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What are they, and when did these headcanons develop?
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Do you have any series headcanons?
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What are they, and when did these headcanons develop?
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I have a bunch of worldbuilding headcanons for the Pokemon franchise, mostly about the world's large-scale geopolitical situation since I have a very top-down method of thinking and the Pokemon franchise doesn't usually expand on much beyond a single region at a time. Everything in this post is purely a headcanon unless otherwise specified.
Governments and Geopolitics:
First off, since how the series' government works isn't really explained, I kinda had to come up with my own explanation. Most of the world is part of a confederation of regions that we all know as the Pokemon League, each with their own individual regional League and Champion. Said Champions serve as their region's head of state for as long as they retain the championship title, though in most regions they function more like constitutional monarchs where the real power is held by elected legislatures. Gym Leaders are elected from their respective towns (and neighboring areas) by popular vote, and said Gym Leaders usually also serve as their town's mayors. No region is allowed to violate human or Pokemon rights, and the League as a whole maintains a social democratic economy with a very strong welfare state.
The League also has "minor regions" with populations too small to support a full Regional League; the Sevii Islands are one such Minor Region that's placed under Kanto, while the Battle Zone is placed under Sinnoh. Alola was recently upgraded to a full Regional League as of SM/USUM and is in the process of getting its first Champion as of the date of those games. Kitakami is also a minor region, but its associated region is unknown at this time.
You can fairly easily fit a lot of fangame regions into my headcanon of the League, too. I headcanon the League as having somewhere around a hundred and fifty different regions, and it'll take a very long time for there to be enough official regions to fit most of the world.
The Pokemon League isn't the only government in the Pokemon World, however. The Ranger Union is the second-largest government in the world, containing around a dozen regions, and it's a geopolitical rival of the League, though there's never been outright warfare between the two. Like the League, it has a heavily-regulated capitalist economy with a strong welfare state. The Union objects to the League's practice of capturing Pokemon in Poke Balls and has outlawed catching Pokemon within its borders, and it's heavily suspected by the League to have assisted Team Plasma during the events of BW1. There are also several minor regions unaffiliated with either the League or the Union, with the most notable being Orre, which for a time functioned as a rogue state under Cipher rule and didn't join the League even after Cipher was defeated. I assume that basically every spin-off game that has its own region exists in the same world unless otherwise specified, and most end up as one of these unaffiliated minor regions too.
(Speaking of Orre, I headcanon that the war Lt. Surge fought was a war between Cipher and the Pokemon League, with Orre being Pokemon-world Arizona and Surge explicitly being stated to be an American prior to LGPE. The fact that Surge is in Kanto is evidence that he likely lost his war and had to flee to a different region.)
Both the Pokemon League and the Ranger Union are relatively recent creations in the grand scheme of things; the League having been founded two centuries ago shortly after the invention of Poke Balls in Johto, and the Union being less than 50 years old.
Geography:
The Pokemon World is, at a large-scale geographic level, very close to Earth. All the continents are in the same places, most areas are reasonable recognizable, et cetera. That being said, almost nothing is called by the same names as real life because the Pokemon world has differences so far back from us that none of our cultures or languages developed the same way. The place we call France is called Kalos, our Hawai'i is called Alola, et cetera. However, because of the various legendaries, there are a lot of climate and coastline differences between our world and the Pokemon world. The latter certainly started out nearly-identical to ours, but after Groudon and Kyogre fought and reshaped the coastlines repeatedly, Regigigas moved some continents and islands around, and other Pokemon made other changes to the climate, there are a lot of moderate geographical differences between the real world and the world of Pokemon.
Military:
While the Pokemon World in the modern day is in a state of relative peace thanks to the Pokemon League, there are still occasional wars outside of the League's borders. These are fought almost entirely with Pokemon, with humans serving as commanders and vehicle drivers who only do actual fighting as a last resort. The Pokemon World (excluding early-installment weirdness in the Anime) never invented firearms and what human-to-human combat exists is done via a combination of medieval-style melee weapons and bows, and thrown explosives such as grenades.
Religion:
Most religions in the Pokemon world are dedicated to their region's respective Legendaries. It's very, very rare for trainers to actually catch Legendaries, especially major Legendaries like most Box Legends, and those who do only usually have them for a short period of time before they leave their trainers. Those who do travel with legendaries as partners, however, are usually considered akin to living saints for as long as they keep their legendaries happy enough to stay with them. (Capturing a Legendary against its will, however, is considered the highest form of blasphemy, especially if the Legendary is mistreated or forced to commit evil deeds.) Most people pray to multiple Legendaries in a polytheistic pantheon rather than selecting a single one as a patron, but exceptions exist.
Because of the proven existence of ghosts and ghost-type Pokemon, the existence of an afterlife is scientifically-proven and well known that said afterlife is a decent place for people of all religions, though most of the actual details are unknown. Most religions don't focus on the afterlife, instead focusing on one's current life.
Demographics:
I don't think the Pokemon world is as sparsely-populated as shown in the games, but I do still think that the global human population is significantly less than real-life Earth. I'd say that the Pokemon World as a whole has somewhere in the high hundreds of millions of people on it, and each region has at most somewhere in the single-digit millions, with Lumiose as the only city to be larger than a million people. Part of the reason for this is that much of the Pokemon world (such as setting of the Mystery Dungeon games) is still uninhabited or nearly-uninhabited by humans due to either dangerous environments or hostile wild Pokemon, and what agricultural land is settled by humans is used to feed domesticated Pokemon to a far greater degree than we use to feed our own domesticated animals in real life, leaving less room for the human population to grow larger. Most people across the entire world have few children, much like in industrialized nations in real life, so there isn't much of a risk of humanity growing enough to end up exceeding its smaller agricultural capacity.
