The Pale refers to an area surrounding Noble City and Newhaven that was directly under the authority of the king during the nineteenth century. The time was one of chaos, autonomy and very weak central government, so the term refers to the small part that the king was able to reliably raise taxes from and enforce laws in. The term was first used by historians of the period in the 1980s, and comes from the name of a area in a similar situation in Ireland in the Middle Ages, the Pale.