tokens: more spheroidal, as in the Milky Way halo, rather than being represented by a disc-like structure. One would therefore expect intermediate-aged populations traced, for instance, by RC stars to be somewhere between those. This is exactly what we found. Subramanian Subramaniam ( 2012 ) also used RC stars but found a very small inclination, i = 0.5°. Their methodology however was to use axes ratios and to limit the sample to a small depth range, which may have inadvertently introduced a bias. The PAs we found are nearest to those determined by Subramanian Subramaniam ( 2015 ), who used Cepheids, and Rubele et al. ( 2015 ), who fitted entire CMDs and found a mean i = 39°. In conclusion, while the SMC does not exhibit an obvious disc component there is a clear trend for the system to become more inclined with respect to the plane of the sky the younger the (stellar) tracer is. Since the RC stars already show this progression this means that the dynamical events that led to this time-dependent morphology must have occurred on Gyr time-scales. Indeed, while most of the stellar mass in the SMC was generated >4 Gyr ago (Sabbi et al. 2009 ; Rezaeikh et al. 2014 ; Rubele et al. 2018 ) there is evidence in the SFH of the SMC of a strong interaction with the LMC to have occurred ∼2 Gyr ago (Harris Zaritsky 2004 ; Noël et al. 2009 ; Rezaeikh et al. 2014 ; Rubele et al. 2015 ). A more recent interaction ∼0.2 Gyr ago coincident with the closest approach to the Milky Way, also seen in the SFH (Harris Zaritsky 2004 ; Noël et al. 2009 ; Sabbi et al. 2009 ; Rubele et al. 2015 ), may have caused further distortion of the gaseous disc, from which the younger population traced by the Cepheids formed. 6.3 Distortions and other structures The outer regions of the SMC have been transformed by interactions leading to stripping and spatially stretched populations. Dias et al. ( 2016 ) described the SMC as being composed of three bodies: the eastern Wing, the central main body, and the western halo. We find the intermediate-age main body traced by RC stars to be structurally simple and symmetrical, consistent with a spheroidal component. The eastern Wing, on the other hand, is split into two distinct populations (both traced by intermediate-age RC stars), of which the brighter one clearly lies in front of the main body (Fig. 9 , bottom right). We have been able to comprehensively trace these two components across the VMC footprint, allowing us to relate them to what other observational and theoretical studies have found. We find a fourth structure, in the north (Fig. 9 , top left); this has previously been described as an extension to the Wing (e.g. Gardiner Hawkins 1991 ), but Sun et al. ( 2018 ) showed this area to contain a shell of young stars which is clearly separated from the general Wing area. The intermediate-age population of RC stars in the north need not be related to these young stars, though. We compare our results with previous analyses of Cepheids, RR Lyræ,
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