I guess because they wanted to reflect the divergence between the Anglo-Saxon based cultures and the mainlander ones which forced the Old Saxon culture to migrate.
For that matter, why isn't there an East Germanic heritage for Langobards/Lombards and Goths?
Might have died out early enough to be irrelevant. The last vestiges of the Visigothic Kingdom ended before Charlemagne and that was the longest running one I believe. Those were definitely cases of a small group of elites ruling over a Roman culture speaking a Roman language.
I agree. You might divide the whole Germanic Frankish area in Low Frankish and Franconian though.
Back in old CK II I understood this uneasy compromise solution, even though I didn’t agree with some of the choices made in transition areas. Some things are better now, Dutch being closer to their continental cousins. Frisians should be in the middle between Dutch and the West Germanics (and with North Frisia arguably the Danes).
Except most Saxons stayed in their homelands and were together with the Franks one of the more important Germanic tribes. They were only converted to Christianity after the conquest of Charlemagne. One of the most important Imperial dynasties, the Ottonians (Liudolfinger) were Saxons.
The problem with West Germanic is that the so called Central Germanics are in fact also West Germanic. Maybe Insular West Germanic versus Continental West Germanic?
That would be better naming, I agree. But West Germanic probably shouldn't be outside of its historical linguistics context. By the time it matters, it's not even a good descriptor ("south" might have been better).
Can you clarify this for a bit? Since combining in game West and Central Germanic would still be within the historical linguistics context. The whole problem with the labelling, is that whole East Germanic branch went extinct.
I left out a word. It was supposed to say "West Germanic probably shouldn't be *used* outside of its historical linguistics context". By the time of the game, East Germanic was probably mostly gone outside of a few pockets near the Black Sea and maybe among a few of the nobility where the Visigothic Kingdom used to be (doubtful) and possibly the Balkans still. So all continental Germanic outside of Scandinavia was West Germanic. But the cultural distinctions had already arisen across the West Germanic area, so it's not really a useful term anymore. And it's also not even really west anymore among the spoken languages, thus my proposal that it could just as well be called "south" (i.e., not north/Norse).
