The People's Tapestry - Historical Culture Revamp for the Mediterranean

[perry7484]

---Coming Soon! Just lend me a few days to adjust, feature-fix, and set up melting pots&features. Sit tight!---​

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Just as Rome was not built in a day, its people - its traditions - didn't suddenly go out with the candle flame; no, it took centuries for our modern world to take shape -- this mod aims to bring some of that dynamic back to the territory of the former Roman Empire, with historical groups of people -- though not all of them will be around for very long.

CURRENT FEATURES​

Localization in Old Occitan & Catalan for their respective regions (Toulouse -> Tolosa, Auvergne -> Alvèrnhatz, Cote d'Azur -> Còsta d'Azur, etc.)

New Latin-group cultures in their historical regions, with their own unique character names, as well as their half-Romanized Germanic counterparts:

- Hispanic and Romano-Gothic (forms Catalan, Castilian, Occitan, etc.)
- Gallo-Roman and Romano-Frank (forms French, unless ruled by a Romano-Frank or Latin ruler)
- Dalmatian - The historical culture of the Romanized balkans, gives way to Croatian over time. By the 1080s is confined to Ragusa (where it remained an official language for several more ceturies), and Istria (because I don't quite know how to simulate the movements of Italians, Dalmatians, Romanians, and Slavs all in a one-province minor)
- Daco-Roman and Thraco-Roman - Evolve into Romanian within a few centuries
- Thraco-Greek - Historically mostly eaten by the Bulgarian Slavs, this one only holds two provinces and may not last too long ingame...
- Pannonian - Latin Christians that survived until the late 8th century, present in CM start but historically died out by the end of the century.
- Sardinian - One of the first languages to diverge from the main branch of Italo-Western Romance developing. Distinct enough from Italian to be its own culture, so here it is. Still present to this day.
- Italo-Lombard - Should develop into Italian within the next few centuries.
- Raeto-Roman - Gradually loses ground but survives to this day as the Romansh culture.
- Illyrian Culture & Group - Because how could you forget the Albanians?? Illyrian culture evolves into Albanian over time, though having a Slavic ruler just may speed it up a bit.

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PLANNED/CONSIDERED FEATURES​

A way to simulate the cultural situation in North Africa, less than a century after the Arab conquests (Latin Christians - including what remains of the Vandals, the Donatist heresy, Berber versus Maghrebi cultures, and Mauri -- or, Moorish -- culture)

Levantine cultures - Assyrian, Babylonian - Remember that this is only ~100 years after the Arabs showed up, most peoples aren't quite assimilated yet...

Splinter cultures in the Greek diaspora - Coptic for Egypt (Alexandria, Cyrenaica?), Cappadocian for Anatolia, Italiot for Italy

Crimean Gothic

Cultural splintering in the mid-to-late game, if your centralization/crown authority is low -- mirrors the regional split in quasi-independent Europe IRL, and (if I ever get that far) makes the late game more interesting.

Exactly where in Switzerland was the Language split at this point in time? We get provençal and names like "Neuchatel" out of the western area in the middle ages -- should it then be Romano-Frank? Romano-Alemannic?

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DOWNLOAD LINKS:
N/A (Soon to change! I'll keep you posted!)​

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Thank you all for looking at my mod -- And, as I like to say, have a good one!

-​

 

[perry7484]

This is, eh, Reserved!

 

[perry7484]

This too!

 

[Andrelvis]

This is pretty cool I don't like much how vanilla conflates Germanic groups and the Latin/Romance peoples they ruled over.

 

[loup99]

Interesting! A lot of the things you are adding or considering for the 769 reminds me of the discussions on cultures and melting-pots for WtWSMS.

 

[perry7484]

This is pretty cool I don't like much how vanilla conflates Germanic groups and the Latin/Romance peoples they ruled over.

Oui - The Italians absorbed the incoming Germanics... Twice. By the late 700s, the Germanic "Lombard" culture had all but died out, with even hairstyles disappearing. I may melting-pot it into some kind of north Italian north of the La Spezia-Rimini line though, as that's where the Germanic and Gallic influences were strong enough to affect pronunciation even in the present -- but I would need to think over this before I tried implementing/enacting it.

 

[perry7484]

Interesting! A lot of the things you are adding or considering for the 769 reminds me of the discussions on cultures and melting-pots for WtWSMS.

