Sure, there can be diverging rivers... But they're like a one-legged man in a story. They're unusual and distracting, unless they're there for a purpose, which the storyteller or mapper probably ought to explain.
I intentionally bent rules of thumb in my recent river contest map - specifically as an exercise in brinksmanship. Say terrain is really, really flat - what is 'downhill' today might not be so tomorrow, by inches, as sediment deposits or driftwood snags. For a river to have such a split personality as to choose to go simultaneously to distant opposite coasts - it makes the geoconscious viewer think "naaaaaah, not so". If you're creating an environment to be atypical and intentionally jarring - more power to you & I'll enjoy figuring out what's happening. If it's just supposed to be an ordinary river though...
It's what I call the principle of least divergence -- an author (artist, whatever) risks wearing out his reader's attention on things not necessary to the plot, if he makes his setting too unique. Rivers go brown in flood, yet the conventional symbology is some bluish color. If the map depicts a flood - go for brown, all-in. If the mapped rivers are shown to depict linear flowing wetness ;-), stick with blue tones. But hey, hereabouts we do fantasy mapping -- floating islands, turtleback worlds, magical vortices, benevolent dictators: all good.
Some mappers honestly don't know that a river generally ;-) won't connect opposite coasts, nor split in a big way, nor cross ridges or valleys. I try to offer improved perception of realism while not being dogmatic -- the above post was doubly sloppy as I even said "won't join thusly" when I meant "won't split thusly". Careless: me. Indeed, my own knee-jerk reaction when told something can't be so is to come up with a way it *could*...
I'll mention another reason to (generally) stick to typical drainage patterns -- topo-oriented people can read the whole lay of the land from the river network, without needing contour lines or hill symbols. If I can't tell for sure which way is down, I'm thrown off.
I like the map. I'm in awe of folks who can get good consistent mountain shapes across the breadth of a page. I find your solution to the difficulty of forest patterns being Too Much Symbology delightful, and the swirly aesthetic matches the swirls in that valley up north. What do those mean, by the way? Good stuff, and I'd love to see more!
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