#asturia

Asturian-Cantabrian Bronze: in what would become the tribal territory of the Astures in the Iberian Iron Age, to the west of the Pisuerga, there was a distinct absence of the sort of Bell Beaker pottery which was characteristic of Ciempozuelos.

El Nuberu is a character of Asturian, Cantabrian, Galician and northern Castilian mythology- a bearded old man with a wide-brimmed hat who lives in the clouds, often depicted wearing goat leathers he has been reported to drive a charior pulled by Iberian wolves. El Nuberu (literally "Clouder") controls the rain and lightning, and likely derives from the old Iberian Celtic weather god, Taranis.

Cudillero, Spain (No. 4)

In the Modern Age, Cudillero is already consolidated, being the Asturian fishing center and a series of buildings appear such as the church of San Pedro built by its inhabitants. A pier is also built in the port and the castle of San Juan to defend against English incursions.

In the eighteenth century, the residents of the place offered 1000 doubloons to segregate themselves from the jurisdiction of the council of Pravia since they could not name their positions, but this would not come until a hundred years later. At that time there was only one stately preserve in this territory: that of San Pedro de Boca de Mar, belonging to the house of Omaña.

Okay, let’s finally do this. Egzardia is another of Asturia’s neighbors and allies and the home to a certain snake of a prince in my fic; not a popular character I guess, but also real fun to write!

So what do we know about this country from the series, artbooks and other official material? So, similar to Basram (the previous in the WDWK series), this fictional country seemed to have an obvious source of inspiration, which was the Earth’s France. Or was it?

Canon information

1. Egzardia is a country famed for its fashions

And that is what first pointed into the direction of France. The pants that Millerna wears are somewhat outrageous in Asturia but in Egzardia, where she got them from, they are the height of fashion. Here’s Millerna, her pants, and a bonus “come at me bro” Allen.

So, the new trends for the daring come from Egzardia, as the Filmbooks confirm also near the picture of the soldiers (”when it’s not uniforms, Egzardia seems to set the trends in fashion”).

This sort of goes together also with the fact that “they try to make even their guymelefs beautiful” (Roman artbook). The same book also says their guymelefs have elegant, round shapes (the Mazdas of guymelef world haha).

2. Egzardia is a neighboring country to Asturia

Because Asturia formed an alliance with its neighboring countries (episode 23).  The map of Gaea (from the Vision of Escaflowne Fanbook) puts it north of Basram and South of Zaibach. Makes you wonder where the border with Asturia was supposed to lie? But yeah, as we know now, this whole map is fanon.  

3. The design of the soldiers/guymelefs

Regarding the soldier designs, it is, again, obvious that somebody did their homework and looked up the 17th-18th century military uniforms as an inspiration.

Here is the Egzardian general named Jardi (Jarudi) and his regular soldier underling. There are no official transcriptions of these names so we can only guess how it was supposed to be transcribed (Giardi? Jardie?).

Anyway, what I was able to figure out was that the inspiration for the general was the European uniform of a grenadier (the soldier who throws grenades) that became distinguished from other troops in 17th century. Mostly because of the mitre cap (like the Pope wears) which is a trademark of this troop.

Upon closer look, the closest examples look to be the British grenadiers! The bottom part of the mitre above the forehead in particular looks very British (compare).

So was I off with France after all? When you google French grenadier, you see that mostly their mitre caps are all fur and they look a bit further away from our guy Jardi... but he does have a French-looking pom-pom on the top of his hat... and the gillet, the gaiters... guess the uniforms of the era had these elements often in common.

Here’s image for ants of Jardi from the back (Settei Artbook). I want to use the ponytail and bow on Gilles’ design as well.

4. The flag/coat of arms

It looks like this (this is my work using the sketch in the artbooks and coloring it according to the scheme shown in the anime).

So, what do you think it represents? I think the other crests are more obvious in that than this one. The only thing that comes to my mind is a variation of Fleur de Lys, but I guess it’s because I’m partial to France with this. Or maybe a fancy-looking spear? They definitely use spears on the battlefield.

(don’t ask me why Basram flag is involved in a shot of mostly Egzardian soldiers lol)

5. The Egzardian warship is called Triville. 

For this, we have a transcription from the official subs. Tréville is a commune/family name in France (okay, not to be too partial to France, you can find another little town called Treville in Italy). And also a character (based on a real historical figure) called Monsieur de Tréville in Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. The name seems related the region of Trois-Villes, so basically, tréville is a fancier way of spelling “Three Towns” to my understanding. But there was also a French admiral de Latouche-Tréville who had three French ships named Latouche-Tréville after him, so this seems the most likely inspiration, if there was any.

So what did I do with this information so far?

SECRET [65/?] (source: Escaflowne Newtype Filmbook 2, p. 30)

That would be the very same tournament that Allen won and caught himself a Caeli title... and Princess Marlene’s eye. Budokan is the legendary Tokyo venue of all kinds, but especially, music and martial arts events. “Live at Budokan” is something that may ring a bell.