Tollkühnheit took his magic tool and went looking for a new land to settle. Accompanied by his wife and retainers, he sailed through the southern country gate and eventually happened accross an inhabitated land, with a comparetively poor population, unable to use any magic. While the area didn't appear to be rich in any valuable natural ressources, it was able to sustain the local population, which was good enough for Tollkühnheit. He used his Grutrissheit to create a duchy foundation and raise an entire ivory city before the eyes of the stunned locals. Having never seen any magic of this scale, or potentially any magic at all, this awed the locals so much that many of them took to worshipping Tollkühnheit as an emisary from the land of gods, making it easy for him to crown himself the king of this new land and crism it Lanzenave.

Due to the mana disparity of the newly arrived nobles and the indigenous people, interbreeding was essentially impossible. Furthermore, since his Grutrissheit was only a duplicate, which he created with his Schtappe, rather than a physical transcription, he couldn't hope to pass it down to any of his children and it would disappear along with him upon his death. To make matters even worse, without a schtappe, no one could fully maintain the city's foundation magic either, once he was gone, meaning that not just the Grutrissheit, but the entire city would be lost, if he couldn't find a solution.

He petitioned his brother, now the Zent of Yurgenschmidt, to give one of his children a schtappe, but due to it being impossible for people not registered as Yurgenschmidt nobles to receive one, the Zent had to decline. Instead the two monarchs hammered out an agreement to sent a princess of Lanzenave to Yurgenschmidt, where she would conceive children from the local nobility, who would then be raised as Yurgenschmidt nobles, including going to the Royal Academy and obtaining a schtappe. However Zent Heiland was concerned that, if all the children were allowed to leave the country after their coming-of-age, their neighbor might become too powerful and threaten his own country one day, so he only agreed to send a single child - regardles of gender - each generation to Lanzenave. Due to practical reasons, primarily involving the effects of pregnancy, the first couple of children thus chosen, were all male, until it became tradition to always receive a male heir.

The first princess chosen to become the mother of the next Zent was Adalgisa and over time the villa in which the Lanzenave princesses stay and the entire arrangement, took up her name. The princesses' children are also called the "Seeds of Adalgisa" even centuries after the actual person died.

Most Yurgenschmidt nobles in the situation to be a father of a male Seed of Adalgisa, are unwilling to take the child, because they can't be absolutely sure the child is really theirs and due to the problems this might cause with their wives. One of the rare exceptions was the Sixth Aub Ehrenfest, who chose to take his son Ferdinand back to Ehrenfest.

Over 200 years ago, Eisenreich was one of the richest, most powerful and most influencial duchies in the country. In his hubris, the Aub at the time allowed himself to be convinced to try to usurp the crown by people from the neighboring country Bosgeiz.

To facilitate the rebellion, the Bosgeiz government sent many people and supplies to their ally, while Aub Eisenreich brought his political weight to bear, to establish as many of his loyal subjects as he could among the Sovereign nobility. In preparation for the strike he also infiltrated many of his knights into the Royal Academy's dormitory.

Many of the local nobles and members of his own family tried to dissuade him from this foolishness, but he would not listen. In her desperation, one of his daughters fled the duchy and flew directly to the Sovereignty, to inform the Zent of the impeding attack. Enraged by the treachery, the Zent immediately teleported to the area to close the country gate and upon his return to the Sovereignty, gathered the Sovereign Knight's Order for a preemptive attack against the would-be usurper, utterly crushing is surprised force. The rebellious Aub himself died in the fighting. As punishment for the insurrection, the duchy was split into three parts. The western areas were turned into a new, middle duchy, given the name Frenbeltag, and the northern, iron-rich areas were handed over to Klassenberg. The less than third that remained was reduced to the rank of a middle duchy. The entire archducal family was executed as traitors, with only the woman who warned the Zent being spared and put in charge of the diminished duchy. The Zent also had all Sovereign nobles formerly of Eisenreich, as well as some of the more powerful, local nobles executed.

With their main sources of income either being given to another duchy or being blocked off due to the closure of the country gate, as burden of the many left behind Bosgeiz citizens stuck in the area and the rest of the country scorning them as a duchy of traitors, Eisenreich and its nobility fell into crisis and without any help from the Zent or anyone else, declined further and further, caught between stories of old glories and a future without prospects. With nearly all foreign sources of food, or the means to pay for them, drying up, the Leisegang family, in charge of the most fertile area of what remained of the duchy, rose to become the most prominent and influential noble house of Eisenreich, near enough overnight.

Over time the country split into two factions, one, enticed by stories of their glorious past, advocated to beg the king to reopen the country gate, so that the stuck Bosgeiz citizens could return home and they could use its riches of the reopened trade-lanes to regain what they considered their rightful place. The other faction wished to keep their heads down and ride out their punishment, and punish the Bosgeiz people, since they blamed them for corrupting their former Aub and causing their duchy's downfall.

