[Omnirizon]

I think your right, Illuminated. It seems Mari is deliberately Iberian, and the HRE wasn't involved in France Spain like I was thinking they were.

France is so entirely hybridized, its hard to find anything essential about it without having one foot in Man and the other in Ulm; i'd say the gravity of these two nations would draw away a lot of what might be "French".

Still, I'm thinking about an environment of haughty aristocracy and a priesthood of political intrigue. Here the priests are more a political entity interested in the central state, rather than the divinity. This would set it apart from Man who are a little more separate from the continental priesthood, and from Mari who are in bed with it; however it does have a bit of the theme of Ulm. But unlike Ulm which is fractured with infighting, le Midi nobles have always faced the a central state, to the point of absentee landlords who would rather spend their time in the capital than tending their estates.

I might draw imagery from Poe (Masque of Red Death), the stories of Notre-Dame, vulgar peasant fairy tales, and wandering and aloof orders of gypsies. I'd like to read about Merovin-Carolin and whatever-gians, to see if I can place the lineage of le Midi with some narrative that already exists in dominions.