Why do people consider Slaver's Bay unrealistic?

[King Zee]

George RR Martin has taken several qualities from history and created a new civilization with parts of each.

This itself is the problem. You cant take some pieces of Rome, Ottomans and the Colonial Americas , leave other pieces out, and merge them into a coherent workable civilization.

In the Ottoman Empire the slaves who made up the military and bureaucracy ended up running the empire , making and unmaking Sultans as they pleased.

In Egypt the Mamelukes went so far as to make themselves rulers.

You also have the missing freedman population which existed in both Rome and Colonial America. There were ways for freedmen to eventualy earn citizenship in Rome, while in the Americas its wasnt unusual for former slaves to end up owning slaves themselves.

[Suzanna Stormborn]

I do not believe that the Slaver’s Bay chapters are filled with cartoon characters. I think some of the issues raised in the chapters are worthwhile and most of the action entertaining. I can see some aspects of the place as a sort of Martin’s Mordor, with Cleon the Butcher as a redneck Sauron. This is particularly true of the Astapor-Yunkai war. Here’s another point worth making: The debate about SB provides an opportunity to stand a common “It’s all Dany’s fault” argument on its head.

Do you think that Daenerys is to blame for all the blood and terror in Astapor? I say—Nah, not even close. She made a big mistake by marching north, but blaming her for so much as 20% of the horror that Astapor became is probably too much. Do you believe that the slavers were just unbelievably stupid in giving her a large always-obedient army? Then how can you accept the stupidity that unfolded after this? How can you say that the dragon queen should have known that matters would get anywhere near as bad as they got?

There are lots of problems. Let’s concentrate on the most serious one: acquisition and training of young fighters. The process would be something like this: Cleon and his goons capture a large group of young men from the former ruling classes. They castrate and further abuse these unfortunate "draftees." Then they give them weapons. The seemingly inevitable result? King Cleon’s head would be mounted on a city wall. Say, however, that there is some reason that the “Unsullied” wouldn’t kill Cleon. Unfortunately for any such explanation, the fact of the matter is that they do it, in an “oh, for the sake of the gods” stupid manner. How is this possible in any sort of rational universe? You have to fashion an explanation that accounts for these beyond-incredible facts:

The young men from former high class families follow Insane Clown Cleon (ICC) out of the city and into battle. Why? Even if there had been some explanation for the sparing of the clown’s life, why follow him? Once beyond the city gates, why don’t the young men just take off on their own? They don’t. The battle is joined against men of their own class, men to whom they should appeal for help, and yet they fight these guys (or their hirelings). After being thrashed, do they do what any half-way rational person would do? That is, do they surrender? No, they flee with ICC all the way back to Astapor. Would even a pack of abused dogs do such a thing? I doubt it. When the Yunkai arrive at the walls of their city, then the soldiers kill ICC. Why in the seven hells would they wait so long? And, one more time, it just gets harder to believe. When the “king” is dead, why don’t the soldiers open the city gates and surrender?

Somehow, all of this is Dany’s fault. She should have expected it. Every death and all of the horror is on her.

Baloney

Rationally, the thing can not be believed. There is no way to legitimately argue that anyone should have expected it. The problems I left out (e.g. the behavior of the Yunkai’i and their sellswords) are matters I might deal with in a later post. Some of the things are entertaining in their own way. I find that they can be accepted in terms of the “Martin’s Mordor Method” I mentioned. They can’t be used as a way to prove that Daenerys Targaryen is beyond hope as a leader. She doesn’t exactly distinguish herself here, but that’s not uncommon for leaders in this story.

The argument that all of the SB stuff is just to make Dany look better (e.g. in #132 above) fails. A better argument would be that the ultra-mega-completely-over-the-top fate of Astapor was concocted by the author to make Daenerys look worse than she could possibly be. After concluding that she was beyond terrible, we will be surprised to see how well she does in Westeros, where mistakes do not lead to such ridiculously bad and totally unpredictable results. Notice that I don’t say that this would be a strong argument. I just hold that it would be a better argument than the one often put forward by some of the harshest Dany critics.

Always thoughtful and rational posts :)

:agree:

Poster's could take lessons from you Parwan.

[Parwan]

Always thoughtful and rational posts :)

:agree:

Poster's could take lessons from you Parwan.

Thank you. The effort to analyze things rationally is worth it, even if the fantasy situation you're analyzing doesn't seem exactly rational.