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Is GRRM interested in geographical, economic or demographic accuracy?


The Don Dadda

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Looking through the almost endless pages of threads that have amassed over six years I have noticed that a lot of people have devoted what must have been not an insignificant amount of time to scrutinising the human and physical systems at work on Planetos. However almost every system apparently fails to stand up to interrogation, and most (self-proclaimed) experts who post are seemingly able to pick a number of holes in things like the way the population fluctuates, how trade works or how the seasons work. My first thought was that GRRM probably doesn't care about these that much compared to character, plot and other more important aspects of the narrative, but then in quite a lot of SSMs he seems to answer questions as if he really does consider those things to be important? So what gives? Did he mean for them to be plausible but just fudged it? Or was I right in thinking that he doesn't really care that much in those aspects of his world and just answers questions as if he does in order to pander to that section of the fandom that geeks out about that sort of stuff? (not an insult by the way because I geek out about that stuff as well!)

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I think it's a combination of self proclaimed experts often being a lot less knowledgeable than they like to appear but trying to score a few easy credibility points by dismissing stuff that's actually quite fine, and the impossibility to actually plan an economy down to the very last detail.

That being said, in most respects where he is aware of this impossibility, GRRM often leaves stuff open in the knowledge that while it's practically impossible to accurately give all of the figures, it's much easier to give a vague range for them. This is why we'll never hear stuff like "x% of the population are millers, and y% are bakers, and z% are toymakers", but you will hear that mills are rare enough so that a medium lord knows all of them in his domain.

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He worldbuilds where it is needed, but doesn't dwell too much on numbers and all that. For instance, we'll probably never know how many people say Gulltown has, because then George needs to remember that number and keep it consistent. In the end it all piles up to be too much. He already has admitted he has trouble keeping physical characteristics (mainly eye color) straight. Things like economic systems, demographics and such are only explored when they are relevant.

All in all George seems to want to write a better story than focus on such things, which I surely cant blame him for.

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I think it's a combination of self proclaimed experts often being a lot less knowledgeable than they like to appear but trying to score a few easy credibility points by dismissing stuff that's actually quite fine, and the impossibility to actually plan an economy down to the very last detail.

Not really he has rather big holes - 8000 years of static development, a vast overdose of slavery in Essos and a Northern economy that simply cannot so far be expected to survive his long winters etc. The question you have to ask is are you reading an economic history of Westeros (no) or a fantasy novel that is very much interested in politics and character interaction so just don't sweat the details since than you might start asking for some kind of logical explanation for wargs.

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Not really he has rather big holes - 8000 years of static development, a vast overdose of slavery in Essos and a Northern economy that simply cannot so far be expected to survive his long winters etc. The question you have to ask is are you reading an economic history of Westeros (no) or a fantasy novel that is very much interested in politics and character interaction so just don't sweat the details since than you might start asking for some kind of logical explanation for wargs.

No it's clearly not an economic history (or a meteorological sutdy) of Westeros but sometimes GRRM will answer a question as if he himself believes that the economic system (or population of climate system) of Westeros is a worthy object of analysis.

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Not really he has rather big holes - 8000 years of static development [...]

Yeah, that is a good example for what I mean. 8000 years of stasis wtf? We know of technological advancement. We've been told that legends likely exaggerate how long ago stuff was. We've been told that stories have been retconned in universe to introduce contemporary (for them) concepts which actually did not exist back then, which of course leads to an illusion of stasis. GRRM has given himself practically unlimited leeway to introduce a feeling of eternal grandeur and at the same time maintain realism by telling us "Yeah, that's just what they like to think".

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I think that GRRM cares that its not obviously impossible or goes into direct war with all kinds of logic and rationality. I do however don't think that he's as interested to write a master thesis in Medieval economy to ensure that something like this is perfectly correct and realistic.

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It's magic! I'd rather he just focus on the plot than figuring out what effect the Pentoshi sales tax has on the economy.

Yeah that's pretty much how I feel about it but people seem to get pretty hung up on the details and then argue fairly passionately over them and even base arguments about plot and character on them. My initial reaction, like I said, was that there's no point arguing over them so intensely, nor basing other arguments on them if GRRM hasn't thought about it that much whilst writing, but then thought maybe he does think they are almost central to his story because of the way he answers questions about them.

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Yeah, that is a good example for what I mean. 8000 years of stasis wtf? We know of technological advancement. We've been told that legends likely exaggerate how long ago stuff was. We've been told that stories have been retconned in universe to introduce contemporary (for them) concepts which actually did not exist back then, which of course leads to an illusion of stasis. GRRM has given himself practically unlimited leeway to introduce a feeling of eternal grandeur and at the same time maintain realism by telling us "Yeah, that's just what they like to think".

When were we told this? Personally I quite like the idea of key events happening 8000 years ago.
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Yeah, that is a good example for what I mean. 8000 years of stasis wtf? We know of technological advancement. We've been told that legends likely exaggerate how long ago stuff was. We've been told that stories have been retconned in universe to introduce contemporary (for them) concepts which actually did not exist back then, which of course leads to an illusion of stasis. GRRM has given himself practically unlimited leeway to introduce a feeling of eternal grandeur and at the same time maintain realism by telling us "Yeah, that's just what they like to think".

This. We have statutes of king David as a medieval knight. So in the over one thousand years between the bronze age and medieval times, we've had no technological advancement?

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Essos seems too empty to feild that many sellswords.

But I guess these logistics are unimportant to the story, much less important than what Tyrion and Samwell's dicks look like, much less important than nipple color.

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GRRM isn't good with numbers: ages, economics, population sizes, etc... He is better at killing things. He is better at destroying words than building them. :)

I agree with this more than I agree with my post.

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It's High Fantasy. A certain amount of handwaving is expected, nay, required. it may be centuries before we have virtual reality models of medieval societies capable of giving us a fine understanding of just what is or is not feasible with regard to this type of environment. And even then, people still enjoy the most ludicrous stories, as long as they are constructed under certain rules...

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I think it's a combination of self proclaimed experts often being a lot less knowledgeable than they like to appear but trying to score a few easy credibility points by dismissing stuff that's actually quite fine, and the impossibility to actually plan an economy down to the very last detail.

That being said, in most respects where he is aware of this impossibility, GRRM often leaves stuff open in the knowledge that while it's practically impossible to accurately give all of the figures, it's much easier to give a vague range for them. This is why we'll never hear stuff like "x% of the population are millers, and y% are bakers, and z% are toymakers", but you will hear that mills are rare enough so that a medium lord knows all of them in his domain.

Agree with this

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I think if he were writing historical fiction, the inaccuracies would be glaring. However it's fantasy set in a world that doesn't exist. I think, for the most part, he remains consistent with how things work in that world and because it's consistent in that world, it's more or less accurate.

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