The capital city of Sérannie

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  City of Sérannie

Here is all I know about Sérannie, the capital of the Sérannian kingdom. During my 7 years in the fantasy world, I only stayed in Sérannie for a few weeks, but since the country is so centralised, it was impossible not to learn a lot about it anyway...
I'm also very smug about how I managed to find equivalent in the normal world to make estimates about a bunch of stuff.

— Isabelle

Isabelle

Isabelle is a young French woman who was brought through a magical portal to Sérannie, hit with translation magic, and told to help the Séranniens beat their Dark Lord. Only, once the questing party triumphed, she was forced back to the normal world. She is rather bitter about that.

While looking for a way to go back, she writes journal entries about her time in Sérannie to not forget what happened and to prepare for her return, illustrating her notebook by sticking postits with emojis scribbles, drawing, or printing photos.

Geography

The Sérannian kingdom itself is a peninsula only attached to the rest of the continent by a piece of land in the North. The capital has been built around that area so as to control passage inside the peninsula. It is also located on the major river allowing that is used for trade between the country and the rest of the continent. I think this specific location along the river has been chosen to take advantage of a natural harbour.

Climate: Warm Temperate, with four distinct seasons. It's all very similar to Italy and the region around Rome, so I can estimate that average annual temperatures is 16°C, rainfall 600 mm, and snowfall 2m.

Elevation: Maybe something like 200 m above sea level? Really no idea...

River: Very big, probably with a depth of 6 m and a width of 200 m (by comparison with the Seine). A few big species of fish live there. Currents go from north to south where it joins with the sea. However, the prevailing winds are southeast to northwest, and so useful to navigate the other way. This has allowed for very well-developed trade between the country and the rest of the continent.

Small lakes: Good for catching small fish species and crabs, and for industries. Inside the city, a few small lakes are located around the river in one area that is very swampy as a result, and so it has been transformed into a park with a stone path allowing people to walk in the middle of it.

Soil types: By deduction, probably clay, silty, loamy, sandy, and peat—the kind of stuff that is found near rivers and lakes.

Flora: It looks similar to the normal world, but individual species are different. It's mostly some types of mosses, tall grasses, and berry bushes, with trees similar to oak, ash and pine. One species I actually know is the tarcie trees, as their big leaves are used to make sandwiches.

Stones and ores: Those are the same types as in the normal world, so I actually know the names! All the quarries are located outside towns in the hinterland, of course. They have lots of cobalt that they use to make beautiful blue dyes in potteries and glasses. Then for the stones, it's mostly limestones, and travertine (grey stones) that are both used for buildings. They also have serpentine (green stones) that they use for jewellery and sculpting, and a few marble quarries (white when with limestone, blue when with cobalt, and green when with serpentine) used inside noble houses, making them super pretty.

Kingdom of Sérannie

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The Kingdom of Sérannie drawn by Isabelle based on the information she has learnt during her time in the fantasy world.

Drawn with what I remembered from my travel in the south during the quest to defeat the Dark Lord and the few Sérannian maps I've seen.

Leaf sandwich by AmélieIS

The city

Demographics

• Total population: 450,000 inhabitants
• Population density: 32,150 inhabitants/km²
• City size: 14 km²
• Hinterland territory: 2500 km²

Sérannie itself is extremely populated and got a crazy population density! Converting Sérannian units to metric units is difficult, but I think the city is similar to ancient Rome.

The city proper is defined by what is inside the defensive walls, with more houses and farms directly outside as they don't have to pay the tax and so are cheaper but less protected in case of war.

Architecture

• Number of districts: 11
• Type of houses: Big townhouses or small units in apartment buildings
• Number of people living together—poor families: 3-6
• Number of people living together—rich families: 13-17
• Poor building style: Clay lined fibre and wooden
• Richer building styles: Concrete and stone
• Districts: Palace and market, patriarchate, park, river 1 & river 2, residential districts

Rich people live in big townhouses in the patriarchate district. Those houses are enormous, as they have to house the main family, the dependants, and the servants. Often, they are noble families with the house head being a senator, but a few merchants also got rich enough to buy their way there. Those townhouses are made with stones, with marbles used for decoration. The richest of them even have a small garden attached.

On the other hand, poor people live on top of each other in the units of apartment buildings that are just like roman insulae. I think they can go up to 6 or 7 floors. Oftentimes, the ground floor are shops, restaurants, or workshops, with the housing units above that. Not everyone living in apartments is poor though. People with more means or offspring of rich families have vaster apartments with several rooms to themselves. Some apartments are made with stones, but all of the poorer ones are made with wood and clay and are especially susceptible to fires.

