Ahnen, Bd. I.1 Ingo

In the year 357 AD, a Vandal prince loses everything: his homeland on the Rhine, his father's throne, his people's trust. What remains is a title without land, a name without power. When Ingo seeks refuge at the court of Count Answald in Thuringia, he finds not sanctuary but a different kind of exile, one measured in suspicious glances, whispered resentments, and the slow withdrawal of hospitality. The count's followers want no landless foreigner at their hearth. Then Ingo's own men arrive, and the tension curdles into something darker. When Ingo falls for the count's daughter, even Answald's thin patience snaps. The Romans, ever watching, learn of the prince's hiding place and demand his head. Caught between Roman iron, Thuringian steel, and the ambitions of men who see him as either useful or expendable, Ingo must choose: surrender the ghost of his former life, or fight for a future that may already be lost. This is the opening movement of Freytag's ambitious cycle tracing one family's journey from the fall of Rome to the industrial age.