Pelasgia
Established Nation
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This post is made as the Acadian Republic.
« La Foi, la Loi, le Progrès »
« Entre la mer et le bayou » ("Between the sea and the bayou") was how Auguste Saint-Clair, one of the few Acadian poets truly worthy of the name, had described his native land. It is said that the King of Burgundy and ruler of the @Holy Frankish Empire at the time had put it even less diplomatically: « Trois villages qui se prennent pour des villes, séparés par des marais et des plaines où il y a plus des citronniers que de gens. » ("Three villages that dare to think of themselves as cities, separated by marshes and by plains where there are more lemon trees than people.") Either way, for Minerve Lachouette, either was a fair description of her country, which stood both at the forgotten tail of northern Occidentia and, in truth, at the very back of the world's thought. The rest of Europe scarcely had any reason to bring Acadiana to mind, save, perhaps, for the rather hilarious episodes the Acadian Republic's blue sky laws offered for the world to look at, thanks to the advent of the internet.
In a sense, Minerve believed that that was partly because this was precisely what the Acadians themselves wished: to be left alone, to continue living out of place and time, as if the whole country were a relic of a bygone era. Having grown up in a humble farming parish on the slightly elevated lands close to the triple border with Josepania and Neu-Scharmbeck, the tall, pale young woman had grown up living a life that could very well have come out of a 19th or 18th century agrarian novel. The only time when the 20th century would sip into her world (full of Catholic masses and hard farm labour) would be through motor vehicles or electric power... and even then, it was only recently that her native commune* of Saint-Polycarpe-des-Monts had been fully electrified and connected to the internet. "Were it not for Le Chef's rural education initiatives and state bursaries," she would always explain when asked how she made it to Marieville, "I probably be mother to five children and part-time orange farmer right now." As far back in the family as she could remember, that had been an accurate description of life in rural Acadiana.
"Why didn't your family come to the cities?" asked Agnes, who had been raised in Vaudreil, the only truly modern and globally relevant city in Acadiana (the rest being apparently stuck somewhere in the first half of the 20th century for the most part). "My grandparents moved to the city, and we had to work in factories, true, but at least there's hospitals and modern schools." Minerve shrugged. "I never knew it was an option." Of her three brothers, one had become a sailor on the high seas, another had migrated to @Natal and the third had died in a coal-mining accident. Her one sister had gotten married to a local notary and was leading a relatively prosperous life, while the other had joined a convent after her husband had run off on the day before their wedding (rumours about town were that he had been a closeted homosexual, though no one could surely know). "Until I was about to drop out of the last class of collège that is," Minerve explained, referring to the Acadian three-year middle school, which preceded lycée (three-year high school). "Mme. Duplessis, the headmistress, insisted that I should not, because I was the best in the class. I protested that my family had not the means to educate me and that I should go work... but it was an election year, thankfully, so Mme. Duplessis pulled some strings and got me a Church scholarship all the way to medical school."
Agnes frowned (and with eyebrows as big as hers, that was quite a frown!), crossing her arms over her sizeable breasts. "Church scholarship? I thought you said that you owed your success to Le Chef's bursaries." Minerve's pale, freckly face grew bright, her checks lighting up almost as much as her reddish brown hair; she smiled widely, so much in fact that she even closed her big blue eyes. "Indeed. The state bursaries were still nascent that year, and so the Church and the old money backing the Union populaire catholique were determined to offer generous alternatives to make them seem redundant. My family, like most of the parish** voted blue, of course... but the Action nationale pour le progrès still won that election handily, painting the map red. And, in the end, it was all for naught. But I still got my bursary, and on the local Bishop's word at that, so they couldn't take it back."
As the two women walked through the cloistered halls of the Institut supérieur de l'État pour les sciences et les lettres,*** they could not help but pause next to a massive window that looked out into the valley that extended beneath the hill that Old Marieville stood on. Saint Mary's Bay seemed almost golden with the rays of the setting sun, while the bronze domes of the city's many churches and other public buildings shined. For a moment, Minerve thought of a poem she had once read about Propontis, the Pelasgian "Queen of Cities" and fancied Sainte-Marie-sur-Vermilion (as Marieville was officially known) to be the Propontis of the West. Agnes, however, cut her thoughts short: "But why did you come to the Institut then? I thought the Church hates our secular education and prefers the University of Sainte-Foy." Minerve nodded, a tress of her chestnut-coloured hair falling on her pitch-black student's robes. "Yes, but the wealthy landowner that funded half the scholarship died, and his son apparently had already squandered most of what was left, so they couldn't pay me. The Institut is free, even if it is harder to get into, so the cost would be less, and the local Bishop offered to cover any living expenses... conditionally of course."
"Is that why you're joining the Order of the Pelican in Her Piety after graduation?" asked Agnes, almost gasping. "Surely there must be a way for you to get out of that obligation? Any State hospital would take you in a heartbeat!" Minerve offered no response, staring out into the city for a few moments more. "One does not cross the Church. Not in Acadiana. Not yet anyway." A bitter expression lingered on her face, but she wiped it off and, with a smile, addressed her friend. « Allons donc ! Il ne pas faut laisser attendre Monsieur le Doyen ! » ("Come then! We mustn't keep the Dean waiting!") And with that, the two young women continued toward the end of the hall, where a finely carved door awaited their knock under a gothic arch. Even the Acadian Republic's most modern university had to be located within a neo-gothic complex to be deemed worthy of the name...
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*commune in this context refers to the Frankish word for a municipality
**parish (paroisse) is the lowest-level administrative unit in the Acadian Republic (which may or may not coincide with an ecclesiastical parish)
***The Institut supérieur de l'État pour les sciences et les lettres (Higher State Institute for the Sciences and Letters) is the Acadian Republic's most prestigious secular, state-run public research university.
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