Governments and Geopolitics:
First off, since how the series' government works isn't really explained, I kinda had to come up with my own explanation. Most of the world is part of a confederation of regions that we all know as the Pokemon League, each with their own individual regional League and Champion. Said Champions serve as their region's head of state for as long as they retain the championship title, though in most regions they function more like constitutional monarchs where the real power is held by elected legislatures. Gym Leaders are elected from their respective towns (and neighboring areas) by popular vote, and said Gym Leaders usually also serve as their town's mayors. No region is allowed to violate human or Pokemon rights, and the League as a whole maintains a social democratic economy with a very strong welfare state.
The League also has "minor regions" with populations too small to support a full Regional League; the Sevii Islands are one such Minor Region that's placed under Kanto, while the Battle Zone is placed under Sinnoh. Alola was recently upgraded to a full Regional League as of SM/USUM and is in the process of getting its first Champion as of the date of those games. Kitakami is also a minor region, but its associated region is unknown at this time.
You can fairly easily fit a lot of fangame regions into my headcanon of the League, too. I headcanon the League as having somewhere around a hundred and fifty different regions, and it'll take a very long time for there to be enough official regions to fit most of the world.
The Pokemon League isn't the only government in the Pokemon World, however. The Ranger Union is the second-largest government in the world, containing around a dozen regions, and it's a geopolitical rival of the League, though there's never been outright warfare between the two. Like the League, it has a heavily-regulated capitalist economy with a strong welfare state. The Union objects to the League's practice of capturing Pokemon in Poke Balls and has outlawed catching Pokemon within its borders, and it's heavily suspected by the League to have assisted Team Plasma during the events of BW1. There are also several minor regions unaffiliated with either the League or the Union, with the most notable being Orre, which for a time functioned as a rogue state under Cipher rule and didn't join the League even after Cipher was defeated. I assume that basically every spin-off game that has its own region exists in the same world unless otherwise specified, and most end up as one of these unaffiliated minor regions too.
(Speaking of Orre, I headcanon that the war Lt. Surge fought was a war between Cipher and the Pokemon League, with Orre being Pokemon-world Arizona and Surge explicitly being stated to be an American prior to LGPE. The fact that Surge is in Kanto is evidence that he likely lost his war and had to flee to a different region.)
Both the Pokemon League and the Ranger Union are relatively recent creations in the grand scheme of things; the League having been founded two centuries ago shortly after the invention of Poke Balls in Johto, and the Union being less than 50 years old.
Geography:
The Pokemon World is, at a large-scale geographic level, very close to Earth. All the continents are in the same places, most areas are reasonable recognizable, et cetera. That being said, almost nothing is called by the same names as real life because the Pokemon world has differences so far back from us that none of our cultures or languages developed the same way. The place we call France is called Kalos, our Hawai'i is called Alola, et cetera. However, because of the various legendaries, there are a lot of climate and coastline differences between our world and the Pokemon world. The latter certainly started out nearly-identical to ours, but after Groudon and Kyogre fought and reshaped the coastlines repeatedly, Regigigas moved some continents and islands around, and other Pokemon made other changes to the climate, there are a lot of moderate geographical differences between the real world and the world of Pokemon.
Military:
While the Pokemon World in the modern day is in a state of relative peace thanks to the Pokemon League, there are still occasional wars outside of the League's borders. These are fought almost entirely with Pokemon, with humans serving as commanders and vehicle drivers who only do actual fighting as a last resort. The Pokemon World (excluding early-installment weirdness in the Anime) never invented firearms and what human-to-human combat exists is done via a combination of medieval-style melee weapons and bows, and thrown explosives such as grenades.
Religion:
Most religions in the Pokemon world are dedicated to their region's respective Legendaries. It's very, very rare for trainers to actually catch Legendaries, especially major Legendaries like most Box Legends, and those who do only usually have them for a short period of time before they leave their trainers. Those who do travel with legendaries as partners, however, are usually considered akin to living saints for as long as they keep their legendaries happy enough to stay with them. (Capturing a Legendary against its will, however, is considered the highest form of blasphemy, especially if the Legendary is mistreated or forced to commit evil deeds.) Most people pray to multiple Legendaries in a polytheistic pantheon rather than selecting a single one as a patron, but exceptions exist.
Because of the proven existence of ghosts and ghost-type Pokemon, the existence of an afterlife is scientifically-proven and well known that said afterlife is a decent place for people of all religions, though most of the actual details are unknown. Most religions don't focus on the afterlife, instead focusing on one's current life.
Demographics:
I don't think the Pokemon world is as sparsely-populated as shown in the games, but I do still think that the global human population is significantly less than real-life Earth. I'd say that the Pokemon World as a whole has somewhere in the high hundreds of millions of people on it, and each region has at most somewhere in the single-digit millions, with Lumiose as the only city to be larger than a million people. Part of the reason for this is that much of the Pokemon world (such as setting of the Mystery Dungeon games) is still uninhabited or nearly-uninhabited by humans due to either dangerous environments or hostile wild Pokemon, and what agricultural land is settled by humans is used to feed domesticated Pokemon to a far greater degree than we use to feed our own domesticated animals in real life, leaving less room for the human population to grow larger. Most people across the entire world have few children, much like in industrialized nations in real life, so there isn't much of a risk of humanity growing enough to end up exceeding its smaller agricultural capacity.
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