Trivia / Rihannsu

• Executive Meddling: Resulting in Swordhunt being Divided for Publication.
• Outdated by Canon: A considerable portion of the Rihannsu backstory given in The Romulan Way conflicts with later Canon sources, especially Star Trek: Enterprise.
  • The Rihannsu version of the Earth-Romulan War has the Federation discovering the Romulans when the latter had only sublight vessels, albeit an extensive capability to that end. Based on prior bad experience with the Abusive Precursors of the Orions that sparked the Sundering, the Romulans misinterpreted things and built a warfleet to attack the next Federation ship to visit the Eisn system. They captured it, gained warp drive and sundry other tech from it, and things went downhill from there until the Romulans were destroying entire fleets, at which point the Federation decided to cut its losses and negotiated a peace treaty by subspace radio, designating a swathe of space surrounding Eisn as the "Romulan Star Empire".
    
    The Enterprise episode "Minefield" shows the Romulans as already possessing warp drive and cloaking devices at First Contact with United Earth in the 2150s (though the cloak was admitted by the writers to be a continuity error). While some of the Star Trek: Enterprise Relaunch novels (effectively ENT seasons 5 through 7, written partially using the notes of Manny Coto et al.) borrowed parts of Diane Duane's worldbuilding, the Earth-Romulan War instead took place before the Federation, and in fact was a catalyst for its creation out of an alliance of Alpha and Beta Quadrant races (chiefly humanity, the Andorians, the Vulcans, and the Tellarites) that joined forces to beat the Romulans.
  • The Vulcans are stated in The Romulan Way to have joined the Federation during the Earth-Romulan War, and identified the Romulans as their long-lost brethren, whereas in Enterprise the Vulcans are a founding member of the Federation.
  • The Remans, referred to as Havrannssu ("the Travelers") in The Romulan Way, are said to be a frequently dissident faction or ethnicity of Romulans who were forced onto the Sundering's colony ships involuntarily, and Remus is a Class M garden world. In Star Trek: Nemesis, Remus is a barren planet tidally locked to Eisn, and the Remans are a different species entirely.
  • The structure of the Romulan government is given as a series of aristocratic councils referred to as the Tricameron, with among other things twelve praetors ("fvillham") serving in a separate chamber from the bi-cameral Senate ("deihuit"). The TV series beginning with Star Trek: The Next Generation showed the Senate as a unicameral legislature, with a single praetor apparently equivalent to a prime minister (conveniently, Ael mentions she's going to reform the government at the end of The Empty Chair). The closest thing in canon to Diane Duane's Praetorate is the Continuing Committee that comes up in "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges".
  • Star Trek: Picard discards this series' Romulan conlang in favor of a new one developed by linguist Trent Pehrson from various snippets of Vulcan spoken in the shows.
• Referenced by...:
  • Star Trek Online references Ael t'Rllaillieu as a historical figure in its Backstory and uses a lot of Rihan words (mainly for names of ships).
  • A short story in Aeon 14 called "Know Thy Enemy" states there are cults on the planet Vulcan, in the 40 Eridani system, that worship a smith god alternately called Vulcan or S'harien. S'harien was a swordsmith and convert to Surak's reality-truth who forged the sword that Ael steals in The Romulan Way.

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