The Targaryens were terrible monarchs

[Lord Varys]

5 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Time to point out that no Northern lands are actually depopulated because of Wildling raids. Only Night's Watch lands.

I'm not convinced by that. I think a lot of the lands in the farther North are in fact only supporting as few people as they are because the peasants there are regularly losing a good portion of their crops and life stock to wildling raids.

That would be a good explanation aside from the climate to explain why nobody seems to be living in the lands north of Winterfell compared to the people that live further down south.

5 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Strange that the Wildling threat is strong enough to send smallfolk fleeing from the New Gift, but the moment one crosses the invisible border with the Umber, Mountain Clan or Karstark lands, suddenly the smallfolk are quite happy to stay and farm their lands. Mayhaps one should look at the deficient leadership and organisation of the defense of said lands, which falls squarely on the shoulders of the thieves, rapists and man-whores of the Night's Watch, and is not the responsibility of the Northern lords.

That makes little sense. One should assume that the Northmen and the NW could get together to help each other with the wildling issues. The fact that they didn't suggests they lacked the manpower to protect each other. After all, the Umbers and the mountain clans also suffer from raids. And one assumes that only those people who were reasonably safe remained in the lands they lived in. I'm not saying all the Umber and clansmen folk were in constant danger but some of them would have been.

5 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

As for the Vale Clansmen, well, now you are using a circular argument. Saying that since the Clansmen exist, the Vale lords clearly aren't too bothered by them, because if they were, the Clans would not exist. Yet in the case of the North the opposite is apparently the case. This is inconsistent reasoning.

Nope, because there are changing factors in the North - the decline of the NW causes more and more successful wildling raids. There are no similar factors in the Vale.

5 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

That said, the size of the territory involved clearly changes the nature of the Wildling threat substantially. Which was the whole point I was making. They are a constant nuisance, that cannot be avoided. They are just a fact of life in the North. But in the Umber lands, the defenses against them are clearly far more robust than in the New Gift, else there won't be any peasants in the Umber lands either.

Well, perhaps the Umbers kill smallfolk who leave their lands? That should dissuade them from leaving their lands. Medieval peasants were usually not allowed to leave their lands unless they were yeomen. The NW has no jurisdiction outside their own lands and not exactly the resources to search after some peasants. But an Umber man caught on the Bolton or Manderly lands most likely would either be forced to return to his farm or severely punished (or both).

Not to mention that the Umbers and others might actually have welcomed peasants leaving the Gifts and settling on their lands if they had land to spare.

22 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

If the Night's Watch completely died out, the Northern lords would extend their territory to the North and occuply the Night's Watch forts, to form as strong a border as possible with the Wildlings. These would be marcher lords, in constant war with the Wildlings.

Or the wildlings would seize the Wall, build their own castles on their side of the Wall (or fortify the NW castles against the south) and establish themselves as the new rulers of the lands of the NW.

A man like Mance most definitely could do stuff like that.

[Free Northman Reborn]

10 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I'm not convinced by that. I think a lot of the lands in the farther North are in fact only supporting as few people as they are because the peasants there are regularly losing a good portion of their crops and life stock to wildling raids.

That would be a good explanation aside from the climate to explain why nobody seems to be living in the lands north of Winterfell compared to the people that live further down south.

That makes little sense. One should assume that the Northmen and the NW could get together to help each other with the wildling issues. The fact that they didn't suggests they lacked the manpower to protect each other. After all, the Umbers and the mountain clans also suffer from raids. And one assumes that only those people who were reasonably safe remained in the lands they lived in. I'm not saying all the Umber and clansmen folk were in constant danger but some of them would have been.

Nope, because there are changing factors in the North - the decline of the NW causes more and more successful wildling raids. There are no similar factors in the Vale.

Well, perhaps the Umbers kill smallfolk who leave their lands? That should dissuade them from leaving their lands. Medieval peasants were usually not allowed to leave their lands unless they were yeomen. The NW has no jurisdiction outside their own lands and not exactly the resources to search after some peasants. But an Umber man caught on the Bolton or Manderly lands most likely would either be forced to return to his farm or severely punished (or both).

