From: Stephen Abrams
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 1995
Sorry to disillusion you - Krondor is between 5,000 and 15,000 (making it a REALLY big city in midieval terms). It is however, tiny compared to the major cities in the Kingdom proper. We are talking about the provinces after all. Like so many things the size of something depends on one's definition of where it starts and ends. The Kingdom 'proper' (e.g. Salador to to the Eastern Kingdoms) at the time of the books is about 1250 miles by 800 miles. This does not include 'the West' or the colonized areas on the south part of the Sea of Kingdoms. At that same time, the Empire of Kesh was about 1700 miles by 1000 miles at it's largest points, excluding the Kesian Confederacy. The distance from Krondor to the nearest 'proper' kingdom city, Salador, is close to 500 miles. A caravan (the safest mode of travel), making 20 miles per day would take close to a month just to REACH the kingdom.
From: Stephen Abrams
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 1995
Be careful with your assumptions - in particular the Army of the West (at least NOW - talk to Ray about THEN... :) ) is heavily subsidized and essentially a 'foreign' army of troops from the Kingdom proper. They serve a two year stint in the provinces then get to go home. Much of the support for the army is shipped in from the East. However, I'll agree that the border lands in the time of the books were better populated than they are now... Regarding Keshian cities - they tend to be 2-3 times the size of comparable Kingdom cities of the same importance. The models that were used were based on Western European cities in the period of the high middle ages for the Kingdomand the more sophisticated portions of the middle east in the same window. Population density in the Empire is much higher. 50,000-80,000 is a HUGE midieval city - probably only Salador, Bas-Tyra and Rillanon are that size or larger in the Kingdom. FYI - the 5-15k figure for Krondor was based on taking the city map and making an assumption that the average population density per building was about 6-10 and multipling by the number of buildings. I would estimate that Krondor at the time of RoaMP was probably 3-5 times larger than it is in 'current' times.
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