>>I'll bet that the clear borders marked on the maps have very little
>>relationship to the facts on the ground. Even in the RW today national
>>borders are very fluid things for the practical purposes of people
>>living there except where governments put up barriers.
>>
>YRWWV ... ;-)
>
>Lots depends on which parts of RW or Glorantha you live in.
>
>The border between, say, Afghanistan and Tajikistan is a very fluid one,
>whereas the border between France and Switzerland isn't.
I don't know about France and Switzerland, but I do know the border between Eire and Northern Ireland is pretty much ignored by many of the people who live on either side of it. Then there's the French/ Spanish border where the locals regard themselves as Basque. The other one I was thinking of was the US/Canadian border most of which is wilderness. Of course since most of the EU abolished internal border controls and adopted a single currency ordinary people are much more inclined to ignore boundaries when deciding where to shop or work.
>I'd guess that border lines are fairly important in the feudal West,
>because at the micro level each local Lord and Knight needs to know
>which fields he owns and which peasants pay how much poll tax to whom,
>and at the macro level which local Lords are subject to which Kings,
>Bishops, et cetera ... This would remain important even at the national
>level IMO.
But these aren't national boundaries, the legal structure is feudal allegences where who you are pledged to determines rents and taxes. In border areas that probably changes on a pretty frequent basis and there may well be some nobility who play the kings off against one another while remaining independent. Look at the history of the English/Scottish border for an example. You'd have a job drawing a definitive line on the map at any particular date and a generation or so later it would be wrong.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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