As part of the Wheel of Time Atlas project, I thought it would be interesting to break down the nations of the Westlands by size and try to work out their size more precisely.

To do this I returned to my new map of the continent, for which I had assembled the scale by taking all of the distances given in the text and in Robert Jordan’s notes and then averaging them to reach a scale that would agree with all available sources. Once I did that I was then able to approximately map how many pixels were in each country and then apply a conversion to convert them into square miles. The results are as follows (with a real-world equivalent for comparison):

The Westlands: 7,299,234 miles²

Andor – 504,072 miles² Peru – 494,209 miles² Cairhien: 497,964 miles² Saldaea: 439,492 miles² Colombia – 401,000 miles² Altara: 382,073 miles² Ethiopia – 390,000 miles² Tarabon: 350,233 miles² Nigeria – 351,649 miles² Arad Doman: 210,488 miles² France – 210,020 miles² Illian: 201,814 miles² Thailand – 197,260 miles² Tear: 190,954 miles² Spain – 192,660 miles² Ghealdan: 174,530 miles² New Guinea – 174,850 miles² Amadicia: 158,213 miles² Paraguay – 153,399 miles² Arafel: 158,059 miles² Zimbabwe – 149,362 miles² Shienar: 142,072 miles² Japan – 140,752 miles² Murandy: 139,593 miles² Germany – 134,623 miles² Kandor: 130,521 miles² Rep. of the Congo – 131,900 miles² Malkier: 120,583 miles² Poland – 120,421 miles² Mayene: 8,794 miles² Belize – 8,805 miles²

Some interesting points can be seen in this information:

The Westlands (delineated by the Mountains of Dhoom and Spine of the World, so not including the Aiel Waste, Malkier or Great Blight, or the offshore islands) are larger in area than South America (6,890,000 miles²) but smaller than North America (9,540,000 miles²).

Saldaea is slightly larger than the other three extant Borderlands – Kandor, Arafel and Shienar – combined.

Shienar is approximately the same size as Japan (140,752 miles²) and Tear is approximately the same size as Spain (192,660 miles²), the two countries which arguably inspired them in Jordan’s writings.

Murandy is one of the smallest, poorest and least-powerful countries in the Westlands but is still somewhat larger than Germany (134,623 miles²), the economic and industrial powerhouse of Europe.

The five largest nations are all larger than any American state bar only Alaska (which is larger than all of them).

Mayene is the smallest kingdom but still larger than the four smallest American states.

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