The Borderland Army

[grump]

Do you think King Lan riding to TG will have any effect on the borderland army?

[Thor]

Not really, because the Borderland army is not in the Borderlands. :lol:

 

Essentially, Lan and other Malkieri are going to be the only ones there, once again facing the blight on their own.

 

Hum, ironic come to think of it.

 

If they make it through, then they truly would have avenged themselves and resurrected Malkier.

[Gentled Ben]

I have to agree with Thor here. :shock: :lol:

[RobertAlexWillis]

Not really, because the Borderland army is not in the Borderlands.

 

Yes, because they couldn't catch up by, I don't know, Travelling or anything like that.

 

Essentially, Lan and other Malkieri are going to be the only ones there, once again facing the blight on their own.

 

If thats the case, then Lan and the Malkieri are gonna get ground into dog meat. Or, actually, Trolloc meat.

 

Which should make all the people who want to see Lan die in the Last Battle happy.

[cloglord]

I don't know about that Robert. I don't have my books with me right now, but wasn't it the case in TEotW that if more countries had shown up, then it wouldn't have been so lopsided at Tarwin's Gap that time? I think that if Lan can muster a credible number of borderlanders, he might have a chance of holding Tarwin's Gap for the duration, that is until Rand takes care of whatever needs taking care of.

 

I'll have to look that up, when I get a chance.

[RobertAlexWillis]

If the Trollocs come south with anything less than a half a million, then Demandred (or whoever's in charge) is a moron.

 

There's no way Lan and the leftovers of the Borderlands can do anything but be a bump in the road for a half a million Trollocs. Lan's not going to get more than 50,000 men, which is about what Shienar can muster (assuming that Shienar represents about a quarter of the 200,000 Borderlanders), and his men aren't going to be as well trained, organized, or equipped as the regular Shienaran army.

[Thor]

What is the terrain at Tarwin's (sp?) Gap?

 

If it really is a gap no more than 10 meters wide, I don't see why they can't hold back the shadowspawns, even if they come in the millions.

 

And no, I don't think the Borderlanders will be doing any travelling, especially if Demandred is with them.

They are either going to self destruct (haha :lol: ), or they are going to bog themselves down. The sisters with them have been out of contact with the rest of the aes sedai, they won't have a clue of what's going on.

[RobertAlexWillis]

And no, I don't think the Borderlanders will be doing any travelling, especially if Demandred is with them.

 

There's going to be some kind of confrontation when Rand finally does meet with them. Unless Rand loses, then whoever is left at the end will be willing to Travel with Rand and the Asha'man to Tarmon Gai'don.

 

Of course Rand might lose, in which case, Lan and his boys will be ground into Trolloc meat.

 

The terrain is open enough for the Shienarans to use cavalry. And the reason the Trollocs have always come through Tarwin's Gap is that its big enough to move large numbers of Trollocs through, and Lan knows it.

 

"In the Trolloc Wars, the Shadow used Tarwin's Gap to move large numbers of Trollocs"

 

(Lan to Nynaeve in Knife of Dreams, chapter 20 The Golden Crane)

 

So, its not like the pass at Thermopylae where a few thousand Greeks held off the Persians for a couple of days.

 

(And before anyone goes off about "There were only 300 Spartans at Thermopylae!" despite the legend, those Spartans were not alone. For a good description of what really happened, read Thermopylae, by Paul Cartledge. There were several thousand other Greeks with them.)

 

So its not a gap "10 meters wide". I would ask where you got that idea, but that would be futile.

[Thor]

You said a whole lot of things withou actually answering my question.

 

What IS the terrain at Tarwin's Gap? HOW wide is it?

[imrathill]

anyway it wont be only the malkieries the borderland rulers said that they had people in the borderlands to hold everything exept a huge war.. so i gues lan gets them in his army to.

[RobertAlexWillis]

What IS the terrain at Tarwin's Gap? HOW wide is it?

 

You want a number? Its never measured in the books. But its a VALLEY between two mountain ranges. A valley wide enough to use heavy cavalry in. So its a whole lot bigger than 10 meters.

 

And its big enough to be visible on a map of the world.

 

anyway it wont be only the malkieries the borderland rulers said that they had people in the borderlands to hold everything exept a huge war.. so i gues lan gets them in his army to.

