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Atlas of Ice and Fire


Werthead

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There might be some climate zones (perhaps the Rills and the Manderly lands?) favorable to horse-breeding, and I'm certainly willing to believe that the richer Northern houses (Manderly, Stark, Dustin, Bolton, Karstark, Umber) might have enough resources to afford/maintain a contingent of powerful chargers/war horses, but the overwhelming majority of the Northmen should not.

From the latitude map (which seems plausible), if Winterfell is around York, then most of the North is south of the latitude of the UK, i.e. in central or southern Europe, or northern France. Quite a lot of the North, particularly the southern half of it, should be reasonably fertile and reasonable horse=breeding country.

The far north, up around the Wall (around the latitude of St. Petersburg), not so much.

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18 hours ago, Werthead said:

From the latitude map (which seems plausible), if Winterfell is around York, then most of the North is south of the latitude of the UK, i.e. in central or southern Europe, or northern France. Quite a lot of the North, particularly the southern half of it, should be reasonably fertile and reasonable horse=breeding country.

The far north, up around the Wall (around the latitude of St. Petersburg), not so much.

I don't think that kind of parallels are a good means to make guesswork at climate, weather, and the fertility of the country (which would, in addition, be dependent on geography about which know pretty little aside from general tendencies) in light of the magical freak seasons.

There is summer snow in the North, and what works (more or less) in our world in a northern climate (where there are no year long winters but at best very hard 4-6 month winters) may not work in the North of Westeros. One could actually assume that the summer snow thing means that a summer in the North is sort of resembling all our seasons - when there is summer snow it is a mild winter, and when the weathers it is better we have a Western European spring and autumn temperature-wise with our summer months marking the peak of heat in the North.

A northern winter would be completely different, though. It would be really cold for a very long period of time, unlike anything we experience in our world. We already see that a northern autumn snow storm is completely different from anything we would experience in either the UK or France.

In addition you have to keep in mind things like the Gulf Stream gracing Western Europe with an unusual mild climate. If such a thing does not exist in Westeros (and we have no reason to assume that it does) when we would actually have to compare Westeros latitude-wise to the US and Canada rather than to Europe.

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7 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I like the population reference, and especially the analysis of the comparison to Dorne's population. Completely agree. The Iron Isles fall below Dorne in population numbers, and Doran was referring to the mainland kingdoms as represented by the seven sigils on Joffrey's goblet.

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13 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Nice write up, but I don't think we have confirmation for some of the assertions made.

We don't know that the Westerlands is more fertile than the Vale. The Vale of Arryn itself is said to be more fertile than the Reach, although of course the entire Kingdom of the Vale is not as fertile as that central section. In the same vein, we don't know that the Westerlands have a greater population than the Riverlands, which are much larger and which are stated by Martin himself to be fertile and populous - although divided.  And the West is smaller, and more mountainous than the Riverlands.

As for using army sizes as a yardstick for population size: The West raised what is estimated to be around 43000 men by emptying Lannisport of pot boys and street urchins. They were down to their dregs. We don't yet know what the Vale can raise, although the Lords Declarant alone are said to be able to raise 20,000 men. And we know the Riverlands' armed strength is limited by their weak leadership, divided lords and weak borders. Also, it is logical that the vastly greater wealth of the Westerlands will allow them to raise a proportionally larger army than other kingdoms of comparable popuation size but lesser wealth.

So one would have to think that if the Vale can raise anything close to 40,000 men, then they must be of pretty much equal population to the Westerlands. And it would seem very plausible that the Riverlands have a higher population than both of these regions.

In any case, I admit that none of the above is certain. But I don't believe it is accurate to state definitevely that the Westerlands has the second largest population in the Seven Kingdoms. We don't yet know that.

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On 18-2-2017 at 9:25 PM, Werthead said:

I am not sure about your placement of Coldmoat and Standfast because they ly close to Dosk and Little Dosk and those two are on the coast, we know this because Little Dosk is raided by the Ironborn and it is the closest of the two to Standfast since Dunk then has to go further away to Dosk for the cask of wine Ser Eustace sends him to buy.

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6 hours ago, direpupy said:

I am not sure about your placement of Coldmoat and Standfast because they ly close to Dosk and Little Dosk and those two are on the coast, we know this because Little Dosk is raided by the Ironborn and it is the closest of the two to Standfast since Dunk then has to go further away to Dosk for the cask of wine Ser Eustace sends him to buy.

Yup, and that adds to the difficulties of trying to make the geography make sense given that both castles are vassals of the Rowans and the Rowans' lands seem to extend north and east, away from the coast.

At the moment I'm thinking that ironborn raiders may have slipped up the Mander to raid deep inland, putting Little Dosk on the river rather than the coast (Little Dosk is not on the map due to size issues). If that's unworkable I'll think again about redoing the map.

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On 20-2-2017 at 9:00 PM, Werthead said:

Yup, and that adds to the difficulties of trying to make the geography make sense given that both castles are vassals of the Rowans and the Rowans' lands seem to extend north and east, away from the coast.

At the moment I'm thinking that ironborn raiders may have slipped up the Mander to raid deep inland, putting Little Dosk on the river rather than the coast (Little Dosk is not on the map due to size issues). If that's unworkable I'll think again about redoing the map.

Have you considered that the lands the Rowans hold may not be one solid blok but rather pathces of land with the lands of other Lords in between them, or that they have multiple castles like the peakes use to have.

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Geographic Map 11: Dorne

On 22/02/2017 at 11:41 AM, direpupy said:

Have you considered that the lands the Rowans hold may not be one solid blok but rather pathces of land with the lands of other Lords in between them, or that they have multiple castles like the peakes use to have.

Certainly possible, although it would complicate things a lot.

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18 hours ago, Werthead said:

Certainly possible, although it would complicate things a lot.

I can't imagine how Dalton would raid Dosk if it was placed that much up the Mander. That would mean bypassing the defenders at Shield Islands and Highgarden, having to row upwards thousands of miles and going into great danger in the middle of enemy land. All this only to sack a couple of minor towns? It makes no sense.

There's also the fact that placing the Marshals of the Northmarch at the frontier with the Riverlands would be strange, since the threat always came from the Westerlands. In fact, we know that Wilbert Osgrey was able to stop an unexpected Lannister invasion at the Red Lake, so the keep of the Osgreys shouldn't be far from there.

I think the easiest solution would be placing Dosk at the Searoad, and assume that the Rowans control all the strip of land from Goldengrove to the sea (the Cranes could be their vassals, and maybe they substituted the Osgreys as Marshals of the Northmarch).

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Valid points. The only reason I didn't push the Northmarch to the Lannister border is that you already have the Oakhearts and Cranes in that region who would appear to be more senior. But it's possible that the Oakheart domains extend more inland to the Mander and the Cranes are a less powerful house.

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9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Valid points. The only reason I didn't push the Northmarch to the Lannister border is that you already have the Oakhearts and Cranes in that region who would appear to be more senior. But it's possible that the Oakheart domains extend more inland to the Mander and the Cranes are a less powerful house.

I always imagined that the Oakhearts, Cranes and Rowans where the ones who carved up they old Osgrey lands between them and that the old Osgrey lands where therefore somewhere in between Old Oak, Red Lake and Goldengrove. Also Standfast and Coldmoat may have gone to Rowan but we do not know if Dosk and Little Dosk are also in there domain, they may actually belong to either the Oakhearts or the Cranes.

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