Ehrenfest (Duchy)/History and Story

About 200 years ago, the family of Eisenreich were declared traitors to the King and their duchy was crushed. After redrawing the borders of the duchy to their current state, the King appointed the Ehrenfest family as the lords of these lands. Wanting to make sure not to be associated with traitors, the first Aub Ehrenfest did not retain any of the Giebes appointed by Aub Eisenreich and instead filled the ranks with his own trusted allies.

When Drewanchel invented the toilet slime magic tool 80 years ago, Ehrenfest was among the bottom five duchies in ranking and accordingly had to wait a long time for the privilege to buy this technology. When they were finally able to acquire the rights, it came at a rather inopportune time, since it was right after Lady Gabriele of Ahrensbach had forced through a marriage between her and the second son of the Fourth Aub Ehrenfest. As a result of the politics surrounding the marriage, Gabriele's husband was given the title of Count Groschel and left the city with his family to take up residence in his new domain, taking all of their mana with them. This negatively impacted the archduke's family, with the loss of so much mana, that they could not make full use of the new technology right away due to the high mana cost of using creation magic to make a sewer system. To keep up appearances they first re-made the dormitory at the Royal Academy, since this was the place where the majority of interactions with other duchies happened. It took several years to finally be able to establish a sewer system for the archduke's castle and several more years for the rest of the noble's quarters. Due to higher priorities, the establishment of a sewer system for the lower city was pushed back time and again until most people had already forgotten that such plans ever existed, particularly when the people involved in drawing up the original blueprints started to die off from old age or other causes. And so the plans lay tucked away in the Aub's personal storage for decades, only being rediscovered recently by scholars in the employ of Lady Charlotte, one of the seventh Aub Ehrenfest Sylvester's daughters.

Several years ago, there was a coup within the Sovereignty. Though Ehrenfest formally stayed neutral in the conflict and thus didn't suffer any losses in the fighting, many nobles from the region died, and others moved to other territories. Furthermore, the new king also enacted a purge of anyone believed to be affiliated with the brothers he had been fighting, even in the neutral duchies. Due to this, Ehrenfest, like all duchies of the Sovereignty, suffered a large reduction in mana, even to the present day. Many nobles who had been sent to the temple were called back to their families and many of those remaining were called to the main temple in the Sovereignty, in turn causing a secondary mana shortage in the temple.

While Ehrenfest had several outstanding nobles in the past, almost all of their accomplishments stayed on an individual level and failed to raise the the duchy as a whole. Some of the individuals mentioned are Professor Hirschur, whose scientific discoveries baffled even Professor Gundolf, and the former blue shrine maiden Christine, whose incredible skill with the harspiel left an eternal impression on those who heard her play, including Prince Anastasius.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 8 Despite the unfair opponent summoned against them in their Ditter match at the Interduchy Tournament Ehrenfest still manages to secure the tenth place in the tournament. While some of the students are disappointed with Ehrenfest only coming in tenth due to how they managed to reach the sixth place in the prior mock-battles, this is still an improvement over the previous year and thus praised by the nobles back home.

On the academic side thirteen Ehrenfest students manage to attain honor student status this year, which is an impressive number. This large number comes as such a surprise that the budget set aside for the rewards isn't sufficient and the Archduke is forced to hand out smaller commemorative feystones than the previous years to the successful students. Rozemyne also comes in first-in-class of her grade for the second time in a row.

< Ehrenfest (Duchy)