Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-31763506-20170717113624/@comment-31763506-20170723050946

Ugh....

Anyway, my argument was that the annexed territories are probably not Stineford and Feroholm, but the area  west   of the big mountain range near Ardoheim's western coast, plus maybe the mountains themselves and perhaps the portion South and East of them up to the major river that flows into the Pithu Ocean just east of the Zirantian border.

See, although you need to zoom in.

There's a ruined elvish shrine on the Withered Mountain in the prologue, and the Withered Mountain must be in that mountain range west of Feroholm. It seems unlikely that citizens of one of the ruined elf kingdoms would have been inclined to travel very far to erect a shrine to one of their sages, so at least one of the lost elf kingdoms must have been nearby.

Either the mountains or the river make a fairly logical natural pre-war border with Ardoheim for one or more small kingdoms. That leaves the question of where their forest is/was, but we don't really know that all TLS elves are "Wood Elves".

Another argument against Stineford being independant pre-war is that huge region east of Stineford, Feroholm and Delgar Forest, but West of Darghelon. It's hard to see how an Ardoheim that was limited to Greater Ardford and that area bordering Darghelon pre-war could have stayed a single country, given how easy it would been for Stineford/Local Rebels to block communications between the area near Ardford and the eastern area by just holding that very big river emptying into the big bay. Plus we have no evidence that the IK got any closer to Darghelon than Devil's Pass.

Plus, if there were independant nations that contained Feroholm or Stineford pre-War, why aren't there any people in either town self-identifying as anything other than ethnic Ardans?

OTOH, Simon looking Ardan doesn't prove that Feroholm is such. We don't really know where he was born, just that he lived in Feroholm at the start of the game.