What are the powers of the King on The Iron Throne?

[TimJames]

As ruler of The Iron Throne, the King of Westeros has immense power. However, his power is not absolute as he must still contend with his vassals.

What powers does The King of Westeros have. What would he be allowed to do without provoking an uprising?

 

[Burning down the House]

He gets a really cool chair.

[Universal Sword Donor]

32 minutes ago, TimJames said:

As ruler of The Iron Throne, the King of Westeros has immense power. However, his power is not absolute as he must still contend with his vassals.

What powers does The King of Westeros have. What would he be allowed to do without provoking an uprising?

 

How many dragons does he have? Does he suck? Is he martial? Is he ambulatory? Does his mom worry if he's gonna marry a nice girl? Has he eaten enough?

WHY DOESN'T THE KING CALL ON HIS MOM ENOUGH? SHE'S IN THE RED KEEP TOO.

Wait this sounds familiar. Does anyone else fall under this line of questioning a lot?

[TimJames]

8 hours ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

How many dragons does he have? Does he suck? Is he martial? Is he ambulatory? Does his mom worry if he's gonna marry a nice girl? Has he eaten enough?

WHY DOESN'T THE KING CALL ON HIS MOM ENOUGH? SHE'S IN THE RED KEEP TOO.

Wait this sounds familiar. Does anyone else fall under this line of questioning a lot?

I don't mean "The King" as in "King Tommen". I meant "The King" as in the office of king, i.e. whoever is sitting on The Iron Throne at the time.

[Philokles]

It varies immensely from King to King depending on a lot of factors - military strength, alliances, luck, dragons, etc.

The best example is probably Aegon V who couldn't push through the reforms as Targaryen power had declined, whilst many of his predecessors would have been able to if they so wished.

[Ser Tristan Flowers]

9 hours ago, TimJames said:

As ruler of The Iron Throne, the King of Westeros has immense power. However, his power is not absolute as he must still contend with his vassals.

What powers does The King of Westeros have. What would he be allowed to do without provoking an uprising?

 

In theory it is absolute, the king can do as he pleases. In practice power is connected to the person and always relative to the opposition. One king might have many allies and have close to absolute power, his successor might have no allies and be largely a figurehead. Both are kings. To describe kingship as an office doesn´t apply to medieval times.

[Nyrhex]

9 hours ago, TimJames said:

As ruler of The Iron Throne, the King of Westeros has immense power. However, his power is not absolute as he must still contend with his vassals.

What powers does The King of Westeros have. What would he be allowed to do without provoking an uprising?

 

There is a difference between allowed to do within the limits of his legal power, and allowed to do without provoking an uprising of some sorts.

Aegon V could pass laws that were meant to remove rights from the nobles, because he deemed those rights as harming the commoners. As king, Aegon has accepted a duty when he accepted the oaths of fielty from his subjects. The duty to give them justice. In most cases, nobles rose up in arms against Aegon, but the laws were still mostly just, they had the good of the commoners in mind, and the rights that were stripped away from nobles were done so because those rights mainly gave the nobles unjust powers. Aegon had changed the status-quo, but the king is not bound to keep the status-quo, he is bound to provide justice to all.

When Aerys II murdered hundreds without trial, he had broken his feudal contract to provide justice, to the nobles and to the commoners in thier retunues who were all murdered on his orders. When he accepted that his son, the Crown Prince could kidnap a woman and her family had no right to demand justice, he had broken his part of the deal, he acted outside of his power (and common sense).

The king is above the Faith of he Seven. The Faith Militant had risn up in arms in the first century, but was disbanded. The king can legitimise a bastard, or over-rule the High Septon with a decree that declares his judgement on ongoing trials run by the Faith, as Tommen can do. The problem is that the Lannsiters to not wish to get any religion based troubel while still in war on several fronts, and so choose to play along. For now... 

The king can strip away titles from subjects if he has a legal reason. Usually, the subject had commited treason, or had failed in his part of the deal in some way. The only notable exception is the New Gift, which was a time where the king gifted one of his lords' lands to the NW. We are told that the Starks of Winterfell rejected this forced donation, but they reasoned this on being too little, too late, and that the land would not bring benefit to the declining order, but would rather suffer the same fate as the existing Gift. It may be that the land belonged to rebels, or that a forced donation of lands still falls under the kings' duty to defend his subjects. In case of the latter, the king could give the rational that a strong NW brings safety to the realm. This is notable since Stannis specifically says later that lands that are given cannot be taken by the king, only given back. Considering the pressures that Stannis used on Jon, it seems likely that the same happened with the Starks of Winterfell and the New Gift. Not an order, but more of a strong suggestion. As we saw with Jon insisting on keeping the castles of the NW in NW hands (though for the odd rational of "heritage" rather than any militarily-logical argument...), this sort of frim resistance can work, and the king not being able to legally strip lands without just cause is not a dead letter. That Aerys II did so was again, another example of him breaking the rules.

