Night's Watch: Causes of Decline

[FacelessStark]

The point is, from all narratives threat declined thousands of years ago. Yet NW built 19 castles and manned a number of them for quite some time with quite large garrisons. After thousands of years it still had 10 thousands swords... And then suddenly within 300 years boom... Down to 1 thousand.

Maybe during times of stability rulers were willing to send healthy, non criminal, military aged men to the wall... But in a time of rebellion and upheaval this is not done anymore.

[Runaway Penguin]

The obvious meta reason is to make Jon Snow's meteoric rise to the top of the NW at least a bit plausible.

In universe the implausible part is that the Watch remained so strong thousands of years after the Others were seen last, given that the wildlings were seen as a minor threat not worth much attention.

It's implausible with current system, it would not be implausible if it was viewed by all 7k as "neutral reserve force" and "Military academy for 2nd etc. sons", but with possibility to opt out if needed (generally a "safe storage". Hence my remark re. Robb's Will, maybe Robb knew that there was a precedent of getting a heir from the Watch (and, in the first place, absolving him from the oath) in exchange for new men.

[Lady Shadow Cat]

It's implausible with current system, it would not be implausible if it was viewed by all 7k as "neutral reserve force" and "Military academy for 2nd etc. sons", but with possibility to opt out if needed (generally a "safe storage". Hence my remark re. Robb's Will, maybe Robb knew that there was a precedent of getting a heir from the Watch (and, in the first place, absolving him from the oath) in exchange for new men.

I like this idea.

[Runaway Penguin]

You said the symptom not the cause for a few things. You may be partially correct, but self perpetuating cycles often appear in a decline.

Yes the Gifts were abandoned partly because the Wall was not well guarded, you missed the rest of my point there, they would have had a continual recruitment pool if those villages were protected. One thing led to the other and round and round.

10k swords would be able to protect the villages. For the villages to stop being protected, you need a rather drastic reduction of NW capability first. Villages were abandoned only oafter NW numbers dwindled from the initial 10k at Conquest so low that they were unable to maintain the HQ.

There may have been long summers before, and they probably all led to the gradual decline of the number of people swearing themselves to the Watch, it does not invalidate my point that the Long Summer has been an integral part in this most recent decline.

There are very few smooth upswings or downswings in standard graphing of units over time, they wander around a bit and have corrections. So, Long summer=decline, Winter = upswing, but downwards over time.

Long summer lasted for 10 years. Most of the 90% downgrade seems to have alreaday happened. Besides summer would mean more wildlings and thus more off their activity.

I don't get how allowing rapists and murderers to serve is a symptom? They have probably always allowed it and it has probably always been a drag on recruitment. Would you want to serve with them, even if it was a much more desirable gig, or in a better location?

It's a symptom of declining quality and amount of volunteers. I doubt that 300 years before AGoT there were 10x more murderers and rapists ;)

[Woftis]

It's not the most attractive career path is it?

[jons nissa]

So we see that an institution of NW lost 90% of its strength over 300 years - after millenia of existence.

Why? Why so "suddenly"? Was it because with central King and less wars overall, there were less defeated enemies to send to the Wall?

isn't there a great deal of speculation about a connection of the dragons and the others? it is not coincidental that the "threat" on the other side of the wall declined to the point of having practically disappeared and the dragons had practically disappeared as well. i think it's not so much about the targs as much as their dragons. and, eventually, the lack of them.

as the threat became less of an issue, support for the wall dropped, too. i don't believe the targs ever worried about the great other or white walkers and therefore we not eager to support the wall financially or recruits.

[Runaway Penguin]

Now, definitely not, but it would seem that until 300 years before AGoT it kind of was... That's why I am asking what the possible change or "new thing" might be.

[FacelessStark]

To answer this question it seems we need to do a retreading project where we trace NW activity and factors that might effect it.

[Runaway Penguin]

isn't there a great deal of speculation about a connection of the dragons and the others? it is not coincidental that the "threat" on the other side of the wall declined to the point of having practically disappeared and the dragons had practically disappeared as well. i think it's not so much about the targs as much as their dragons. and, eventually, the lack of them.

Common knowledge is that threat of Others vanished thousands of years ago, even if dialogues and events seem to indicate that "threat of Others" doesn't mean Others werent's there (NW seems to know that there are things in the Woods that are best avoided), but they were not threat (in the sense of leading armies of slain or going on massive killing rampage).

