Status of Crossbell (beware, politics)

[Madscientist]

I try to understand the situation of Crossbell.

- It is a state but not an indipendent state.
- It pays part of its taxes to the empire and the republic.
- It is not part of the empire or the republic.
- People from empire or republic are considered foreigners.
- Police cannot punish foreigners hard for crimes.
- No foreign soldiers in the state.
- Not allowed to have an army (no tanks, airships etc)

Can somebody explain this?

Is there a real world example that is similar?
- Taiwan ( China considers it a province, they consider themselves independent, many countries do not recognize it to avoid trouble with china)
- Hong Kong (From my perspective its a normal part of China but it shows up separately in some country rankings)
- Greenland (Its part of the danish kingdom but self governed)

[Dr. Rudolf von Richten]

You're pretty much correct.

Prior to Azure, there was also the matter that the 2 political factions in Crossbell's diet were tied to the empire and the republic, and served the interests of their sponsor country over that of the people of Crossbell, but the events of Zero largely ended all that.

The general idea is that Crossbell, due to it's geographical position and it's Septium Mines, is too valuable for either the empire or the republic to be controlled by the other. In the past, they waged many wars over it, but eventually they realized they were slaughtering the goose with the golden eggs, and came to this arrangement instead.

Of course, that isn't stopping either of them from trying to wrest control over it by more subtle means, and since people, including secret agents, criminals and whatnot, from either country can't be meaningfully punished, they are used in a 'spy-vs-spy' tug of war that tends to result in 'accidents' where a bus or an airship just happens to crash with an agent from either faction is aboard, and too bad for the civilian collateral damage.

Falcom, that is, Kondo, has stated that they were inspired by Hong Hong mostly, but of course it doesn't correspond 1-to-1 to that situation, just like Erebonia isn't identical to Germany and Liberl isn't to Thailand (which did inspire it, again by Kondo's own words).

[Stabbey]

Crossbell is described as a suzerain state, which is a real thing, but it's relatively rare in the modern era (and I doubt there were many real-world examples of a state where TWO powers had suzerain over the same state at once.)