How many people did the Empire have?
There was no precise answer to that question.
The administrative capacity of this era was not yet sufficient to conduct a census. Whether it was the Holy See or the Empire, they could only provide a rough figure—basically adding up the populations of their various territories in a simple and crude manner, with some discrepancy from the actual number.
Castel's current recorded population was around twenty-seven thousand. Most of them were outsiders; the original people of Castel had long since scattered elsewhere. This number would not increase much in the future, after all. An island's capacity was limited, and Castel needed to remain fortified to deal with the most extreme circumstances.
Blood Port's core population was around one hundred thousand. All of them had received at least a basic education, and most were workers—the foundation of all Blood Port.
Its peripheral population exceeded two hundred thousand. These people came from rather mixed backgrounds, most of them refugees displaced by war. Blood Port provided them with basic means of survival, and most chose to remain because of it.
It was worth mentioning that most of these people were actually educated. Many even held formal jobs in factories; they simply had not yet been able to buy their own homes and settle down in Blood Port.
Blood Port had now become a massive urban cluster, siphoning away the population of all Tis.
Expanding the scope to the entire Duchy of Tis, excluding the Blood Port urban cluster, its population was roughly 2.7 million. These were all people Isabella could effectively control. The war zones were not included in the count.
And how many people did the Empire have?
Around sixty million.
This figure was generally considered accurate only in its first digit. Sixty-something million? Neither