Vere is a nation bordered by Akielos and the Ellosean Sea to the south, Vask to the east, and the Great Northern Forests and Northern Steppes to the north. Its capital is Arles. For most of Captive Prince, it is ruled by the Regent and the Veretian Council.
Culture[]
Illegitimate birth is considered horrific in Vere due to the attempted murder of Queen Yseult's true-born heir Prince Edgard by the Queen's consort's bastard son Asce six generations ago. Veretians therefore typically lay only with people of the same sex before marriage, and people of noble birth must be chaperoned when meeting with individuals of the opposite sex.[1]
Name[]
In the original serial version of Captive Prince, Vere was called "Rabat." The name was changed as one of many edits to the books for their first publication. C. S. Pacat explained the change as follows:
I know it's a big change and I wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t the best thing for the story. Rabat is weird and off-putting to readers whose primary point of reference for it is as the capital of Morocco, and I often got emails from those readers telling me that it breaks their immersion. It has to be my #1 most commonly emailed complaint about the story. Even without that, why is the country called Rabat when everything else in the country has old French nomenclature? And that’s not even to get into potential issues of appropriation in using a real Middle Eastern city name for a largely Western-centric fantasy. It had to change.[2]