How many Hallandrens?

[Voidlit Man]

This is a fairly straightforward question. There are around two dozen Returned in the Hallandren court of Gods, and each Returned requires a breath a week, (The God King has two), which brings the number up to 25ish. Most members of Hallandren do not sell their breaths directly to the Gods, I'm going to say conservatively that about an 8th of the population does. How many people would have to live in Hallandren in order to have 200 new breaths a week? Is this number too small, or too large? I have little experience counting demographics based on amount of children born. 

[Treamayne]

54 minutes ago, Voidlit Man said:

This is a fairly straightforward question. There are around two dozen Returned in the Hallandren court of Gods, and each Returned requires a breath a week, (The God King has two), which brings the number up to 25ish. Most members of Hallandren do not sell their breaths directly to the Gods, I'm going to say conservatively that about an 8th of the population does. How many people would have to live in Hallandren in order to have 200 new breaths a week? Is this number too small, or too large? I have little experience counting demographics based on amount of children born. 

The most info we have so far (that I can find) is: WoB

Spoiler

wackyHair

What's the population of the shardworld's we've seen so far (even in very general terms, like one's much bigger than the others or something)?

Brandon Sanderson

Scadrial is certainly the least populated of the major shard worlds. Then Nalthis, I'd guess, followed by Roshar, and finally Sel--which likely has the largest population. I would have to look closely to see which is bigger between those last two.

Phantine

Does a population of about 100 million during The Final Empire (with 1-2 million in Luthadel), and around 15 million during Alloy of Law (with about 5 million in Elendel) seem right?

Brandon Sanderson

Have to RAFO this for now, for reasons I can't explain without giving spoilers.

Phantine

How about as far as Elend/Wax knows, at the beginning of their respective series?

Brandon Sanderson

Then those numbers, if they're off, are at least close.

faragorn

Interesting that Sel has such a large population, given that the actual numbers of soldiers shown seem to be quite small.

Brandon Sanderson

Let's just say that Opelon has an inflated opinion of its own size in relation to the rest of the world.

Footnote: The RAFO about the Scadrian population may be due to the existence of the Southerners, which had not been revealed as of this time.
/r/books AMA 2015 (June 8, 2015)

So, if 1-2 million for Luthadel is at least "close", and if Scadrial is less populous than Nalthis then it is likely that Hallendren is of a similar size (or possibly slight larger). I say similar because while Nalthis is more populous, it also has more countries and more inhabitied geography for that population to spread out. 

Also, Vivenna mentions (ch 9) that the population of Bevalis (Idrian Capital) is "a few thousand" with the Idrian population spread thinly through farms and rangeland but T'Telir is orders of magnitude larger and more populated:

Spoiler

It still felt wrong to be exposed. In Bevalis, she’d have been recognized instantly. Of course, Bevalis had only a few thousand people in it. The vastly greater scale of T’Telir would require a conscious adjustment.

She gestured to Parlin and—gritting her teeth—joined the crowd and began making her way toward the marketplace.

The inland sea made all the difference. T’Telir was a prime port, and the dyes it sold—made from the Tears of Edgli, a local flower—made it a center of trade. She could see the evidence all around her. Exotic silks and clothing. Brown-skinned traders from Tedradel with their long black beards bound with tight leather cords into cylindrical shapes. Fresh foodstuffs from cities along the coast. In Idris, the population was spread out thinly across the farms and rangelands. In Hallandren—a country that controlled a good third of the inland sea’s coast—things were different. They could burgeon. Grow.

Get flamboyant.

 

Edited February 21 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Argenti]

1 hour ago, Voidlit Man said:

This is a fairly straightforward question. There are around two dozen Returned in the Hallandren court of Gods, and each Returned requires a breath a week, (The God King has two), which brings the number up to 25ish. Most members of Hallandren do not sell their breaths directly to the Gods, I'm going to say conservatively that about an 8th of the population does. How many people would have to live in Hallandren in order to have 200 new breaths a week? Is this number too small, or too large? I have little experience counting demographics based on amount of children born. 

Alright, so, say there are ~55 births per 1000 per year at the time. I'll pretend infant mortality is about 20%, (Roman Egypt's was about 32%, and with breaths and all that, it's probably significantly lower) so about 44 babies per 1000 per year, divide that by about 52 (Number of weeks per year), and you get 0.85 babies per week. If you need ~200 breaths, divide that by 0.85, and you get around 236 thousand people minimum. I'm willing to bet it's at least twice this many, probably closer to three times, as Rome IRL, by conservative estimates, was about half a million, and with the breaths and very fertile soil, its not unreasonable to assume it could support three-quarters of a million.

