Here's the thing, I'm writing in a middle ages style fantasy world and have four kingdoms in said world. Each kingdom is divided up into.....well one of the topic title things. Each area has its own laws and sometimes culture, trade between them usually still requires treaties, agreements and such. The queen still rules over the kingdom but allows each their own laws due to each area knowing how to take advantage of their area's opportunities and such. What would these be called precisely? The areas wouldn't necessarily have a governor. One of the reasons I'm going with this as well (to help explain my objective) is because some areas have a zero tolerance policy for anything that isn't human (pretty much any other sentient race) while others have precious commodities that play a (minor) part in the story that they even refuse to sell to other areas and have even managed to make it a law for it to be illegal to be in possession of such commodity outside that area.
I actually also wanted to add that no kingdom has a single capital city, each of these areas has its own capital.
Personally I would go more with things like 'Dukedom/Duchy' or 'Fiefdom/Fief'. However, this only works if the area is ruled by one individual, and if that individual is a member of nobility. Or each area could be a kingdom, each with its own king/queen, with a High Queen ruling over all. If not...I would probably go with State. Or you could create 'City-states', in which each area is made up of a major city and the surrounding territory. If you need an idea of how that would work, try researching Greek city-states such as Athens and Sparta. I realise my answer is all over the place, but I hope I helped a little bit.
Thanks, I'm actually not after Dukedoms or Fiefdoms since each area has powerful governments that would not be badly harmed should a single important individual pass away suddenly. I also looked up city-states but found out that they're entirely independant so that wouldn't work. Thanks for bringing them up though, I'd actually forgotten about city-states
I'd say provinces, most likely. I'd say just individual kingdoms united under one common banner, like what happens in Game of Thrones. There were seven kingdoms and one came around and conquered the rest making them swear fealty but letting them be slightly independent. You could always do something like that. Maybe there was like 50 or so mini-kingdoms and just four specific ones came around and swept them all up and added them to their own territories.
My knowledge of government infrastructure is feeble at best, however I know my country is divided into provinces, and each province has its own capital city. It's largely a federated system however with the recent 18th Amendment, the government has been greatly decentralized and each province is free to conduct its own affairs. Of course, it's not a monarchy, so not sure how it translates into that.
I think provinces are what I'm looking for, thanks guys. Each area having a good deal of independance plays several important roles in the story and they're not each ruled by a single person, the queen essentially facilitates many important treaties and agreements but each is ultimately left to their own devices. Thanks for the help.
