How many unmentioned Houses might there be in Westeros?

[nelsontropical]

All of the major players have at least been mentioned so far, but I was curious if anyone had an idea of how many minor houses might be lurking around that we haven't heard of yet. I'm also wondering whether certain regions might have a higher concentration of heretofore anonymous houses.

My thought is that Dorne probably has the most unnamed houses so far. They keep to themselves, and seem to have a solid government structure in place, which would suggest a strong compliment of houses to keep everything in order throughout the kingdom. After that, I'd say the Iron Islands, although they seem so much more scattered and disorganized that they'd likely have less over all than the other kingdoms. However, with all of those islands, and the autonomous attitude of ironborn, one would think that there would lots of family houses ruling over each island or small cluster of islands.

What do you guys think?

[The Holy Goat]

There's bound to be shitload of unnamed houses in Westeros, many of them so small they are of no consequence at all and little more than common smallfolk. It is a large continent with a population around 50 million or so afterall. I assume that large fertile, populaous regions like the Reach have the most houses, smaller less populous ones like the Iron Islands or Dorne probably have the least. Though I can be wrong.

[Lord Lannister]

As many as the plot requires.

[Lord Davos Baratheon]

There's bound to be shitload of unnamed houses in Westeros, many of them so small they are of no consequence at all and little more than common smallfolk. It is a large continent with a population around 50 million or so afterall. I assume that large fertile, populaous regions like the Reach have the most houses, smaller less populous ones like the Iron Islands or Dorne probably have the least. Though I can be wrong.

I agree. There's no way a person could guess the exact number; even GRRM mustn't know.

[RaDeBrun]

Brown Ben Plumm requests of a lordship with 50 hides of land from Tyrion. A hide generally means the land required to support a family. Let's say this is 8 people per hide. Assuming that this is typical of a low-level lord, then lords would tend to rule over about 400 people.

This would be in line with observations in high-middle-ages-France of approximately one noble family per 400 populace.

This would cause one to assume that there are tens of thousands of unmentioned houses.

[Light a wight tonight]

There might be 472, or there might not. And if they never get mentioned what does it matter?

[James Arryn]

I agree. There's no way a person could guess the exact number; even GRRM mustn't know.

Wrong.

It's 449, with a margin of error of 7.118.

[Lord Davos Baratheon]

Wrong.

It's 449, with a margin of error of 7.118.

That reminded me of the data that was published here in Brazil during the presidential election run-off.

So misleading...

[James Arryn]

That reminded me of the data that was published here in Brazil during the run-off presidential election.

So misleading...

It's 100% accurate except maybe the decimal point. And some of the numbers.

[Bluetiger]

IMO we know about 80% of major noble houses.

There are also many minor noble houses (like sworn to someone who is sworn to Tyrells).

There are also hundreds ( if not thousands) petty landed knights.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Somewhere in the (lower) five digits.

[Ser Arthur Hightower]

The only info we are given is Manderly's statement that he has 12 lords sworn to him, and 100 landed knights.

However this information is only worth so much, because the north would presumably be quite different, and Manderly would be far more powerful that the average lord.

I think we can estimate that the average major lord has 8-10 smaller lords sworn to him, and in areas keeping the seven 60-80 landed knights. I can't be bothered to work out how many major houses in each region and then times by 91, but that is a possible method.

Another way to do it would be to divide the population of westeros by 200, RaDeBrun estimates the value closer to 400, but 200 is the value i have seen several times (sometimes lower) so I'm guessing there is roughly one noble house for each 200 inhabitants, which gives us along the lines of 200,000, if we assume westeros has 4,000,000 people.

It's worth remembering that a lot of minor houses may just be cadet branches, so no different last names, so if you want to get technical there may be less than half that number of houses. There may also be cases where unrelated houses have the same or very similar names, like house Wells being a Dornish and Northern house, with no known connection.

[Jaak]

We have a better source. 600 lords at Field of Fire.

[Nittanian]

I agree. There's no way a person could guess the exact number; even GRRM mustn't know.

Yep, in this SSM he states:

That's it of those I came up with, although the web page has spurred one more question from others. You didn't block the Houses Ryswell and Dustin in the North as dead, and I said as much, but given that Lord Dustin and Ser Mark Ryswell fought and died at the Tower of Joy ... Were they the last of their houses? I don't think so, but I suppose one can't be certain, especially as no Dustins and Ryswells appear in the novels (both in the text and the appendicies.) Then again, neither are the Burleys or Liddles (I think), and certainly not the Flints of Flints Finger or any of the lords of Skagos.

Well, Robin Flint is one of Catelyn's companions when she rides to Bitterbridge, though I never say which branch he's from, I don't think. No, there are still Dustins and Ryswells in the north, and maybe even in Robb's army. I mean, he had twenty thousand guys or near about when he marched south, I couldn't characterize them all. I have always figured that there are =dozens= of minor lords and =hundreds= of knights and such in all these armies. Simply because someone isn't mentioned doesn't mean they are not there.

[Oafkeeper]

I think we know most of the major houses and probably all of the most important ones but every landed knight is part of a house and there are thousands of them, not to mention breakaway houses like the various Lannister descendants.

[The Holy Goat]

I think we know most of the major houses and probably all of the most important ones but every landed knight is part of a house and there are thousands of them, not to mention breakaway houses like the various Lannister descendants.

This, pretty much.

[Jaak]

We have a better source. 600 lords at Field of Fire.

That´s on the allied side, though. Reach had twice as many as Westerlands, so we are talking about 400 Lords from Reach, and 200 from Westerlands.

On Targaryen side, the army was 1/5 of the allies, but with a smaller share of knights and lords. Thus fewer than 120.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

We have a better source. 600 lords at Field of Fire.

Lords. But knights have Houses as well. Furthermore, not every Lord was present.

[Jaak]

Lords. But knights have Houses as well. Furthermore, not every Lord was present.

Not all knights have Houses. World of Ice and Fire provides total number of knights, but not their breakdown between knightly members of lordly families, houses of landed knights and houseless hedge knights.

[Bluetiger]

Not all knights have Houses. World of Ice and Fire provides total number of knights, but not their breakdown between knightly members of lordly families, houses of landed knights and houseless hedge knights.

You are right. There are thousands knights like Bennis of Brown Shield, ser Kyle, there are also knighted commoners and bastards like ser Glendon Flowers/Ball.