Peeking into the rock

So I'm just building up some more names in case I need them and first I find myself in a weird little forum where people are discussing Polish names but they also seem to be complaining about the frequency of certain Polish women's names, and about Polish emigrant women being with non-Polish men (and the utter horror of non-European men), so that was distressing, but then I found a man named Trepka who was an impoverish Polish noble of the 16th century who wrote a book denouncing people who claimed to be Szlachta (nobility, but a special Polish kind of nobility) but had non-noble antecedents. And then I found a book called <>God's Playground which is about the earliest history of Poland, and I found the true reason why it's dangerous for people to pay much attention to Yanek. The early form of inheritance divided the lands of the family among the sons and unmarried daughters in equal portions as they came of age, wth the youngest child getting the last bit when the others had left. The szlachta tended to own villages and estates scattered all over the map (useful information all by itself), and the last bit of inheritance that the youngest one got was typically the home that all the children had grown up in.

So this has several implications. I have to decide whether to deal with the scattered-properties thing, since I have posited federated tiny principalities and that's almost the opposite way of handling territory. But the key characteristic of this country is contradictory and confused institutions. And this inheritance pattern was moderated in the 16th century because no szachta family could maintain itself beyond a few generations because of the fragmentation of holdings: there was a new law then that put some properties into entailment and required strict primogeniture for them. Notice the "some." This is clearly the point here. The Skalabeks (apparently that ought to be "skalbekskis," because the -ski ending implies nobility, but I'm not sure of that and the Duke's last name is Steinbrenner ad how do you make a -ski ending stick to that) -- that is, Yanek's birth father's family -- obviously don't have enough of their properties entailment, and he has a lot of older siblings he doesn't really know: and of course they don't want the home property they grew up on to go to the brat their mother chose over them and who has never even seen the place.

On the other hand, his foster father the Duke has a family that is really, really anxious that Yanek not inherit from him either. Even though it's clearly laid out in the wedding contract and in all the relevant wills and deeds that Yanek won't, whenever they get an inkling that the Duke has any affection for the kid they get nervous that the Duke will peel off some of the non-entailed property for Yanek as if he was in fact the oldest surviving son. Even the fact that Yanek's mother managed to split off from her dowry -- property that was strictly her own to dispose of, within limits -- a house in the city of Boem and an estate on its outskirts, is viewed with suspicion by the Duke's family as an unfortunate precedent indicating that things can be split off of family holdings and given to Yanek.

And this is why the Duke mostly keeps Yanek hidden and is having him educated to be a bureaucrat. It's in Yanek's interest to never catch the attention of people who are worried about the family holdings, and to have a job that is useful and independent of noble standing.

Actually, the new information I found his morning mostly only reinforces what I'd already figured out. I do wnt to think a bit about the fragmented holdings vs. principalities thing: I'm thinking that the scattered holdings are indeed there, and are, as in the real world, a remnant, while the principalities are a stage on the way to nation-building and are in fact obsolete themselves, as are most things in the Marezhki Empire Federation.

side note: I am sitting on a futonesque loveseat (hello sims players) that I just brought into my bedroom since last week I emptied my room and it's making me itch. I thought I had removed all the remnant of rat -- apparently one of the carnivores had decided that the bottom of the couch was a good place to deposit an offering in the rat wars and because the couch was being stored in a corner of the other bedroom I didn't notice it, of course. I vacuumed the feathers off the thing, rather the fur, but apparently it needs to be washed too. In general my broom is looking good. It needs to be painted and the doors need to be set into the closet and the attic access, and there is one bit of wall that's to have built-in shelves and is therefore raw now, but I have removed most of the boxes (almost 3 years later)and I am on a regular vacuuming schedule, sort of. I see some dust in a corner as I type, though, which I will vacuum later when I work on this sofa.

