Culture of Ottonia

The culture of the Ottonian states is complicated and somewhat unique in Belisaria. Although there are differences between the local cultures of North Ottonia, South Ottonia, and Sudmark, the three countries share enough cultural features that they can be considered part of the same complex of practices, traditions, and beliefs.

Food

Main article: Ottonian Food

Staple Foods

The Ottonian diet makes heavy use of oats and potatoes to provide starch and calories, while wheat and rye, usually in the form of bread, serve as auxiliary starches. Common vegetables in Ottonian cuisine include carrots, onions, cabbage, broccoli, beans (especially white beans). Common cooking fats include butter, lard, sunflower oil, and rapeseed oil. Common proteins include beef, mutton, pork, and chicken, cod, and herring. Dairy (dairy milk and cheese) are integral parts of the Ottonian diet.

National Dishes & Specialties

Certain dishes are iconic to Ottonian cuisine. Stews and soups in particular tend to make up a large share of quintessentially-Ottonian fare, and one in particular, Eonese Fabada is well-known both domestically and abroad, and is common festival food in colder months.

Ottonia is also famous for its apple orchards and its accompanying cider production. In addition, Ottonian mead and ales are well-regarded abroad, and Ottonian distilleries produce rye whiskey and gin in particular for export. In addition, productive pastures provide the setting for prolific dairy production, and Ottonian milk and cheeses are well-known and renowned abroad.

Dining Customs

Ottonians typically eat three meals per day. Breakfast is typically hearty, eaten shortly after waking, and relatively high-calorie, making use generally of hashes or oatmeal dishes, along with chicken eggs and vegetables. Lunch is typically eaten around mid-day, and is typically only barely more than a snack. Dinner is typically eaten in the early evening (between 5 and 7:30 PM) and is comparatively large, typically eaten communally either with family or, in other living arrangements, friends, neighbors, or roommates. Some Ottonians use an alternate schedule where, instead of eating a single larger lunch, they consume two lighter snacks, one in the late morning and one in early afternoon.

Ottonians make use of fairly standard western silverware, using forks, spoons, and knives to eat around a table.

Street food is a common fixture of Ottonian towns, where food trucks and mobile stoves are used to prepare inexpensive fare for workers and pedestrians. Perhaps the most quintessentially Ottonian such fixtures are "stew stalls", where cooks prepare large, slow-simmering pots of hearty stews. Soft pretzels and soft pretzel buns are also very popular hand food on Ottonian streets and festivals.

Family

Family Structures

The most common family unit in Ottonia is the extended family, in which three generations may share a household or live in very close proximity to one another to assist in childcare and eldercare.

Courtship & Romance

Love & Alse

Allamunnic has two different words for what is referred to in standard Anglic as "love," each with different pragmatic meanings. Allamunnic shares "love" with Anglic, although in practice it is used to refer to the close bond between family members, close friends, and the early stages of romantic love, what might be referred to as a "crush" elsewhere or the bond between a couple that only recently embarked on their relationship. "Love" is used freely, and it is not unusual for even friends to say they love each other.

The second word, "alse" has no direct equivalent in Anglic. Alse refers exclusively to the deep, long-lasting romantic bond between partners, especially spouses. "Alse" is never used by native Allamunnic speakers in any other context. The first use of the phrase "I alse thu" in a relationship is considered very serious, and frequently accompanies proposals of marriage.

The use of the phrase is considered so momentous that there is a semi-formalized set of responses to it. To accept the declaration, a partner typically responds "And I, thu." To gently reject the declaration, perhaps because a person is not yet ready to return it, the recipient typically replies "And I love thu." Finally, a person may reject the declaration entirely, which, when it is used in the context of a romantic relationship, typically also marks the end of the relationship; the outright rejection of an "alse" declaration is essentially an indication that the declarer has misunderstood the nature of the relationship or is not going to see a change they may be hoping to see.

The dynamic of the two words are echoed in the distinction in Eonese between "querer" and "amar", with the former corresponding to "love" and the latter to "alse" respectively. The nuance in Allamunnic is often lost on non-native speakers of Allamunnic who do not grasp the love/alse distinction and use the latter in places where the former is more appropriate, leading to sometimes awkard encounters.

