Iasse

Josiah asked me to do a series of posts on the different castles in my book.  I will start with the most famous--Iasse.   Iasse was originally intended to withstand siege for months.  It had extremely high walls and towers from which trained archers could pick off the enemy.  However, it fell twenty times in five hundred years.  Its owners put their heads together and realized their problem was  that they built their castle at the bottom of a valley instead of on the convenient hill nearby.  The nearest river was five miles to the east, and they completely forgot the moat.  Sometime in the 17th century the Tyrulian monarchs revamped it as a summer residence. King Peter 1st had the remarkable stained glass dome built to cover a hole in the ceiling caused by an earthquake.  When Princess Maria was just a child she visited the palace and fell in love with it. After her father gave up on finding a husband for her she moved there.  Since the castle is drafty in winter she would stay there from April to October, and spend the winter in Jezamine. Iasse was never repaired after King Diorn captured it in 1822. It looks somewhat like a cross between these two castles, the one in France and the other in Wales.  It has strong walls, but is also beautiful.

Chateau de Pierrefonds

Chepstow Castle.