You're right, the map isn't drawn in its traditional North/South orientation.  I turned the map slightly to the side.  This was a design decision so I could fit in all of the major locations in the recipient's life without having to butcher the map by cleaving off parts.  This way, the map is still fully readable.  I just need to remember to add the compass and to change the orientation of north so it'll be facing the correct direction.

Q: Why didn't you just make it north to south?
A: Because AEthelmearc is situated at a funny angle on the map, and I wanted to fit in the East Kingdom too.  Most kingdoms have a nice and defined north and south that I could nicely fit into two pages of vellum, but not AEthelmearc.  Since it sprawls over an area that is almost in the mid-west and reaches into New York, I would have needed 4 different leaves to just fit it in from one border to the other.

Q: But you could have just drawn the map in period style and made everything fit!
A: True, I could have done that.  But then the defining features of the Kingdom would become so distorted that it would be very difficult to make out what you were looking at.  I had a hard time deciphering the real Catalan map with its real-life markers and land masses, imagine how difficult it would be to decipher a map with imaginary borders from made-up kingdoms.

This was done on purpose and as a discussion point about the map itself.  The entire atlas was completed on 6 leaves of parchment, which were later mounted to wood.  Those 6 parchment leaves later became 12 panels.  I believe that the map degraded and cracked naturally in the middle of the page after being folded for centuries.  I put the names of places across or near the fold to make it look cohesive.