The King's Shadow Has No Limits

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The Late Renascence historian known as Pannonicus had written that ‘The names of nations are often changed; the names of rivers, never.” Had he contented himself with observing that the names of nations changed more often than those of rivers, his comment would have been more correct. The names of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania had been officially adopted only in the fifth year of the Reign of the present Monarch; the name of the Ister is found on the earliest maps; The so-called Addendum to Procopius quotes a Fragment of Tacitus, now lost, to the effect that "The river of the Galans flows into the Ister,” and so forth. Gaul, Gael, Galan, Galicia, Gallego, Galatia, all mark the marches of that once-widespread people, whose languages are now spoken only in the highlands and islands of the misty Atlantic. The lesser of the two streams on whose banks came into being the great City of Bella still bears, officially, the name of the Gallants . . . but to every nonscholar in the Capital of the Triune Monarchy it is and only is the Little Ister.

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