Religion

Honorian Rite of Fabrianism

Main article: Fabrianism

Historically, the dominant faith of Ottonia from the 9th century until the late 18th century of the Common Era was the Honorian Rite of the Fabrian Church. The founding of the Rite is traditionally attributed to St. Honorius of Aarhusium with his arrival in the city that would one day bear his name, although some scholars believe that Sarpetic missionaries were active in what would become Ottonia as early as the 4th century CE and that Fabrianism was spreading well prior to Honorius' arrival.

Initially confined to the western coastline, particularly the southwest, of the area, the faith would come to be spread in the early 9th century CE during the conquests of Otto the Invincible, often brought to Corvae, Eoni, Kamrae, and Allamunnae alike at the point of a lance. Although conversion efforts in the southern reaches of the Bluwaald Mountains would be quite effective, conversions in the country's further north and eastern regions were somewhat halfhearted, and in the ensuing centuries local practices often flourished unabated alongside nominal Sarpetic allegiance. Fabrianism additionally lent its sanction to the Allamunnic royalty of Tyrrslynd, Onneria, and Staalmark.

In the 18th century, scholars and spiritualists, increasingly fascinated by pre-Sarpetic Allamunnic, Eonese, and Corvaean beliefs, set to work reconstructing what they believed to be the ancient religion of the region prior to Honorius' arrival. Although some of the resulting reconstructions were of questionable accuracy, the wave of interest was enough to cause a large-scale departure from Sarpetic beliefs, at least nominally, in the northern and eastern regions of Ottonia, in an event known as The Great Apostasy. From that point onward, the Fabrian Church, even the more local Honorian clerics, lost much of their influence over Ottonia as a whole, although the western coast, especially the country's southwest Onnerian core remained staunchly Honorian, as did much of the southern Bluwaalds in the interior of the country.

Come the 19th century, however, Honorianism would be faced with another challenge; in the aftermath of the Great Apostasy, attempts to suppress the new pagan practices had resulted in widespread bloodshed, and flocks increasingly found themselves divided over willingness (or lack thereof) to tolerate their apostatic neighbors. As conflict spread into Bluwaald Honorian communities, Archbishop Abram Karrag petitioned Pope Sixtus XX to bring the threat of excommunication against Honorians who were willing to tolerate the presence of apostates in their communities. In 1819, Sixtus excommunicated the members of 73 parishes, largely in Eona and the Bluwaalds, inadvertantly giving rise to the Corsanguine Movement. Attempts at suppressing both Reytled and Corsanguinism would result in vicious religious conflicts and would help deepen the faultlines that eventually led to the Northern Revolution and eventually the Partition of Ottonia.

Corsanguinism

Main article: Corsanguinism

Corsanguinism has its roots in the 1819 excommunication of the Righteous Seventy-Three parishes in what is now North Ottonia. The parishes in question were excommunicated from the Fabrian Church after the parishes, including their priests, refused to take part in or facilitate the suppression of the Great Apostasy, and instead on numerous occasions interfered with would-be death squads from within or neighboring communities. Pope Sixtus XX named the 73 parishes specifically in the bull of excommunication after the priests and several lay people from those churches petitioned the Archbishop of Onneria for an end to the violent suppression of the mass deconversion occuring (mostly) in northern and eastern Ottonia.

In a speech condemning the rogue parishes, Archbishop Karrag called those interfering with the religious conflict "bleeding hearts". The intended insult was adopted as a rallying nickname for Fabrians in the area where the Apostasy was occurring who chose to aid and protect their now-pagan neighbors. A large number of the "bleeding heart" or Corsanguine parishoners paid for their acts of selfless love for their neighbors with their lives.

Reytled

Main article: Reytled

Language

Allamunnic

Main article: Allamunnic language

The bridge language for the whole of Ottonia is Allamunnic. The West Germanic language is spoken throughout North Ottonia, South Ottonia, and Sudmark, with a sizable Allamunnic-speaking minority also inhabiting parts of Erishland.

Allamunnic is in many regards similar to the closely-related Anglic language spoken in Arthurista, with the primary differences coming in vocabulary (Allamunnic borrows heavily from Eonese, Corvaik, and Nordish, whereas Anglic borrows more from Aulian and directly from Latin) and in in one particular grammatical element: Allamunnic retains the familiar second person thu/tu/du pronoun and accompanying case.

Eonese

Eonese is a Celtic-influenced Latinic language spoken primarily in central and northern Ottonia, especially in the region of Eona (also known as Innia). Eonese is the second most-widely-spoken language in Ottonia.