Persona explanation

I have been asked, Why 1360?

Because of Charles the fourth, Holy Roman Emporer.

He remains to this day a Pater Patriea to the Czech Republic and I wanted Eleonora to be a Lady during his reign of intellectual, creative and economic prosperity.

My time is also right before the birth of Jan Hus, the first Czech Protestant, who later had a direct influence on Martin Luther, which means I'm right in the middle of religious reformation.

In 1360, I have missed the Black Plague that swept through Venice (my mother's hometown) twelve years earlier.


Eleonora is the a daughter of a wealthy merchant, who plied his wares from Constantinople to Paris.  This backstory allows me to wear pretty much anything I want in European fashion in the mid 14th century.

I was really stuck on the name Eleonora, and started out as Eleonora z Praha (Eleanor of Prague) but the Herald (God bless her!) advised me that Eleonora is an Italian name.  I couldn't find an Eleonora in the Bohemian countries until well after her time, so I was forced to go Italian.  And since I had an Italian first name, I had to have an Italian lastname.  So I chose Pragensis, which is Latin for "from Prague".  Now that I'm an SCA Lady (big L), technically, to be in line with my Italian name, I SHOULD be "Signora Eleonora Pragensis" but I'm INSISTING on Dáma ("DAH-ma"), which is the Bohemian (Czech) version of Lady. 

The end result is that I had to explain why I had an Italian name if my father was a Czech merchant based in Prague.

Simple: my mother.

My mother was the daugher of a Senator on the Great Council in Veniti (Venice).  Wiki says:

With the elimination of pirates along the Dalmatian Coast, the city became a flourishing trade center between Western Europe and the rest of the world (especially the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic World).

The route my father took on his travels from Constantinople to Paris and back.

Wiki: 

In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Venice was a major centre for commerce and trade, as it controlled a vast sea-empire, and became an extremely wealthy European city, a leader in political and economic affairs and a centre for trade and commerce.

Meanwhile, over in England in 1360, Edward III was signing the Treaty of Calais.