everyone is so alive

Bonus:

Just where IS Genovia?

I’d been assuming it was somewhere in the Low Countries, Luxembourg style, but that doesn’t jive with many of the descriptions given

So I did some thinking and weighed all of the evidence.

Genovia is described as having both mountains and access to the ocean while still being a really tiny nation, so it has to be somewhere where mountains and water are in close proximity.

Though many characters have British accents, I would attribute this to local schools teaching British English, which is standard in Europe. Other accents are varied but many seemed to be German-sounding, or vaguely Eastern-European. It would make sense if Genovia was located close to the German-speaking countries then, something that’s backed up by the seemingly high relevance of one of Mia’s suitors: a “count of Austria.” Either that, or its in/near the Slavic regions.

The real puzzler is the artwork and architecture however. There’s a scene in which Mia finds a secret passage in an old chapel, the walls of which are decorated in Byzantine-style fresco/mosaic.

So Genovia has to be somewhere that was part of the Eastern Roman Empire, has both mountains and beaches, and has a bit of Germanic or Slavic language influence.

There is only one country I can think of that meets all of these criteria:

Slovenia.

It has both the Alps and the Mediterranean, it’s directly south of Austria but is primarily Slavic, and it was a part of the Roman Empire up until the 4th or 5th centuries AD, when it was contested between the Ostrogothic Kingdom and the Byzantine Empire.