Frank Van Meer asked Heather Rose Jones:

Silly question: Where exactly would the fictional nation of Alpennia be located in this universe? I ask (because I have time on my hands and I'm silly like that) because in both Daughter of Mystery and The Mystic Marriage, a route via Marseille is being discussed and I just can't see Austrians travelling that way .

Heather Rose Jones Alpennia is a sort of "Ruritania" in the sense of being inserted into the existing geography of Europe without actually replacing or displacing any existing countries. For that reason, I tend to be rather vague about the specific borders to avoid contradicting reality. But if you will allow for a certain elasticity of geography, Alpennia is located roughly in a place where it can border on France, Italy, and Switzerland. Travel via Marseille is mentioned specifically in the context of winter travel when a more direct eastern or south-eastern route over the Alps wouldn't be practical. So the options for travel to Vienna would be either south and then either a coastal or sea route, or north and via Germany (which would still involve mountains at some point).

Under normal circumstances, of course, summer travel to points east would be more direct. Unless there happened to be some sort of mystical interference with the alpine weather patterns that was designed to prevent the easy movement of large numbers of people (such as military units) by those routes …. (Which just _might_ be a relevant plot point in the next book, Mother of Souls.)

By pure coincidence, I was planning to blog about Alpennian geography today. I haven't posted it yet so I can't provide a direct link, but check out http://hrj.livejournal.com under the "Alpennia" tag later for more discussion.

Thank you so much for your question! I love talking about my world-building.

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