Advent 2019:Calendar/2

So day 2 is supposed to be determining what the climate of the book should be like based upon the mood of the book. Now I am doing the world building for the joy of it (not because I am writing a book) so I can't really talk about that

Leon and Æthelron
Leon and æthelron are both blessed and cursed by good whether. Both have almost perfect growing conditions which leads in both to localist cultures where communities of a few thousand are entirely self sufficient with little travel or trade. Both have little national government and both have large artistic communities. And there the similarities end.

æthelron has a system of local government where families gather to send a representative to a local moot and so is, in many ways, democratic. Leon has local areas run by a hereditary knight who can do what he likes (hey there's another difference - æthelron is ruled by women who make up most of the moot councils and all of the queens while Leon follows male primogenitor. While I am being drawn into the gender politics of Gaia I might as well add that while Achthal has no hard and fast rule that women can't get into positions of authority it is rare for them to do so while Narlwage and Illia have systems that make pinning down a leader to specify that they must be one way or the other practically impossible).

Leon also has some degree of trade due to a generally colder northern climate.

Illia
You would expect that Illia would go much the same way as Athelron. But this ignores the rise of the Euphorian empire and the subsequent development of large trade networks. In fact Illian localism lead to the development of competing trade networks which have helped Illia maintain its position upon the world stage. Now the weather has continued to distract people from the darker forces at play in Illia which is perhaps why its politics has become so Byzanthine (in fact the term was coined to describe Byzanthus, a state in Illia).

Achthal
Achthal is a mountainous region if ever there was one. The mountains have lead to many different climates from the sunny Roy and Leben valleys to the snowy North and that has led to a diversity of cultures across the land. Now these cultures were forced to trade with each other