a bride's story takes place in 1856
none of this is new information and I'm almost certainly not the first person to note it, but I think it's neat.
First, we can get a lower bound for the date from Mr Hawkins' first letter to Henry's parents, in chapter 68:
(TL: "As you are aware, we were able to halt Russia's advance towards the Ottoman Empire, and thus towards the sea, in the war that took place in Crimea.")
The key piece of information here is the perfective: 起こった戦争 implies that the war in question has already ended, which puts us sometime after March of 1856.
The upper bound is implied in chapter 107:
(TL: "I see. I doubt any [Anglican] parish will be willing to marry the two of you. How do you intend to marry her, Henry?" "In Scotland, you can get married anywhere, provided you have two witnesses.")
In 19th century England, the only marriages recognized by law were those conducted in Anglican churches, either between two adults at least 21 years of age or with the consent of both parties' parents. The immediate barrier they're discussing here is Henry's mother's refusal to recognize Talas as his fiancee, but I'm actually a little unclear on why that would be an issue: Henry and Talas are both presumably at least 21 years old. I guess Talas could conceivably still be 19 or 20 if she was first married in her early to mid teens and went through 1-2 husbands a year until meeting Henry.
It could also have to do with her being Muslim, though Anglican churches were certainly willing and able to marry people of other faiths for legal purposes: The advice given to Catholics in England at the time was to hold their wedding in a Catholic church, then have a second, legally binding ceremony at an Anglican church. England's non-insignificant population of Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and others also had to do the same thing to have their marriages legally recognized at this time, so it presumably wasn't that unusual a practice. Maybe it specifically being a mixed-faith, mixed-race wedding is the issue.
The other possibility is that it's not really a legal thing per se, and more just that no church would be willing to conduct such an obviously scandalous wedding between the son of a prominent family and a (probably undocumented) Muslim woman who doesn't even speak English.
Whatever the case, the part that's actually relevant here is Henry's proposal that they elope to Scotland, and the fact that they're currently going through with it. And unless they're planning to live in Scotland for almost a month beforehand--which they can't be, since they've brought Hawkins and Edward along for the ride, rather than going north by themselves and having those two join them later for the marriage:
...this must be happening before the end of 1856, per the Marriage Act of 1856 (Scotland):
Interestingly this means that the alternating chapters following Karluk's time with the Halgals must take place several months after Henry's attempted return trip from Ankara to Karluk and Amira's village: It took about six months to travel between London and Bombay by ship prior to the Suez Canal being opened in 1869, so if Henry and Talas are to make it to Scotland in time to get married before December 31st after having arrived in Ankara sometime during or after March, they must have headed back east and then to Bombay in late April or early May at the very latest. Meanwhile Karluk's POV chapters clearly take place in winter. Possibly Kaoru Mori is just playing a little fast and loose with the travel time here.
In any case, what does this actually mean for where the story's going? Well, we know Amira and Karluk's village is somewhere close to Bukhara. Luckily for them, Russia never approached the Emirate of Bukhara itself until after taking Tashkent in 1865. Whether the village is actually under the jurisdiction of the Emirate or not is a little unclear: The closest hint we get to its location is back in chapter 17, when Henry and Ali are discussing their route to Ankara after Henry gets out of jail and parts with Talas:
We know the town where Henry got arrested is pretty close to Karluk and Amira's village, since they got the news and made it there to bail him out within a few days, and it was close enough that Pariya's parents were fine with sending her along with them. It seems unlikely that the village is directly ruled by Bukhara or Kokand (or Khiva). We get some information as to its politics when the soldiers arrive after the battle with the nomads, in chapter 35:
(TL: "We're peacekeepers here on the order of the provincial lord! We heard this town was attacked by barbarians!")
But it's pretty unspecific. The word he uses for the local ruler, 藩王, literally means a feudal lord, so it's probably being used here to mean a provincial Hakim. The Emirate of Bukhara, the Khivan Khanate, and the Khanate of Kokand were all pretty decentralized, so most likely even if they are nominally under the control of one of those states it's in the form of the aforementioned Hakim sending occasional tribute at most.
It's entirely possible that the residents of Amira and Karluk's village will have to evacuate south towards Bukhara proper as the Russians expand along the Syr Darya through Kokand. What's guaranteed, both historically and from the clear implications of the plot, is that the Halgal clan, who've been displaced even further north, are going to get embroiled in the Russian expansion--and the alliance between the nomads and the village will surely drag everyone else into it, too.
