Ehrenfest (Duchy)/History and Story

More than 200 years ago, the Aub of the greater duchy of Eisenreich was enticed by the people of the neighboring country to attempt to usurp the throne. After she failed to convince her father to abandon this foolish notion, his own daughter fled to the Sovereignty and informed the Zent of the impending coup. This lead to the closing of the country gate to Bossgeiz and the splitting of the duchy. The western parts were established as the new middle duchy Frenbeltag, the northern parts were given to the duchy of Klassenberg and what remained was reduced to a the rank of a middle duchy, but allowed to exist. The woman who warned the Zent was made the new Aub.

However, a generation later, a civil war broke out in the diminished Eisenrech, between a faction wishing to return to their old glory and their opposition. With her will broken by her inability to stop both her father and her own offspring from bringing such doom upon themselves and the duchy, she begged the Zent to accept her resignation and assign someone else to rule. The Zent accepted this and went to the territory to crush the nobles advocating the return to old glories. To crush their will to ever return to the days of old, he used his Grutrissheit to move the location of their foundation to a different place, so they would be deprived of the castle once held by the usurper and thus the symbol of their past greatness, and renamed the duchy to Ehrenfest - the family name of the loyal noble he put in charge in the former archduchess' place.

It is said that before this, the location of the Aub's castle was somewhere in what is today the province of Groschel.

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.

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.

In Rozemyne's third year at the Royal Academy, Sylvester plans to enact a purge of the former Veronica faction and anyone name-sworn to Georgine, after the conclusion of the Lord of Winter hunt. However, due to information given to Rozemyne by Matthias and Laurenz, the timetable is moved up, and the purge is executed almost immediately after the last students departed for the Royal Academy. While the Ehrenfest Knight's Order tries to take the accused alive, many of them end up committing suicide before they can be apprehended or resist their arrest so fiercely they end up dying in their escape attempts.

Among those that died in the purge are no less than three Giebes, Viscount Gerlach, Viscount Wiltord and Giebe Bessel. Of Giebe Gerlach only a left hand with his noble ring still attached is found, after he presumably blew himself up. Despite all the evidence clearly pointing toward Viscount Gerlach's death, Bonifatius - who led the strike team trying to apprehend him - still can't shake the feelings that their quarry is still alive. But once again, Sylvester can not go by his uncle's instinct alone and thus pronounces Viscount Gerlach officially dead.

To be extra careful, Sylvester gathers the Citizenship Medals of everyone criminal they failed to capture alive and uses them to Execution Magic to make absolutely sure that none of the culprits could get away, even if they somehow managed to convincingly fake their own death and escape the besieging knights. The only way to escape the range of Execution Magic is to pass through the duchy's border barrier, and since Sylvester felt no alert from a noble crossing the border, he is quite confident that none of Georgine's pawns were able to get away.

Following the purge, Aub Ehrenfest selects nobles from the Leisegang faction to replace the lost Giebes. They are put on a three year trial period and will have their position finalized should no issues turn up. Should one of the freshly appointed nobles prove themselves insufficient for the tasks expected of them, this method allows their removal with a minimum of personal, political, and administrative issues. Apart from managing their new home provinces, the newly appointed Giebes will also have to be on guard against interference from Ahrensbach.

Aub Ehrenfest also announces his engagement with Brunhilde, the daughter of Giebe Groschel, who will become his second wife.

< Ehrenfest (Duchy)