: And I'm pretty sure we don't know that the
: Province was independent of the Cath Bruig;
: "province" most generally means
: "territory" and usually has implications of
: being under the control of a foreign/central power, so
: I always imagined them sort of "the
: frontier" of the Cath Bruig empire, who only
: became independent after the bulk of the empire
: crumbled.
Addendum: this is also the context in which I interpreted the phrase "Free Cities of the North", i.e. the Province was that part of the West under the Cath Bruig's imperium, whereas the Free Cities were independent of that empire.
