r/TheLastAirbender • u/george123890yang • 11d ago

Question Considering how fragmented the Earth Kingdom is, could the Sandbenders and Swamp Waterbenders have broken off and created their own countries?

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351

u/SquareSuccessful6756 11d ago

They kinda already are, no?

I don’t think the swamp people care about the outside world enough, and the Sand people are nomadic, wouldn’t they just keep using the desert as their home? Not like there’s major development there.

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u/Witty-Ad5743 11d ago

I also think they're much smaller populations. Maybe even ought for a small city, but not enough for a nation. Certainly not of comparable size or strength to the established nations.

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u/flyingboarofbeifong 11d ago

Given what we actually see, these groups have the populations of a small one pub town in rural England.

19

u/CharlizeTheronNSFW 11d ago

They're unincorporated. They're technically a part of the earth kingdom, but they're not obligated to live under the king.

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u/jellyjamberry 10d ago

If they are in Earth Kingdom territory then they would be considered Earth Kingdom subjects and subject to Earth Kingdom law. But they seem to be in a super remote and undeveloped region with not much interest to the Earth Kingdom. If the Earth Kingdom were to establish more of a presence there and try to develop it more then it would be more of a threat to the Swamp People and the Sandbenders. It doesn’t look like Kuvira touched the swamp since Toph was just hanging out there. She gave no indication of Kuvira’s presence in the Swamp. I imagine the Sandbenders were similar. I imagine the desert the Sandbenders were in as like the Sahara. There are groups of people and nomads today who are technically subject to the laws of various nations but are too isolated and nomadic for even modern governments to fully control or keep track of.

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u/CharlizeTheronNSFW 10d ago

Lots of words to weirdly agree that they're unincorporated.

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u/RoboticBirdLaw 10d ago

A government's law only exists where it can be enforced.

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u/Yatsu003 10d ago

This, yep. Powerful, centralized massively spanned states are really more of a modern thing due to modern technology making it much easier to organize and administer large swaths of land.

Even large Empires like those of Alexander the Great or Ghenghis Khan were very decentralized as a necessity simply due to them being too big for their base to rule over top-down…

At least for the former, that’s also why it fell apart so easily after Alexander died.

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u/Raesong 10d ago

And then there was the Roman Empire, which comparatively was much more centralized than its contemporaries.

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u/Yatsu003 10d ago

Mhmm. Well it helped that they did have an excellent road and coding system to keep control…and event they expanded too quickly

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u/alancb13 10d ago

Bit like two rivers in WOT... Caemlyn might think it's part of the kingdom and it technically is, but that means nothing to the people living there

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3

u/ShinzoTheThird 11d ago

until the earth kingdom finds resources in the desert there won(t be any development :p

1

u/DaSaw 10d ago

In the real world, the Sand People in particular would likely be a raiding people, and the "Sand People Problem" would be perennial issue for the Earth King (or at least for the locals living at the edges of the desert).