Avatar: A Study in Worldbuilding - the Earth Kingdom [ The Last Airbender l Legend of Korra ]

as the towering walls of the earth kingdoms Fortress of a city fell behind him and breathed in the new Metropolitan air the air of a city of a people who had warned renamed old war and the year of the last safe haven against the onslaught the vast spread of houses and markets was a motley of green yellow and brown woven together with a smoky haze that hung above in the distance the stony monoliths of the inner wall loomed as she looked upon a tall katara then knew she had never known a city till she saw Bar Singh say the moment when team avatar enters bar Singh say like plenty of moments throughout Avatar The Last Airbender is fantastic because one of the things the show always did incredibly well was building a real sense of place that no town or settlement was a generic backdrop and that each nation felt distinctly cultured but never colored with a single shade you can thank senior for this video topic who chose it as his patreon perk and if you would like to suggest a video of your own then there's a link to my patreon down in the description below it would mean the world views support me even if just for a dollar a month also there's gonna be a discord soon so if you want to be part of that then patreon DUP there are dozens of facets to effective world building from religions to social structure to architecture but this is not an on writing video where we would usually break down those individual components so today we'll be taking a look at a very specific element of world building in Avatar The Last Airbender how it's map and geography affixed the way the earth Kingdom has been world built from its politics to its social structure to its economy welcome to one of the longest videos I have ever made at 2,900 words why do I do this to myself the earth kingdoms political landscape arises naturally from its immense size when looking at the world map it dwarfs the second largest nation the fire nation in both population and landmass little own comparing it to the water tribes which essentially comprise a couple of cities as they don't occupy much of their northern and southern icy wastes and the fundamental fate of the place into this is that the larger the kingdom the more difficult it becomes to govern logistically ruling a nation requires three important things that we'll talk about one a direct flow of information to the central authority to a unified militaristic body to enforce the laws and collect taxes for the central authority and three a way to keep the local politics in line with that central authority and the earth kingdoms geography creates some unique challenges for each of these three things most prominently SC before the large of the landmass the more difficult it becomes to govern firstly the transfer of information becomes a lot slower meaning that the central authority here being passing say making decisions for distant lands becomes delayed or even ineffectual when they require urgent intervention the intelligence organization for the throne known as that daily are only described as the cultural authority of Bisons day they are the guardians of all our traditions but only passing say they don't seem to have much influence outside that particular province and I think that reflects this problem with information it will be too slow and ineffectual for them to really bother to keeping a unified militaristic body designed to enforce that central authorities laws and collect their taxes becomes a lot more difficult as the earth Kingdom is essentially in the feudal era meaning that the local militia designed to do these things are pulled from the populace that they're protecting making them more loyal to the crown that they've never met then they are to their local leaders would require a huge amount of influence whether it be a strong control of resources or a high increased in pay for working for that central authority we actually see this idea referenced in the episode the earth Queen where she says but what's left of my kingdom is falling to ruin roving bands of barbarians are raiding villages in the countryside and now some of my subjects are refusing to pay their taxes and later on we get the other side of the coin their passage they were forced to send to their own forces to collect their tax money because the local militia wasn't willing to put lives on the line for a monarch that they had never met and it seems that the people were taking it into their own hands but what's interesting is that we can look at how Kuvera planned to unite all of the earth Kingdom provinces how she planned to get around these difficulties with the geography when she bought the state of VI under her banner she required loyalty proclaim your loyalty if you wish to keep your post but maintaining that control over these remote provinces requires more than a pledge of loyalty I've heard how you help towns by conquering them we see that she manages to maintain that central authority by keeping careful control of resources that these towns and provinces need without which they may either fall behind economically or in the worst cases staff I know the only reason you want this region is because it's rich in ore and your pride certainly will not feed your hungry when all that is left is rubble kuvira managed to maintain a sophisticated system of control to surmount the scale of its land mass in a way that the earth