Chapter 26: Dulu Dulu Lucia

Guo Kang did not particularly care about this point.

"These so-called Rus are not actually a single group," he pointed out. "I personally feel that our biggest problem right now is forcibly categorizing them as one entity. It does not align with reality."

"We cannot simply treat them as one people just because a few Rus believe they are of the same kin, can we?" Guo Kang shook his head. "The Great Chieftain of the Alemanni goes around proclaiming himself the Emperor of Rome; does that make them our kin as well?"

"Then what do you think... should be done?" Li Xuanying pondered for a moment before asking.

"I think our current management style is far too crude," Guo Kang replied. "In the past, our strength was insufficient, so we could not manage them properly and had to settle for a generalized approach. We cannot continue like this now, can we? We know too little about them; if we carry on this way, we will never achieve good results."

"To be perfectly honest, even the name 'Rus Province' is problematic," he noted.

"I know it is problematic. This place should be called... *drrr*, *drrr-u-Rus*." Li Xuanying struggled, trying to make his tongue vibrate, but failed. "But I just can't pronounce it. I've never been able to say it since I was a child."

"Tell me, how should we translate it?" he countered. "The name 'Rus' is indeed a lazy choice; it simply replaces that entire string of sounds with a single syllable. But even if we were to write down the locals' pronunciation directly, could we really pronounce it the same way? I certainly don't believe so. Why don't you try it yourself?"

"I think 'close enough' is fine," Guo Kang hesitated, then began to experiment: "Drrr... Drrr-u... Drrr-u-drrr-u-Ro... Drrr-u-Rus..."

"See? I told you," Li Xuanying said with a look of 'I knew it.' "It’s not as if I haven't tried. It’s always like this: Drrr-u... Drrr-u-drrr-u..."

"Drrr-u-Rus... Drrr... Drrr-u-Rus..." Guo Kang was getting a bit impatient, continuing to try just to prove it wasn't impossible to say.

"It's useless no matter how much you try. I've spoken Greek for so many years and I still haven't mastered this sound," Li Xuanying added. "Drrr-u-drrr-u... See? I can't get it out."

"That's not right, is it?" Guo Kang looked embarrassed. "Drrr-u-drrr-u... Drrr-u-drrr-u..."

"Drrr-u-drrr-u..."

Several people nearby turned their heads and looked at them with puzzled expressions.

"Hey, hey." Shi Ke, the eldest son of the Shi family, patted Guo Kang. "What are you two doing? Stop acting like madmen before the palace!"

"Uh..."

"No madness, no madness." Shi Ke was a few years older than Li Xuanying, who had been intimidated by him since childhood and quickly waved his hands. "We are just researching a foreign language."

"See? I told you, this doesn't sound like a language for proper people," he turned to complain to Guo Kang. "My tongue is already going numb."

"Perhaps they are just used to it," Guo Kang offered as a compromise. "Look, all the languages around here are so... *drrr-u-drrr-u*. It's normal for outsiders to get the pronunciation wrong."

"What do you mean we are wrong? I think they are the ones who are wrong. Who starts a word by trilling their tongue?" Li Xuanying, having lost face, was quite indignant. "We must correct them properly. I think the Khanate should issue a regulation forbidding the Rus from trilling their tongues when they speak."

Shi Ke shot him a look as if he were an idiot, turned away, and decided not to bother with him further.

"Then let's pretend I didn't say anything," Guo Kang conceded. "I think 'Rus' is just fine."

"There's no other way. If we were to write the name exactly according to the locals' pronunciation, it would be a string of characters. Rus names are already ridiculously long, and if you add these inexplicable sounds in front of them, how long would it have to be?" Li Xuanying agreed. "I suspect even a playwright wouldn't dare write it that way; otherwise, the theater manager would accuse him of padding the word count."

Guo Kang could only nod in agreement.

The term "Rus" was likely invented by people whose tongues simply refused to vibrate.

As for his own era, the discrepancy between the translation and the actual pronunciation became even greater.

"Rus" was an imitation of "Drrr-u-drrr-u-Rus." In this era, these eastern Slavic city-states and principalities did indeed call themselves "Drrr-u-drrr-u-Rus," but later on, they changed their names.

