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Why isn't Moat Cailin built up?


Canon Claude

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Given that the Realm has been united for three hundred years, a veritable city should have sprung up by now at Moat Cailin. The North has valuable resources, and I'm sure there's a lot that the southern kingdoms could sell them, be it food, materials, or whatever.

So you have the Kingsroad, which is the only road into the North (unless you count the secret passages of the crannogmen, but I don't count them). When there's a possibility for trade, people will gather towards it and set up shop. There's a reason that the overwhelming majority of Canada's population is situated close to the U.S. border. And in Westeros we see similar situations. A city was built when the Manderlys saw the use of developing the east coast of the North to welcome ships from the south and from Essos. So I find it hard to believe that Moat Cailin spent all these years as just a mouldy half-wrecked castle with nobody but the crannogmen living nearby.

If this is the gateway to the North, and the crannogmen don't attack people on the Kingsroad, what's stopping traders from coming North or going south? The Starks could have given Moat Cailin to a lesser branch of Starks to develop, repair, even as hundreds of people could come south to set up multiple settlements to begin farming and welcoming traders coming or going. We should have a second Barrowton there by now. And that would then allow for Moat Cailin to be repaired and fully operational in case the North is attacked.

Why haven't the Northerners ever taken advantage of this huge opportunity?

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I agree, this doesn't make much sense. The Starks should have been keeping Moat Cailin in good order during all those years of repelling riverlords, stormlords, valemen, and Ironborn. And then Aegon's uniting of the Seven Kingdoms could have allowed for a trading post to emerge around the castle, which would have developed into a city.

All things considered, this might be one of the biggest problems I have with Westeros. Advancement and progress, as it occurs in our own history, is very patchy and inconsistent.

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The lands near Moat Cailin are not good enough to support a Lord, so I don't see how it could provide for a city. Same reason why the North had gone so long with out rebuilding its Navy or having a strong settlement on its Western coast, the cost comes to more than the benefits.

1 hour ago, Canon Claude said:

There's a reason that the overwhelming majority of Canada's population is situated close to the U.S. border.

Yes, the climate. The majority of Northern Canada can not feed large populations while its South, with its more farmable land can.

Besides, Moat Cailin is a few hundred miles away from the Norths border.

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1 minute ago, GallowsKnight said:

It's the King's road. It's likely any toll would go to him. Unlike the Twins is a privately owned bridge through their land.

Very true.

And a toll might bring in more revenue for the Starks but it might also decrease merchants coming North (who are already spending a lot to simply get there) or make them more costly for the Northmen themselves. It may also hit Northern merchants who would either make less profit on their trade down South or run the risk of not making any profit at all. Distance is already hampering the Norths merchants, the Starks don't really need to be doing the same with a toll.

It also helps that the Twins lands are quite fertile meaning that the garrison needed to operate the bridge is already being supported by the farmland.

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There's a pretty major difference between a sea port with inland river access and a fortress that sits at the end of a difficult to navigate causeway that runs through a swamp. All major trade will likely bypass the Neck by sea then utilise the rivers of the Riverlands to cut West or carry on down South or East, it's certainly no Silk Road, there's nothing in the North worth humping around on foot through the neck for when you can just as easily take a ship to White Harbour and back. The trade that is going on foot probably isn't large enough to drive an economy at the end of the causeway anyway, like who's going to try and take hundreds of pack animals and carts through a swamp to get say wood when you can just ship it down the rivers in the North then on to White Harbour. 

 

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It's a truism that trade is better carried out by ship than overland. Faster and just about as safe, and a ship can carry more than any pack train of reasonable size. The King's Road is described in the text and it's little more than a trail up in the North because there's no real need for a good road. Almost all trade with the North goes through White Harbor.

 

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I liken Moat Cailin to Helm's Deep. It's not going to have a permanent population and is better served as a defensible location and castle.

As for building it up to just let it sit there, you're going to attract all sorts of unwanted people such as squatters, bandits, etc.

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Regarding building up the defences it's pretty much just diminishing returns. The key defensive advantage is the causeway not the fortifications and the towers get the job done covering it. Extra defence beyond that is probably redundant when considering the cost of building castles, which is enormous. 

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5 minutes ago, Franklin VI said:

Funding.  The Starks do not have the coin to rebuild and garrison the fortress.

Sources.

