persephoneweston

[persephoneweston]

The Golden Rose

Or How A Terrible Setting Ruins A Perfectly Good Story

Oh, this is going to be very bittersweet, just like my experience while reading it.

Now, I’m aware this might ruffle a few feathers because I know this particular piece has many fans that absolutely love it, but I also believe that what I’m about to say below needs to be acknowledged as well.

In general, the story, the adventure in itself is very, very good and engaging; as long as we completely ignore the setting, that is, which proves difficult due to constant mentions of places and is overall a poorly thought out incoherent mess. We’ll get into that matter under the cut.

The interludes are a great idea and a good device to let the reader see or know how other characters and factions are doing or build tension. From comments on other interactive fiction works that have used this method, I know some people think they break immersion, but I personally find them useful, informative and they contribute to further to the aforementioned immersion within the story.

It's beautifully written, with detailed descriptions and extensive vocabulary; especially taking into account that the author is not a native English speaker, which makes it even more painful not to be able to fully enjoy the story because of a series of very unfortunate setting choices.

There are a couple of minor mistakes when it comes to certain terms like mixing up spurs and stirrups or hilt and pommel. The latter is sort of a weird case because sometimes the terms are used correctly and some others wrong. There's also the whole nails turning white thing, which is mentioned on several occasions and that just feels... weird? Weird in the sense that it's not an expression that's really commonly used in English. But overall, nothing really major on that end.

The characters are interesting (I personally adore Beka and this is coming from someone who doesn't even like kids in the first place), something which is key to create an enjoyable story, even though some of them (or parts of them) do contribute to the incoherence of the setting.

Before we begin, I want to say that I've read several of the "explanations" Miss Ana Ventura has given regarding some of these choices and find them highly unsatisfying.

Anyway, let’s get into it, shall we?

SETTING PROBLEMS

Now, I understand this is supposed to be an “alternate Medieval Europe”, but things need to make sense and be explained properly precisely because you’re making major changes to an existing world and its history; something this novel fails to do.

If this were set in a fictional place called Seaspire, Touver, Avirie or whatever, we would have zero problems because it’s a place that doesn’t exist and the author can freely determine the culture, the language, the geographical set up, its history, etc. They can loosely base it on an existing culture, mix several together to create a new one... Anything. The problem stems from the fact that the story is set on a very real place, with very real autoctonous people and very real culture and history. If one starts changing stuff just because without giving a proper reasoning for those changes, it’s a perfect recipe for trouble. It goes without saying that it also completely ruins and dispels immersion.

I’m about to list the major problems with the setting right below, so let’s go one step at a time.

1 - When does it actually take place? What century or what year?

I’m assuming this is set somewhere between c.1119 - c.1312, which is when the Knights Templar were active. But if that’s the case, man, references are all over the place and completely anachronistic (potatoes, rapiers, galleons, sextants, etc.)

The use of galleons (16-18th century vessels) instead of galleys, which were the warships the Knights Templar used (aside from other cargo vessels that they more than likely hired for specific voyages).

Sextants (17-18th century), that should have been mariner’s astrolabes instead.

Potatoes and chocolate in Spain/Iberian Peninsula before even reaching (“discovering”) America in 1492. Do I really need to say more?

Rapiers didn’t get designed until around the 1500s.

In the secret room at the Devil’s Bridge, there is a quill that has seemingly been there since Roman times. Quill pens did not appear until medieval times; Romans wrote with either reed or metal pens. Granted, I’m not 100% sure about this particular one within the story, but it all seemed to point towards the author implying the quill in the secret room had been there since the Romans were there. If it was meant to be in a previous century but still during the Middle Ages, then it’s fine.

2 - Why would the Church want to ban Latin, its official language since its inception during the Roman Empire?

I can understand the Church wanting to ban and destroy all the pagan gods, monuments and practices from the Romans and other cultures and tribes, but not the very language its built on and that actually gave the Church all its power and influence. What’s the Church’s official language then? Aramaic? Hebrew?

3 - If Latin was banned, wouldn’t all the names derived from it be prohibited as well?

Let’s just say that at least half of the names in the story either wouldn’t exist or would be banned.

Aurelius. Straight up Latin. Why is this man allowed to prance around, and in a position of power no less, bearing a name in a language that is prohibited and its use, I reckon, heavily punished?

Hadrian. A variant, a shortened form of the Latin name Hadrianus.

Alessa. Now this is an interesting one, because her real name seems to be Alexandra, a name of Greek origin but she prefers to go by Alessa, the shortened version of the Latin variant Alessandra. For such a cautious woman, this seems incredibly stupid and reckless of her. So unlike her character.

Vallen. Another name of Latin origin.

Alain. The name is of French origin, a language that wouldn’t exist in the story. It’s thought to be derived from the Alans, an Iranian nomadic group of tribes whom the Romans referred to as Alani or Halani.

Ysabella. Italian variant of the Hebrew name Elisheba, with an extra "exotic" flare by using the Y.

Lance. Believe it or not, this name comes from another word of Latin origin.

Chouriça. As with Alain and Ysabella, this word in Portuguese has no place in this story, since the author herself made it clear through external info posts (not in the story, mind you, which is a huge mistake because not everyone is going to read the COG forums or a Tumblr blog) that none of the Romance languages would exist.

As you can see, just this creates quite important incoherences within the setting. Also, notice how there are names in Romance languages other than Spanish. Except in the case of Rafael Borja (we’ll get into this one in point 5), of course, which coincidentally is a character with very unbecoming traits. It kind of smells if I’m being honest, especially since the story takes place in the kingdoms that later formed Spain.

