which kingdom can be cut without affecting the main story?

[purple-eyes]

there are seven kingdoms (great houses), but the most important ones are obviously the Stark, lannister and baratheon. 

let us say we want to reduce the size of westeros, then i feel Dorne can be easily cut without affecting main story much. all we need to do is to change Elia Martell to another house, or maybe even make her sister of rhaegar. it does not matter since she will anyway end up dying after rhaegar ran off with lyanna. and without oberyn, tyrion will still follow the same storyline. 

next one will be vale. there is only one house from vale which is closely related to the main story, house arryn. rest of them are hardly visible. we can just make house arryn a great vassal of crownland. 

next one will be reach. they have a lot of houses but only house tyrell and house florent joined the main story. it is not that necessary to make it as a kingdom. we can easily combine house tyrell and hightower into one house and move old town to stormland, rest of them will remain the same. 

then we have westerland, stormland, north, riverland. four kingdoms plus crownland. and the main story will still remain the same. 

and it looks like this is what the HBO show thinks as well. Dorne, vale and reach were subject to the biggest cut. 

[Bright Ancalagon]

Hey! Hightowers are a big deal, in the Dance.

[Aetta]

I don't think anyone is left in the Westerlands that we care about, you can take that out.

[Boarsbane]

None of them but removing Dorne would probably have the least impact.

[GallowsKnight]

While you can't avoid affecting the story. For terms of impact this is what I think.

In order :

(These two are closely tied)

1. The Vale

2. Dorne.

(Here things get harder)

3.  The Reach

4. The Iron Islands

5.  The Riverlands

(Here you'd really be scrapping it to bare bones)

6. Stormlands

7. Westerlands

8. Crownlands

9. The North

Because at the end of the day you could tell a story solely contained in the North. Have the Boltons do treasonous stuff. Have the wildings and White Walkers invade etc. Most of the other kingdoms you really couldn't.

[Lockjaw of House Boltagon]

As it stands, you can take out Dorne and the only changes would be that Gregor would still be alive and Myrcella would still have two ears. That's it. That really highlights how GRRM is struggling to connect Dorne to the main storyline. 

Ditto the Vale.

Also, I think the Riverlands are mostly functional in their capacity of geographical setting, but GRRM could've made them a part of the North or something like that. Have Tywin attack the North in AGOT, the Red Wedding is an exclusive Bolton affair, the Tullys are converted into a northern House or replaced with the Manderlys, their closest analogue, Brienne and Jaime's chapters could easily take place in the North, etc. 

[purple-eyes]

8 minutes ago, Lyin' Ned said:

As it stands, you can take out Dorne and the only changes would be that Gregor would still be alive and Myrcella would still have two ears. That's it. That really highlights how GRRM is struggling to connect Dorne to the main storyline. 

Ditto the Vale.

Also, I think the Riverlands are mostly functional in their capacity of geographical setting, but GRRM could've made them a part of the North or something like that. Have Tywin attack the North in AGOT, the Red Wedding is an exclusive Bolton affair, the Tullys are converted into a northern House or replaced with the Manderlys, their closest analogue, Brienne and Jaime's chapters could easily take place in the North, etc. 

very good points.

although in this case, who will murder myrcella?

 

[Lockjaw of House Boltagon]

9 minutes ago, purple-eyes said:

very good points.

although in this case, who will murder myrcella?

 

It still hasn't happened in the books, technically, so it could be Varys, the Faith, etc. 

[lujo]

Technically if you wanted to condense it to a purely "face value" narrative so far and assume Matin was basically a hack padding a cash cow franchise which started as a joke but somehow got popular (not necessarily the case 100% but can be interpreted that way), you could cut the

- Iron Islands (you just cut all of their PoV's and make Theon the son of a previously rebellious lord from wherever. They really seem to be filler some folks find cool. Even if they're somehow "integral to the story" - meh, they don't justify the ammount of words spent on them, as proud as Martin can be of sculpting a Lovecraftian society that actually holds water)

- Reach (there is very little that's relevant about them, Renly vs. Staniss conflict could have been a Stormlander vs. Stormlander affair.)

