So I had never seen Princess Diaries 2 before I watched it with my girlfriend the other day (amazing movie, can’t recommend it enough) but something bothered me throughout:
Just where IS Genovia?
I’d been assuming it was somewhere in the Low Countries, Luxembourg style, but that doesn’t jive with many of the descriptions given
So I did some thinking and weighed all of the evidence.
Genovia is described as having both mountains and access to the ocean while still being a really tiny nation, so it has to be somewhere where mountains and water are in close proximity.
Though many characters have British accents, I would attribute this to local schools teaching British English, which is standard in Europe. Other accents are varied but many seemed to be German-sounding, or vaguely Eastern-European. It would make sense if Genovia was located close to the German-speaking countries then, something that’s backed up by the seemingly high relevance of one of Mia’s suitors: a “count of Austria.” Either that, or its in/near the Slavic regions.
The real puzzler is the artwork and architecture however. There’s a scene in which Mia finds a secret passage in an old chapel, the walls of which are decorated in Byzantine-style fresco/mosaic.
So Genovia has to be somewhere that was part of the Eastern Roman Empire, has both mountains and beaches, and has a bit of Germanic or Slavic language influence.
There is only one country I can think of that meets all of these criteria:
Slovenia.
It has both the Alps and the Mediterranean, it’s directly south of Austria but is primarily Slavic, and it was a part of the Roman Empire up until the 4th or 5th centuries AD, when it was contested between the Ostrogothic Kingdom and the Byzantine Empire.
So there ya go. Slovenia is Genovia. The answer to a question I don’t think anyone but me has asked.
