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More Small Questions, Really?


Angalin

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Where did this idea of the Great Other come from?

"On one side is R’hllor, the Lord of Light, the Heart of Fire, the God of Flame and Shadow. Against him stands the Great Other whose name may not be spoken, the Lord of Darkness, the Soul of Ice, the God of Night and Terror."

-Melisandre in ASoS while visiting Davos in his cell

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Where did this idea of the Great Other come from?

Basic negation. The Other is everything that is the opposite of R'hllor and without The Other R'hllor cannot exist.

You need darkness to contrast with light in order to call light "light" and darkness "darkness". Something cannot exist without its negation.

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Cheers fellas

"On one side is R’hllor, the Lord of Light, the Heart of Fire, the God of Flame and Shadow. Against him stands the Great Other whose name may not be spoken, the Lord of Darkness, the Soul of Ice, the God of Night and Terror."

-Melisandre in ASoS while visiting Davos in his cell

Basic negation. The Other is everything that is the opposite of R'hllor and without The Other R'hllor cannot exist.

You need darkness to contrast with light in order to call light "light" and darkness "darkness". Something cannot exist without its negation.

Cheers fellas

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Can woman or bastard ever have a claim to iron throne?

A woman can, yes. I am not sure about bastards..

They have to be legitimized. That's how the Blackfyre rebellion started - Aegon the Unworthy legitimized all of his bastards.

And by the way, through the right of conquest, anyone can have a claim. They "only" have to manage to take the throne.

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Women: Yes.

Before the Dance of Dragons (the historical war, not the book), women would normally ascend to the throne. After, the Targaryen dynasty included a special law that women should not ascend the throne if there was any male heir left. However, after the fall of the Targaryen dynasty, that does not seem to be applied to the new Baratheon dynasty, where it seems quite accepted that the line was King Robert -> Joffrey --> Tommen --> Myrcella (and only then males like Stannis and Renly). That being said, the queen would probably be expected to marry and her husband be considered ruler of the realm.

Bastards: Hardly.

While it is noted that bastards can in some cases inherit if there is no real heir anywhere to be found (and that includes going to uncles, cousins etc), that seems to be specially decided on a case-to-case basis. So presumably if the only available heir would be bastardborn, a council would be called similar to the one that wanted to award the crown to Maester Aemon (passing over a Targ that would have been earlier in the succession because of insanity). I doubt such a council would agree to offer the crown to a bastard, but it may depend on the circumstances.

Legitimized Bastards: Yes.

Legitimized Bastards are usually placed in the lines of succession after daughters (trueborn sons --> trueborn daughters --> legitimized bastards). So they should be able to inherit. Note that in this way, Daemon Blackfyre's claim would still be weaker than his trueborn half-brother's. Daemon pulled a Stannis and denied that Daeren wasn't his half-brother at all but a cuckoo's egg. Regardless of whether that was true or not, a substantial part of the realm accepted Daemon as the heir.

ETA: Gah. Double-ninja'd.

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There is something I have been wondering about for a while (I think this is a small question because there is probably a relatively straightforward answer)…

We hear a lot about illiteracy in ASOIAF, but not very much about innumeracy. I believe humans have a certain amount of innate mathematical ability whether they are educated or not, but I am wondering how this was addressed (both in ASOIAF and in RL).

The specific example I was thinking about was the case of military scouts. If you have an army which is pretty much completely uneducated, who are the scouts that are sent ahead to, for example, count the enemy’s troops? The numbers they would be dealing with could be in the hundreds or thousands; if they haven’t been educated, how do they communicate these numbers to the leaders?

When it comes to smaller numbers and amounts I could see how uneducated people could just learn as they go. Somebody like Davos clearly would have had to gain some mathematical ability on the job as a smuggler. But I feel like for much larger numbers, this must have been an issue in military history over the centuries. Does anyone know how this was dealt this? Did armies just improvise (ie, Lord Tywin’s army is over that way, and it’s “very large” or “not too large”)? Is there some military method for improvising and recording very large numbers (kind of like a mathematical equivalent of heraldry, ie, a system of identification not based on the written word)? I would be interested if anyone has any knowledge of this.

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Yes there are some mentions of this in Daenerys chapters in ASOS when she mentions that Barristan has been teaching her to estimate army sizes. The easiest way is to count or estimate camp fires and multiply that by the number of people around it - this is invariably going to be a standard number, if you just think of the practicalities of it, not every soldier is going to carry a cook pot and a tent with them on campaign so you are going to have groups sharing a common cook pot (standardised military catering is something relatively recent) and other communal equipment (tents, spades, wood axes etc). There are limits to the size of pot you can practically carry so you are probably going to end up with about eight to each camp fire like the ancient Romans (eight to a tent, eight to a mess group).

I would say that most of the maths that was used historically in the middle ages was basic stuff, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. You might use an abacus for calculations and keep track of debts from business deals with tally sticks (immense quantities of tally sticks recording medieval debts in England were stored in the old Parliament building of the Palace of Westminster and an attempt to get rid of them all by putting them on the furnace caused the whole building to burn down in 1834).

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Legitimized Bastards are usually placed in the lines of succession after daughters (trueborn sons --> trueborn daughters --> legitimized bastards). So they should be able to inherit.

I've often seen this claim on the board, but I don't recall where it comes from. When George was asked a related question, he only said it was unclear where legitimized bastards go in the line of succession. Is there something from the books that proves that legitimized bastards go behind their trueborn siblings in the succession?

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I don't remember it being explicitely stated as a rule (except on the wiki, and the wiki doesn't give a source). However, the conversation between Roose Bolton and Theon in Dance seems to collaborate this.

The Dreadfort will soon be overrun with Boltons. Ramsay will kill them all, of course. That's for the best. I will not live long enough to see new sons to manhood, and boy lords are the bane of any House.

Which seems to assume that every trueborn son of Bolton would supersede the legitimized bastard (and become a 'boy lord'), even though Ramsay is undisputably older.

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Did you mean this?

“We’re not the only Walders either. Ser Stevron has a grandson, Black Walder, he’s fourth in line of succession, and there’s Red Walder, Ser Emmon’s son, and Bastard Walder, who isn’t in the line at all. He’s called Walder Rivers not Walder Frey. Plus there’s girls named Walda.”

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Did you mean this?

Yes. I must have confused some of those Walders as legitimate. My apologies. But it all comes down to the same thing, doesn't it? According to this:

I don't remember it being explicitely stated as a rule (except on the wiki, and the wiki doesn't give a source). However, the conversation between Roose Bolton and Theon in Dance seems to collaborate this.

Which seems to assume that every trueborn son of Bolton would supersede the legitimized bastard (and become a 'boy lord'), even though Ramsay is undisputably older.

A legitimized bastard comes after the trueborn children, no matter the age.

Which raises a question: If Jon gets legitimized as Robb's heir, but Bran and Rickon are alive, how could he be King in the North in the end? In the end, I'm taking for the majority of the lords to be aware that Bran and Rickon are alive.

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A legitimized bastard comes after the trueborn children, no matter the age.

Which raises a question: If Jon gets legitimized as Robb's heir, but Bran and Rickon are alive, how could he be King in the North in the end? In the end, I'm taking for the majority of the lords to be aware that Bran and Rickon are alive.

If Jon is both legitimised and named as Robb's heir, then he is Robb's heir. If Robb only legitimised him but did not specifically name him as heir, then Jon would go behind Bran and Rickon (and probably Sansa and Arya, too). Though that is just a technicality, if Jon could form a large faction to support him (or if someone else formed a large faction to support Jon), then Jon could win out over the other kids.

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