That's assuming my math is right, and the sources I found are right.

[alder24]

On 2/21/2024 at 7:22 PM, Voidlit Man said:

This is a fairly straightforward question. There are around two dozen Returned in the Hallandren court of Gods, and each Returned requires a breath a week, (The God King has two), which brings the number up to 25ish. Most members of Hallandren do not sell their breaths directly to the Gods, I'm going to say conservatively that about an 8th of the population does. How many people would have to live in Hallandren in order to have 200 new breaths a week? Is this number too small, or too large? I have little experience counting demographics based on amount of children born. 

The only thing we know, the only thing that matters is that T'Telir requires at least 25 births every week to sustain the Court of Gods demand for fresh, child's Breaths. That's at least 300 Breaths per year. Using the data from the city of Warsaw (Poland), which in 2015 had nearly 20,000 births per 1.744 million inhabitants, you would need a city of ~26,100 people to sustain the Court of God with the same birth rate. But the Court has room for twice as many Returned, so the city would have to be at least 52,000. That's really, really small. T'Telir seems to be much bigger, they have much greater births per year.  

It doesn't really matter how many adults sell their Breaths because we know nothing about this. They don't count in this statistic because they aren't babies, they can give up their Breath whenever they want - not when they are young. We don't know how many Breaths are held by the upper class or priests, how many Breaths are sold or anything. We can't speculate because that's just wild guessing at this point. We can only look at how big the city needs to be to provide Returned with fresh, young Breaths every week. We can't include the amount of Breaths sold by adults because we know nothing.

Another way to look at this is that Hallandren has 40,000 Lifeless. Those will eventually break down after a couple of years and they would need a replacement. If we assume an average "life" expectancy of around 10 years for Lifeless, they would need on average 4,000 bodies per year to replenish losses. In 2015 in Warsaw nearly 19,000 people died. That means that T'Telir needs to have a population of at least 367,000 people to sustain such an army. That's more like what I've imagined. That's comparable to the population of the largest cities in Europe in 1600. The population would have to be even larger because many of those bodies would not be adequate for Lifeless soldiers - like too weak, too much rotten, lacking limbs, etc.

But then the entire country would contribute to the replenishment of the Lifeless army, people from outside of the T'Telir could be making Lifeless and selling them to the Court of Gods. But let's assume for the sake of simplicity that it's cheaper to make them from bodies found in the city, thus they prioritize mainly those. 

Edited February 23 by alder24

[Voidlit Man]

On 2/21/2024 at 12:45 PM, alder24 said:

The only thing we know, the only thing that matters is that Hallandren requires at least 25 births every week to sustain the Court of Gods demand for fresh, child's Breaths. That's at least 300 Breaths per year. Using the data from the city of Warsaw (Poland), which in 2015 had nearly 20,000 births per 1.744 million inhabitants, you would need a city of ~26,100 people to sustain the Court of God with the same birth rate. But the Court has room for twice as many Returned, so the city would have to be at least 52,000. That's really, really small. Hallandren seems to be much bigger, they have much greater births per year.  

It doesn't really matter how many adults sell their Breaths because we know nothing about this. They don't count in this statistic because they aren't babies, they can give up their Breath whenever they want - not when they are young. We don't know how many Breaths are held by the upper class or priests, how many Breaths are sold or anything. We can't speculate because that's just wild guessing at this point. We can only look at how big the city needs to be to provide Returned with fresh, young Breaths every week. We can't include the amount of Breaths sold by adults because we know nothing.

Another way to look at this is that Hallandren has 40,000 Lifeless. Those will eventually break down after a couple of years and they would need a replacement. If we assume an average "life" expectancy of around 10 years for Lifeless, they would need on average 4,000 bodies per year to replenish losses. In 2015 in Warsaw nearly 19,000 people died. That means that Hallandren needs to have a population of at least 367,000 people to sustain such an army. That's more like what I've imagined. That's comparable to the population of the largest cities in Europe in 1600. The population would have to be even larger because many of those bodies would not be adequate for Lifeless soldiers - like too weak, too much rotten, lacking limbs, etc.

But then the entire country would contribute to the replenishment of the Lifeless army, people from outside of the Hallandren could be making Lifeless and selling them to the Court of Gods. But let's assume for the sake of simplicity that it's cheaper to make them from bodies found in the city, thus they prioritize mainly those. 

Another thing to note, Poland's TFR during 2015 was 1.32 births per woman, and I would assume that Hallandren's TFR is higher, since they are likely in stage 2 of the demographic transition model. T'Tellier seems to be a truly massive city!

