The Founding: The Field of Letters — How the City Was Begun

I, Christine, sat alone in my study, surrounded by books on all sides. I looked up from my reading and a great displeasure fell upon my heart.

CATALOGUE ENTRY — Bureau of Impossible Geography DOCUMENT CLASS: Shard Genesis Report FIELD AGENT: Dr. Eleanor Hartley, Senior Cartographer (ret.) CLASSIFICATION: LITERATE CONTAMINATION — UNTREATABLE DATE OF INITIAL SURVEY: Unrecordable (see §4.7: Temporal Stratification) I am required by Bureau protocol to begin this report with the phrase "The following account describes the genesis conditions of the Shard designated CITÉ DES DAMES." I am also required to maintain scholarly objectivity throughout. I will try. I will fail. The Cité does that to you. The Field of Letters is a plain. That is the simplest true thing I can say about it. It is a plain of grass and wildflowers, bisected by a shallow river, bordered by low hills to the north and a line of poplars to the east. On a clear day — and the days in the Cité are always clear, in the way that certain arguments are clear, not because they lack complexity but because they have resolved it — you can see the city walls rising from the ...

From the lore of Cité des Dames.