Kingdom monarchs hadn't ever done previously part of the reason for this was trains because trains revolutionized our worlds during the industrial revolution with the quick transfer of information resources and militaristic force but this isn't a breakdown of kuvira's birth in play as fascinating as there would be no the main point is that the earth Kingdom didn't have those things it didn't have trains to allow for the mobility of information resources and military force required for that sort of political cohesion and without that capability it needed to resort to a decentralized system of power given its immense size the earth Kingdom was split up into 58 states give or take a few as to whether we count the United Republic and xiaofu and the like although it probably wasn't split up into the states as we see in legend of korra I'm sorry raava I failed to bring peace even with vaatu locked away darkness still surrounds humanity it's likely that the provinces previously existed but they were drawn together by the strongest of them for a warring period and we'll talk more about why Ba Sing se was the strongest of them a bit later and these provinces are relatively independent politically as we know from the extras in the episode Avatar day in the earth Kingdom there is no universal court system which becomes clear enough because when Aang is facing a trial Thomas's evidence that's not how our court system works I say what happened and then you say what happened and then I decide who's right NH town just mix it up but I do want to highlight how unusual this is having no centralized system of law really shows how decentralized to the power in the earth Kingdom really is that is generally expected to be one of the fundamental tenants of political cohesion but it doesn't have it and the reason does come back to geography obviously enforcing a body of law across a continent of this size would be incredibly resource heavy and logistically difficult but it's also because of the cultural diversity that bringing people together across a landmass of this size would mean not every town would feel like criminals deserve to be boiled in oil instead a sort of federal system makes a large landmass much easier to govern as allowing local bodies to roll is more efficient and more stable as locals understand their needs better than a central government would especially with an absolute monarch the more people that you have to dictate to the more likely some of them will rebel so the less you try and dictate to them the less likely they are to rebel and that's why I think they don't seem to have a unified body of laws essentially stability across the whole continent I say this coming from a country with a government with practically no separation of powers I mean Montesquieu would be spewing I am and we can see this in how the Monarchs power is essentially null outside bar Singh say the decrees are only ever referenced as having power within the city with a few exceptions like conscription but the difficulty of governing a landmass of this size is compounded by a number of geographical factors for most of the sea Wong desert which is described in the following way I'm afraid that deserts impossible to cross we get varying descriptions of how large the SI Wong desert is but the most accurate one is probably the map we used in the episode the library spanning from Omashu to the eastern sea essentially covering nearly a third of the earth Kingdom territory and the important thing about the SI Wong desert is that it essentially creates an impenetrable natural barrier between the northern half of the continent most importantly the central authority bar Sing se and the southern half to tie this back into our centralized body of laws it would be incredibly difficult for the earth kingdom to bring a force down into the south to confront any city or town that really disobeys its declarations its decrees and it's because of this that de facto the provinces of the earth Kingdom are essentially independent states that I think are only nominally part of the earth Kingdom this is true to the extent that Omashu one of its provinces has its own king bumi a title there would not usually be tolerated in a cohesive monarchy it's the earth king he's over there he's also over there but that one has heart Andi listen though there may be a reason that Oh Marshall in particular has its own king because we know that other provinces are typically run by governors amartia was placed in the middle of the coulomb mountains and on the western side of the SI Wong desert it would be next to impossible to sustain a siege in the arid climate let alone bring forces down from the north to attack it that is unlike the Fire Nation who can bring fresh troops in with a powerful Navy from the south that natural defensive position gives them a unique advantage if bassing say try to get rid of their monarchy then they may just secede from the earth Kingdom and what would they do about it it's also curious to note the mountain range that dominates the eastern border of the Northwest provinces creating a natural barrier between them and passing say there is a pass through the middle of them though near Taku which would explain why the Fire Nation built the Poho fortress we see in the Blue Spirit episode to control the main axis way to their conquered territory and forcing the earth kingdom into a bottleneck if they ever tried to take it back now on the one hand