Bordeleaux

Bordeleaux is the great port of Bretonnia's western shore, where the vineyards run down almost to the salt and the harbours crowd with fishing luggers and high-castled galleons. It is the kingdom's window on the wider world, grown wealthy on wine, salt, and the long sea-trade, and its lords have learned a lesson the inland dukedoms never had to: that chivalry must sometimes keep its footing on a heaving deck. Knights of Bordeleaux are as apt to don their armour aboard ship as ahorse, and think nothing of trading the lance for a boarding-axe when corsairs come over the rail.

So its knighthood patrols the sea lanes as diligently as it does the marches, warring against Norscan reavers, Bretonnian rivals, and the pale things that rise out of deep water in the dark of the year. Its dukes hold to a broader notion of lordship than most of their peers profess: that a lord owes his people not merely the sword that shields them but the full nets, stocked cellars, and honest trade that let them prosper. In a kingdom where the peasantry is too often fed on nothing richer than protection, Bordeleaux's insistence on plenty verges on heresy, and verges, too, upon the truest chivalry the realm still keeps.