Ile-Rien

Ile-Rien is a fictional country which is the setting for five fantasy novels by Martha Wells. It is a centralized monarchy governed by the Fontainon dynasty, governing from their ornate capital of Vienne. It is also the home of the university-city of Lodun, a great center of learning, producing world-renowned scholars in medicine, law and sorcery. Its neighbors are the nations of Adera, Umberwald and Parscia, as well as Bisra, its long-standing enemy. Ile-Rien shares a coastline along the Western Ocean with Parscia.

Superficially, Ile-Rien resembles France, with its highly sophisticated culture, cuisine and fashions, as well as its one-time rarefied nobility. Many of the names invented by Wells have a Gallic flavor to them. Additionally, Wells uses French terms with respect to food and drink. Although the name "Ile-Rien" is taken from the French for "Island of Nothing", Wells has stated that she did not intend this.

Over the course of the novels, Ile-Rien develops technologically and culturally, with advances such gas lamps replacing candles, before being replaced by electric lights, and trains and motor-cars replacing horse-drawn conveyances. The government, once an absolute monarchy, develops into a more and representative system supplementing the crown.

In the first of the books to be set there, The Element of Fire, Ile-Rien is ruled by the Dowager Queen Ravenna, who was the daughter of the previous king, who shares power with her son, King Roland, and his new queen consort, Falaise. Queen Ravenna's consort, King Fulstan, is deceased. The Princess Katherine, Fulstan's bastard daughter by the Queen of Air and Darkness, Moire, maintains an uneasy relationship with both her brother Roland and Ravenna. A skilled, yet capricious, sorceress, she goes by the name 'Kade Carrion.'

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