Sérannie is officially divided into 11 district intra muros. In particular, there is the one district with the park and the area around it, the palace and market district that also houses several public buildings such as the library, theatre and senate chambers, the patriarchate district, and then two river districts on both side of the park where most of the crafthouses and warehouses are located as well as the harbour. The rest is a plethora of normal residential districts. There, there are also some less smelly and noisy crafthouses, shops, restaurants, and some temples. I didn't really participate in the religion, so I don't know a lot about those.

City of Sérannie

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Insula reconstitution by talo Gismondi in Guido Calza: Le origini latine dell'abitazione moderna

Public infrastructure

• Road construction: Stone paved roads, stones and wooden bridges
• Main irrigation: Furrow irrigation
• Public buildings: Market place, thermal baths, library, theatre, park, temples, senate chambers, palace, harbour...
• Defences: Reinforced wall
• Natural defences: River and cuesta
• Military: Garrisons

The roads through the kingdom have been greatly damaged by the war, but those of the capital are, of course, in a much better state since they are regularly used by the nobility.

All of those public infrastructure buildings can be used by anyone in the city, either for free or for a fee, and their upkeep is done at the expense of the state.

The senate by Cesare Maccari (Cicero Denounces Catiline)

Farming

Inside of the city itself there are a few green areas, mostly the park and a few greenhouses, although the rich houses also have their own garden. However, outside of the perimeters of the city wall, there are more houses, and those have larger gardens were they can cultivate a few crops. And just beyond that area are a lot of farms that support the population of the city.
Here are what they grow:

• Grains: Some equivalent to wheat they use to make bread.
• Vegetables: Lots of types of cabbages—they're called cruciferous, I think?
• Fruits: Types of berries and some nut things.
• Herbs: Lots of aromatic herbs for food and tea.
• Livestock: Chicken, donkeys, rabbits (see animals in Sérannie).

As I explained before, their equivalent to wheat or their grasses are not nourishing enough to support horses. In order to do so, they need herbologists to use their magic to bring nutrient to the surface to feed the grass and make them more nourishing. This means that horses are super expensive to keep and only reserved for officers in the army.

That's not the case of the donkeys, but they're too small to ride.

Once every few years, the whole city comes together for a week-long ritual-festival during which similar magic is worked. The goal is to refresh the nutrients present in the soil and to negate the damage caused by erosion. The high number of participants in these rituals have helped make the region extremely fertile.

Rabbit and birds by AmélieIS

Donkey by AmélieIS

Politics

Government

The Sérannian kingdom is strongly centralised and governed from Sérannie. All noble families have a townhouse there, and the heads of the family are senators sitting in the senate, the legislative body of the country. The kingdom also has a royal family and a king. The heir to the throne is Princess Jérine.

Social hierarchy is extremely strict in Sérannie, with the senate and the king all-powerful over the country, and respect must always be shown to your social superior. However, all the nobility has a function of patrons to the rest of the population, and they have to support their clients with jobs, food, or money in exchange for their political support. So, I don't know... It's all very autocratic, but at the same time, they can't really rule without popular support?

Patronage

Conflicts

Because everyone lives on top of each other and there are such big differences in wealth, the city always seems to be on the edge of a civil war. The nobles always try to placate their clients, but as soon as they get distracted by their own petty political conflicts, there is a bad winter, or the northern neighbours threaten war, revolt grounds again among the population. It has been extremely easy for the Dark Lord to take advantage of the situation...

As a French, my feelings about all of this are mixed. I really can't stand all those stuck-up nobles who think their whole lives should be handed out just because of their lucky birth and who block everyone else from progressing socially and in their career. But on the other hand, I also want to marry Prince Calendre—no matter how much the king disapproves of having a commoner for daughter-in-law!

I can only hope that I'll be able to bring in some necessary changes in the way things are done. Maybe by taking inspiration on the Roman empire and the way participatory democracy worked at some time of its history—before it itself became mired with autocracy and coup d'état... No way I'll accept to be treated as inferior or to die in a revolt!

The Dark Lord's army by AmélieIS

The questing party that has defeated the Dark Lord

... though if the king refuses to accept my coming back to the fantasy world and my marriage with Calendre, one of those revolts might come in handy...

Revenge by AmélieIS with images from Pixabay and Vecteezy