So is the Earth Kingdom just a bunch of decentralized city states...

So is the Earth Kingdom just a bunch of decentralized city states? I can't remember if they ever explicitly acknowledge some sort of heirarchy, though is seems like smaller cities would be subordinate to Ba Sing Se, but Omashu also has it's own king. How many Earth kings are there?

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It's literally Greece, bro.

Greece and Italy were non-heirarchical though. They had centuries of lame little wars with each other.

Zero. They were all conquered during Korra, then the person that conquered them was overthrown, then the guy that inherited power told the rightful noble rulers to pound sand and instituted democracy even though that completely negates all the bitching everyone did about the city states being conquered.

I would assume it would be something bloated, arbitrary, inconsistent, and loose as like the Holy Roman Empire--with a thousand local princes, dukes, counties, free cities, bishoprics, even kingdoms all under the authority of the Emperor.

Earth Kingdom is the Comfiest Kingdom

That's would explain why the fire nation seems to beat them anytime it's a stand-up fight

It's kind of weird how the Earth Kingdom is basically the center of ATLA's world, the other nations are tiny as fuck by comparison.

Not only that, but the Fire Nation actually us the least in size.
Also, has anyone else ever wondered what is in the rest of the Air Nation lands? Like, we saw just a couple temples. Are those three archipelagos just devoid of human life following the Air Holocaust?

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The water people are literally represented by a primitive tribe and a larger primitive tribe in a snow fort. The only reason the North Pole hadn't been rolled by someone bigger before the eclipse is because they aren't sitting on anything of value so it wasn't worth the cost in gold or men to actually conquer it.

The Earth Kingdom is also presented as being sparsely inhabited in most of its territory.

What is the population of this world? It seems like it's mostly empty space and even most of the cities just aren't that dense.

>They had centuries of lame little wars with each other.
You mean based wars?

Yes, but mostly because lots of greekroaches died in them

They were mostly mountainous, probably not inhabited by humans

The Fire Nation is all mountainous volcanic islands, and they have tons of people.

Sounds familiar...

That's because the big desert separates the continent.

ATLA civilization is basically medieval-tier. Aside from a few cities, everything is basically villages and farms and shit.

That's so based I can't even deal with it right now.

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The temples are literally the entirety of the Air Nomad culture, apparently.

They didn't want to let the cat out of the bag on how Tibetan culture actually worked.

It's a side effect of the entire Air Nation being wiped out since way before the start of the series, the Water Tribes being reduced to the Poles and the Fire Nation being the "bad guy" country that the heroes would only reach in the final season

everything in Avatar is based on Asia so the earth kingdom would be China

was the air nomad genocide simultaneous?

The comet did most of the work, but there were still airbenders around, so there were apparently tons of “trap” cities and refuges set up by the fire nation that ended up killing the rest of them.

> A small number of Air Nomads escaped the initial attack on the temples and proved too elusive for the Fire Nation to hunt down. Changing tactics, Fire Lord Sozin removed relics from the temples and had a number of small residences high in the mountains furnished with them, giving these places the appearance of being inhabited by other Air Nomad refugees. Using spies to spread rumors about these safe houses throughout the Earth Kingdom population, Sozin successfully lured the remaining airbenders into the hands of waiting Fire Nation soldiers and eliminated them.

There's also an AtLA card game or something, and they had at least one airbender who literally sold his fellows out to the fire nations in exchange for not being murdered.

Earth Kingdom is china

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>both the temples on the east and west are called the western air temple

It's sort of unrelated, but how the fuck did people born in the air temples without being benders survive?
Did non-bender air nomads spend their whole lives stuck in those temples without being able to contribute in any way while seeing other folks flying around while being unable to leave by themselves?

I recall reading somewhere that all Air Nomads had air bending due to their increased spiritual awareness

they were all benders, because bending is a spiritual thing and air nomads are super spirity

in the air nations maps they are probably together on the same side

Ok, kind of a stretch but I can believe it, it makes sense in-universe

Does that mean that say, an earth kingdom couple that REALLY wants their kid to be a bender can get really into spiritual stuff to increase the chances? Like all those bullshit ways real couples try to use to have a boy/girl, but in this case it actually works? That's interesting

the spiritual thing seems to be a collective thing instead of just 'i go to church a lot'

but it isn't consistent, especially by korra which was written by idiot libertarians

i wish dave had done it, it'd have been silly but it'd have FELT right

Magic is fickle. Spirituality doesn't seem to be the only thing that gives you bending because we've got things like it being hereditary and the existence of characters like the Boulder.

Presumably you can't game the spirituality route unless your faith is completely legitimate. Doing it with an ulterior motive might just make it fail. True faith required yada yada

The combination of magic and genetics is such an unexplored well of good content

you could read Mistborn