The king can write and change laws, raise or lower taxes, take loans in the name of the realm and using it's combined credit. He can order military action, create new titles and lords, appoint members of the Small Council and remove them at will. Regarding Maesters the story is a bit more of a mystery. Cressen served Storm's End, and as we know Masesters are sworn to the Castle, not the lord. And yet Cressen moved to Dragonstone. So it may be that the king has some say in the placement of maesters, at least as far as his own house is concerned, or that maesters can file petitions to move castles (and the Citadel takes into account personal bonds, etc). 

That's off the top of my head.

[Magnus9]

The Westerosi monarchy seems pretty damn absolute, doesn't it. There's no constitution or charter that's been introduced in the text. The king can take or grant land at will. The legal system is pretty laughable and what Justice there is can be rigged or circumvented by the authorities. Yeah I'd say the king's power absolute, tempered only by the threat of rebellion by local lords if the ruler doesn't play his cards well. 

[Bright Blue Eyes]

The King can appoint the members of his small council, with the exception of the Grandmaester, and relieve them of their office. He can theoretically appoint Wardens, but it's against custom.

He is the highest-ranking judge and can overrule lesser judges, but has to keep his verdicts according to the laws of the realm.

He can adjust the royal portion of taxes and tariffs, but has to keep those affordable.

He can adjust the existing laws to an "negotiable" extent.

He can demand help from his Lords in dealing with problems, as long as the demands fit the size of the problems.

He can replace extinct Houses.

He can outlaw Houses, if they utterly fail in their duty to him.

He can speak for the entire realm when making deals with another power.

 

Apart from that, he's just an average Lord, ruling the Crownlands and a couple oddities distributed all over the continent..

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

13 hours ago, TimJames said:

As ruler of The Iron Throne, the King of Westeros has immense power. However, his power is not absolute as he must still contend with his vassals.

What powers does The King of Westeros have. What would he be allowed to do without provoking an uprising?

Ain't that what the books are about (the political facet, at least)? The nature of power. What a king can actually do. Varys' riddle, expanded into several books.

And, just as with Varys' riddle, there simply is no "correct" answer, that's the very point.

2 hours ago, Magnus9 said:

The Westerosi monarchy seems pretty damn absolute, doesn't it.

Not in the slightest, to be honest. Where local lords command their own private armies and wield enormous political power, it is everything but an absolute monarchy.

[Universal Sword Donor]

5 hours ago, TimJames said:

I don't mean "The King" as in "King Tommen". I meant "The King" as in the office of king, i.e. whoever is sitting on The Iron Throne at the time.

Yes and without more information about his current status, support, and personality, we can't really tell you much

[RoamingRonin]

The King does have absolute power. The thing about absolute power is that it's not magic. Vassals have free will to obey or disobey any command the King declares.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

If the King had absolute power, the Starks wouldn't have tried to search for legal arguments against the New Gift. After all, absolute power isn't legally restricted.

[Ser Tristan Flowers]

5 minutes ago, Bright Blue Eyes said:

If the King had absolute power, the Starks wouldn't have tried to search for legal arguments against the New Gift. After all, absolute power isn't legally restricted.

They didn´t find anything, did they? 

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Not for lack of searching though. The important point of my argument is that legal limits to the King's power exist, not what they are exactly.

[Ser Tristan Flowers]

Huh? The king makes laws, he esentially is the law. There can only be legal limits to his power if imposed by others, like the magna carta.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Nope, not at all.

 

Feudalism (as in Westeros) is basically a contract. The often-mentioned oath of fealty is exactly that contract. Neither party can legally exceed the limits of the contract.

That's why the Holy Roman Emperor couldn't make his son his successor, he needed to convince at least four of the seven Electors representing their regions and really big changes required a Reichstag, That's why France had the Ètats généraux.

 

The Magna Carta is a bit of an oddity, basically a backlash from the Norman Conquest eradicating the old, grown feudalitistic structures of both anglo-saxon England and french Normandy.

[Ser Tristan Flowers]

It is never specifically said what this contract contains aside from the obvious, protection, taxes and call to arms. Succession laws can be changed, too. Of course the monarch needs support of the nobles to pull anything like this off, but he doesn´t need all of them. Vassals are not robots. Whatever he has the leverage to negotiate is considered legal.

If you don´t consider this absolute power then, well, absolute monarchy never existed.

[RoamingRonin]

5 minutes ago, Bright Blue Eyes said:

Nope, not at all.

Feudalism (as in Westeros) is basically a contract. The often-mentioned oath of fealty is exactly that contract. Neither party can legally exceed the limits of the contract.

Kings have absolute power until people decide to defy them. Those "legal limits" vary.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Ok, back to the basics.

This is absolutism.

This is feudalism.

Absolute legal power is what the King has in absolutism. That's why it is called absolutism. In feudalism, his legal power is limited. Westeros shows a lot of features commonly found only in feudalism, but not in absolutism.