Constantinople is the city on the Bosporus where Asia and Europe meet (Byzantium before, Istanbul after): over 400,000 inhabitants, capital of the Empire at its height around 1000, and economic, spiritual and cultural focus of humanity.
| Type | Place (city) |
| Spanish entry | Constantinopla |
Description
From the sea it appears as “the line of towers, turrets and domes”; locals say the many domes keep lightning away. Streets are paved with marble; houses have porches covered in vines and ivy. A map from Theodosius’s time shows the city, Hagia Sophia and the Golden Horn. Plains lie beyond the walls of Constantine; naval battles occur off the dark coasts at night.
Government rests on a triad: the palace and its private gardens, Hagia Sophia, and the hippodrome, whose clubs are “the true political factions of this city”. In 1050–1055 Queen Theodora reigns, knowing “the walls of Constantine will not hold”. Around 1150 power is split between an empress and another woman, wife of an important man she chose as consort; the Patriarch is Saint Michael or Michael I.
The city is open to Muslim, pagan and Christian (including iconoclast) creeds, and debates whether angels have a sex. Its libraries hold manuscripts, codices, wax tablets, possibly cuneiform, and forbidden books; the first translations of the Black Book appeared here. The Imperial Library is destroyed in 1200 and again in 1400; the city falls in 1453.
For one century chronomancers established their knowledge here. It is the only place where flare magic works, and a point where travelers arriving by ship changed time.
Routes
The city ends sea routes and heads the pilgrims’ land road south through Ankara, Caesarea, Tyana and Tarsus to Ephesus and the secret caves of the Sleepers near Tarsus: 792 miles (about 1,200 km), two weeks traveling fast.
Role
A company knows the city “because we were its rulers”. An infection by the creature inside the city would be a disaster. Strange twins are tied to its cosmological events; that record is very unclear.
Open questions
- How the library’s destructions relate to the fall of 1453 is not established.
- Whether Saint Michael and Michael I are one person, and who the two women of 1150 are, is unknown.
- Which century the chronomancers chose, and when the company ruled, is not recorded.
- Whether the “consort” of Theodora’s prophecy is the emperor or a figure who will return is unknown.
- Currency, prices, and the locations of the travelers’ meeting alley and landing port are not recorded.