The history of Knyaz Club is, first and foremost, a story about people who deeply love what they do and stay loyal to their passion year after year. Everything else changes — the economic climate, personal circumstances, trends in historical reconstruction, the priorities and skills of the club’s members. The roster has shifted too, since natural attrition is normal in historical reconstruction — some move on to other interests and everyday life, others stay. But the club has always been a community of people who love their craft.

It all began long before Knyaz Club got its resonant name and official status.

The club’s leader and constant inspiration, Anton Trubnikov, remembers:

«In 1997 I discovered role-playing games — I went to a game called «Kings of the Night» with my classmates and their friends. We realised right away: this is cool, this is exciting, but it could be done better. For the next game we turned up as a more prepared crew — that was «The Dacian Wars». Both games were held at the Sokolovo training ground (Editor’s note — near Kharkiv). We loved it there — the forest, the emotions, the camaraderie, the freedom, the wild fear of the first fights… I once spent nearly five hours in ambush. For Dacia I bought my first helmet — a sheet of duralumin bent to the shape of my head. I wore it over a child’s furry trapper hat. The funny thing was — the helmet protected the sides and the face well, even the back of the head, but on top there were just six or eight metal struts meeting at a bolt in the centre — guess where that bolt drove in when someone struck the top. The duralumin was thick enough, but they made the upper «petals» out of aluminium. And aluminium is a very soft metal, easy to bend. Yet the helmet looked like a helmet, and people hit it freely — they figured my head was protected — so it hurt me. I never wore it again and sold it on the spot during that same game. My weapons were two skis, like a pair of gladii. My outfit was a Scottish plaid and a tunic, and I had proper chrome-leather boots. From our very first game we were all in boots — compared to the trainers most people wore, that was very good gear.

Our first lineup — back then we were a team, not yet a club, that’s how it was done — was me, my classmate Ulyashov, Oleksandr Bilozor, Saturn (also known as Anton Bryhadinov), and Leleka (also known as Yurii Pivnenko). Those are the people in the old photos. We didn’t have a logo; we just hung out together. Then we decided to form a proper team — it felt logical and epic. I don’t even remember how it happened, but we picked up friends and acquaintances and grew to twelve. We took over a glade on the edge of the woods (in Kharkiv, by the Institute of Low Temperatures tram stop). We were the first role-players ever to train there — later everyone gathered at that spot. Then we needed a name, but more than anything we needed a logo. There was a planning meeting at my place about it. We called ourselves «Siverianyn», after the Siverian lands of medieval Rus’ that interested us. For some reason we decided right away that we’d do reconstruction — though it was role-playing-style reconstruction as we then understood it. We decided not to be gnomes or elves, but someone historical. We settled on Slavs. Everyone was doing Vikings then, and the closest thing to Vikings was Slavs. We weren’t sure which century we were aiming at, but we were closest to the 10th — the cut of the clothing and the rest were close to the Vikings, yet we set ourselves apart somehow. The logo was drawn by a guy called Vova Dok — he drew a sun. We thought long and hard about the colour, then ran into the limited range of paints at the market. The only paint that worked for shields came in a certain palette, so out of the orange options we chose the more saturated red — less chemical, prettier. The black-and-red colour scheme looks bold and frightens enemies. You understand — this isn’t your avatar in some social network, everything has to be serious. People often accuse us of having a gloomy logo. But it shines with joy for those who know — and for everyone else, it’s supposed to be intimidating. We were seventeen, and we wanted to put pressure on everyone. The point was — we were gathering together, and we wanted to look striking right from the start. We weren’t punks; the core was serious. Reaching our goals turned out not to be easy. Meanwhile we hung out with some rather strange people, went to training sessions in the woods and in Gorky Park. But we were doing things.»

The pre-club era: plywood and wood

Anton Trubnikov: «Knyaz Club began to take shape when we got our first historian in the line-up. We had just realised we were Slavs. We saw almond-shaped (kite) shields and started making them for ourselves.

Now picture this. We were all seventeen. We wanted to buy plywood. We found an ad, called, agreed to buy. In Nova Bavaria. I have no idea why we didn’t look for more convenient options. The seller could only meet in the evening — he worked during the day. Winter. Dark. Some guy, some basement. To this day I’ve only been to that area four times in my life. Four of us go for plywood. None of us has a car. How we got those two sheets of plywood home — I don’t remember. We somehow made it to the South Railway Station, got on the №40 trolleybus — miracle of miracles! — astonished everyone, took over the back platform, rode to the Institute of Low Temperatures stop, and dropped the plywood off somewhere. In the morning we got to sawing shields. Not with anything fancy — with a hand saw! We traced the outline and got to work. There are still saw marks on the banisters of the staircase to my old apartment, because we’d rest the plywood against them. We cut what we could. Some got a sharp angular result, others tried harder and got something more like an almond. The shields were huge — but that was the fashion then, so you could hide behind a shield completely with it standing on the ground. When I got tired holding mine, I’d plant the tip in my chrome boot.