Plus Others were in the woods before Dragons were reborn, Craster alone was on his midden heap for ages...

[jons nissa]

Now, definitely not, but it would seem that until 300 years before AGoT it kind of was... That's why I am asking what the possible change or "new thing" might be.

it appears to be a simple as a new regime in power that may not have been as familiar and convinced about the "legends" of westeros and did not consider anything north of the wall as a problem, let alone a threat.

[tze]

The deterioration of the Watch is particularly interesting because you'd ordinarily expect the opposite to have occurred in a united kingdom. Prior to the Conquest, the only practical benefit given by the Watch (since nobody really believed in the Others anymore) was felt in the North, because due to distance issues, wildling incursions simply didn't (and couldn't) occur in any other region. The King of the Vale, King of the Rock, King of the Reach, etc. wouldn't have derived any tangible benefit to their domains by aiding the Watch because they didn't need an extra buffer against the wildlings (if anything, securing the northern border of the King in the North could have been seen as a negative thing to the southern kings, because it freed up the Starks to perhaps start making trouble south of the Neck).

But once the Iron Throne took over, the Wall stopped being a border of the North alone and started being the northern border of the entire Kingdom. The Iron Throne was ostensibly in charge of safeguarding the realm's northern border, and the Iron Throne had access to resources from all over Westeros (which the Starks, as Kings in the North, never had)---the Iron Throne could have given the Watch more money than the Starks ever could, more weaponry and building materials than the Starks ever could. Hell, the Iron Throne could have, by virtue of sending its own extra sons to the Watch and publicly encouraging non-criminal peasants to join the Watch, made joining the Watch a fashionable thing to do throughout the entire Seven Kingdoms. The Watch's diminishing under the Iron Throne sounds counterintuitive at first glance.

Westeros has four borders: the western border had no foreign enemies to attack it (only the Ironborn, and they were supposedly controlled by the Iron Throne!), the eastern border could have been attacked from the sea by the Free Cities (but there's no indication they ever were---the closest thing to an attack there came from the threat of the exiled Blackfyres, who were really just a cadet branch of the Targs). The southern border was, for two hundred years, with Dorne---but once Dorne joined the realm, the "southern border" became, like the eastern and western borders, a place with basically no likelihood of attack by foreign forces. The Northern border, however, has been under constant foreign attack for three hundred years---by the wildlings, because in between attacks by Kings-Beyond-The-Wall, the North was constantly being raided. So for over a century the only place in the realm that had to be defended from foreign attack was the northern border, aka the Wall, and defending the realm is, as we're constantly told, the purview of the King. Yet we don't hear about House Targaryen ever really helping the Watch, and in AGOT when Ned is wondering what to do about the wildlings, he says he'll lead an army north of the Wall---but asking Robert for help never seems to occur to him. (Queen Alysanne's actions at Deep Lake obviously didn't help the Watch; she gave them some useless land bordering Brandon's Gift, rather than ordering wealthier lands in the south to tithe to the Wall, and she arranged for a new castle to be built where over a dozen castles had already been abandoned; the castle she had built was abandoned relatively quickly, so clearly it wasn't helpful. She gave the appearance of helping the Watch, but didn't give the kind of support that the Watch actually needed.)

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised one bit if the Watch deteriorated under the Iron Throne because the Iron Throne wanted the Watch weakened, for one simple reason: as a means of controlling House Stark. The North is the largest of the Seven Kingdoms, and it's also the furthest away from King's Landing. House Stark has the prestige of being the oldest ruling family in the realm, and unlike all of the other Great Houses (save only House Greyjoy), cannot be manipulated via the apparatus of the Faith (the Starks don't care who the High Septon anoints as King, for example). If House Stark decided to rebel against the Iron Throne, then the Iron Throne was always going to have a great deal of difficulty bringing the Starks to heel, even before the dragons died out, because the sheer size of the region, its sparse population, its climate, and its inability to be invaded by land, all meant that southern attack was incredibly difficult. (The only reason Robb was in such a weak position once declaring independence was because he added the indefensible Riverlands to his kingdom.)

But by keeping the Watch weak, the Iron Throne ensured that House Stark was going to be too busy defending its own people to have the time or the resources to rebel against House Targaryen. This would have been especially crucial for the Iron Throne once the dragons died out (as suddenly House Targaryen's chances of militarily imposing its will on the North go from "difficult" to "impossible").

it appears to be a simple as a new regime in power that may not have been as familiar and convinced about the "legends" of westeros and did not consider anything north of the wall as a problem, let alone a threat.

