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Did LF steal from the Iron Throne?


Lady Winter Rose

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Sorry for any mistakes in the following text.




Did LF make a financially fraud while he was Master of Coin? I vaguely remember that Tyrion were thinking LF have been buying the goods from merchants, then he manufactured them to seems more expensive and sells them back to the Crown. Ego, Crown buys their own goods.


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Sorry for any mistakes in the following text.

Did LF make a financially fraud while he was Master of Coin? I vaguely remember that Tyrion were thinking LF have been buying the goods from merchants, then he manufactured them to seems more expensive and sells them back to the Crown. E. G Crown buys their own goods.

Pretty sure Tyrion thought exactly the opposite i.e. LF was making good money for the crown by buying cheap and selling to other merchants for more.

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Pretty sure Tyrion thought exactly the opposite i.e. LF was making good money for the crown by buying cheap and selling to other merchants for more.

When I first read this part in the books I thought exactly the same - Tyrion is just seeing a competent man. But what if Tyrion was wrong? What if that was the clue that Crown is buying their own goods and Tyrion not noticing?

After all, he did say Crown profit was more than it was before, yet debt is even greater. I understand Robert B. lived expensive life, but he did seem to earn a big debt by very short time, all while Crown was making more and more money.

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Yea, I have no textual evidence to support my feelings but I think its almost a given that littlefinger was stealing from the crown. Every time the crown needed additional money littlefinger was the one that got it. He would'nt have needed to do anyhting elaborate like resell goods to the crown for profit. He could simply skim a little off the top each time he used a new initiative to give the crown more money for example:



  1. During the war of 5 kings: When littlefinger came up with the idea of instituting a tax for entrance into kings landing during the war of the five kings when the smallfolk were running away from the war and sought protection in kingslanding. I could see him easily taking 10% off the top and nobody would be the wiser because nobody could track down all of the people who gave their money and possesions to enter the city it would be a logistical nightmare to prove he had been stealing. There is no telling how much money he could have made during this period alone.
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Yea, I have no textual evidence to support my feelings but I think its almost a given that littlefinger was stealing from the crown. Every time the crown needed additional money littlefinger was the one that got it. He would'nt have needed to do anyhting elaborate like resell goods to the crown for profit. He could simply skim a little off the top each time he used a new initiative to give the crown more money for example:

  1. During the war of 5 kings: When littlefinger came up with the idea of instituting a tax for entrance into kings landing during the war of the five kings when the smallfolk were running away from the war and sought protection in kingslanding. I could see him easily taking 10% off the top and nobody would be the wiser because nobody could track down all of the people who gave their money and possesions to enter the city it would be a logistical nightmare to prove he had been stealing. There is no telling how much money he could have made during this period alone.

I agree he could get 10% of the profit for himself, but reselling Crown goods could be more profitable. Especially if Crown sells goods to LF employee and he later buys it from the Crown, and gives money to LF.

Who is going to check? Arrogant, greedy, spoiled Queen? I think this was Queens job (to check what comes into keep and out of keep, to manage the housekeep). But Cersei would be more interested in buying jewels and clothes. Master of Coin? Jon Arryn? Jon could, but if he ever have doubts, Robert didn't want to 'count coppers'.

It's possible, but there is no evidence he did.

I think there's clues in text. Could someone find quote where Tyrion thinks how competent LF is?

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Ask yourself this: how did a lord from one of the smallest of minor houses (net worth a tiny castle and a few-dozen sheep) become one of the richest men in Westeros? By saving his salary as Master of Coin? Hardly. How did the Crown's income increase but the debt increase faster? Maybe because the increase in income was only on paper. A lot of it was spent to cover the Crown's debt to the Iron Bank, interest only.



In my opinion one reason LF tried to frame Tyrion for Joff's poisoning was that he was afraid Tyrion would figure out how much of the Crown's funds he was syphoning off.

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I think there's clues in text. Could someone find quote where Tyrion thinks how competent LF is?

Here are Tyrion's thoughts as he's going through the books:

He went back to work after she left, trying to track some golden dragons through the labyrinth of Littlefinger’s ledgers. Petyr Baelish had not believed in letting gold sit about and grow dusty, that was for certain, but the more Tyrion tried to make sense of his accounts the more his head hurt. It was all very well to talk of breeding dragons instead of locking them up in the treasury, but some of these ventures smelled worse than week-old fish. I wouldn’t have been so quick to let Joffrey fling the Antler Men over the walls if I’d known how many of the bloody bastards had taken loans from the crown. He would have to send Bronn to find their heirs, but he feared that would prove as fruitful as trying to squeeze silver from a silverfish.

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Ten years ago, Jon Arryn had given him a minor sinecure in customs, where Lord Petyr had soon distinguished himself by bringing in three times as much as any of the king’s other collectors. King Robert had been a prodigious spender. A man like Petyr Baelish, who had a gift for rubbing two golden dragons together to breed a third, was invaluable to his Hand. Littlefinger’s rise had been arrow-swift. Within three years of his coming to court, he was master of coin and a member of the small council, and today the crown’s revenues were ten times what they had been under his beleaguered predecessor . . . though the crown’s debts had grown vast as well. A master juggler was Petyr Baelish.

Oh, he was clever. He did not simply collect the gold and lock it in a treasure vault, no. He paid the king’s debts in promises, and put the king’s gold to work. He bought wagons, shops, ships, houses. He bought grain when it was plentiful and sold bread when it was scarce. He bought wool from the north and linen from the south and lace from Lys, stored it, moved it, dyed it, sold it. The golden dragons bred and multiplied, and Littlefinger lent them out and brought them home with hatchlings.

And in the process, he moved his own men into place. The Keepers of the Keys were his, all four. The King’s Counter and the King’s Scales were men he’d named. The officers in charge of all three mints. Harbormasters, tax farmers, customs sergeants, wool factors, toll collectors, pursers, wine factors; nine of every ten belonged to Littlefinger. They were men of middling birth, by and large; merchants’ sons, lesser lordlings, sometimes even foreigners, but judging from their results, far more able than their highborn predecessors.

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Yeah, it does seem to beggar belief that Littlefinger can multiply the Crown's incomes by so much yet still be in so much debt unless expenses are rising too. Could all these expenses really be from Robert's feasts, tournaments, and flaming swords? It does strain credulity unless each feast cost as much as a Faceless Man.

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I'm too cynical to think otherwise. Considering Baelish's aims of rising high, he almost surely took the job to make a fortune from it. And he's very well off by the time Ned arrives in KL. Probably the brothels were an 'honest' business where few questions were asked and he could blackmail customers if they got too nosy or accused him of anything illegal, like money laundering. In real life, many people take public jobs to get rich. This is especially true of financial jobs in countries that are corrupt or have weak regulation. Illyrio, who is already beaucoup rich, wants to be the Westeros Master of Coin eventually. Not for his health, presumably!

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