In 1999 we went to our first team game — with these logos, and everyone already had a helmet (it cost twenty-five hryvnias per person back then). Funny enough, there was a tradition then of drinking out of your helmet, and we didn’t like our helmets to leak. I don’t remember anything about armour — gambesons didn’t exist yet. We had swords — out of linden wood, we carved them ourselves. And shields with the logo, even leather-edged, but fitted with door handles. And we had costumes. By the standards of the day, we were decently kitted out.

This was the game «Braveheart», held at Eskhar in the spring of 1999. We played Scots — I don’t remember the clan’s name though. Besides us, the fortress also held the so-called black-and-greens and a team led by some guy called Khryusha (his name was Vlad, but I don’t remember the surname).

There we met our first serious sortie by the «Yoms» team. We headed out on a night manhunt — and it turned out we were no longer the hunters but the prey. Forty minutes of being roughed up! It ended over a friendly drink. We’d interacted with the younger members of that team before, but not with the older ones. Everyone was afraid of the Yoms then, and we were afraid along with everyone else. Having someone to fear and someone to look up to — that’s actually a good thing. They put pressure on everyone, we didn’t want to give in, even though we got pressured too. It was fun.

It was a really good game; for a rookie team, we held our own well.

That same autumn we had another game — «Ancient Rus’».

By then it was just us and the black-and-greens. They were great allies — pleasant guys; sometimes it almost felt like they were our vassals. The game stood out because we built our first fortress. Our own. It was the city of Chernihiv, we were team «Siverianyn» — everything fit beautifully. For the first time we brought an army marquee tent to a game. Historical tents weren’t even on the table — nobody had them — but a marquee-style tent was wonderful.

It’s worth noting that, back then, reconstruction as we know it didn’t really exist; all the modern «fathers» of the movement, the famous tournament fighters, everyone who forms the backbone of historical reconstruction today — were playing LARPs. The games were semi-historical, and the biggest ones in the country were held right near Kharkiv. For anyone who wanted to hold some sort of weapon and wear some sort of armour, LARPs were the only alternative.

Pretty full-contact fights were already happening. You couldn’t strike to the head, but everyone hit anyway — the weak fighters didn’t hold back so they’d be considered strong, and the strong ones just because. So everyone fought as best they could, even if they tried not to injure each other. It was rough for the level of armour we had — meaning the near-total absence of it.

Anyway, we built a really good fortress. Four-metre walls on one side, four on the other, a donjon, a drop-down ladder, tall gates, a so-called «corridor of death». We spent a long time building it, spent a lot of money and effort… we hauled the planks ourselves, the only ones who bought planks. We bought cheap wet pine — picture eight six-metre boards, very heavy. We couldn’t afford to hire a truck, so we carried the boards on foot, across the whole city, to the apartment of the person from whom we’d leave for the game.

But for the first time in club history, we had a table at the game. We hired a «Ural» truck and hauled all our gear out to the site… our table might even survive on some old photo somewhere. We sculpted clay tableware for everyone — by hand, crooked, but authentic. I dragged out of my home everything that looked historical: three tablecloths, white with blue embroidery; grandma’s pitchers; wooden spoons. Grandma still hasn’t forgiven me.

And there it was — the forest, Eskhar, and a table laid out in Khokhloma style. There are no words!

We played beautifully and got seriously drunk for the first time. That’s the honest history. Back then, everyone drank, and drank a lot.

The game was also remembered for the battering ram and for some serious highs and lows. Before the game we had a powerful enemy — the Khazars, led by a certain Rett. We needed to invent an enemy for ourselves, so we invented him, talked him up, and we got our siege. We won somehow, but when I left on some business I learned on the way back that my entire team had been killed and a huge army was marching on our fortress. I was completely alone. Inside the fortress there were five of our allies. I tucked myself in at the tail of that army — they were dressed in good Roman gear. I walked among them all, gradually, chatting them up, made my way to the emperor, and killed him. By the rules, beheading was represented by a strike to the shoulder. So… I killed the emperor; the guards froze in shock, and of course I was killed in the end, but I’d earned their respect. The whole thing was fun and interesting, the team was set. There still wasn’t a Knyaz Club, of course. That’s when Maksym Mazur joined us, Oleh Yurchenko, Sviatoslav Malanov…»

Oleh Yurchenko: «It all started in 1998. I was finishing school. One day my friend, Sasha Bilozor, brought a helmet to class and told me he and the lads were doing role-playing games — at that time the concept of «historical reconstruction» didn’t yet exist. Sasha told me about training and away games.