independent there's a fantastic thing there's a reason that federalism took off in our world but it can also lead to situations where the central authority is unable to intervene or in worst cases doesn't kit we actually see this in the episode Zuko alone those men should be ashamed to wear earth Kingdom uniforms the real soldiers are off fighting the war you're bullies freeloaders abusing your power mostly over women and kids damn that excerpt was fantastic I really wanna do a breakdown of that and the southern Raiders what Minster is that these natural and penetrable most notably the SI Wong desert represent a place that the earth King cannot exert force in a meaningful way meaning that there are whole peoples who live there that don't really count themselves as citizens of the earth Kingdom like the sandbenders so with this geographical layout the question becomes what is the role of the central government in the earth Kingdom we know that well technically the earth Queen has a right to conscript her citizens and we know that it clicks Texas from all of its provinces which means it must offer something in return if it didn't then it would be the 47th peasant uprising and I'm not even kidding there have been 46 peasant uprisings and Ba Sing se alone in earth Kingdom history on another note no peasants such as ourselves have ever revolted against supreme leader Mishka he's the perfect fascist oil hey Lee Mishka either way we know that there is a centralized military force under the Council of five that we meet in passing say but it doesn't seem to do many other things on a nationwide scale it may only be responsible for security a libertarians dream though this may have been exaggerated during the hundred year war period where they needed kind of that unified military force prior to that we don't really know it's possible that much of its collective wealth was put straight back into a bar Singh say maintaining its walls maintaining its roads it's building up its infrastructure things like that which would make sense because we know the busing say is well ahead of much of the earth Kingdom which is relatively poor because of its geography the earth Kingdom government operates on the highest degree possible of decentralized power whilst maintaining the minimum required for nationwide cohesion control of security this would explain why the fall of bassing same into the fall of the entire Earth Kingdom its command structure would have been entirely based within Bar Singh say if the whole kingdom wasn't centrally controlled from there then the other provinces would have continued to fight far more than they did after the season two finale in effect the geography of the earth kingdom from its size to the SI Wong desert to its mountain ranges makes it impossible for the earth monarch to exert any real influence in a huge amount of influence over its provinces if bar Seng se did try to become a dominant power then it would likely be met with resistance and even secession that it couldn't stop this is near Eclair then in Qin the conquerors campaign during the reign of the 46th earth King passing say tried to extend its power to over Texas citizens and probably set laws down to be enforced across the entire kingdom surprise surprise people don't like that and so they revolted under chin the great Oh Conqueror depending on what you think and the earth king was powerless to stop him as he essentially took over all of the earth kingdom except bar Singh say but let's talk about something even more interesting economics my father would be proud of me we know that Ba Sing se was built atop the crystal catacombs of old Ba Sing se we see this in the crossroads of destiny in the crystal catacombs of old Ba Sing se deep beneath the palace well what do you know there is an ancient city down there but it's deep [Music] and this particular geographical feature is much more important than many would realize cities are usually built around water sources being rivers or lakes or the ocean that's why most people tend to live on the coast but Ba Sing se is curiously in the heartland of the continent with only a small river flowing into Lake laogai in the outer ring but this underground feature may mean that Ba Sing se doesn't need to rely on the ocean or lakes or rivers because it seems like old Ba Sing se was built around an underground aquifer think of a like a huge body of fresh water beneath the earth for earth benders this would be easy to tap into and use but it's notable that the city with a population the size of Ba Sing se requires a huge amount of food and by all indications this food has grown inside the city it doesn't get brought in when both Aang and Korra inter Ba Sing se we see the vast amount of land that is dedicated purely to crop production much of which would have been rice a crop easy to cultivate and hints White's a staple of the earth Kingdom diet busing se has a horde of flat land to use a more importantly its climate allows for a rare agricultural benefit known as multiple cropping which i think is pretty self-explanatory the climate allows for two or more harvests per year instead of the usual one which gives bassing say a huge advantage in food production without which the earth Kingdom definitely wouldn't have become the most populous nation and without which I don't think the provinces would have been united under the banner of the earth Kingdom and I'll explain why in a bit but first there's this