The problem with that argument is that there was always something north of the wall that posed a problem and a threat: the wildlings. They were attacking people that, post-Conquest, owed fealty to the Iron Throne. Remove the idea of the Others, and you're still left with the Iron Throne presiding over a diminishing of a force geared around protecting the Iron Throne's subjects from foreign invasion.

[jons nissa]

To answer this question it seems we need to do a retreading project where we trace NW activity and factors that might effect it.

i'm pretty sure the heresy threads (they are long and full of theories!) address a lot about the topic of the watch, the others and the night watch men.

[Runaway Penguin]

tze:

Nice analysis. It would seem even the Starks are not that much bothered... While I agree that Iron Throne probably didn't help, I would say that even then the regions would continue to view Watch as useful... Unless they suddenly felt it failed them. That is why I wonder if the "Watch takes no part" and "Watch is for life" were not parts of the deal with Targaryens and Conquest. Watch declined to help the Realms of Men against supernatural invasion (dragons) -> Watch failed its purpose, if the "for life" change was also part of it (Watch ceased to be a safe haven for third sons and an insurance for Houses), it would just hasten the decline...

plus there were further failures like the Battle of the Long Lake, but again I would say these were more a result and symptom of downfall of the Watch than the cause - just proofs that Watch lost its usefulness.

[FacelessStark]

i'm pretty sure the heresy threads (they are long and full of theories!) address a lot about the topic of the watch, the others and the night watch men.

I mean more of a history of the NW combined with political and economic conditions in the 7 kingdoms, as opposed to a variety of disjointed theories.

Then you would come back and try to estimate garrison numbers over the 300 year time period we are talking about here.

[jons nissa]

I mean more of a history of the NW combined with political and economic conditions in the 7 kingdoms, as opposed to a variety of disjointed theories.

Then you would come back and try to estimate garrison numbers over the 300 year time period we are talking about here.

read the threads! it is definitely grounded in the history, political and economical events of westeros. the theories come into play with the others, the AA, the night king, etc. but they discuss the watch very thoroughly.

[jons nissa]

The problem with that argument is that there was always something north of the wall that posed a problem and a threat: the wildlings. They were attacking people that, post-Conquest, owed fealty to the Iron Throne. Remove the idea of the Others, and you're still left with the Iron Throne presiding over a diminishing of a force geared around protecting the Iron Throne's subjects from foreign invasion.

i admit to not being as knowledgeable on the wildings but were they attacking people south of the wall? and, if they were, would the iron throne really be concerned with that or would they assume it was a problem for the starks to manage?

eta: just read your post, tze, which leaves me with my original question: were there many wildling raids? if so, then it does make sense for the targs to use it to keep the starks busy which also keeps the targs free them from the responsibility of having to deal with them. but i don't recall having many of them south of the wall.

[Buried Treasure]

It would not be suprising if the fortunes of the Watch had always fluctuated from one generation to another and that the 10000 was a higher than normal number, perhaps at other times the size of the Watch was slightly more modest - 7 or 8 thousand?

I'd suggest the fall of the Valyrian Empire and subsequent opening of the Essos continent as a destination for exiles as a cause for the NW's decline if that hadn't been a century before Harren's brother, unless turmoil on Essos made it an unpleasant prospect for exiles in Aegons time and they all joined the Watch instead. I actually think the success of the Golden Company may have been partially responsible for the lack of high ranking recruits for the NW in the past century, it's a semi-honourable home for lords like Jon Con with no other place to go. In the past such men might have seen no other option but the Watch, and its them that make it seem like a place worth volunteering for to oridinary men.

[FacelessStark]

There is a lot of content to get through... I am quite new. That being said, I was talking about information specifically pertaining to the question of NW garrison sizes that. Haven't found.

[Runaway Penguin]

It would not be suprising if the fortunes of the Watch had always fluctuated from one generation to another and that the 10000 was a higher than normal number, perhaps at other times the size of the Watch was slightly more modest - 7 or 8 thousand?

For sure there would be fluctuation in percents or even 10-20% based on the factors already mentioned (wars, wildlings, season...), it is the sudden major decline that worries me.

[The Broke Howard Hughes]

Ignorance of the challenges the watch faces and an inherent lack of immediate danger. Most people in Westeros have no idea what the Nights Watch deals with daily. I think all Lords should be required to visit Castle Black at least once, so they know the importance of its existance.