Ancient-Road was a minor branch of the Fair-Field clan that had already separated from the main household and was living in a district called Ancient-Road at the time of the foundation of the Realm, as such it was registered as its own clan, created Master, and its home district was made a province. In those days Ancient-Road Province was a small country with few people, whose villages were connected by dirt roads and whose rivers could only be crossed by fording. A very blessed land it was, however, and the people there never went hungry or wanted for fine materials. During the reigns of the first few Emperors, the population grew from five hundred households to over thirty thousand, most of them engaged in farming and fishing, and the settled areas expanded into the wilderness. The clan heads were charismatic and excelled in matters of politics and war, so numerous lesser clans were eventually joined to them, and the province grew even larger. In response, the fifth Emperor promoted the clan to Knight.
From the time of the third Emperor onward, Empresses were sourced from only three excellent clans, these were Orion, Southern-Lea (a branch of the True-Pillar) and Fair-Field. But in order to avoid the divine ban on consanguinity, these clans increasingly turned to their junior branches to source Imperial women. Since the ladies of Ancient-Road were always given an exquisite education and exceeded the women of the other branches in looks, too, they were often selected to become Empresses on behalf of Fair-Field. This caused the wealth and prestige of the clan to increase even more, and eventually the ninth Emperor promoted it to Duke, but this promotion was also because warriors who belonged to Ancient-Road had earned merit for their participation in subduing the rebellion in that year of Prince Broad-House.
It is said the home district of Ancient-Road was originally a wasteland, but at a later time a respectable deity moved there and revitalized it. By the time the clan went there, it had already become fertile, but the legend remained, which prompted the clan's founder, as he passed a glittering lake dyed green by the reflection of the forest, to declaim:
The steeds the ancients rode would balk
Were they today to see the only
Country they had known,
For cattails grow where once was only
Ashes, soot and stone
People regarded this verse as very clever, and it came to be synonymous with the province.
From the earliest days seven middling clans dwelt alongside Ancient-Road in the Capital and the provincial County, and these became the main sources of its retainers and artisans. Following the clan's promotion to Knight, this number increased to twelve. Chief among the attaches was a clan called White-Vine, which had a manor in the Capital and whose chief held the same status as a 7th-rank gentleman. Two other attaches, [frigid lord] and ..., were permitted to bear themselves no more humbly than an 8th-rank clan. The rest, while having no outstanding privileges, were honored above commoners in their home province, but had enough wealth to rival any titled noble, although it would not have become them to make a show of it.
In the fifth year of the reign of the tenth Emperor, the Duke along with two of his sons attended the sixtieth birthday banquet of the Orion King. That lord, considering his declining health, did not desire to drink all too much that evening, so the Duke volunteered to drink on his behalf. Drinking twice the regular amount, it was not long before he was boisterously drunk. The talk rolled around to all kinds of topics before settling on the estimation of the great men and clans of the day, and the Duke made a remark to the effect that Fair-Field was in the ascendant, that it would not be long before even its junior branches like Ancient-Road held the title of King, and that the likes of True-Pillar no longer attracted the smiles of fortune, that the branches of that clan would soon wither. He likely had the recent wedding of the Crown Prince and a woman from one of the Fair-Field branches in mind. At the same banquet there was a lieutenant whose father was the sworn brother of the heir of Southlea. When he heard this boast, he lost his temper and left without finishing his food. When he saw his father that evening, he told him what he had heard, and it eventually made it to the ears of the heir. The heir succeeded his father as the Southlea King upon the latter's death three years later.
At around the same time, an chatterbox working at the Southlea clan's Sixth Avenue residence began spreading the rumor that the lover of the disgraced renegade Many-Rooms, who had jumped off a cliff and so was never identified, was the daughter of the Orion King ... and a concubine. This angered a great deal of men from both clans, the one because they believed it was true, the other because they thought it a lie, and they refused to speak to one another in public and conduct regular dealings in private.
Two years later at the Solstice Festival, a son of Ancient-Road wrestled with one from Southlea and defeated him in the third round. The clansmen on both sides had been shouting insults at each other the entire time, and now were very near to overcoming the fences and pummeling each other. They were pacified by a warrior from ..., and were evicted from the festival grounds. But the men, some fifty or sixty in total, continued to brawl on the gravel streets of the outskirts, and the intensity of their upheaval did not abate until the moment the Ancient-Road lad took a sword off a nearby man and ran it through the bowels of the boy from Southlea whom he had just defeated in the ring. He was immediately apprehended by the army, was locked in jail and finally executed to atone for the crime. The Magistrate presiding over the case judged that the mutual hatred of the clans is what led to the murder, and, citing the line from the Law that read, "in matters concerning the honor of houses, no man acts alone," recommended the Emperor to reduce the status of the Ancient-Road clan to Knight, and this was done. But after that the clans' hatred for one another began to cool.
In the reign of the twelfth Emperor, a man from the [frigid lord] clan was sponsored by the Ancient-Road Knight to take the Great Examination. He was a genius the likes of which was rarely seen more than twice in a millennium, and he came in first place, and was awarded the title Young Erudite. He was allowed to choose any department he wanted to work in, and was appointed as the Magistrate of the Eastern Meadow Circuit. There he worked for the next seven years, upholding the law at every turn and in such a faultless way that even those who continued to doubt the sincerity of the clan he was a retainer of could not help but admire him, and the reputation of that clan was renewed as a result.