[Colors]

On 2/21/2024 at 2:45 PM, alder24 said:

The only thing we know, the only thing that matters is that Hallandren requires at least 25 births every week to sustain the Court of Gods demand for fresh, child's Breaths. That's at least 300 Breaths per year. Using the data from the city of Warsaw (Poland), which in 2015 had nearly 20,000 births per 1.744 million inhabitants, you would need a city of ~26,100 people to sustain the Court of God with the same birth rate. But the Court has room for twice as many Returned, so the city would have to be at least 52,000. That's really, really small. Hallandren seems to be much bigger, they have much greater births per year.  

It doesn't really matter how many adults sell their Breaths because we know nothing about this. They don't count in this statistic because they aren't babies, they can give up their Breath whenever they want - not when they are young. We don't know how many Breaths are held by the upper class or priests, how many Breaths are sold or anything. We can't speculate because that's just wild guessing at this point. We can only look at how big the city needs to be to provide Returned with fresh, young Breaths every week. We can't include the amount of Breaths sold by adults because we know nothing.

Another way to look at this is that Hallandren has 40,000 Lifeless. Those will eventually break down after a couple of years and they would need a replacement. If we assume an average "life" expectancy of around 10 years for Lifeless, they would need on average 4,000 bodies per year to replenish losses. In 2015 in Warsaw nearly 19,000 people died. That means that Hallandren needs to have a population of at least 367,000 people to sustain such an army. That's more like what I've imagined. That's comparable to the population of the largest cities in Europe in 1600. The population would have to be even larger because many of those bodies would not be adequate for Lifeless soldiers - like too weak, too much rotten, lacking limbs, etc.

But then the entire country would contribute to the replenishment of the Lifeless army, people from outside of the Hallandren could be making Lifeless and selling them to the Court of Gods. But let's assume for the sake of simplicity that it's cheaper to make them from bodies found in the city, thus they prioritize mainly those. 

Just to clarify, Hallandren is the country, T'Telir is the city. T'Telir alone should be able to support the Court of the Gods as you suggest, and when you add the rest of the country in they should have no issue supporting the Lifeless army either. Although we do not know much about Hallandren outside of T'Telir, we do know that T'Telir is the capital city, Hallandren is divided into several provinces, and one of those provinces is where the Pahn Kahl ethnic group originate from. They by themselves were an independent country before being subsumed into Hallandren. That should mean at least a few other cities outside of T'Telier though I don't think any are ever mentioned specifically. 

[alder24]

10 hours ago, Voidlit Man said:

Another thing to note, Poland's TFR during 2015 was 1.32 births per woman, and I would assume that Hallandren's TFR is higher, since they are likely in stage 2 of the demographic transition model. T'Tellier seems to be a truly massive city!

Yes, Hallandren is a preindustrial society, a single family would have more kids than a modern family - Dedelin (Siri and Vivenne's father) has 4 kids, Jewels has 5 siblings. 

 

8 hours ago, Colors said:

Just to clarify, Hallandren is the country, T'Telir is the city.

My mistake, that's what I meant. I often forgot the name of T'Telir.

8 hours ago, Colors said:

Although we do not know much about Hallandren outside of T'Telir

It's quite large. It took Siri weeks of travel through the country before she arrived at T'Telir, she passed through multiple smaller cities. Hallandren also controls a third of the inland, Inner Sea coastline, a sea that's probably quite large considering it was crossed only 600 years before Warbreaker. I wouldn't be surprised if the Inner Sea was comparable in size to the Black Sea or even Mediterranean Sea. 

[Colors]

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

Yes, Hallandren is a preindustrial society, a single family would have more kids than a modern family - Dedelin (Siri and Vivenne's father) has 4 kids, Jewels has 5 siblings. 

 

My mistake, that's what I meant. I often forgot the name of T'Telir.

It's quite large. It took Siri weeks of travel through the country before she arrived at T'Telir, she passed through multiple smaller cities. Hallandren also controls a third of the inland, Inner Sea coastline, a sea that's probably quite large considering it was crossed only 600 years before Warbreaker. I wouldn't be surprised if the Inner Sea was comparable in size to the Black Sea or even Mediterranean Sea. 

Agreed on all counts.

That's what I thought, it's been a few years since I read Warbreaker, but I distinctly felt like they mention some unnamed towns along the way. Obviously the farther out you get from T'Telier the control the capital exerts would naturally diminish, as with all kingdoms or empires at similar stages of societal progress. How much we don't know, but I suspect a lot more of the resources to sustain the Court of the Gods and the kindgom's defenses probably come from T'Telir or the region directly around T'Telier.