Not to mention that the Umbers and others might actually have welcomed peasants leaving the Gifts and settling on their lands if they had land to spare.

Or the wildlings would seize the Wall, build their own castles on their side of the Wall (or fortify the NW castles against the south) and establish themselves as the new rulers of the lands of the NW.

A man like Mance most definitely could do stuff like that.

The NW was not established to fend off the Wildlings. It is not necessary for that. There are perhaps 100k wildlings. Compared to 4 million or more Northmen.

The Umbers alone have more people than the entire Wildling nation. The wildlings can never sieze territory from the North. They can only ever raid and run. 

They could never hold forts at the Wall or anywhere else that the Northmen could not take from them.

 

[Winter's Cold]

1 minute ago, Lord Varys said:

I'm not convinced by that. I think a lot of the lands in the farther North are in fact only supporting as few people as they are because the peasants there are regularly losing a good portion of their crops and life stock to wildling raids.

That would be a good explanation aside from the climate to explain why nobody seems to be living in the lands north of Winterfell compared to the people that live further down south.

Climate is a much better explanation than Wildling raids. We know that the climate is harsher in the farther North and thus the land is able to support less people.

1 minute ago, Lord Varys said:

That makes little sense. One should assume that the Northmen and the NW could get together to help each other with the wildling issues. The fact that they didn't suggests they lacked the manpower to protect each other. After all, the Umbers and the mountain clans also suffer from raids. And one assumes that only those people who were reasonably safe remained in the lands they lived in. I'm not saying all the Umber and clansmen folk were in constant danger but some of them would have been.

Of course they suffer from raids. It's impossible to fully guard the wall and as long as a wildling band can make it over, they'd definitely be able to raid the Umber lands. The difference is that raiding the Umber lands would be far more difficult than raiding the New Gift because the Umbers have far more manpower than the Night's Watch does. 

 

1 minute ago, Lord Varys said:

Nope, because there are changing factors in the North - the decline of the NW causes more and more successful wildling raids. There are no similar factors in the Vale.

The mountain clans in the Vale can only attack small bands. They generally can't take castles. The situation is the same in the North. The wildlings have never taken a castle.

1 minute ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, perhaps the Umbers kill smallfolk who leave their lands? That should dissuade them from leaving their lands. Medieval peasants were usually not allowed to leave their lands unless they were yeomen. The NW has no jurisdiction outside their own lands and not exactly the resources to search after some peasants. But an Umber man caught on the Bolton or Manderly lands most likely would either be forced to return to his farm or severely punished (or both).

There's no evidence for your conjectures in the book.

1 minute ago, Lord Varys said:

Not to mention that the Umbers and others might actually have welcomed peasants leaving the Gifts and settling on their lands if they had land to spare.

Or the wildlings would seize the Wall, build their own castles on their side of the Wall (or fortify the NW castles against the south) and establish themselves as the new rulers of the lands of the NW.

A man like Mance most definitely could do stuff like that.

The wildlings have never won a pitched battle against Westerosi forces. If they actually defeat the Night's Watch, the Northern lords will swiftly destroy them. 

[WSmith84]

14 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Or the wildlings would seize the Wall, build their own castles on their side of the Wall (or fortify the NW castles against the south) and establish themselves as the new rulers of the lands of the NW.

A man like Mance most definitely could do stuff like that.

If the NW was destroyed, the Northern lords would rally and march on the wildlings. Even assuming the wildlings managed to fortfiy the castles against the south (unlikely given their apparent lack of masonry skills) they would be swiftly destroyed. Wildlings have no discipline, no training and no experience with sieges or the like.

