Bare with
me here, this is going to get a little complicated. Let’s just clarify a few
things first!
Great Britain isn’t a country. It’s
a geographic island that contains the majority of England, Scotland, and Wales.
What confuses a lot of people is that it’s often referred to as the UK, which
is too vague of a term because it doesn’t include Northern Ireland.
The United Kingdom is a country in
itself, which consists of another four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and
Northern Ireland. It’s sometimes referred to as the Kingdom of Great Britain (which includes the three former countries
from the geographic region I just mentioned) and Northern Ireland. Despite
being part of the UK, each four of the countries also possess sovereign status.
To avoid
confusion, it’s important to note that Himaruya did initially create a separate
UK character, but discarded him from canon afterwards:
Now, as for your question: England is both the
representative of the UK, and the personification of England. (This has definitely
been answered before, but I don’t mind). We know that he represents the UK
because of the Union Jack flag that appears over his head, as opposed to the separate
English flag.
However, since
he is also referred to as England by the other nations, we know that he
represents England too.
This is
very similar to the situation with Russia and the Soviet Union (USSR). Even
though he acted as the Soviet representative, Russia still represented Russia (what
a mouthful). Russia was referred to as such after WW2 because it was easier to
say. Anyways, it’s not impossible for the nations to represent more than one political
entity.
There’s plenty of other reasons for this, but I like yours too!
Some others would be the fact that there weren’t lifeboats, most of the sailors were urbaners and didn’t have access to bodies of water, or even the belief that water held diseases and would kill you either way.
Most people think that it’s because a lot of characters in
British movies are unable to swim. That doesn’t make much sense to me, as it
doesn’t explain why he didn’t learn to beforehand. I see it more as a metaphor
for his own arrogance.
England thought very highly of his royal navy, and we know
full well that he loves to gloat. Because of his self-perceived “invincibility”
on the waters – yes, I’m referring to one of his character songs, sue me – he probably
didn’t feel the need to learn how to swim.
(Part 2) And maybe this is a topic that Hima will never answer on purpose. Whether it is to keep it light hearted and funny, or to focus on creating newer content. Or perhaps he doesn’t think it really matters for the stories he wants to tell. That being said, it’s still weird, funny, and cool how several theories seem to make perfect sense. Figuring things out ourselves is also a lot of fun.
Ella: I agree! Some things definitely go deeper than the surface level, and then there’s just parts that make you wonder why you ever joined the fandom. (Although, Nekotalia always cracks me up.) There are also things that will probably never require an explanation.
I’m leaning more towards: Hima is constantly changing or removing things to fit new plots. We see that a lot with deleted strips or contradictory material on his blog. He’s also very receptive to what we want as fans, and I just think that’s so cool.
It is fun, mostly because it disproves critical opinions of Hetalia on the basis of it being thoughtless.
!!!!!! The height aspect makes sense, but it could also be the Netherlands as well, since he’s very tall. As for Finland? Hmmm. Maybe. Finland tends to be pretty modest, but perhaps America only inherited his cheerfulness. America also inherited a lot of his arrogance from England too.
I’m pretty sure the Scandinavians first discovered Canada (don’t quote me on this, it just makes sense given Greenland’s relative location to Canada).
Edit: Okay, so the Scandinavians did first discover Canada as @kesesemapleprucan said. It makes me wonder now what Canada inherited from them…
Anon said: You might have done
this one before idk and it probably can’t be answered without more information
from Hima but do you think you could do something on how the nations are born
or how you think they’re born? Are they actually birthed as a human and become
countries, or do they just appear, or variations of that sort?
I think the problem here is that
there isn’t one way for a nation to come into being. You’re right though, it is difficult to confirm anything, but we can speculate from the material we are given.
Hima seems to show us multiple
nuanced methods of how nations are born/come into existence, so rather than
focusing on this process, I think focusing on how they continue to exist is
more important. What links them is their nationhood – micro-nations included.
Anyways, we see from America and
Japan that they can be born as toddlers. Either that, or they existed before
without being detected by the other nations.
However, they can also be born as
babies, namely Egypt.
We also know that nationhood can
be achieved by humans, as seen with the Republic of Nikoniko who went from a
middle-schooler to a micro-nation, and then back to an aging human again. Even
though Japan finds what happened to Nikoniko’s fluctuating nationhood status as
an “anomaly”, it’s still a possibility.
Overall, this is just the tip of
the iceberg in terms of the many ways that nations can be born. As long as
there is some claim of belonging and belief from the people, then that’s likely
what gives them their immortality.
I guess what I’m trying to say is
that there is no true answer. Instead, what I’ll probably do is analyze the
many different ways nations form themselves in another – more detailed – post.
There are plenty of more examples where you see personifications possessing
nationhood, despite lacking sovereign status. Becoming a nation seems to be a
rather flexible process!
Ellawritesficssometimes 