Following the naming conventions of the Greeks and Romans, suffixes were added to nouns representing regions, turning them into names like "So-and-so-ia." The "Rus" that the natives called themselves thus became "Russia."

By the time Peter the Great came to power, in order to align with Europe, he used this Greek/Roman name as the formal designation for diplomatic occasions, so the name of the country became "Drrr-u-drrr-u-Russia." It remained in use until his time.

As for whether "Rus" or "Drrr-u-drrr-u-Russia" is more correct, it is actually hard to say, because the country truly had two sets of names.

Later generations calling the unified Rus state "Tsarist Russia" is also a simplification.

The title "Tsar" originally came from Bulgaria, and it was not actually "Emperor," but "Caesar." The Bulgarian ruler Simeon, through war, forced the Byzantine regime to grant him this title, because his ultimate goal was to enter Constantinople and become Emperor.

This move was not a novel tactic at the time. In theory, anyone could become a Roman Emperor—the Armenians had already succeeded, and the Serbs would attempt it in the future.

However, Simeon never managed to break into the city and become the Basileus of all Rome, so he had to settle for stopping at that point, serving as the Caesar of Bulgaria. This was also not strange, because the regimes of that time were not like the nation-states of later eras; they did not have such clearly defined boundaries. In theory, everyone could join the Roman system and obtain and use Roman titles. Thus, this title was passed down in Bulgaria.

Later, more distant Slavic peoples also learned this term.

However, by the time the Slavs rose to power, the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire had already greatly declined, and the administrators they were in direct contact with were the Mongols. Therefore, although the term "Caesar" was used, its meaning had already changed within the Slavic world.

In the documents of that time, the Great Khans of the Golden Horde and its various branches were also called "Tsar." Even in the modern era, official documents from Russia, Poland, and other countries still referred to the Crimean Khan as the "Tsar of Crimea."

Ivan IV even once staged an abdication performance: he first pushed the puppet Khan of Kasim to serve as Tsar, and after more than half a year, he had the Khan of Kasim abdicate to him. Therefore, many later documents regard the Kasim Dynasty as part of Tsarist Russia. This kind of back-and-forth shuffling makes one wonder whether his "Tsar" title was Roman or Mongolian...

The Rurik dynasty to which Ivan IV belonged eventually died out, and after a period of chaos, the Romanov dynasty inherited the title of Tsar. But the first Tsar of the Romanovs was only the nephew of Ivan IV's empress, roughly akin to the blood relationship of a Slavic Wang Mang. This resulted in an inherent lack of legitimacy for the Romanov family, causing numerous troubles later on.

By the time of Peter I, he could no longer stand it and decided to leave, establishing a new capital in St. Petersburg on the edge of the Gulf of Finland, and using the European-style title of "Imperator," effectively creating a new legal foundation. The name of the country should have actually been "The Imperator's Drrr-u-drrr-u-Russia."

From "Caesar of the Rus" to "Imperator of Russia," they were effectively two different systems. As for which one actually counted, it is hard to say, because in many cases, including official settings, they used both.

The Ming Dynasty had almost no contact with this country, while the Qing Dynasty had contact quite early. However, the Qing Dynasty referred to the Russian ruler directly as "Chahan Khan," meaning "White Khan," effectively avoiding the issue.

Later, the "White Khan" Romanov dynasty ended. The newly established Red Khanate used yet another set of legal principles. In this narrative, "Drrr-u-drrr-u-Russia" was called a *ulus* under the Red Khanate.

But the Red Khanate was also highly unstable. In the early days, under the leadership of the powerful Yusuf Bulat-Temur Khan and others, the Khanate still held great prestige. But later on, once the Great Khan was weak, it became increasingly difficult to maintain. Before long, the Red Khanate also disintegrated, and all the *uluses* became independent, no longer acknowledging the authority of the Great Khan.

As for which legal system they belong to now, they probably cannot even explain it themselves. It is likely that for the time being, no one has the leisure to agonize over the choice of terminology for translation.