1 hour ago, StarkofWinterfell said:

I liken Moat Cailin to Helm's Deep. It's not going to have a permanent population and is better served as a defensible location and castle.

As for building it up to just let it sit there, you're going to attract all sorts of unwanted people such as squatters, bandits, etc.

I'd say that it's beneficial to the Starks to establish a Masterly house to oversee Moat Cailin and run a revolving garrison to protect the kingsroad. I'd say no more than 200 and no less than 100 would be an effective garrison to ensure no bandits terrorize anyone on the kingsroad. 

I mean, it's a long distance from the Twins to White Harbor (the closest Northern lord you can get to off the Kingsroad) and no one can just "find" Greywater Watch. It would certainly benefit to have a house directly sworn to the Starks managing that key juncture for them. And how far past does the Neck extend beyond Moat Cailin? I have a feeling like the Starks could probably assign land encompassing a couple miles off the Kingsroad and stretching for maybe 25 miles so that Masterly house has at least some good land to produce some farms and maybe some inns once you have gotten in to the North's territory.

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1. The land sucks. Even if the Crannogmen left it alone, it's still treacherous, gross, disease-ridden land crawling with biting insects and lizard lions (which I always assumed were alligators). There's a reason the locals have such a comparatively low standard of living. If I remember correctly the narrow causeway is the only stable ground through Moat Cailin. 

2. I don't think there's enough trade to the North to support a town. They don't have any luxury goods to sell except maybe pelts, pretty much all they have to sell is timber, maybe iron. And all of that traffic is apparently handled just fine by White Harbor, which has cornered the trade in and out of the North. I always took the Stark's giving permission to the Manderlys to build White Harbor was kind of granting them trade rights, by implication more than word. Plus the North doesn't seem to have a high demand for southern goods. 

3. If it's the door to the North, I could see why the Starks might want to leave it barren. I can see why you wouldn't want a bunch of foreign people milling the around the location that's the key to your defense. 

I could see why you'd want to set someone up at Moat Cailin, but they would never become more than a minor house by their charge more than their holdings or wealth. 

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IMO, Moat Cailin suits the Starks just perfectly as it is right now. You can use it to defend very well from any attack against the north, but it's not very effective at stopping the northmen from going south. Why would you want to build it up and risk someone capturing it and using it against you to keep you bottled up in the north? It wouldn't hurt to garrison it during times of war, but during peacetime you can let it continue sinking into the muck.

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12 hours ago, King of Winter-ish Stuff said:

Sources.

I'd say he was wrong, of course the Starks could fund a garrison and even rebuild Moat Cailin but obviously they have far more practical things to spend their revenue on than rebuilding and maintaining Moat Cailin.

12 hours ago, King of Winter-ish Stuff said:

I'd say that it's beneficial to the Starks to establish a Masterly house to oversee Moat Cailin and run a revolving garrison to protect the kingsroad. I'd say no more than 200 and no less than 100 would be an effective garrison to ensure no bandits terrorize anyone on the kingsroad. 

So why haven't they? Why has no intelligent Stark done this in the last few centuries (at least) when Moat Cailin has remained lordless?

The logical reason would be that it is simply not profitable to do so.

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I am also of the opinion that building a town at Moat Cailin would be less than successful. People do not like to move to swampy areas infested with mosquitos and even less desirable wildlife. Unless they have to, they will not.

If I understood correctly, the causeway is not very wide and to build anything beyond the causeway would require substantial work to drain the swamp. The mechanics required for draining the swamp may be beyond the technology of Westeros anyway, which would require dikes or levies. Historically, the Netherlands built earthen dikes layered with seaweed to create an impermeable material to keep water from leaching back in. The following is from Wikipedia about the draining of the swamps in the Netherlands.

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At about the same time as the building of dikes the first swamps were made suitable for agriculture by colonists. By digging a system of parallel drainage ditches water was drained from the land to be able to grow grain. However the peat settled much more than other soil types when drained and land subsidence resulted in developed areas becoming wet again. Cultivated lands which were at first primarily used for growing grain thus became too wet and the switch was made to dairy farming. A new area behind the existing field was then cultivated, heading deeper into the wild. This cycle repeated itself several times until the different developments met each other and no further undeveloped land was available. All land was then used for grazing cattle.