 

So they all desert their posts along the Blight, leaving no one behind? The Shadow would LOVE that. "Hey, while you guys guard Tarwin's Gap, we're just gonna take over the whole rest of the Borderlands."

 

The Borderland rulers took all the extra soldiers south. There are no more extra soldiers to go with Lan. His "army" will be merchants and farmers and craftsmen.

 

Besides, if Tarmon Gai'don isn't going to be a "huge war" what will it be?

[SBoydW]

http://www.wotmania.com/faqtopic.asp?ID=107

[vegetattack15]

I don't think Lan would have to go out of his way to scoop up the Borderlanders. If Agelmar gets wind of the Golden Crane flying again, I think he'll be gone rather quickly to support Lan. If that happens I also believe the other borderlanders would follow. I see them getting to Rand just in time to find out about Lan, (Nyn is with Rand) and Rand could get them all to Lan in perfect timing for TG defenses along the Blight.

[Master of the Blades]

The four Bordelander Monarchs left substantial reserves in their countries to counter any possible Trolloc invasion. Each country has as many as 200k heavy calvalry and foot available. If an attack does come through Tarwins Gap Lan would have as many as 200k Shieneran in addition to his Malkieri's and any other Borderlanders that might rally to him.

 

The Wot Faq cited seriously underestimates the armed forces in Randland. they arrive at a number of 900k.

 

There are 800k in the borderlands alone.

 

100k in Tar Valon between Bryne and Chubain,

 

There are close to 200k Aiel Spears in Cairhien.

 

Tolmeran has 50k troops in Tear,

 

There are 130k Troops in Andor, and 8k Saldaeaen Cavalry. The Band has 20k.

 

The Borderlanders are in Andor and or Murandy with another 200k and Roedran commands 45k himself.

 

Illian is defended by 200k spears, 80k Illianers, 10k Cairhinien, and 35k Legion of the Dragon.

 

Altara has 7k of Galad's Whitecloaks, 5k bowman and Mayeners are with Perrin, Mat has 7k cavalry and Masema's rabble add up to another 20k.

 

We do not know how many Whitecloks are in Murandy.

 

Arad Doman is now populated by 80k Aiel Spears, Darlin and 35k Tairens, 35k Legion of the Dragon, and 85k Domanis under Ituralde.

 

So Randland has armies totalling 2163k men and women.

This does not include all the chanellers and Athan Miere sailors.

 

Assuming that the Dragon Reborn can bind the DoTNM we can now add an additional force of Seanchan composed as follows

Tarabon 100k, Arad Doman (Turan) 150k

Amadicia 50k,

Altara Khirgan 50k, Tuon 200k, Chisen 100k,

Illian 200k,

Tar Valon???

If the Seanchan join the fight then the Army swells by another 800k

 

So the total military might would be closer to 3000k

 

 

Back to Tarwin's Gap

 

Even with 200k it is likely that Lan would be seriously outnumbered. We learned in TEOTW that The Shienerians were about to be detroyed to the last until Rand fried and crushed most of them. He will need a much stronger force to snatch victory.

[Guest Anonymous!]

RobertAlexWillis Wrote:

 

So they all desert their posts along the Blight, leaving no one behind? The Shadow would LOVE that. "Hey, while you guys guard Tarwin's Gap, we're just gonna take over the whole rest of the Borderlands."

 

The Borderland rulers took all the extra soldiers south. There are no more extra soldiers to go with Lan. His "army" will be merchants and farmers and craftsmen.

 

 

Yes ... I agree completely. Lan is going to have to spend at least a month in Fal Dara training his "army", if not more. Plus I disagree with that wotmania page saying that the Borderlands will only have 800,000 men for defense. That's absurdly low. If they can support an army of 200,000 that is thousands of miles away from their homeland then they should have at least 10X that number defending the homeland...AT LEAST.

 

From New Spring we know that people from other Borderland nations were willing to follow Lan. I’m convinced the reason Jordan wrote the prequel before the concluding novels was so we could have Lan say “I will never lead any other men in my war.” a thousand times. It added some drama to Nynaeve’s scenes in KoD. That and Jordan needed to establish Moiraine’s and Cadsuane’s dislike for one another, and the fact that Moiraine believes she is a dark friend.

