"The war is two hundred kilometres away. It gets here on Tuesdays, in the paper, along with the price of wheat." — satire published in Cracoviana, 1889
160,000 inhabitants, stagnant since 1880. Capital of Vykhradia — and the least powerful capital on the continent relative to the size of its own realm.
Urban geography
Situation
- The Vykhradian Plateau, at the point where the river Vykhra leaves the beech forest and enters the open cereal country. A city on flat ground, with no natural defence at all.
- That is the founding fact: Vykhrad is no fortress because it never needed to be. It stands two hundred and ten kilometres from the line of the Vychodstep. No Pactuary Host ever reached here. Cracoviana, Solnica and Cherniwicz take the blows; Vykhrad receives the news.
- A city of broad straight avenues, redrawn in the 1840s over a medieval layout, with parade squares that rarely see troops on a real march.
Climate
Continental. A hard dry winter, a moderate summer, a spring and an autumn of a few weeks. Dust in summer, mud at the thaw, packed snow from December to March. The cereal defines the whole social calendar: the court season begins when the harvest ends.
The power: the king arbitrates, the magnates govern
Canonical decision: the real power of Vykhradia is not in Vykhrad.
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