agrabes Posted September 8, 2022 Posted September 8, 2022 6 hours ago, cometaryorbit said: I think this really is a conflating of two meanings of 'nation'. In the way it's used when talking about many societies that didn't use the Westphalian sovereignty concept (eg the term 'First Nations') Germany (or, really, 'the German people') was (were) 'a nation' (a distinct people-group defined by shared language & culture). And that would be true whether it was broken into 20 separate states, unified as one, or existed under a larger empire. In the Westphalian sovereignty sense, each state was a separate nation (nation-state). Post 20th century we tend to assume the two are the same, and where they aren't that's an anomaly/problem. But that's a pretty modern view & wouldn't exist on Roshar. (It clearly doesn't, given the way Alethkar pre unification is discussed, and the whole thing with Azir kind of but not really having other kingdoms under it). I think you are getting caught up too much in the word "nation." I'm not going to argue on the changing and/or varying meaning of nation because frankly I just don't know enough about it to make a compelling argument. All I'll say is that assuming your definition is technically correct, it's still not the way most people think of the word. In plain language there was no nation of "Germany" prior to Bismarck - only various small central European states populated by ethnic Germans. At a base level - the point we are talking about here is the government of the Alethi Princedoms prior to being unified by Gavilar. Whether you want to call them nations, city-states, principalities, or any other name, what is clear is that they were not sub-units of a larger governmental unit with one centralized ruling structure. They were also not individual governments that were nominally subordinate to a single ruler even if in practice that ruler generally had little practical control. They were 10 separate governmental units who operated autonomously from each other. Sometimes they chose to ally, other times they chose to be enemies. The form of government both before and after unification was monarchy/aristocracy. A hereditary autocratic ruler, with subordinate leaders holding power granted by hereditary titles whose high status are also drawn from genetic ties to the ruling family and/or "royal" decree elevating their status if they don't have blood ties. Now if you were to go back to the Heirocracy, things change again but that's something else.
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