When it became time to decide the archduchess' successor, the divide between the duchy's nobility, which also extended to her own children and grandchildren, escalated into open warfare.

Bemoaning her lack of power and ability stop her own father from committing treason and her own offspring from ripping the remnants of the duchy apart, the archduchess gave her position and status back to the Zent and requested someone else to be assigned to rule. The king accepted her resignation, and together with who would soon become the first Aub Ehrenfest, took the Sovereign Knight's Order to Eisenreich to reestablish order. After crushing the nobles, who advocated for the reopening of the country gate, he used his Grutrissheit and moved the location of the duchy's foundation, destroying their former seat of power and thus the constant reminder of their former greatness, so they would never again seek to restore their old glory, and changed the duchy's name to that of the man he appointed as the new archduke - Ehrenfest.

In its long history, Yurgenschmidt fell into country-wide civil war at least twice.

The first mentioned civil war happened a long time ago, and its resulting mana shortage led many duchies to invade weaker neighbors to steal their mana with black weapons, which led to the banning of teaching this spell at the Royal Academy.

The second known civil war happened only a relatively short time ago. For the details see Civil War.

A drastic consequence for the country was the loss of the Grutrissheit of the true heir - the second prince - and the former fifth prince being unaware of the location of the original transcription made by the first king and thus being unable to create a copy of his own. Apart from the resistance of the bible fundamentalists, this also left the new king with other problems, like being incapable of redrawing duchy borders.

Very early in Zent Trauerqual's reign, roughly ten years ago, there was some kind of incident involving a shipment of feystones between Yurgenschmidt and Lanzenave, that resulted in the new king imposing restrictions on the trade between the two countries, which are still in place today.

Despite the purges, some nobles loyal to the defeated duchies remained. In Rozemyne's second year at the Royal Academy, those rebels launch an assault on Zent Trauerqual and his family at the Interduchy Tournament using ternisbefallen to sow chaos among the gathered students and their families. The attackers even go so far as to launch suicide attacks, either blowing themselves up or feeding themselves to the mana-absorbing feybeasts to make them stronger. Despite these desperate tactics, not a single member of the royal family is harmed. However, several of the students are killed by the rampaging feybeasts. Immerdink and Neuehausen are hit particularly hard, since ternisbefallen appeared at their spots of the proceedings.

As a result of the attack, the king decides to put all the territories of the duchies abolished after the civil war under the control of the Sovereignty, rather than leaving some of them under the control of neighboring duchies, though this has yet to be announced at the coming Archduke Conference.

During the Interduchy Tournament of Rozemyne's third year, Detlinde causes a fuss at the Dedication Whirl. In an attempt to make herself shine with light, she ends up pumping mana into feystones fastened to her clothing, which is unexpectedly sucked away into the stage. Rather than stopping her attempts, the girl keeps pumping more and more mana into the stones until she passes out. When she hits the floor, a magic circle briefly flashes into visibility. Later that day, the Sovereign High Bishop declared that the appearance of the magic circle marks Detlinde out as a Zent candidate.

The actual truth is that in the distant past, the archduke candidates performing the dedication whirl poured mana into their sincere prayers, which activated magic circles for all of them. To be considered a Zent candidate, however, it was necessary to pour in enough mana to make a pillar of light appear, while merely having the circle itself visible marked a failure to quality. Unfortunately, this knowledge has been lost to the general noble population and is only written down in parts of the bible that can only be seen by someone qualified to become a Zent candidate themselves, as such the finer details were lost to the modern temple, leaving them reliant on incomplete transcriptions made in the past and thus open for this kind of misunderstanding.

While the next Archduke Conference is held, it comes to the attention of the royal family, that Lady Rozemyne has not only stumbled into becoming a zent candidate, but is very close to obtaining the Grutrissheit.

Zent Trauerqual is of the opinion that should Rozemyne obtain the holy book, she should become the Zent and any further decision should be left up to solely her.

Prince Sigiswald thinks that only holding the Grutrissheit by itself is insufficient to rule the country and thus advocates for making her his third wife.

Prince Anastasius suggests to take the Grutrissheit from Rozemyne, temporarily make her the Sovereign High Biship until she comes of age, at which point they can send her back to her home duchy, since this would cause the least amount of trouble for everyone involved. Should it be impossible to hand over a Grutrissheit, he thinks Rozemyne should only be made the zent in secret, while the rest of the country is made to believe that Sigiswald is the actual king and Rozemyne his third wife, while she is being kept from the public eye. His father considers this so disrespectful to the new zent, that he forbids him from even talking to Rozemyne anymore.

Ultimately the royals come to the decision to try their best to obtain the Grutrissheit by themselves over the remainder of the year, and should they be unsuccessful, Rozemyne will be adopted by the king and will marry Sigiswald, once she comes of age. Since they are not enthusiastic about their chances off success, both they and Ehrenfest begin to prepare for the adoption in secret.