The City Meridian

The castle of Meridian is a fantastic built with a strong fantasy flair. It shimmers in a light green, blue, sometimes violet light and has many tall windows with flourish frames. It seems to consist of mostly towers, instead of any main building and sits atop a hill at the edge of a valley, looking across the city of Meridian, 8 towers standing in a circle, connected with one another through multiple flying bridges and flights of stairs.

Curiously enough the castle also holds some defensive measures. It's location alone - sitting atop a hill overlooking the city of Meridian - is a strategic advantage, making it almost impossible for enemies to sneak up in secret on either side. In some visuals of the castle and its towers we can also see taluses as their base (thick, sloping walls as extra defense). We see one main entrance following a winding stairwell leading up the hill, something that will make it easy to overlook all comings and goings of the castle by the guard or royals themselves. 

Inside, the building is made of a dark blue brick and twisted green columns. Despite the look from outside, we know from other views in the comic that the castle has balconies looking over a big part of the kingdom.

The throne room has green endorsed walls and a giant door that has green details all over it. The throne itself was originally a golden chair with something that looks like crystals or glass shards hanging from golden frames, making them resemble wings. It was destroyed during the fight of Elyon and Phobos. Later we see Elyon sitting on a new throne. A humble and somewhat comfortable looking design with golden rings and rays at the top. Apart from Elyon's personal chambers, there is a study or library in which the young queen is being tutored and a room high up in one of the towers where Blue Destiny, the sword rests in a case on the wall.

Finally, there are the palace gardens and Phobos' garden. If we look at most pictures of the castle exterior there's no garden to be seen on the outside. Yet, at least the wall of black roses which Phobos had gardener Daltar create, must have surrounded the castle in order to prevent outsiders from entering it. Phobos' garden hence could either have been located in the court yard, the space between the great eight towers, or somewhere underground in a magical space. The garden has great trees and many different types of flowers, some of which he turned into whisperers, his court. At some point we also see him bathing in a big spring. It's unsure what became of Phobos' garden after he was taken to Kandrakar. While the roses were turned back into people by Elyon, the rest of the garden is simply never mentioned again.

Truth be told we don't know if this is actually an old palace, however there are several indicators that it could be. For one, Will is joking about ending up at the royal palace before entering a portal to Meridian and magically seeing this building right after. The second indicator is that the building is very big and tall and holds many ornaments both outside and inside which will have been difficult to make and hence cost a lot of time and effort. Third indicator are the portraits of former queens along with lizard-shaped fountains which reminds strongly of the lizard one of these queens is holding in her arms on a portrait. Finally, the style of built is much more fitting for the rest of Meridian than the shining green castle, which could mean that the green one was built after most other buildings in Meridian, including this one.

Palace or not, the building has not been in active use for quite some time and wasn't maintained well. A red plant has grown wildly over it, the great halls and passages are empty. For a time the rebellion met here until they had to flee in issue 7.

The building style looks gothic and resembles a European cathedral. We see the, for Meridian, typical thin stone bridges reaching towards neighbouring buildings. Inside we also find the same type of ornaments along walls and columns like in the green castle and twisted columns, though not as thick as the ones in the castle. This place uses galleries and balconies both inside and out, creating a multitude of levels. Sadly we only see a small portion of the interior.

Cornelia and Elyon accidentally cause an Earthquake and the building is buried in the Earth even though we don't know how deep down it went.

MORE TO COME...

Under Meridian there lies a vast underground world made up of tunnels, stairs, caverns, columned halls stretching as wide and deep as the city  itself. While some places remind us of modern city sewers with flooding gates, water canals and proper brick work, other parts look more ancient and weathered down but also more mystical like the picture above from issue 4. Again we spot Meridian's trademarks: twisted columns, a few swirly ornaments and thin stone bridges.
With the place being so vast it is no wonder the rebels took it up as their hiding spot along with refugees from Phobos' tyranny.

The first thing that comes to mind when looking at Meridian certainly is 'medieval'. It's dark and blue, people run around in cowls and half-timbered houses everywhere. But the more we see of Meridian, the more we can make out other influences along with a few things unique for this world.

Meridian is all about levels and stone. Everything, except for the half-timber is made of a blue or grey stone and most houses look like they were hewn directly from stone, their shapes being rough and erratic. We sometimes even see cave-like openings here and there. Houses are built on top of other houses or a solid and high rock base. This is what causes the town to have so many levels. Level building can also be found inside the (possible) old palace which uses galleries and stairs to create a multitude of levels to walk around in.

The city levels are connected through stairs and thin stone bridges we can see spreading everywhere across the city like webs. These are very unique for Meridian and cannot be found in Earthen architecture. Many of them connect the small towers of Meridian, each sitting atop a high cliff looking over the city. It remains a mystery if these towers are simply houses with a different shape or if they serve a more official or maybe even magical purpose. Or maybe they once did but are no longer needed for this capacity.

Another epochal influence we can clearly make out is that of the renaissance, famous for its round roofs and domes, amplified use of columns, smoother walls and more elaborate ornaments.

Finally, Meridian's columns are (most of the times) twisted, not straight. In Earthen history they can be best related to the Solomonic columns, which appeared in Rome around the 4th century (though supposedly dating a lot older than that) and later became popular in the baroque epoch, mid 16th century.

So while Meridian shows many influences from Earthen architecture, the city also shows its very own interpretation and variation of these along some new and unique ones which make the place so wondrous.