Yeah I think it’s reasonable to assume that it could have started but we don’t know about it yet.

Some people argue that WW2 actually started in the early 1930s with Japan’s incursions into China which ultimately resulted in the second Sino-Japanese war. In 1932 that probably felt a lot like Russia and Ukraine felt to us in 2022. I think the real deciding factor on whether it spirals into a global conflict is the extent to which a bunch of regional conflicts combine into to a global clusterfuck. US shit in South America is not helping. Neither did Israeli shit in Palestine.

Keep at it! The end of Ship of Destiny ends up paying off. A lot of Hobb books have that kinda “slow burn” thing going where it feels like a slog til the last 30% of the final part of a trilogy and then it goes super hard