How did the Romance language of Romanian remain so far and so isolated from French, Spanish, etc? Why is it there in the first place?
The Roman emperor Trajan conquered Romania from the Dacian tribes in AD 106, and it remained the Roman province of Dacia for the next 165 years. During this time the population mixed with the Romans and Roman culture, and developed the beginnings of the Romanian language from spoken Latin.
Romanian was also at one time more “connected” to the other Romance languages. Other Romance languages, such as Dalmatian, were spoken in the Balkans, but those areas were settled by Slavic-speaking tribes. Romanian has been heavily influenced by Slavic languages.