| 词条 | Videssos |
| 释义 |
Videssos is a series of fantasy novels by American writer Harry Turtledove. The Videssos novels
Background"Videssos" can mean either the Empire of Videssos, or its capital city. The Videssian Empire is very similar to the Byzantine Empire, and much of its history and geography is analogous to Byzantine history. The main differences are the religion, the existence of magic as a usable force, and some details of the history of surrounding states. These states strongly resemble neighbours of Byzantine Empire - for instance Makuran is Sassanid Persia and Vaspurakan is Armenia (Vaspurakan is in reality a historic Armenian province). The map shown of the known world in the time of the various Videssos stories is a very loose east-for-west flip-flop of the Mediterranean. Like Byzantium, Videssos is an absolute monarchy, ruled by an Emperor. The Emperor is assisted by a numerous, influential bureaucracy, which is powerful enough to have been able to enforce its choice for the throne, even in the face of military opposition; the bureaucracy and military are traditionally rivals for power and influence. Even Videssian offices and titles are the same as the Byzantine ones (autokrator, sebastokrator, vestiarios, drungarios). The Videssian emperors and their history strongly resemble the Byzantine emperors.
The Videssian Empire is rather feudal, with powerful landowners wielding great influence. The class of yeoman farmers, who provided much of the best recruits for the military, is dwindling, analogously to what happened at several stages of Byzantine history. ReligionEverything within Videssian life centers around religious beliefs. There are varied types of beliefs from pantheons of gods, spirit/demon worship, and dualist belief. The most widespread belief is in the dualist faith of Phos, the god of light, and Skotos, the dark god. The core of this faith is that Phos and Skotos will battle and only one will emerge. Even in this belief there is nuanced variations that lead to enmity between different countries.
The basic prayer of those who follow Phos is "We bless thee, Phos, Lord with the right and good mind, by thy grace our protector, watchful beforehand that the great test of life may be decided in our favor." To this those of the Duchy of Namdalen append "On this we stake our very souls." It is postulated by Gorgidas in the Videssos Cycle that the variants of the Phos beliefs have to do with political and ethnic reasons rather than true belief. He states that the Vaspurakanur belief in their direct descent from Phos was a way to separate themselves from Videssos and maintain a separate social structure. The Balancer beliefs are flat out stated to have come out of the barbarian invasions of areas of the Empire. Those who survived these centuries of attacks were no longer certain of the inevitable victory of Phos. There are no noted variations of the followers of Skotos. {{Harry Turtledove}} 5 : Fictional countries in other worlds|Fantasy novel series|Fictional empires|Novels by Harry Turtledove|Videssos |
| 随便看 |
开放百科全书收录14589846条英语、德语、日语等多语种百科知识，基本涵盖了大多数领域的百科知识，是一部内容自由、开放的电子版国际百科全书。