 

How big is Tarwin’s Gap? Sure I’m willing to give it a go … remember this is a ROM at best. In the Big White Book there is a fairly detailed map of Randland … on page 207, I think. My first assumption is that this map is accurate and to scale. We know from LoC and AcoS that Cairhein and Caemlyn are a little over 600 miles apart. Take a ruler and measure the distance between Cairhein to Caemlyn. Write the measurement down. That measurement is 600 miles on the page 207 map. Now to prove that my assumption is reasonable. In the great Big White Book, Jordan made a scale map of the world with a scale of 3000 miles. Using this map and scale I estimate that Randland is ~3,200 miles from the center of the Spine of the World to the Tip of Falme. Using my Cairhein/Caemlyn distance and measuring across Randland, I estimate the distance to be about 3,300 miles. Pretty close to scale in my opinion. So now I have a standard unit of measure to figure out Tarwin’s gap. From the bottom of Tarwin’s Gap to the bottom of the Blasted Lands I estimate it to be about 175 miles vertical. The width varies but at the mouth it appears to be ~300 miles wide. It doesn’t look square but trapezoidal with it being narrower toward the top. I estimate the top at about 150 miles. So using the Area formula for a trapezoid the area of Tarwin’s Gap is about 40,000 square miles.

 

Here is a link to the map to which I'm referring:

http://www.wotmud.org/directory/maps/mainmap.jpg

 

You can use this method to figure out the land areas of the various nations. Like I estimate Shienar is about 100,000 square miles, Arafel is about 115,000 square miles, Kandor is about 105,000 square miles, and Saldea is about 320,000 square miles. I came up with these by using simple geometries with known surface areas and filling in the space between the nations borders. Of course these can vary depending on where you put the top border of each nation. I put the northern borders at the base of the Mountains of Dhoom. So according to my calculation the total land area of the Borderlands is about 640,000 square miles. These are RoM’s at best, and shouldn’t be taken as absolute fact. Would I be surprised if Jordan came out and said Shienar is 80,000 square miles not 100,000? No. That is definitely within the realm of error for the maps he has provided us with. If he came out and said it was only 8,000 Square Miles then there would be some serious room for dispute, since the maps he has published would not match that 8,000 square miles estimate.

 

From the land area you can get approximate population densities. I think we can all agree that the level of technology and scientific understanding of Randland before TEotW would correspond to our Middle Ages. Realistic population densities and/or populations is very difficult to track during the Middle Ages but most estimates I have scene ranges anywhere from 5 –105 people per square mile. Yes that is quite a range and for good reason. After the fall of the Roman Empire many of its lands suffered from extreme population decrease as a result. Many nations didn’t reach Roman Empire population numbers again until the 500 years after its fall. Then there was the black plague which wiped out 0.25-0.33 of the population of Europe, and some nations were hit worse than others. Plus just the usual war and famine. So the population was in extreme flux from about 500 AD to 1500 AD. Realistically sparsely populated nations were in the 20-30 people per square mile (ppsm), moderately populated in the 50-60 ppsm and heavily populate was in the 80-90 ppsm.

 

So depending on what you believe about the borderlands they could have total population from 12.8 Million (20 ppsm) all the way up to 57.6 Million (90 ppsm). Could it be as low as 5 ppsm? Yes… but not much lower since small villages of 100-500 people would be 20 – 30 miles apart and we know that not even the Two Rivers was that sparsely populated. It could be as high as 110 ppsm, but the technology of that time really wouldn’t allow for much more.

 

Is this definitive? No. Because even today population densities are wide ranging, South Korea has a population density of ~1250 ppsm, Japan and India have population densities in the 860-870 range, the U.K. has a population density of about 630 ppsm, the U.S has a population density about 80 ppsm, and Russia has a population density of about 21 ppsm.

 

The only major question is if Jordan’s miles equal our Real World miles in length.

 

So if the Borderlands have at minimum 3,200,000 (5 ppsm) and half the population is women leaving 1,600,000 men to fight. Take away all boys under the age of 15 and over the age of 60 who can't fight, and I'll figure 30-35%, you will still have 1,040,000 to defend the homelands. Let's put a realistic population in there of about 20 million, the borderlands could muster 6,500,000 men for defenses. Now remember most of these are going to be farmers and peasants who have never picked up a sword, but they will fight if they have no escape and they are faced with being dinner for trollocs. In fact they will be carrying pitch forks and rakes with no armor, so they will be little more than a wasted sword stroke for the Trollocs.