[Bironic]

7 minutes ago, WSmith84 said:

If the NW was destroyed, the Northern lords would rally and march on the wildlings. Even assuming the wildlings managed to fortfiy the castles against the south (unlikely given their apparent lack of masonry skills) they would be swiftly destroyed. Wildlings have no discipline, no training and no experience with sieges or the like.

Wildlings have also a significant technological disadvantage, because they usually don't have steel & iron weapons and armor.

[Lord Varys]

17 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The NW was not established to fend off the Wildlings. It is not necessary for that. There are perhaps 100k wildlings. Compared to 4 million or more Northmen.

The North isn't the North. The Manderlys don't care or show solidarity with the Umbers being raided by the wildlings. That's their responsibility. Unless Winterfell doesn't call the banners no Northman not directly threatened by some wildlings is going to march. And thus it is hundreds of professional wildling raiders against unprepared helpless northern peasants. Or perhaps peasants who are not strong enough to fight off wildlings.

17 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The Umbers alone have more people than the entire Wildling nation. The wildlings can never sieze territory from the North. They can only ever raid and run.

The thing is, that they don't have to seize territory. They don't sow, either. They let the Northmen do the work and then take it from them, along with their women (whom they use to produce more wildling raiders while the Northmen have fewer women to replace the men the wildlings slay)

17 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

They could never hold forts at the Wall or anywhere else that the Northmen could not take from them.

With Mance's help they could. At least a core group of them could. And if they controlled the Wall itself (that is the top of the Wall) they could build hovels and holdfasts there. It would be all but impossible to retake the Wall in such a scenario. Especially if the wildlings build a permanent ladder to ascend the Wall on the northern side.

20 minutes ago, Winter's Cold said:

Of course they suffer from raids. It's impossible to fully guard the wall and as long as a wildling band can make it over, they'd definitely be able to raid the Umber lands. The difference is that raiding the Umber lands would be far more difficult than raiding the New Gift because the Umbers have far more manpower than the Night's Watch does. 

Sure, I'm not saying it is easy. But the Gifts are pretty much depopulated right now, and the Umber lands are raided. Those are facts. I'm not saying wildlings are routinely raiding lands off the walls of Last Hearth but the remoter regions of the Umber lands are raided by the wildlings.

20 minutes ago, Winter's Cold said:

The mountain clans in the Vale can only attack small bands. They generally can't take castles. The situation is the same in the North. The wildlings have never taken a castle.

We don't know that for a certainty. But I didn't say they would or did. They can control the land and send the people fleeing without conquering a major castle.

20 minutes ago, Winter's Cold said:

There's no evidence for your conjectures in the book.

There is a hint in TSS. We have the Iron Throne command the peasants to return to their lands suggesting that they have to stay there. However, we don't know whether there are any punishments if they don't comply. But then, a peasant who isn't working his land isn't likely to have an income. Thus they would be beggars, brigands, thieves, and the like, and those are likely to face severe repercussions.

20 minutes ago, WSmith84 said:

If the NW was destroyed, the Northern lords would rally and march on the wildlings. Even assuming the wildlings managed to fortfiy the castles against the south (unlikely given their apparent lack of masonry skills) they would be swiftly destroyed. Wildlings have no discipline, no training and no experience with sieges or the like.

They could disperse and plague the Northmen for decades to come. The land is big enough to hide pretty much everywhere. They could also retreat on the Wall and have the Northmen try to actually assault the Wall itself from the south. Not very likely to succeed considering that there would be enough wildlings to secure the defend the entire Wall.

A core group of the wildlings is disciplined enough to win a pitched battle. They lost the Battle at Long Lake back under Raymun Redbeard but a lot of men died there, suggesting that those wildlings were operating on a different level than Mance's people - and Mance's men might have crushed Stannis had they known he was coming. Stannis only won because he appeared strong and the wildlings have no experience with heavy horse and armored knights. However, if they had known that how few men Stannis had had they wouldn't have broken and then Stannis would have been defeated.

[John Doe]

5 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

I'm happy we could agree on this.

What excuse would that be?

It would be the one mentioned in the post directly before mine. 

