† Ashkatar Here is a name that appears to have vanished completely, along with the society that gave it birth; and the best estimates of those experts consulted is that Ashkatar was an approximation, in the Broken dialect, of some altered or corrupted form of Augustus, the earlier name of Octavian Caesar, the famed architect of the Roman Empire during the bridging of the B.C. and A.D. eras. If so, this would indicate that Ashkatar’s ancestors had once been people of importance, perhaps quite close to Oxmontrot, for it would have been the Mad King and his fellow mercenaries who would have heard the story of Augustus during their years of campaigning for Rome. —C.C.
† the names of Arnem’s children The collection goes seemingly unnoticed by Gibbon, in all likelihood because they only offered him more frustration. Even today, one remains obscure: Dalin, which may or may not be some dialectal interpretation of the Gothic term for “share,” and may have been given to the boy at his mother’s urging precisely because of the child’s remarkable physical (and, apparently, behavioral) resemblance to his father, even at birth. We can be more sure, however, that the remaining names reflect either a general trend toward modern Germanic names in the kingdom of Broken, or a conscious effort by Sixt to emphasize his own heritage over Isadora’s apparently Gothic background (the Gothic tribes were, of course, “Germanic” in the broad barbarian and early medieval sense of the word, whereas “modern Germanic names” refers to those appellations belonging quite distinctly to the languages and dialects that would one day meld to form modern German.): Anje is a variation of Anna, Dagobert a fairly common medieval combination of the terms for “good” and “gleaming” (and the name of one of the great Merovingian Frankish kings, just before the period during which the Manuscript’s tale is almost certainly set, and possibly, therefore, borrowed by the worldly Arnem from those same Franks), while Gelie is a derivative of Angelika. The remaining name, Golo, seems to be some kind of variation on or nickname for “Gottfried.” It is still in use — as, indeed, are many of these names, in some form or another — but Dalin remains a riddle without a definite solution. —C.C.
† “… two large, crow-like birds.” of Isadora’s clasp, Gibbon writes, “Without doubt, we are faced, here, with a representation of Odin, patriarch (or ‘All-father’) of the Norse gods, who traded one of his eyes for wisdom, and was attended by two ravens, one representing Thought, the other Memory. What is of particular interest is the fact that, while we now think of this mythology as quaint, it was quite vibrant, during the period that Broken existed, and was such a threat to the Kafran faith (as it was to monotheism generally) that those who worshipped the Norse gods were declared to be, not wayward primitives, but doomed heretics, in Broken — just as they were by the early Christian church.” Once again, Gibbon reveals his fascination with other-than-Christian faiths, although worship of the Norse gods can hardly have been considered a “cult” or “mystery” religion — whereas (ironically) the Kafran faith does indeed fit the mold of either a cult or one of what are known as the “mystery faiths”. —C.C.
† Nuen The name of the Arnem children’s nurse and, later, governess is ignored by Gibbon, probably because Nuen would have been a thorny problem for him to solve, scholarly works on Eastern history and culture being relatively few, in his time, and many if not most of those relying on the work of ancient historians. Presuming Nuen to be an ancestor of the modern Nuan—which, in Chinese, is intended to connote warmth and geniality — may seem a logical conclusion, save that the connection between the Huns (almost certainly the people from whom this woman emerged) and the Chinese has long since been effectively dismissed; and even the Huns’ relation to the Xiongnu (or, in the older form, the Hsiung-nu), a tribe of nomads that occupied northern and northeastern Asia (an area that included much of Manchuria, Mongolia, and the Chinese province of Xinjiang) and may have given rise to some of the similarly restless peoples that sprang out of those regions, is a relationship that, while once considered likely, has recently come to be deeply questioned and in some cases dismissed. Thus the Chinese background of the name is unlikely, but we have few theories to take its place; and so we are forced, like Gibbon, to simply accept the name — although with greater, if therefore more frustrating, awareness of just why we must. —C.C.
† breck Further evidence, if any is needed, that Isadora’s ancestors were indeed Goths who interbred, over time, with other, “newer” Germanic tribes: the word that we know as “brook” winds its way back through most of the related languages of the region — German, Dutch, Middle English and Old English — until its earliest ancestor is found in the Gothic brukjan. The diminishment of the Gothic influence, added to the Old High German vowel shift and the few peculiarities of the Broken dialect that we can speak of with confidence, more than explain the specific form encountered here. —C.C.
† Gisa The name of Isadora’s guardian and teacher, the woman who raised her following the robbery and murder of her parents, is another tantalizing clue to the pattern of religious and social evolution in both Broken and northern Germany generally: although identified as an Old High German name, Gisa’s precise meaning has been lost. We can, however, fairly safely assume both that it was a shortened form of the Germanic Gisela, which connotes both “hostage” and “tribute,” and that it was therefore probably not her original name. Thus, given her activities, was this woman of Nordic extraction perhaps sold into servitude in Broken after being taken as a slave by some unknown armed force or band? And, if she was indeed a “hostage,” was she a person of some importance in her northern homeland? Many such hostages during this era (as today, in parts of the developing world) were never redeemed — a fact that would explain both her bitterness and her indoctrination of Isadora into what was, in Broken, considered a heretical cult, but which was already an established religion in the region, and perhaps a major one; certainly, it was one that would undergo an enormous revival when it was reasserted by the Nordic tribes, many of which blended it with various interpretations and narrative chapters of Christianity. —C.C.
† “… his saddle’s iron stirrups …” A detail that goes unnoticed by Gibbon reveals itself, in the modern era of military history (and military technological history, especially), as being of enormous importance: Broken’s mounted troops were using metal stirrups. The Romans had no such advantage, accounting for why their cavalry units were not the most feared parts of their armies: it was the bracing offered by stirrups that created the stability necessary for men on charging horses to drive spear and lance points into massed infantry, as well as the control needed for mounted archers to fire without gripping the horse’s reins. (There were Asian steppe and American Indian tribes whose warriors could perform this action by way of using their thighs alone to control their mounts, but such were highly exceptional troops, at this time, and relatively rare). Without the stability and control made possible by iron and steel stirrups, horsemen were relatively easily knocked to the ground; whereas, possessed of this seemingly simple advantage, they were very hard to dislodge from their mounts. Two questions concerning Broken’s cavalry, however, remain: If they were indeed using stirrups, why were their mounted units not larger, more heavily armed, or trained in the performance of massed shock tactics that the innovation allowed? Furthermore, from whom did they borrow the all-important advance in mounted technology, which would literally change the face and fate of Europe? Whatever the case, by failing, on the one hand, to increase the size of units that had been given drastically increased shock power, and, on the other, to arm them with the full range of weapons that heavy cavalry mounted with metal stirrups could employ, and by electing instead to maintain their imitation of the Roman model despite possessing a tremendous advantage, the Broken army committed an error of enormous magnitude. —C.C.