Thanks for this reminder post on how slow travel in pre-modern times could be. I especially like the comments about the banshee. I remember a book by late Victorian ghost-hunter Elliott O'Donnell where he commented on how his family's banshee once put in an appearance when he was a boy. It cried and wailed all night long. He said his mother and aunt were convinced that a sickly relative of theirs was dead. The next day they learn that she's fine, leaving them confused. It took months before they learned that Elliott's father, a missionary in foreign lands, had been killed on that night. And that was the late 19th century.
The bits about travel time also put me in mind of one story from the Xanadu series where the Empress goes to visit a strong ally of her empire. Given that her empire was a bit shaky, being only about a generation old, and word got back about her ship being sunk (she lived and eventually made it back home), and how long it would take for word to get around, I have to wonder how much of an empire she had left when she returned!
Oh, yes. The improvements of travel meant that word could travel much faster, but also that people could travel much farther. Even into the 20th century, news of far-off people could be hard to get.
This also helps make me realize something about the one comic I'm always going on about. Where a young girl is commanded by the Emperor to be sent to the Imperial court as a playmate/friend for the imperial heir. Which means she leaves her family, who live on the empire's fringes, because if they were any closer they would've been dragged into court politics. Though little mention is made of how she felt over almost never seeing her family again, even if she and her mother did exchange letters.
It was a little worse for this young lady as this was a multi-racial court, with almost all of it composed of near-immortal and magic wielding 'Mythicals' (anthropomorphic unicorns, dragons, griffons, etc.), and she was a Freeborn fox. She was the only one in the imperial court who wasn't a servant or guard. I always wondered what her childhood at the court must have been like given that she was surrounded by nobles who looked on her as being literally a lower life form, but at the same time they tried to bribe or otherwise manipulate her as a 'back door' to influence with the imperial heir.
Agreed. Which was (to me) a subtle way of showing just how strong-willed both young women were in that they turned out to be decent people in spite of all the temptations that must have been presented to them.
Thanks for this reminder post on how slow travel in pre-modern times could be. I especially like the comments about the banshee. I remember a book by late Victorian ghost-hunter Elliott O'Donnell where he commented on how his family's banshee once put in an appearance when he was a boy. It cried and wailed all night long. He said his mother and aunt were convinced that a sickly relative of theirs was dead. The next day they learn that she's fine, leaving them confused. It took months before they learned that Elliott's father, a missionary in foreign lands, had been killed on that night. And that was the late 19th century.
The bits about travel time also put me in mind of one story from the Xanadu series where the Empress goes to visit a strong ally of her empire. Given that her empire was a bit shaky, being only about a generation old, and word got back about her ship being sunk (she lived and eventually made it back home), and how long it would take for word to get around, I have to wonder how much of an empire she had left when she returned!
Oh, yes. The improvements of travel meant that word could travel much faster, but also that people could travel much farther. Even into the 20th century, news of far-off people could be hard to get.
This also helps make me realize something about the one comic I'm always going on about. Where a young girl is commanded by the Emperor to be sent to the Imperial court as a playmate/friend for the imperial heir. Which means she leaves her family, who live on the empire's fringes, because if they were any closer they would've been dragged into court politics. Though little mention is made of how she felt over almost never seeing her family again, even if she and her mother did exchange letters.
Odds are good that girls normally left their homes. Usually to marry, of course.
It was a little worse for this young lady as this was a multi-racial court, with almost all of it composed of near-immortal and magic wielding 'Mythicals' (anthropomorphic unicorns, dragons, griffons, etc.), and she was a Freeborn fox. She was the only one in the imperial court who wasn't a servant or guard. I always wondered what her childhood at the court must have been like given that she was surrounded by nobles who looked on her as being literally a lower life form, but at the same time they tried to bribe or otherwise manipulate her as a 'back door' to influence with the imperial heir.
Courts are never fun.
Agreed. Which was (to me) a subtle way of showing just how strong-willed both young women were in that they turned out to be decent people in spite of all the temptations that must have been presented to them.