Banjali

Nehemia was raised in a river palace that smelled of lotus blossoms, under a sun that burned everything — then left it for a cold castle in the north and never came home.

Capital of Eyllwe, seat of the Ytger crown: river-ports and grasslands, one of the two richest cities on the continent, a conquered royal house that never stopped calling itself royal. Nehemia's home, and the whole reason she was in Rifthold at all.

The place

The rich, warm South the empire couldn't make kneel quietly.

Banjali is the capital of Eyllwe, spread across the continent's southeastern peninsula where grasslands run down to rivers and trade-ports. It's one of the two wealthiest cities in Erilea — resources, farmland, water, and the routes that move all of it. Adarlan conquered Eyllwe and left the Ytgers their crown, so they govern from here as a royal family that bent the knee and never meant it. Nehemia's father keeps a river palace that, in her telling, smells of lotus blossoms under a sun that burns everything.

What happened here

Everything that mattered about it happened somewhere else.

Almost nothing of the series happens inside Banjali, and that's the point — it's the home Nehemia is carrying in her head the entire time she's in Rifthold. Her father sends her north dressed up as a girl learning Adarlan's customs and common tongue, when she's really there to spy and to pull her people free. Eyllwe is the kingdom that fought hardest and bent least, and Banjali is the crown at the centre of it. You never actually set foot in the place. You spend the whole series orbiting it.

Also in the story

Connected

Allies, rivals and enemies — the ones this story crossed.

The history

A rich city, a kept crown, a daughter sent north.

The capital that stayed royal on paper, told in the order it happened.

The richest city that still had a king
Banjali grows up as the seat of the Ytger family and one of the two wealthiest cities on the whole continent — grasslands, rivers, forests, ports, and every trade route tying them together. Rich, warm, southern, and a long way from Adarlan's cold.
Bent the knee, kept the crown
Adarlan's conquest swallows Eyllwe like it swallows everything else — except the Ytgers are left their title. They govern Banjali as royalty under occupation, which means they rule a people who never once stop rebelling.
The daughter they sent north
From this city the king sends his daughter Nehemia to the glass castle in Rifthold. The official story is that she's there to learn Adarlan's tongue and manners; the truth is she's there to spy, and to free her people. She dies in that northern castle without seeing Banjali again — and the news of it puts a pickaxe through an overseer's gut a thousand miles south.
The South, still standing
When Dorian brings the glass castle down and the old empire with it, the South Adarlan never fully held comes out from under it. The crown Banjali kept through the entire occupation turns out to have been worth keeping.

Landmarks

What Banjali is made of

You never actually walk its streets. What you do get, you don't forget.

The river palaceHer father's seat. In Nehemia's words it smells of lotus blossoms, and the sun outside it burns everything — almost the only piece of Banjali she ever describes out loud.The grasslandsEyllwe runs out from the capital in farmland, waterway and forest. The wealth that made Banjali one of the two richest cities on the continent, and the prize Adarlan was never going to hand back.The trade routesEyllwe's resources moved along these — and under Adarlan, so did its people. A Banjali merchant's son turns up enslaved in Skull's Bay, half a world from the river palace.

All of it

The File

Region: Capital of Eyllwe, southeastern peninsula of Erilea
Run by: House Ytger — royal, and under Adarlan's occupation
Known for: River-ports, grasslands, trade routes; a lotus-scented river palace
Wealth: One of the two most prosperous cities on the continent
Its daughter: Nehemia Ytger, sent north to Rifthold — to learn Adarlan's tongue, and to free her people
Fate: The unbowed South; freed when the old empire finally falls

We're Caffeine and Curses. The Library started as my design research — I can't put Nehemia on a shirt without knowing what her kingdom cost her — so we keep the notes here where everyone can use them. The pages are fan-made, not official; the licensed designs are in the shop.

Officially licensed