I got curious and decided to take part. The first time I made it to a training session was in winter. It happened in Kharkiv’s forest park. There, for the first time, they put «armour» on me, handed me a shield and a wooden stick, stood me in front of a stranger, and said: «Fight!» Of course I had zero fighting skills, but they appreciated the fact that I didn’t chicken out — and they let me into the group.

We trained every week. Gradually I started making armour — I wove my first mail hauberk from wire myself, and not just in my free time: sometimes I’d do it during lectures at university. At that point you couldn’t order kit anywhere, so we were considered the «most historical» around. By the time we started seriously thinking about upgrading our armour, it was still common to meet participants at similar events armed with a plain wooden stick and dressed in robes.»

Anton Trubnikov: «We had about twenty people… or fifteen if you count only the seriously active ones. Then came the year 2000, and our epic build-up for the mega-war. The game «The Hundred Years’ War» — everyone prepared for it, everyone gave their best. We made ourselves circular aventails, we made ourselves textolite swords, rubber axes. We worked hard. We were all English in Gascony; the town was called Bayonne. The game masters were… well, very strict. We arrived at the first construction trip in late March — the snow had just melted. We walked the site, and our old fortress that stood in for Chernihiv was still standing in one piece. Usually locals dismantle everything down to the last plank, but somehow this time we got lucky — not a single board was missing. Imagine the joy. We thought — just an upgrade and we could play right away. Then the GMs said — no, by our map your fortress is supposed to be over there. Big deal, a kilometre and a half on foot. We argued for a long time, threatened, cried, but didn’t have the authority. So we took the whole fortress apart, plank by plank, and moved it to the new spot. It was oak forest, with vipers and ticks, damp ground… Thank God none of the vipers bit anyone, although I personally am terrified of snakes.

Essentially, the «Hundred Years’ War» — the first May game of 2000 — was a serious test of our strength. We were eighteen by then, well-prepared, with everything we needed. We looked great by the standards of that year. The matching shields made it seem like there were more of us than there actually were. It was a great feeling. In practice it was the peak of our role-playing careers. The team was me, Oleksandr Bilozor, Ihor Anikin, Vadym Ulyashov, Sviatoslav Malanov, Oleh Yurchenko, Maksym Mazur.

War back then meant breaking the enemy’s line. Only later did we start to wonder — what comes after? But that was still a long way off. Then, just breaking the line was considered cool. War was chaotic; a broken line was basically a defeat.

The rules were silly. Arriving at a siege, you had to knock on the gate forty times with a stick for it to count as open. So we knocked, the gates opened. We lined up in formation, they lined up in formation. We demanded they hand over a guy without a helmet — and ran for it. And if you got inside the fortress — you were the winner. We were really pleased with that victory, then had a nice time chatting afterwards. In short, it was good; there were even more epic outings to come. We finally consolidated as a team, we were happy with ourselves, we felt nothing could be cooler — we were friends with everyone, everyone respected us. Of course, that had to be followed by a slump. But the slump was still a way off. We felt like a team, a single unit; we felt we could do anything.

The year 2000 was also memorable for a trip to the Urals, to a major all-Union LARP. All of us already had mail hauberks — coiled-wire ones, true, but still. The mail weighed over twenty kilos, but I was used to running in it. The mail went on over a sweater, and we even had leather bracers. We thought LARPs (HI) were cool — that the scale there was huge, that everything was different. For that game we joined the «Variag» team led by Zaporizkyi. The trip was interesting — we saw for the first time how other people lived, and that’s when we got our first whiff of real reconstruction. We saw Vikings, proper kit, iron swords in someone’s club. There was something different in the air, something solid — but it was just a whiff. Knyaz Club still didn’t exist. Although between 1999 and 2000 we tried to register the public organisation «Siverian Warrior». «Who are you going to fight?» we were asked — and they refused to register us.

As for the autumn of 2000 — it wasn’t marked by anything in particular. We let ourselves relax, drifted off into other things.»