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by Sathyr Longleat
Wayrest is one of the most glorious cities of western
Tamriel: sparkling in her contemporary beauty, lustrous by her past. She is prized above all cities in High Rock -- no
other city has contributed, and continues to contribute so much to the culture of the Bretons. The spirits of her genius
children continue to haunt the streets; you can see them in the gabled roofs, grand boulevards, aromatic
marketplaces. The people of Wayrest have an instictive appreciation of their past, but are not obsessed by it, as
the people of Daggerfall seem to be. One feels that one is in a modern city when one visits Wayrest, but there is a magic
in the air that could only come from thirty-two centuries of civilization.
It is difficult for historians to declare a certain date
for the foundation of Wayrest. A settlement of some variety had been existence where the Bjoulsae River feeds the Iliac
Bay possibly since the 800th year of the First Era. The traders and fishermen of Wayrest were surrounded by hostile
parties: the orc capitol Orsinium had grown like a poison weed to the north, and the Akaviri pirates and raiders
crowded the islands to the west. There is no mystery to Wayrest's name. After the fighting most travellers had to
endure passing through the eastern end of the Iliac Bay, the little fishing village on the Bjoulsae was a welcome rest.
Nowhere in the much vaunted censuses of the Skyrim
Occupation is Wayrest mentioned. In the Annals of Daggerfall, King Joile's letter to Gaiden Shinji of the
Order of Diagna contains the following reference: "The orcs have been much plaguing the Wayresters and impeding traffic
to the heart of the land." The date given for the letter was 1E 948.
Wayrest only truly bloomed after the razing of Orsinium
in 1E 980. The hard-working traders and merchants were instrumental in forming the Masconian Trade Way and thus
reducing the pirate activity on the Bay. At this time, Wayrest occupied both banks of the Bjoulsae. A successful
mercantile family, the Gardners, built a walled palace on the High Rock side of the river and, over time, allowed banks
and other businesses within its walls. It was a Gardner, Farangel, who was proclaimed king when Wayrest accepted
ambassadors from the Camorian Empire, and was granted the right to call itself a kingdom in the 1100th year of the 1st
Era.
Although Wayrest became a kingdom under the command of
one family, the merchants continued to wield incredible power. Many economists have alleged that Wayrest's eternal
wealth, despite all her hardships, comes from this rare relationship between the merchants and the crown. The Gardner
Dynasty fell, followed by the Cumberland Dynasty, which was followed by the Horley Dynasty, and finally, in the Third
Era, the Septim Dynasty. No citizen of another kingdom of comparable age can, with one hand, name all the families who
have ever ruled. Never has a king of Wayrest been deposed by revolution or assassination. Except for those of the Septim
family, every king of Wayrest can trace his line back to a merchant prince of Wayrest. The merchants and king respect
one another, and this relationship strengthens both.
One need only walk down the great boulevard of Wayrest
to see physical proof of this unique alliance. Going north to south, Wayrest Boulevard suddenly divides, one half
going west and the other going east. Both halfs end in identical squares: one at Castle Wayrest, the original
palace of Aphren Gardner, and the other at Cumberland Square, where the oldest and wealthiest marketplace in
Wayrest. The message here is clear: the king and the merchants are joined and equal.
Wayrest has survived blights, droughts, plagues,
piracy, invasions, and war with good humor and practicality. In 1E 2702, the entire population of the city
was forced to move into the walled estate of the Gardners as protection against the pirates, Akaviri raiders, and
Thrassian plague. A less resourceful community would have withered, but the Wayresters have survived to enrich Tamriel
generation after generation.
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