Rihannsu

Rihannsu, "the Declared", is the name that Romulans of Star Trek use for themselves in Diane Duane's series of books about them. The singular form is Rihanha. Like "Romulan", it comes from the name of their planet, "ch'Ríhan" ("of the Declared"). ch'Havran ("of the Travelers") is ch'Ríhan's sister planet, known to the Federation as Remus.

Book series

The series consists of five books:

* cite book
title= My Enemy, My Ally
year= 1984
isbn= 0-7434-0369-X
* cite book
author= Diane Duane
coauthors= with Peter Morwood
title= The Romulan Way
year= 1987
isbn= 0-7434-0370-3
* cite book
title= Swordhunt
year= 2000
isbn= 0-671-04209-2
* cite book
title= Honor Blade
year= 2000
isbn= 0-671-04210-6
* cite book
title= The Empty Chair
year= 2006
isbn= 1-4165-0891-0

Another book, "Spock's World" (ISBN 0-671-66773-4), makes reference to some of the events in "The Romulan Way" from the Vulcan side of things. Duane's Mirror Universe novel "Dark Mirror" also refers to the Rihannsu. The 2006 omnibus, "Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages" (ISBN 1-416-52577-7), reprints the first four Rihannsu novels, with minor timeline and character rank tweaks for consistency with other novels.

These books, as with most of the other Trek novels, are not considered canon.

"Rihannsu" is also the name for the Romulan language invented by Duane. [cite web
title= On Inventing a Romulan Language...
url= http://www.owlsprings.com/romlang.htm
date= January 6, 1996
archiveurl= http://web.archive.org/web/20031212175737/http://www.owlsprings.com/romlang.htm
archivedate= 2003-12-12
last= Duane
first= Diane
authorlink= Diane Duane]

The main Rihannsu character in the above series is Ael i-Mhiessan t'Rllaillieu. Her sense of honor and duty leads her, paradoxically, to violate her oaths to her government and crew, first helping Captain Kirk and the crew of the "Enterprise" to destroy a secret research facility, and then stealing the most precious artifact of her people, the Sword from the Empty Chair, using it as a symbol to lead a rebellion against the government, which she comes to feel has betrayed the ideals of the Empire.

Rihannsu language

Rihannsu is a fictional language invented by author Diane Duane which is spoken by the Rihannsu (Romulans) in Duane's "Star Trek" novels. In her novel "The Romulan Way" (ISBN 0-7434-0370-3), as the inhabitants of the planet Vulcan turn to the philosophy of Surak "en masse", the followers of S'task decide that they can no longer remain on Vulcan. As part of their exodus, they intentionally invent a new culture and a new language, based on Old High Vulcan and "aged" in a different direction. This language, described as sounding somewhat like Latin and Welsh, came to be known as Rihannsu.

Fan reaction

Duane's creation of the Rihannsu was generally well-received by fans, with some going so far as to lobby Paramount to accept them as canonical. [cite web
title= Duane discusses Romulan novels
url= http://www.syfyportal.com/pagetogether.php?id=238
date= July 15, 2001
accessdate= 2008-01-09
publisher= SyFyPortal.com] . However, Gene Roddenberry himself is said to have taken issue with the depiction, particularly Duane and Morwood's assertion in "The Romulan Way" that the Rihannsu "were never Romulans." [ And also as being another ludicrous example of rampant, untalented fanfic.cite newsgroup
title= Richard Arnold responds
url= http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.startrek.fandom/msg/0ed40e8cb4806c88
newsgroup= rec.arts.startrek.fandom
author= Richard Arnold, by way of Scott Evans
date= March 3, 1994]

References

External links

* cite web
url= http://www.tc.umn.edu/~joela/cgi-bin/romwords.cgi
title= Romulan language generator
accessdate= 2007-12-31
first= Joel
last= Polowin (based on Duane's original program)