Category: Short Stories

The great halls of Wallachia’s courts echoed with the deep voices of rulers, their boyars and foreign envoys hammering out treaties, forging alliances and, more often than not, deciding the fates of women before they were old enough to understand their worth beyond the ink of a marriage contract. In Moldavia, daughters of noble houses were bartered like fine silks, their marriages securing fragile truces with the Poles, the Hungarians, the upcoming Russians and even Sultans. In Transylvania, a land where Saxon merchants, Székelys warriors and Hungarian lords vied for influence, the Romanians or Vlachs out of the way, noblewomen walked a careful line between tradition and opportunity, sometimes inheriting estates or trading privileges—but always within the confines set by men.