Late June 2009

Some weeks ago, as I read some novel or other late/early on a Friday night/Saturday morning after a day of Boy’s History of the World-related frustrations, a character to whom I had not previously been introduced commenced telling me how, on his sixteenth birthday, instead of receiving the car every sixteen-year-old boy dreams about, he was given an itinerary and tickets for a summer trip to Europe. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have been especially interested.

But then Nate (that was his name) went on to say it wasn’t Europe in general he would be visiting but, specifically, an island in the Adriatic off the coasts of Montenegro and Albania, an island that in itself constituted the fifth-smallest European sovereign nation. Mildly intrigued, I let him continue. He would be travelling, Nate said, with their mother’s baby brother Jonny and Jonny’s husband (they were married the month same-sex marriage became legal in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts), who happened to be a member of the exiled royal family of that tiny nation.

At 3.01 AM on Saturday, 6 June 2009, I created a new word-processing file on my little Mac. Not knowing what to call it (I still don’t), I labelled the file “the unexpected thing.pages” and starting writing. In three and a half weeks I’ve hardly stopped: some 16,000 words/60 pages. That’s not counting a stack of background notes, including the rough draft of a tourist brochure:

Welcome to Magical MXHET … the island of thyme!

Did You Know…?

1. •Mxhet is the fifth-smallest nation in Europe. Only Liechtenstein, San Marino, Monaco, and the Vatican are smaller.
   

2. •Mxhet is the site of some of the oldest structures in the world. Only the megalithic complex of Ġgantija on Gozo in Malta is definitively older than the neolithic temple at Bidrezhd (ca 2500 BCE).
   

3. •“Mxhet” is the name of both the nation and its capital city. The city of Mxhet was founded on the site of a minor fishing port ca 310 CE by agents of the Western Roman Emperor Maxentius (ca 278 - 312 CE; ruled 306 - 312 CE) as a palace complex for his eventual retirement, intended to surpass his predecessor Diocletian’s similar palace at Spalatum (now the city of Split, Croatia). Unfortunately for him, Maxentius was killed in battle with forces of rival Emperor Constantine I in 312 CE. It is believed he never visited the never completed palace.
   

4. •Mxhet has been formally independent since 688 CE when, after an unsuccessful fifteen-year siege, the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire recognized the island’s sovreignty in exchange for a nominal annual tribute. In actual fact, the island had been effectively independent for several centuries previous.
   

5. •Mxhet is the only nation of the Balkan region that was never integrated, however briefly, into the Ottoman Empire. Sultan Mehmet II Fatih, conqueror of Constantinople, formally recognized Mxhet’s independence in exchange for continuation of the tribute formerly offered to the Byzantines. This tribute was tendered annually from 1453 CE until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 CE.
   

6. •Mxhet has, in its history, been closely aligned with various regional superpowers which guaranteed the state’s sovereignty, including the Republic of Ragusa (9th - 12th centuries CE), the Republic of Venice (12th - 18th centuries CE), and the Austrian and Austro-Hungarian Empires (19th century CE). Mxhet has been neutral and nonaligned by statute since the end of the First World War (1918 CE).
   

7. •Mxhet has never been occupied by foreign forces except briefly (1939 -1944 CE) during World War II, when the island was made part of Mussolini’s Italian Empire.
   

8. •Mxhet is the only European nation the majority of whose population does not subscribe to either Christianity or Islam. Some 85% of Mxhet’s citizens remain devoted to the island’s ancient, pre-Christian, polytheistic religion, some elements of which may date to the Neolithic era! Nevertheless, freedom of religion and conscience is guaranteed to all and there are vibrant Jewish, Muslim, and Christian (including Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and several Protestant denominations) communities.
   

9. •Mxhet’s national language, Sotic, is unrelated to any other in the world. English and other European tongues are also widely spoken throughout the island, as more than 50% of the population is functionally bilingual.
   

10. •Mxhet is a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Non-Aligned Movement, and other European and international organizations. It is not, nor does it expect to become, a member of the European Union.
    

11. •Mxhet is a principality, that is a state ruled by a princely house. The Royal House of Sotorra-Mxhet, first mentioned in chronicles of the 4th century CE, ruled in Mxhet until sent into exile in 1939 CE during the Italian intervention. Since that time, the nation has been governed under the stewardship of His Majesty’s Regent until such time as the princely family resolves internal matters of precedence and the nation may welcome home its rightful Prince.

Naturally, the unexpected thing is evolving into a love story as well as a story of political, supernatural, and magical intrigue and adventure. I hope to surprise myself, my characters, and you more than once in the process.

[Background reading: Jan Morris, Hav: comprising Last Letters from Hav & Hav of the Myrmidons (1985-2006); Lisa Goldstein, Tourists (1989); Peter Cameron, Andorra (1997).]

Maps. Unfinished maps.

The island principality of Mxhet, fifth-smallest nation in Europe.

The walled old city in the capital, founded as  the palace of a Roman emperor in 310 CE.