Both WTWSMS and this mod essentially deal with opposite ends of the same period of migrations shaping Europe and the Near East, although by 769 there's been time for the incomers to be assimilated by the people, or vice versa. In the Arab-controlled regions, however, the current order is only about a century old -- not enough time to convert or assimilate everyone. Religion and culture are likely similar to what they were during the conquests of the early 600s...

(For the record, BTW, I really enjoy WTWSMS, though I've not played in a while - doesn't matter if I'm playing as Byzantium or as Frank chow -- Soissons, I'm looking forward to future updates - especially the prospect of a 395 or Justinian update. Illu Novu Imperiu Romanu -- Por illa victoria, et por semper! -- Or something in the early Vulgate... )

 

[Fabuloscriptor]

Feel free to adapt the culture files I wrote for WTWSMS and a couple of other mods! There's African Romance, Daco-Romance, Gallo-Romance, etc. in there; probably some stuff you can use.

 

[perry7484]

Feel free to adapt the culture files I wrote for WTWSMS and a couple of other mods! There's African Romance, Daco-Romance, Gallo-Romance, etc. in there; probably some stuff you can use.

I'll be sure to have a look -- Thank you so much!

 

[perry7484]

Feel free to adapt the culture files I wrote for WTWSMS and a couple of other mods! There's African Romance, Daco-Romance, Gallo-Romance, etc. in there; probably some stuff you can use.

I'll be sure to have a look -- Thank you so much!

I can let you look at the list of names I came up with, trying to reverse-engineer modern, medieval and vanilla French names back to pre-900s (Prior to medieval L->U, St->T, C->Ch, A->E, etc.)

Sample partial lists, and explanation:
(For the Romano-Franks, things like: Albin rather than Aubrin; Anton/Antonin/Anthon/Anthony rather than Antoine, Alaria rather than Alaire, etc.)

(For the Gallo-Romans, names like: Amable, Bastian, Amor, Annet, Boniface, Gaetan, Honori/Honorat, Modeste/Modestin, Placide, Prosper, Roman; Amata, Alodia, Beatrix, Clemença, Joia, Justina, Plesança, etc.)

^Modwise this usually transitions to French within a few decades, and is meant to become both French and Occitan, so pardon the too-old-to-sound-very-French bit

 

[Fabuloscriptor]

I can let you look at the list of names I came up with, trying to reverse-engineer modern, medieval and vanilla French names back to pre-900s (Prior to medieval L->U, St->T, C->Ch, A->E, etc.) ...

This is what I attempted with the WTWSMS files - my versions of Old French (Franceis), non-Frankish d'oil (Galleis) and Old Moselle Romance are all sort-of-reconstructions of Old French in the first two cases and Gallo-Romance in the latter, with different name lists. I think Old Moselle Romance is the closest to common Gallo-Romance; Franceis and Galleis are more like Mediaeval French.

Franceis, for example, has Albery instead of Aubrey and Carles instead of Charles, and given that Gallo-Romance will flip to vanilla's 'Frankish' pretty early, it might make sense just to use Old French (or to use Old French and my 'Galleis' culture, which represents non-Germanic-influenced d'oil Gallo-Romance in WTWSMS). I remember that, at the time, I reconstructed further back than Old French, but the orthography would either be impenetrable to most readers or it would result in something with very little cosmetic difference from either French or Italian. 'Carles', for example, is pronounced like 'kar-lez', not like 'carls' as it would be in French orthography; going back further you either get pseudo-Latin or something which is written the same way even if it's meant to be pronounced differently. The 'pseudo-Latin' option is sort of what Old Moselle Romance is.

I should clarify, some of them are 'fantastic'/pure conlangs, like African Romance, because it's unattested, or Slavic Romance, because it never existed. I based African Romance on Proto-Sardinian because the only accounts suggest that it was similar in some respects to Sardinian, and geographically that makes some sense. Slavic Romance was based on Eastern Romance with some Western Romance features, to reflect its geographical location at the boundary between the Eastern and Western Romance-speaking areas. Others, like Daco-Romance, are attempts at partially reconstructing Proto-Eastern-Romance at varying degrees of remoteness. I can't claim that they're true reconstructions - I don't have either access to a large enough lexicon or more than amateur knowledge of historical linguistics - but they should at least be plausible enough for adding a little flavour to the early game. This Daco-Romance culture is probably the closest to a 'proper' reconstruction, though I'm sure there are errors.

 

[omega20056]

Don't forget the Crimean Goths. There's also literary evidence to Gothic being spoken in Constantia until the 840s. A German monk from Swabia visited the area and recorded the presence of a Germanic language there and around the Danube.