[Thor]

Oh dear, that's not much of a gap then is it?

 

Guess we are going to have some nice corpses.

 

edit:

wait a second, you can't use that map for reference, the place where Tarwin's Gap is written is all blanked out to provide space for the words. any measurements made from that is going to be inaccurate, the words very conveniently covers up the gap itself.

[RobertAlexWillis]

There are 800k in the borderlands alone.

 

Where did you come up with that number? Or most of the others for that matter ....

[Guest Anonymous!]

wait a second, you can't use that map for reference, the place where Tarwin's Gap is written is all blanked out to provide space for the words. any measurements made from that is going to be inaccurate, the words very conveniently covers up the gap itself.

 

Actually that is what I thought at first, until I looked at the other words used on the map. Look at many of the names for regions. Geography passes right through some of the names. Like Tar Valon, Andor andFar Madding have roads and forests passing right through them. Then I looked at the Spine of the World and there wasn't any whited out border around those words either. So its possible that Jordan left Tarwin's Gap blank because it is a giant valley in the Mountains of Dhoom. He has shown all over that map that there doesn't have to be a whited out section around words. I don't think it's likely, since the Mountains of Dhoom appears to have a whited out section around it, but its possible and it's the best ROM I've got.

 

RobertAlexWillis, I'm uncertain what you are asking about, so I will try to cover them all. The 800K number came from the Wotmania page posted by SBoydW earlier. I thought that was a little to low. As for the medieval populations that came from a variety of sources on the population estimates from the middle ages. The one I have bookmarked on my computer is at:

www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pop-in-eur.html

 

They are rough population estimates because census weren't really done in that period of time, so all we have are estimates. The land areas of most of those regions are known and so a population density can be calculated.The real world population densities came from the CIA Factbook. The 600 miles from Cairhein to Caemlyn came from ACoS and LoC:

 

LoC - ch. 17 - Cairhien is more than 600 miles from Caemlyn.

 

ACoS - Ch. 7 - Cairhien is more than 150 leagues from Caemlyn "...then stepped more than a hundred and fifty leagues to Caemlyn..." (1 league = 4 miles)

 

The land areas of the WoT Nations came from Geometry and a map that I could rely on. Those are real RoM's, though. I would be surprised if they were accurate (as in within +/- 20%). Its a heck of a lot better than trying to back out the populations from the army sizes. That has very little to do with the actual population size, but more on the level of technology of the civilization, and how far away from home the armies are traveling. Just look at the army size differences all throughout the Hundred Years War.

[RobertAlexWillis]

RobertAlexWillis, I'm uncertain what you are asking about, so I will try to cover them all. The 800K number came from the Wotmania page posted by SBoydW earlier. I thought that was a little to low. As for the medieval populations that came from a variety of sources on the population estimates from the middle ages. The one I have bookmarked on my computer is at:

 

That was the main one I was asking about ...

 

This is the Borderlands section lifted in toto from the FAQ cited:

 

They cannot take more than 300,000 men on an attack, but they should be able to field over 800,000 in defense—reasons below.

 

The Golden Crane:

Lan has “undertaken” a long journey traveling the entire width of the Borderlands, and Nynaeve is contacting prominent Malkieri to ensure men will join him on his journey to the Last Battle. It is likely that there are many men who would join Lan even if they are not from Malkier. Nynaeve’s loyalties and Lan’s previous behavior indicate that they are closer allies to Rand than the four Borderland rulers down in Andor.

 

Borderland Alliance

In A Crown Of Swords, Deceptive Appearances, we learned that all four Borderland rulers had come south and brought their armies along. Tenobia said that she has close to fifty thousand men behind her, and it is possible that each ruler brought just as many soldiers south. Merilille Sedai believes their numbers to be over two hundred thousand (Winter’s Heart, Expectations). The army is currently a few days north of Caemlyn. These are all hardened men with experience fighting Trollocs along the Blight Border. They would be a great addition to Rand’s army, perhaps forming the heart, with soldiers from other nations providing bulk and support.

