World-building Advising: The Empire Writes Back

So as I build the world of the Arcane Realm, I often find various concepts to build up this weird setting of mine.

So I vaguely looked at the idea of empires as in real world history, they have been a big part of it, spreading cultures, ideology, political powers and similar things to that. The ancient world ran on the progress made by empires and dynasty’s and the modern world as we know was made by breaking that tradition  and entering a new world.

I think this video from Extra Credits segment Extra History further illustrates this and I hope you take a look at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-wSL4WqUws&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5Aq7g4bil7bnGi0A8gTsawu&index=5

So unknowingly the fictional world that I made could reasonably have its own imperial forces that spread culture, power, and conflict. But to properly build my fictional empires, I had to take a look at real world empires. So along with Wikipedia I also found another site: http://empires.findthedata.com/.

Thanks to this site I have to share with those who are making their own imperial powers some things to think about:

Founder

The Leader who brought the empire into existence and declared it either through political consolidation or military conquest. Think a bit about their personality and could make a story about how they came up with power on their own

Peak Leader

Leader who accomplished the empire’s largest size. Could be the founder but for a long running empire, they often could

Size (Square Kilometers)

Land (in kilometers squared) controlled at the empire’s peak. Now you might not have to write down the actual size but its a good idea to think about how far particular powers reach within your world, even if you don’t like map making.

Year (at peak size)

Year the empire was its largest.

Again, the numbers aren’t important for everybody (unless you have a timeline for your story) but use this to think about which monarchies and leaders exist at the same time and how they will interact and play off each other at their strongest and weakest.

Government Type

Self-explanatory:

1. Hereditary Ruler

2. Authoritarian

3. Republic

Reason for End

A short explanation of what caused the empire to fall. Going from the most to least common:

1. Conquest

2. Rebellion

3. Leader Death

4. Civil War

5. Incorporated into New Entity

6. Voluntary Withdrawal from Territory

7. Revolution

So far I’ve been using these to create my own imperial powers in the Arcane Realm and I hope this could be useful to people building worlds or historical writers or anyone who finds this interesting.

Thanks to Extra Credits and Find The Data.com for getting me interested enough to make this post.

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