Powder: “🎵Dear friend, across the river…🎵”
My pedantic ass: “actually, I’m pretty sure that’s a strait.”
Okay, all jokes aside, it really does look (to me at least) as if the cities are built on two peninsulas with a strait in between them; the upper city/Piltover on the northeast peninsula and the Undercity/Zaun on the southwest peninsula. (Tbf, “dear friend across the strait” doesn’t sound as good lmao.) Which would fit with the Runeterra map as shown here:
Vander even says in episode 1: “the north side’s off limits,” and sure enough, Piltover is supposed to be situated to the north of Zaun.
It’s hard to be sure because we can’t actually see the isthmus/two peninsulas between Valoran and Shurima in the Runeterra map, so it’s impossible to compare the two maps and see how well they line up.
It doesn’t help that the two maps are oriented completely differently; the Runeterra map clearly shows one landmass to the north and one to the south, with oceans to the east and west between them. Whereas the Piltover map appears to be the other way around, with ocean to the north and south but landmasses to the east and west. Which is it? 🤷🏼♀️.
So if I’m right and it is a strait instead of a river, that has a few word building implications. For starters it would mean the Undercity/Zaun is literally on another continent, which is all the more reason why it should be independent. It also implies that the Council’s wealth comes from the fact that their city is in control of the one passage between two continents and anyone who wants to sail through can get taxed.
Which makes them using the Hexgates for trade even more egregious, because it would mean the Council already had a monopoly on taxing seaborne trade via the strait and wanted to have control over airborne trade as well just to make themselves (and the upper city) richer 😩.