 

Shienar’s army, the most heavily armored, is led by Lord Agelmar Jagad, one of the best generals in the land. Lord Baldhere is the general for Kandor; he is a good captain and has had that position ever since Ethenielle’s husband was killed at the end of New Spring. Ishigari Terasian is the general for Arafel. Saldea’s forces in the Borderland army are currently lead by Kalyan Ramsin, one of Tenobia’s uncles. Saldean are famous for their light cavalry.

 

There are also thirteen Aes Sedai accompanying this army, five with Tenobia and eight with Paitar (The Path of Daggers, Prologue).

 

Remaining Borderlander armies

We don’t know how many experienced warriors were left to guard the borders: Alesune, King Easar’s shatayan, said ”We have left the Blight all but unguarded,” while Queen Ethenielle said “What I’ve left behind can guard the Blight short of the Trolloc Wars coming again” (The Path of Daggers, Prologue). It is these men who will hear Lan’s call to ride with the Golden Crane for Tarwin’s Gap.

 

However, what is certain is that every Border-man will take up arms once the Last Battle is there—they have no other choice. A large portion of men in these nations have some experience fighting raids, and once the Trollocs come they must kill or be killed.

 

While it says it will give a reason for the 800,000 figure, it never does. Given Alesune's worries (”We have left the Blight all but unguarded,”) it seems unlikely that they left 3 times as many behind as they brought with them. I doubt there are more than 100,000 men under arms left in the Borderlands.

 

As for basing the other numbers on population projections, remember that Randland suffers from a strange affliction:

 

After Hawkwing's death, however, the population began a gradual decrease that the chaos of the War of the Hundred Years alone does not account for. This decline has continued to the present ... Towns and even some cities lie abandoned ... No one is certain why the population has declined, thought some theorize that it has been caused by the Dark One's touch through the gradually weakening seals.

 

So, population projections based on our world do not necessarily apply. I don't think the descriptions in the books warrant an estimate of 3 million men under arms in Randland.

[Master of the Blades]

TEOTW (Against the Shadow)

"And Rand was no longer on the hilltop...

...He stood in a broad mountain pass, surrounded by jagged black peaks...

 

...Battle Surrounded him or the tail end of a battle."

 

Anonymous' depiction of Tarwin's Gap is more representative of the pass than anything we have heard. We dont know the dimensions but to pass a large cohort of Trollocs would require a large space.

[Guest Anonymous!]

 

Anonymous' depiction of Tarwin's Gap is more representative of the pass than anything we have heard. We dont know the dimensions but to pass a large cohort of Trollocs would require a large space.

 

Thank you Master of Blades...I have always assumed Tarwin's Gap was the core region of Malkier and as such it had to be large enough to be a strong nation that could repel the the Blight for over 900 years. The UK is about 93,000 miles so its about half that size.

 

RobertAlexWillis:

 

The world is failing, you are right. And my scenario fits into that idea of the world failing. Anyone can see that the world is failing. Just look at the map. There are four huge areas that we know to be relatively unpopulated: 1) The area from the Aryth Ocean through the Caralain Grass and into what used to be Harden (Excluding Tar Valon of course), 2) The Almoth Plain 3) The huge area of Haddon Mirk, Plains of Maredo, and the Hills of Kintara, and 4) the Shadow Coast. Looking at that area it probably represents half of the sub-continent. Half of the sub-continent of Randland has probably a population density much, much less than 1 person per square mile (ppsm).

 

After the Breaking there were enough people in Randland that 10 nations were formed and covered the entire sub-continent, including the Shadow Coast. That means they had enough population to support and hold their own borders (meaning collecting taxes, soldiers, people to build roads, etc.). After the Trolloc wars, Randland was divided up into 29 nations, covering every last square inch of Randland. The populations of these nations were large enough that they could fight two massive wars over the course of 25 years. The War of the Second Dragon (FY 939-943) and then the War of the Consolidation ( FY 943-963). According to the Big White Book, Amalasan (the false dragon) conquered 11 of the 29 nations, and had defeated armies from every nation except Hawkwing. That’s a lot of fighting, and a lot of men. Then Hawkwing conquered the other 28 nations in a sub-continental war that lasted 20 years! The amount of men, resources, and infrastructure needed to carry on that war is astounding.

