I think it’s about time we created a list of them. I’m not sure we know the names of even 10 yet, but maybe that’s about to change as the story of the Dilmun Club progresses.
I don’t know if Apis Meet and Varchas count among the Kingdoms. Also, the Court of the Wakeful Eye is probably an independent entity not under sway of the Presbyter.
These are the ones I can come up with off the top of my head:
There is mention of the “Great Queen of Huz”, Caution, and Apis Meet. Also Nicator. There is mention of what seem to be fortresses and fortified palaces, but I think they’re in Vesture, with the possible exception of Azanech. I’ll be happy to pass on the epilogue if you want to check yourself. It’s a version where the kingdom is successfully recovered.
Given that several of the ‘kingdoms’ seem more like city-states than full-fledged nations, I can only imagine that Varchas and Apis Meet counts.
In addition there is the one I can’t remember what is called which was consumed by the colossal fungus, which we hear about in the “Thing of Fog” exceptional story.
I don’t know if Varchas is under the control of the Presbyterate. Also, the Princess of Vesture, in one story, mentions Nicator, and implies that it’s also a kingdome. But that could be Mithridacy lies.
Elsewhere Nicator is not a kingdom, but a King. Or at least someone who is peer to Kings. Although I’m never sure the king of what. Being the king of Nicatoria would be very on-brand, although instead he seems to have fleetingly been the King of everywhere else.
You can make an opera in the court about the Elder Continent, and the phrasing in that suggest that Nicator is a place, rather than a person - one which was destroyed at some point.
I’ll like it here.
I have several quotes from fate stories that talk about Nicator the King, or Nicator doing things like seeing something, waiting in a place, tightening hands, being a tyrant, or being rumored to marry the Empress (the last one doesn’t prove anything). None that can be interpretted as Nicator being a place.
“Desolation” can be applied to people too (when it apparently, according to google define, means “great unhappiness or loneliness”) - something I suppose has fallen into disuse long ago already.
If you ask me to complete “The Desolation of ___,” my first answer is Smaug. Granted Tolkien liked archaic uses, e.g. how he used “Doom,” but given the balance of evidence I’m leaning towards that usage being a person rather than place.
For me, that’s not a contradiction. Let me put it this way: why was the Seleucid Empire known as the Seleucid Empire? Of course this could all be Mithiridates lies.
Here you go! The first quote is from the Season of Sceptres conclusion, and it hints that there is a kingdome named Nicator. The second quote is when you compose an opera about the Elder Continent, and the word “desolation” make me think it is a place (and because the word start with a lowercase, as opposed to the region called the Desolation of Smaug).
You can now research the Presbyterate in your Jericho Locks library.
New names that have come up there include Rimer, and Ixander (which has not been mentioned since the time of the Third City).
There is also this, from the conclusion of your research:
“Your suggestion that the nature and number of kingdoms has changed is met with approving comment, yes, this is true, it is wise of the Londoner to have noticed, most do not.”
Concerning Nicator: “This dusty bottle purports to have been distilled by Nicator himself, when he ruled the hollow nation of Verdigris. Or it could have been from his nine day reign upon the Hidden Throne, till even that silence betrayed him and the College fixed its eye upon him again. Or perhaps that secret time, when he reigned as Presbyter, the first or the thousand and first. There is little else to distinguish the wine, which, like all revealed mysteries, proves disappointing.”
In addition to that, the text of the Nicatorean Relics that can be found in the Moulin Waste also seem to imply that Nicator was a person (who would, in fact, not even have been real):
Either this is evidence of an ancient king in the Presbyterate, or it is d__ing evidence of Mithridatic fabrication of an ancient king in the Presbyterate.