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Fantasy Wargaming

Geography

The great nations of western Europe — England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc. — do not yet exist as we know them. There are places called, “England,” “France,” “Germany,” and “Italy,” but they have no national government. Their kings are weak, and real power is in the hands of many nobles. Thus, Europe is really a collection of petty noble states.

Similarly, the European languages as we know them do not exist. In France alone, more than a dozen languages are spoken, some completely unrelated to the others. The situation is similar in Germany. In England, there are four separate dialects of “English,” (the language we might call Anglo-Saxon).

As a result, there is no national identity as we know it. A man from Normandy isn’t a Frenchman, he is a Norman. A man from Burgundy is a Burgundian. A man from Northumbria may well consider himself an Englishman, but he looks to the Earl of Northumbria, not the king of England, as the real power in the area. An Irishman may well recognize the power of the high king of Ireland, but he considers himself a man of Munster, Ulster, or Connacht, not an “Irishman.”

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