 

After the War of Hundred Years, there were 24 nations not including Mayene and Tar Valon. Only 14 remain. We have some insight into how the other 10 nations fell from TGH, with Ingtar’s insight into the fall of Hardan. We know those nations fell into disarray for one reason or another and the people abandoned the areas. Now all that remains are a few villages peppered across the landscape. But where did the people go? If your government no longer provides and protects you, and you can no longer exist there where do you go? They went to other nations that were not in trouble. After the fall of each of those nations I’m sure the surrounding nations had population boosts from mass migrations. We have seen this in our own history. Heck it’s how the America’s were populated with Europeans the last 3 centuries.

 

BUT… we know from the first five books that the remaining nations aren’t getting stronger. We learned that several nations tried and failed to spread into the current nation-less areas including: Cairhein into Haradan, Arad Doman into Almoth Plain, and Tarabon into Almoth Plain. We also know that Andor, which is considered the most powerful nation, can no longer maintain control within its own boundaries. From Morgase’s thoughts we know that a taxman hasn’t been out to the Two Rivers in generations. We also know that Andor’s control of that regions is just lines on a map. We know from the Battle of Two Rivers that there is not an Andor Garrison in the region, since they should have been there to intervene against the Trollocs. Andor is the most powerful nation and it can’t even hold its own borders. All of this would lead me to believe that the nations populations are stagnant or decreasing.

 

So what am I saying… not a lot yet. According to that Fordham site above, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire the population of the Italian peninsula and surrounding islands decreased from 4 (in 500AD) to 2.5 (650AD) million people. Italy today has a land area of 294,020 sq km or 113,522 sq miles, which corresponds to population densities of ~35 people per square mile (ppsm) and ~22 ppsm. Now is the current Italian borders the same borders used in the Fordham website? I don’t know, but it’s got to be close. France’s estimates went from about 20 ppsm to about 12 ppsm, Spain didn’t have a large decrease only 17ppsm to 15 ppsm, and I’m assuming the British Isles just didn’t have good data, and so it hovered around 4 ppsm. That and Roman influence on England wasn’t as great as other regions.

 

There are theories out there about critical population densities. That if you have too many people, the land won’t produce enough food and the government won’t be able to maintain order and the civilization will collapse because of over population. There is a similar theory about too small of a population density. That if the density gets too small the government won’t be able to maintain control and the civilization will collapse. I have never seen numbers on either one, so I don’t know where the thresholds are. But think about it like this, if a nation has a population density of 1 ppsm and if that nation has a capital city of 10,000 people, then there isn’t another person in that 10,000 square mile area. That is an a circle with a radius of 56 miles. We know this isn’t true for cities like Tanchico and Ebou Dar for two reasons: 1) from the maps and the keys provided for the cities indicates that the cities have populations larger than 10,000 people, and 2) from Nynaeve’s, Elayne’s and Mat’s adventures with Luca’s Circus we know that villages are not that spread out. In fact they are only a few miles apart. So the population densities are significantly higher than 1 ppsm for the remaining nations.

 

So what does this mean… almost there, hang with me. From the scale map of the world in the Big White Book we know that Randland is about 3200 miles horizontal (Spine of World to Falme, maximum width), and about 2500 miles vertical (Illian to Mountains of Dhoom, maximum height). That would be a maximum land area of ~ 8 million square miles. The minimum horizontal would be about 2400 miles (from Spine of World to coast of the World’s End) and minimum vertical of 2100 miles (Mountains of Dhoom to right under the Altara). That would be a minimum land area of ~5 million square miles. Realistically its somewhere in between, for this I will assume 6 million square miles.

 

Europe is about 4 million square miles. That’s right Randland is much bigger than Europe.

The Roman empire at its height was about 2.2 millions square miles, and had a population between 100-120 million people.

 

So Hawkwing ruled all of Randland except the city of Tar Valon. We know the population density of all of Randland had to be high enough to support battles of 100’s of thousands of men during Hawkwing’s War of the Consolidation (The Big White Book stated battles in Hawkwing’s day involved 100’s of thousands). So I’m going to say that Hawkwing’s empire had about 100 million people (or less than 1/3 the population density of the Roman Empire). That's is just a complete guess, though I hope people see that it is reasonable, and hopefully reasonably low. That would be a population of 2-4 million people for each of the 29 nations in Hawkwing’s day. The total population density would be 100 million people divided by 6 million square miles for a total of ~17 ppsm. Do I think that is low? Yeah, but we are being conservative here. Since Hawkwing’s day the population has decreased drastically. About ½ of Randland no longer has nations and is very sparsely populated. Let’s assume that population density is 0.1 ppsm leaving about 300,000 people spread out in those four areas I mentioned in the first paragraph. Now the other half is the remaining nations. I will assume that the remaining area suffered a population decrease similar to France after the Fall of the Roman Empire (ie a 40% decrease) which leaves it with a population density of about 10 ppsm. The pre-TEotW nations probably had a combined population of over 30 million people. That’s really conservative. That is a 70% decrease in total population from the Hawkwing era.