- Westerlands (Lannisters are just a very rich house, the westerlands are mostly painted on a board as far as development goes)

- Dorne (although this hugely depends on how incompetent you think GRRM actually is - some, including me, would say Dorne is behind Shae, The Brave Companions, Qyburn and a whole lot of other stuff and thus the most generally involved house, but if you're OK with most things just happening at random than you could cut them entirely and they're 100% irrelevant. Oberyn could've been some random Spanish guy from somewhere for the Princess Bride plagiarism scene, and you can leave it at that)

You need the Arryns and the Vale because otherwise there's hardly any plot (the Jon Arryn murder conspiracy, Catelyn losing Tyrion after abducting him, Littlefinger rising to be master of coin), although, again, they can just be lords of something up a mountain somewhere.

---

You need the Starks, although... technically, you don't. Ned gets killed for no good reason, Cat's story doesn't go anywhere, Robb's story doesn't go anywhere, Sansa story doesn't go anywhere for the most part, Arya's story looks like it's going somewhere but she just keeps going in circles (as cool as the story is), and Brans story takes a million pages before it gets anywhere. Jons story goes places, just not places that are very much connected with the rest of the plot and you can skip most of it while reading and not miss out on anything (sorta). It's just that you need the North just so there's 2 kingdoms to have a war.

Denerys you could cut entirely. Never was any point to that plot, it's just old pulp magazine staple fare strung together into a jangled narative that doesn't really go anywhere. It's also the source of the idea that ASOIAF is just "dragons and boobs", most of the really shlocky stuff happens over there.

[aryagonnakill#2]

The Iron Isles are not very necessary in my opinion.  Robb could fall for Jeyne without loosing his brothers, Walder could still betray Robb just because he thinks the war is lost, Dorne could start attacking the Reach since they have a historic rivalry.

[lujo]

All-in-all you could cut everything except the Riverlands, Crownlands and the Stormlands, and have everything important happen between those three. Lannisters are in this case a very rich Riverland house (Riverrun is allready practically IN westerlands), Tyrells would be Stormlanders, Arryns would be aloof Crownlanders. The North is quite irrelevant, TBH.

[Lord Wraith]

11 hours ago, aryagonnakill#2 said:

The Iron Isles are not very necessary in my opinion.  Robb could fall for Jeyne without loosing his brothers, Walder could still betray Robb just because he thinks the war is lost, Dorne could start attacking the Reach since they have a historic rivalry.

I agree, I'd rather lose the Iron Islands than Dorne.

[Twenty of House Goodmen]

Most of it really comes down to how important the great house of each region is to the story.

I'd have it Targaryen>Stark>Lannister>Baratheon>Greyjoy>Tully>Martell>Tyrell>Arryn

Still, I think cutting Dorne would have less of an impact than say cutting the Reach, or even the Vale.

[lancerman]

I'll do it in tiers.

Tier 1.

Losing these houses basically kills the series.

-Stark

-Targaryan

-Lannister

-Baratheon

Tier 2.

Less important but crucial to major plot developments.

-Aryn

-Tully

-Tyrell

Tier 3

You could gut these guys with a few tweaks that wouldn't heavily disrupt the narrative

-Greyjoy

-Martell

 

 

 

[Eden-Mackenzie]

13 hours ago, lujo said:

All-in-all you could cut everything except the Riverlands, Crownlands and the Stormlands, and have everything important happen between those three. Lannisters are in this case a very rich Riverland house (Riverrun is allready practically IN westerlands), Tyrells would be Stormlanders, Arryns would be aloof Crownlanders. The North is quite irrelevant, TBH.

Sorry, but what books have you been reading? Eliminating the North and its storyline eliminates a huge and incredibly important portion of the story.  

 

As it stands, Dorne, the Iron Islands, and the Vale have had the least impact on the story, but they all appear to be preparing to become involved in the coming books, so it is really difficult to say. If it were up to me, the storyline surrounding King's Landing is what I would eliminate, as Cersei's shenanigans are uninteresting to me, and the King could rule from anywhere else. If anything about future events is clear, it is that Cersei's children will lose their already tenuous hold on the Iron Throne. 

[BRANDON GREYSTARK]

Dorne

Westerlands

Iron Isles

[Lion of the West]

1 hour ago, BRANDON GREYSTARK said:

Dorne

Westerlands

Iron Isles

Actually not as the Westerlands are absolutely paramount to the story. What could be cut as I believe that Purple-eyes has already said, the Stormlands and the Reach could be merged and the Vale and Dorne cut entirely. I am also thinking that perhaps the Riverlands could be folded into the North from a political viewpoint in the story.