Because of the continuous land subsidence it became ever more difficult to remove excess water. The mouths of streams and rivers were dammed to prevent high water levels flowing back upstream and overflowing cultivated lands. These dams had a wooden culvert equipped with a valve, allowing drainage but preventing water from flowing upstream. These dams, however, blocked shipping and the economic activity caused by the need to transship goods caused villages to grow up near the dam, some famous examples are Amsterdam (dam in the river Amstel) and Rotterdam (dam in the Rotte). Only in later centuries were locks developed to allow ships to pass.

Further drainage could only be accomplished after the development of the polder windmill in the 15th century. The wind-driven water pump has become one of the trademark tourist attractions of the Netherlands. The first drainage mills using a scoop wheel could raise water at most 1.5 m. By combining mills the pumping height could be increased. Later mills were equipped with an Archimedes' screw which could raise water much higher. The polders, now often below sea level, were kept dry with mills pumping water from the polder ditches and canals to the boezem ("bosom"), a system of canals and lakes connecting the different polders and acting as a storage basin until the water could be let out to river or sea, either by a sluice gate at low tide or using further pumps. This system is still in use today, though drainage mills have been replaced by first steam and later diesel and electric pumping stations.

It is not specifically mentioned that the swamps of the Neck are comprised of peat (highly organic soil). As can be inferred, draining the swamps around Moat Cailin to make room for a town would be extremely difficult, time consuming, and expensive. And again, I have not seen much in the text (apart from perhaps Riverrun's defenses) that would suggest that Westeros has the technology required for such an undertaking.

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12 hours ago, thelittledragonthatcould said:

So why haven't they? Why has no intelligent Stark done this in the last few centuries (at least) when Moat Cailin has remained lordless?

The logical reason would be that it is simply not profitable to do so.

Well, I'd also say that it's beneficial to the North to have Moat Cailin garrisoned. The Lannisters had their Lannisport fleet and the Golden Tooth was garrisoned with a castle. I think there's more to it than it's not profitable. It's hard to believe that all the Starks within the last 300 years were exactly like Ned. Maybe it's just that the Northmen tried to stay out of southron affairs as much as possible and thus wouldn't be attacked and could rely on House Reed to guard their approach alone.

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On 7/10/2016 at 3:41 PM, Canon Claude said:

Why haven't the Northerners ever taken advantage of this huge opportunity?

As people have said, it isn't huge or an opportunity. The neck is wonderful if you are a very short, very small, frog eating, spear and net fighting crannogman. there are no maesters, no horses and not much is produced there. Great for someone who grew up there, horrible for everyone else. One single stark king was able to conquer it. That is one single commander in the whole history of humanity.  
The Irobnorn had a terrible time. Even without the poisoned arrows and darts, there was plenty of sickness just from being there. 

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In regards to repelling bandits on the kingsroad, the Liddle that Bran met on the road did not seem to think that was necessary.

Quote

"When there was a Stark in Winterfell, a maiden girl could walk the kingsroad in her name-day gown and still go unmolested, and travelers could find fire, bread, and salt at many an inn and holdfast. But the nights are colder now, and doors are closed. There's squids in the wolfswood, and flayed men ride the kingsroad asking after strangers."

This also suggests that the area beside the kingsroad is not as barren as we think, even if the evidence kind of disputes that.

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14 hours ago, King of Winter-ish Stuff said:

Well, I'd also say that it's beneficial to the North to have Moat Cailin garrisoned. The Lannisters had their Lannisport fleet and the Golden Tooth was garrisoned with a castle.

The coast of the Westerlands has a navy because a 250k population city resides in Lannisport, as well as the Westerland capital Cassgterly Rock, the town of Kayce and a bunch of other rich and powerful settlements ruled from by the Crakehalls, Baneforts and  Plumms.  The Westerlands are a trade powerhose throughout the continensts of Westeros and Essos. Not having a navy would be ridiculous with the Ironborn on their doorstep and (it seems) the majority of their population living close to the Western coast.

 

The Golden Tooth can afford to keep a garrison. Not only is it the Lordship rich in its own right, GRRM mentioning that the gold from those mines helped make the Lannisters the richest house in Westeros, but the lands fertile as they are situated right in the middle of two major rivers meaning that the land is fertile enough to support a Lordship( even without the mines) and are very close to their border.

There are very obvious reasons why Lannisport has a navy and the Golden Tooth has a permanent garrison. None of these reasons apply to Moat Cailin, which is hundreds of miles from the the Northern border, land not very fertile and little means of supporting a Lord and his garrisoned army.

 

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