 

Now is that reasonable? Yeah, I think so as a minimum population. But like I said it all depends on the conversion of “Randland miles” to “Real World Miles”. I realistically think Randland has a population of 60-70 million people, but that’s just me. I really can’t see it being lower than 30 million people.

 

Side Note: Personally I think Hawking was sent by the Wheel to unify the world. The Wheel tried to unify the world for the Dragon Reborn and the Final Battle. Hawkwing would have succeeded if Jalwin Moerad (aka Ishamael) hadn’t intervened. I believe Hawkwing and his empire was Ishy’s target, not Tar Valon. There is no reason for Tar Valon to have survived the 20-year siege. Byrne mentions sealing the harbors, but the harbors don’t matter if you control the whole river. Blocking the river with massive chains like the Continental Army did with the Hudson River in the Revolutionary war, would have been just as effective. The siege was just meant to keep the Aes Sedai away from Hawkwing and Ishy’s plans for him.

[Thor]

Agree completely about the population (though it's really a rough estimate) and Ishy's mechanisms (might be gramatic error here, blech).

 

But I'm still not convinced about the size of Tarwin's Gap. Let's hope RJ gives us a good description in all its glory. :D

[Guest Majsju]

Thank you Master of Blades...I have always assumed Tarwin's Gap was the core region of Malkier and as such it had to be large enough to be a strong nation that could repel the the Blight for over 900 years. The UK is about 93' date='000 miles so its about half that size.

 

[/quote']

 

Tarwin's Gap is close to Malkiers eastern border, where Malkier meets the Spine of the World.

[grump]

Remember Lan is very famous all through Randland. Also the word has been spread and he has what a 2 month journey ahead of him. Even if the border land army doesnt choose to follow him He will probably be one of the major rallying point for the light. The other 6 major charactors still have things to do to get their acts together so the time will be well spent.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Your math is very good Anonymous, and the ratio of real miles to Randland miles is 1:.947 , so it doesn't affect your calculations signifigantly.

 

I have a couple of problems with your population estimates though. I think the population is even more sparse than you are estimating. In fact, and overall population of 2-3 ppsm seems about right to me. You see, the unpopulated tracts of land extend INTO the nations now, as well as into the unclaimed areas. Thats why countries like Murandy have almost no real central government, or why Andor lets a province with world famous agriculture out of its grasp for so long that they don't even remember they are a part of Andor anymore. Places like Tear and Illian are practically city-states despite claiming large areas of land. The whole eastern half of Cairhien has been abandoned for 20 years. Et cetera et cetera. The villages that are so "close together" with Luca's circus are clustered along the roads ... away from the roads there are indeed the 10,000 square mile tracts of uninhabited land to counteract the cities. The empty spaces in the Caralain Grass, Black Hills, Haddon Mirk and north of the Kinslayer's Dagger alone counter all the major population centers and then some. I would be unsurprised to find out that Randland as a whole had a total population of less than 20 million.

 

Europe, following the dissolution of the Roman Empire, fell from its population of 100+ million, to 18 million in about 500 years (per the Fordham site previously given). Sociologically, the collapse of the Roman Empire could be compared to the War of the Hundred Years, and the BWB says the population decrease in Randland was MORE than could be accounted for by the War. So even if Hawkwings Empire had 120-140 million people, dropping to 15-20 million after a full 1000 years of pure decline imposed by an outside source fits the descriptions we have. Remember, population trends in the real world dont take into account the effect of the Dark One on the Pattern (because that isn't a factor in the real world). I know that represents an even more drastic almost 90 percent drop, but thats where I see the world in Rand's day. I think its part of how the Dark One plans to break out, since I think its the existence of independent threads in the Pattern that keeps him bound. He's trying to reduce the total number of threads to the point where he can break them all in one fell swoop.