New England

There’s the fragment of a story – barely a folktale – about a kingdom on the shore of the Black Sea called “England”. It’s an odd little saga kernel.

Basically, in the 11th Century, a group of Saxons fled the Norman invasion of England by putting to sea. They raided their way through the Mediterranean, until they came to the aid of the Emperor of Constantinople. In exchange for their service he granted them lands on the Black Sea coast.

There are only two sources for the story. The earliest is Chronicon Universale Anonymi Laudunensis which was written by an English monk i Picardy, and covers the history of the world until 1219. Note the suspcious date, for Ars Magica purposes. The other is the Játvarðar Saga which is an Icelandic saga about the, fictionalised, life of Edward the Confessor. It was written in the 14th Century, and may have drawn on the previously-mentioned book for its core details, elaborating them.

The saga is a little more prolix. Basically Siward of Glouxester leads the people who had stood again the Normans into exile. In the Pircardian book he’s called Standardus, because it’s in Latin. They are lead by three earls and eight barons, and fill a fleet of 350 (or 245) ships. On their way south they plunder Ceuta in Africa, then seize the Balearic Islands. Proceeding to Sicily (or perhaps Sardinia), they continue to cause trouble, until they heard Constantinople is under siege.

The English arrive and break the siege. Alexios I Komnenos, the Emporer, offers to take them all on as royal bodyguards. He died in 1118, which gives us a date range for the story. This is apparently not an origin story for the Varangian Guard, although some of the English do stay on to join that group. The rest are granted land that the Empire had previously lost, six days sail from the capital. They took it by force, then sent for Hungarian priests (as the didn’t want to embrace Eastern Orthodoxy). The towns in New England were named after those in the old country: the largest being called London. In Latin their area is called Nova Anglia, and they are refered to as the Angli orientales (eastern English), The Chronicon adds that they killed an Imperial messenger sent to demand tribute, which caused their bretheren who had remained in the capital to flee to the new homeland. They then took up piracy.

Where the English settled is an open question. Oderic Vitalis has some of them in a town called Civiltot in Anatolia. Later historians have suggested the current city of Novorossiysk was an English town., called Susaco in period. Susaco clearly existed: it’s on trading maps, but there’s great doubt that it’s the name “Sussex” translated into Greek. The maps also show a river north-east of Susaco, called Londina, which is claimed as “London”. Christine Fell mentions that the Vulan River might be the Londina, although it is not in the correct location compared to modern Novorossiysk .

This puts them on the very edge of the Crimea. On the same maps there are also two cities with names referring to Varangians on the Crimean Peninsula, and one at the mouth of the Don, the river that empties into the Sea of Azov. This gives them effective control of the Kerch Strait and control of the trade route down the Don to Constantinople.

A final historical note is that the Pope sent ambassadors to the Mongols in 1241, and they passed through this area, describing the people as “Saxi”, noting they were Christians, fierce warriors, and lived in fortified cities. This keeps the settlements active well past the Ars Magica start date.

If you have a covenant in Stonehenge, which is a popular choice for new groups, you might consider that the emigration to the East was a covenant fleeing the Tytalus-inspired Normans. Alternatively, a covenant in the far east and your own covenant might be linked: an emigree may have taken an Arcane Connection, so that the two groups are able to communicate, or event travel between sites.

A spring covenant sent to Eastern England might prove interesting. At home you have the English culture, which is readily understood by most players, but outside the covenant you have Tartar magicians, Mongol shapeshifters, Russian forest spirits and the ruins of the Roman province of Cherson. Across the sea is the disrupted Theban Tribunal, and even closer is the proffered, but habituating, assistance of the Tremere.