Other thoughts about not-Poland apply to some other stories I have sort-of outlined (one for a just-for-fun anthology), which apparently take place in the same world. One of them also pivots on a question of inheritance. It's a much more magical story, having as its detective character a part-time alchemist, and taking place centuries earlier. Another character in it is --unknown to himself -- the actual heir to the key holdings of one of the second-tier noble families of the city. "Holdings" being the appropriate word, because what most people don't know is that the property actually belongs to the "uncivilized" indigenous clan that lives at the suburban estates as apparent sharecroppers, and the noble family only owns a use right. Anyway, what I think now is that Yanek's mother is a descendant of both those families, and that the house and the land that Yanek inherits are part of that property. That's a story that threatens to be a novel also, since it involves a cold case murder mystery, a Count-of-Monte-Cristo sort of return from the presumed-dead, and so on and so on.

Considering that I do not like to write about the upper classes I seem to have quite a few stories involving nobility lately. Well, when they are done I can stop it. The other story involving the city of Boem isn't about nobility. I'm still working it out, but I know it involves something like a tinker, a student, some doorways, at least one beer cellar, and maybe an astronomical clock. And love, of course. And I don't know what time period it's in.

. . . well, I wrote that yesterday and the laptop suddenly died without warning that I could see. Apparently the brand new battery on this laptop gives me about an hour of work time. I almost never try to use it without the cord. It is depressing that I don't seem to actually have a portable computer after all.

Currently I am wondering how the Palace servants address Yanek when he is a teenager apprenticed to the clerks in the Ministry of Advancement (that is, agricultural, industrial, and natural resource development). He's not a little boy of ambiguous semi-noble status anymore. Now he's almost a man, and functionally a junior clerk's assistant, which is a distinctly middle-class thing to be. So is he still "Master Yanek?" Or is he "Mister Something?" And how do they decide whether he is Mr. Skalabek (his birth father's name) or Mr. Steinbrenner (his foster father's name)? It's a plot point that it's uncertain what surname he should use and that the country is backward enough that a lot of people get through life sin apellido. I'm thinking that if the events that are going to happen in less than twenty pages didn't happen, he'd be taking the University exam under the name "Steinbrenner."

Frank says in chat he'd still be a prince, or at least a Baron, and servants would call him Lord or Your Honor but that's ridiculous so Sir it is.

posting now. I need to put this effort elsewhere.

There was this slight whiff of old cabbage in the room where the computer lives. For days at a time I live on cabbage-and-stuff, and I'm a clumsy slob, so I figured I must have spilled something. I kind of desultorily looked for it. The smell got stronger and less like cabbage.

Something I didn't realize was connected until later: the cat kept taking up a station in the middle of that room -- which is midway between his dish and out bed, so we can be excused for thinking it was just more cat nonsense -- and staring at us, and yelling. Not yowling. Meowing loudly. The dog did nothing unusual.

Three days of this and I'm finally digging around under the computer desk with a broom. To be fair, the room is dark and under there is darker, and the floor is only a bit darker than the rat that I found right under the desk about two hands length from where my foot would rest if it reached the floor (yes, I'm that short).

It's cleaned up now but boy, am I embarrassed. About as embarrassed as I was last night when my friend's son, passing through on a visit, saw my house at its nadir again.

On another front, and one that indicates nothing inferior about me but my luck, the alienated little girl at the Long's "mailing center" who kept muttering how much she hated her job screwed up my very expensive onternational express mail delivery of December rent money to my son. She left off the customs declaration form -- maybe I should have known about it, but I didn't, as I have never sent an internatinal express mail letter before, though we have sent two international priority mail boxes. We've only lost exactly the time that I paid for. If I have to pay the postage all over again I'll be ballistic. Either way I'm going to demand my money back, something I never do. Also? I will never using their mailing center again. It costs more and you might as well wait for the post office to be open, or fight the traffic, or walk the extra blocks. This time I thought I was in a hurry, and I couldn't get any closer to the post office than the Long's parking lot because of the holiday parade. Santa Cruz does a big thing for every winter holiday you can name. This is a summer resort town, among other things, and so anything that can get tourists and shoppers into town is embraced fervently.