Texture of the Romulan Star Empire

[Arpy]

I’m wondering about the different peoples and planets of the Romulan empire that have been explored a bit in the books and tie-ins.

There are the Rihannsu, the Romulans themselves, famously.

I remember a Romulan-populated world Quirinus in I think Catalyst of Sorrows. And Vejuro, the closest world to the Romulan system in PIC: Last Best Hope.

There are the Garidians, a Romulan-like people, from the TNG game A Final Unity.

And subject species like the Tyrakhean from PIC: Dark Veil. …there were more in that one too that I can’t remember or find on Memory Beta.

What are some others?

 

[Christopher]

Well, there are the Remans, the one canonical attempt to give the Romulans a subject people, but not much has been done with them in the novels, I think.

 

[Avro Arrow]

In Diane Duane’s works, Remus was called ch’Havran by the Rihannsu, and it was the agricultural breadbasket of the empire. (Quite different from how it ended up being depicted in Nemesis.)

Achernar Prime was a Romulan planet that became the capital of the short-lived Imperial Romulan State.

Well, there are the Remans, the one canonical attempt to give the Romulans a subject people, but not much has been done with them in the novels, I think.

Weren’t the Remans explored somewhat extensively in the Vulcan’s Soul trilogy?

 

[Christopher]

Weren’t the Remans explored somewhat extensively in the Vulcan’s Soul trilogy?

Yeah, but the trilogy depicted them as Romulan settlers who were mutated by Reman life forms, which is not an interpretation I care for. Trek usually gets alien "empires" wrong by treating them as monospecies, when the whole definition of an empire is one state ruling over other states. The Remans were the first attempt to depict the Romulans ruling over another species and actually functioning as an empire, and it ruins that if they're just mutant Romulans. Besides, they don't look Vulcan at all -- their design is based on bats and skulls -- so I'm bewildered where the idea even came from.