Centre for Romanian Studies

“At the beginning there was Domn and Domn was God and God was King and the two were one and the same Creed and that Creed was called Domnikios, that is the God-King that ruled over Domnikia.”

Still, there is always something far more visceral that separates the Domnikios from the Tovaras: that is the “nouveau” appellation of the very name “Tovaras” – For the etymology of “Tovaras” was never Latin – but Slav and the Slavs appeared on these remote lands late, very late in the history of Domnikia. It is the Slavs who labelled the nameless under dogs – “Tovaras”, because they looked unprepossessing and so they called them ‘ “Tovaritch”. In fact, before the Slavs invaded Domnikia, the nameless sons of bitches were always shouted at with a short sharp “Hey, you” and the slaves would hurriedly grovel to their master. But now that their lands were run over and their attributes diminished, the Domnikios, who always spoke with a congenital lisp, pronounced and dictated that the under dogs should be called instead “Tovaras”, as a kind of grudging acceptance of the Slav intrusion in the feudal affairs of the Domnikian Principality.

And this is how all the troubles started, and all hell broke loose, as we were going to witness for ourselves in centuries-old civil wars between the Domnikios and the Tovaras, which were occasionally interspaced with short spells of hushed coexistence.

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