[The Sleeper]

What is the main story? After all in Lord of the Rings, anything not involving Frodo could be excised. It wouldn't be the same thing though.

The plot devices ASoIaF has, are not "carry the ring to the volcano and toss it in". They are much more open-ended and don't dictate a clearly defined course of action. The Wall is a fortress but it is also boundaries and duty. The iron throne isn't only a prize, it is also a trap; Ned, the series first protagonist didn't want anything to have to do with the damn thing and it ate him. Even Dany's goal of restoring the Targaryen dynasty to Westreros is essentially a dream of the home she never had.

There is no point to this topic.

[lujo]

On 03.07.2016. at 6:36 AM, Eden-Mackenzie said:

Sorry, but what books have you been reading? Eliminating the North and its storyline eliminates a huge and incredibly important portion of the story.  

Err, not really. The North takes up a lot of the VOLUME of the story, but most of it goes nowhere and is ultimately irrelevant and circular. You don't actually even need the North for it, either.

You could put the Wall at the neck and elminate "the North" from the story altogether. It's a plot tumor, for the most part.

- Ned's story doesn't go anywhere, he goes south, gets killed, gets nothing done.
- Bran does nothing. Like, literally, the story could've been written with Bran just being dead from the fall.
- Arya and Sansa spend most of their screen time in the South, the Starks could've been geographically at where the Twins are, there'd be no difference
- Robb gets an army together. This army all dies and it all goes nowhere. 

- Catelyn's story also goes nowhere, she captures the imp, then loses him a bit later, lets Jaime go, and everyone around her including her just gets slaughtered.

 

The actual story is:

- Littlefinger and Cat's crazy sister poison Jon Arryn
- This causes the political alliance that took the throne from Targaryens to collapse  
- There's a bunch of rather pointless fighting where everybody who challenges the Lannisters pretty much just drops dead (Renly dropped dead, Robb dropped dead, Balon dropped dead, Stannis didn't but he was defeated and then effectively dissapeared)
- Some people wonder around the Riverlands and we get to see that war is hell, and this is in part because of the Dornish sneakily getting veangence on the Lannisters (depending on if you believe this is happening)
- Lanisters mess themselves up
- Targaryens come back (hopefully eventually)

For that you need the Arryns, you need the Lannisters (who could just be Southeastern Riverlands), you need someone where the Twins are to be "the starks" to do the few things Starks maybe did that's relevant, and you need someone to be in the middle riverlands to be the battlefield. And you need Dorne to be secretly pulling strings, if you believe that theory.

Otherwise, the North is about as relevant as Renly ultimately was and most tings about it could've easily happened offscreen.

That's that. There's not all that much point to the North, it's just that people get attached to it because of how Martin wrote it. If you ask me as a writer, the only reason it exists is so that there's an ice and fire visual contrast and to provide sales driving young adult and young woman appeal with wolf imagery. Martin orignally didn't intend to have dragons but was persuaded by the publisher, and a bunch of stuff related to the North looks exactly like the kind of stuff publishers insist on in genre novels (or would have at that point in time).

Oh, and there was the Red Wedding, which is obviously something Martin wanted to write as a cool scene. But that's just the thing, that thing is just a powerful scene and half (all?) of it's power is in the reader going "OH NO, I'VE BEEN READING ALL THIS FOR NOTHING!", and yes, that's exactly what happened. That's the big terrifying reveal - the North was a red herring, their doom was spelled offscreen when this guy boffed this girl, and all it was there was for some gory rehashing of the first time the North turned out to be irrelevant when he did the same with Ned. XD But the North had been irrelevant all along.

That's how the whole damned thing was written. About 85% of it is pointless and only there to let the relevant bits hide in it or to distract the reader while relevant bits happen off-stage. If I wanted to condense it and cut some stuff, the North would be a huge source of dead weight.
 

[khal drogon]

Is this considering only the story we have read so far? After we have read the full story no way Dorne and Iron Isles could be cut down. They both are so different from other kingdoms and those differences are a part of a story.