4 - As per author’s claims, English is spoken in the Iberian Peninsula (not even mentioned why or how that came to be in the story, by the way), ignoring the fact that about 58% of English derives from Latin (around 29% including science and legal terms) and Romance languages, especially French (another 29%), which in this alternate universe none of them would exist, so the characters wouldn’t be able to be speaking English; not even Old English.

5 - Rather clumsy (and in my humble opinion absolutely needless, as it would have only added new interesting layers to the story and not take anything away from it) deletion of 700 years of Moorish history and culture (and diversity) of the Iberian Peninsula just for the sake of it. It really is a pity because Moorish Spain was probably the most advanced in many areas out of all of Europe. Also, what happened with Sephardi Jews? Where are they? Did they also magically disappear like many other things in the story?

As far as I’m aware, no explanation has been given as to why this was erased for, I’m to assume, “storytelling purposes”, but constant references to said “void” being made without any explanation as to how those things came to be if those seven centuries of Moorish rule never happened. Allow me to shed some light into some of those aforementioned references to the “void”.

Rice. Rice is not an endemic species of the Iberian Peninsula, meaning it’s not an autoctonous form of plant life there. It was introduced by, you guessed it, the Moors along with a few varieties of citrus trees (like orange trees), sugarcane, cotton, aubergines, watermelons and several other plants and flowers. Therefore, rice pudding can’t be a typical or traditional dish as shown in the story, if the aforementioned people never settled in Spain. Also, I wouldn't call it a pastry, since it doesn't have any dough in it; it's a dessert but not a pastry.

Borja. Borja is first and foremost a toponym, it’s the name of a place; a town in Zaragoza to be exact. It's a toponym that later turned into what we know as a toponymic name and surname. It’s the evolved form of an Arabic word (Borja < Burya < Burj (برج) meaning tower), which wouldn’t have been possible to find in the Iberian Peninsula according to this scenario. The town would have had another name; it might have retained its original celtiberian name, Bursau, but not Borja and therefore the name and surname derived from it wouldn’t exist either.

Tarek. It’s a variant of Tariq, a name of Arabic origin. I’d be willing to ignore this one since he’s a mercenary, IF there hadn’t been any other Moorish/Arabic references, since mercenaries go where the money is and are not necessarily native to the region; it wouldn’t have been strange to find a Polish mercenary working in France, for example. Sadly, there are quite a few of the aforementioned references.

The very name of Tarragona. Many actual toponyms would have been erased and replaced as well (as we saw with Borja); starting with Tarragona, which the Romans called Tarraco and after getting a spin through the Arabic version Tarrakuna or Tarkūna (طَرْكُونَة‎) is how we get its current form, something that never happened according to the setting. Now, there are several hypothesis as to where Tarraco comes from. Some say it’s Iberian; some others say it was a name of Etruscan origin given by the Romans, which was a language that influenced Latin to a certain degree, as all neighbouring languages tend to do, before the latter ended up replacing it. All in all, Tarragona wouldn’t be Tarragona without the Arabic influence.

As you can see, the author had two perfect candidates (Rafael and Tarek) she could have used to rather easily weave Moorish Spain into the story. Plus it would have made much more sense for the Moors, with their completely unrelated language and different beliefs, to be the ones trying to eliminate Latin and not the Church, which actually heavily depended on it for influence across borders.

6 - Not to mention the complete deletion of any native Iberian (mostly Spanish) references (names, languages, etc.). What happened with Basque, a pre-indoeuropean language isolate that has zero relation with Latin and that is currently still around? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for an actually autoctonous language to take over the rest of the Peninsula instead of everyone magically speaking “English”?

This, and forgive me for the harsh statement, is an act of shameless erasure of any sort of autoctonous cultural identities; yes, plural; it’s not a typo. We already saw that the only reference to any sort of local relation was a Spanish name in the form of Rafael Borja, someone whom the author constantly reminds us of how much of a terrible, scummy person he is. Before, it simply smelled a bit; now, all of this just reeks of xenophobia. All of it just to coddle English speakers (said by the author, not in those exact words but it's the gist of it); as if they were so stupid they can't process or read anything with foreign names in it, you know? It honestly feels so incredibly disrespectful, not just to Spanish people, but to English speakers as well. Dear author, if you want English names and something akin to English culture for your story, set it in England and not in Spain. This right here, completely destroys any possible immersion into the story for me. It’s an absolute deal breaker and as I mentioned before, it’s a real pity because the adventure in itself is very good.

This is basically like writing a story set in Imperial China, but changing all the native names to stuff like John Smith, Travis Simmons and Jane Doe just because and saying “Hey! Remember all the Mongol invasions and incursions China suffered? Well, they didn’t happen here but I’m still gonna mention the Great Wall, which is primarily a direct consequence of said raids, anyway“.

Let me tell you, if the above had been the case, I’d wager that it wouldn’t even have been published and in the chance that it were published, people would have been sharpening their pitchforks and lighting their torches while demanding the culprit’s head on a silver platter. But hey, it's another European country the one being butchered, so it's whatever; let's applaud and praise it.

All of this was an easily avoidable offence by using the geographical set up of the Iberian Peninsula, if that’s what the author wished, but changing locations to made up names, as I already mentioned at the very beginning.

And finally, to wrap things up, a piece of advice: When messing with other people’s culture and history, better be careful and consistent about what you remove, add or change and above all, explain how and why said changes came to be in-game (in an intro or in a history appendix in the stats page, for example) and not in blogs or Q&A outside of the narration or the game, because not everyone is going to read or have access to those, otherwise you’re bound to step on quite a few toes.

| Thank you so much for your attention |