complex economical agricultural equation where if you get more food in equals and a Meowth more babies and who doesn't want more babies but multiple cropping typically requires a huge amount of water and we can see in the establishing shots of the show right outside the outer wall there is an arid desert meaning that this fertile land is likely to be man-made multiple cropping only really became possible and widespread in Asia after a Green Revolution which was where they learned how to use water incredibly efficiently likewise bassing say would have gone through a similar revolution when they mentioned to learn how to channel the mess of water from their underground aquifer into their fields and if this is where mass population for the earth kingdom began because of its aquifer and its climate then that would explain why bastings say is the capital province with the highest food production and population becomes the largest and most well resourced military and with that they would have eventually been able to draw the provinces together under their banner as the earth kingdom also I won't touch on the SI Wong desert again because coupled with the lack of central enforcement and the natural and penetrable barrier that it creates between the north and the south we see that the South becomes a hub for criminal activity trading illegal wares and at settlements acting as meeting hubs for bounty hunters and the like as we see in the misty Palms and other desert towns another geographical to consider are the eastern and western lakes which create another natural barrier between the North and the South as well as between bassing SE and the west but these lakes also create a central point of trade for the earth Kingdom as towns line up around their edges much like the Mediterranean and this may be a factor in the political cohesion of the earth Kingdom so peoples who are heavily integrated via trade tend to be more politically involved with one another as well and historically trade links have led to our political cohesion because they avoid war between those different people groups for example the United States they're more like a bunch of free trading nations but they're so integrated that they need one another they can't afford to go to war against each other likewise the common market in Europe was partially invented as a war deterrent it's likely that the trade across the eastern Western lakes have helped maintain the earth Kingdom as it is and finally I want to talk about how the geography influenced to the fire nations strategy during the hundred year war the fire Lords immediate goal was to bring down the earth Kingdom the only nation that could really challenged it militarily and economically as katara says but they pretty much won the war when they took Ba Sing se the fact that so much of their economy and military is concentrated in that one area makes it the King on the chessboard arguably a smarter strategy would have been to take the south of the earth Kingdom in a blitzkrieg attack with the SI Wong desert between them they would have had a natural buffer with the area subjugated they would then be free to blockade Eastern Lake and lands an army of troops on bar Singh says doorstep but instead they focused on the Western Front the reason for this I think is resources the financial needed resources to sustain their attack and we can see from the likes of Mokpo village and Taku which were built in a fashion notably more wealthy than other places in the earth Kingdom and Taku was one of the central trading posts for the earth Kingdom that the northwestern territories covered in dense forests mining reserves and metal deposit that they would need for ships attacking there was a far better target for a long-term strategy and they had no guarantee that Ba Sing se would fall on their first assault they needed to wear it down first Avatar integrated every element of its world building with one another and this was just a fun little study to show how deep that really went how complex the earth kingdom was and how much of that arose from its geography because geography really does influence how you build your fictional world but that is all for me if you would like to suggest your own video topic beard avatar Lord of the Rings elder scrolls whatever you liked then come support me on patreon and we can talk about that really would mean the world and if you enjoyed this cuz this it's gonna take me a long time so here that's then please do question of the day how would you conquer the world from your country as in what would be your strategy let me know down in the comments below and the meantime laughter you can follow me on Twitter Facebook email me stuff too you've mail in the address and links in the description below stay nerdy sub-areas and I will see you in the future

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 1,449,721

Keywords: avatar, legend of korra, legend of aang, the last airbender, atla, firebending, earthbending, waterbending, airbendering, night fury, toothless, dragon, earth kingdom, on writing, worldbuilding, world building, GRR Martin, Tolkien, religion, geography, mountains, desert, Ba Sing Se, cities, city, visual imagery, politics, government, monarchy, Dai Li, Fire Nation, Library, Kuvira, state rights, katara, sokka, crossroads of destiny, finale, toph, queen, king, bumi, explained, lore, theory

Id: I-FNPuIM9jg

Length: 20min 8sec (1208 seconds)

Published: Wed May 16 2018