[Aegon VII]

I would think the wall and the NW are terrible measures of how good a ruler is in Westeros There is so much mystery around the wall and the origin of the NW that we as the readers don't even know their true purpose. They are integral to the fantasy/mystical element of the story and therefore GRRM can take more liberties with them and not be historically (or whatever) accurate.

[Lion of the West]

7 hours ago, John Doe said:

It would be the one mentioned in the post directly before mine. 

That's what I thought first, but it didn't make much sense to me.

[devilish]

The Targs weren’t bad or good rulers. They were no rulers at all (apart from the Crownlands). The rest of Westeros was ruled by their respective Lord Paramount who were all but kings in name. 

That’s how the feudal system worked especially in big countries (and Westeros is not just a big country but an entire continent). Many French kings barely had control over all France as noblemen could easily challenge the king or ignore his calls. Catharine the Great lamented that her reforms barely ever left Moscow let allow reach the far ends of its enormous domain.

The Feudal system would be considered terribly ineffective in today’s world. However it’s a system built around the limitations of its time. Transportation was slow, inefficient and dangerous. A king would have to spend weeks and months to travel from one side to another and might risk losing his life in ‘accidents’. Real time data was virtually not existent and a king would not know what the hell is exactly happening in his domain until it was too late. The common people were basically their own feudal lord slaves. He dictated everything from how much land they have, how much taxes they pay, if they go to war. The noble lord might even decide to have a first dip on the commoner’s wife if he wanted to.  Professional standing armies were often difficult if not impossible to maintain so the king had to rely on an army mostly built by militia, which was mostly provided him by the noblemen. Irk a powerful nobleman and that guy will probably not answer the king’s call or even betray him in the times of need.  Effective weapons were often easily bought. A crossbow which could be used by anybody, could kill a knight in full armour. Therefore most powerful noblemen could raise an army and challenge the King. FFS, Henry Tudor was able to take the English crown with a measly army of 5000 men!
 

[Free Northman Reborn]

It seems quite likely that the lands of the New Gift previously belonged to the Umbers East of the Kingsroad, and to the Mountain Clans West of the Kingsroad. If so, the Umbers and Clan lords would not have been happy at all with the Targaryens' unilaterally annexing their lands and giving it to the Watch. In this light, it is quite easy to believe that they would thereafter have "washed their hands" off of this territory.

After all, the feeling would probably have been along the lines of: " They don't want me to earn taxes from these lands anymore, so why the heck should I protect it? Let the Watch do that, since they own it now".

It is then quite clear that the Umbers and Clansmen withdrew their protection from these lands, resulting in its almost immediate decline into a territory too dangerous for the average peasant to survive in. These peasants quite likely moved to the Umber or Mountain Clan lands, or perhaps further South to White Harbor even, in search of a safer life.

Consider how Brandon's Gift is still farmed today by the Stewards of the Watch. They generate some of their supplies from this land. So even with their paltry 1000 men, they are still able to secure at least some portions of the original Gift, closest to the Wall. But it is the no man's land between the Umber lands and Brandon's Gift, which is patrolled by no one. The New Gift. The Watch can't secure it anymore, and the Umbers can't be bothered to protect it, as they don't own it anymore.

 

[John Doe]

13 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

That's what I thought first, but it didn't make much sense to me.

It's the one saying that the books are not about background informations on how the monarchs ruled politically and economically and thus we should not expect to be able to judge the rule of the Targ monarchs in such a way. But we literally have an app, dozens ssms and a whole book solely focused on background information, like marriages, Elmo Tully and stuff, so I don't think this excuse holds up. We should know more than enough about the Targ achievements. 

But, of course, it's not that big of a deal anyway. I'll give the Targs the benefit of the doubt in that regard. But the fact remains that they had a pretty high rate of civil wars (most of them caused by their fellow Targaryens), and even in medieval terms, a pretty backwards law system. 

[BRANDON GREYSTARK]

They weren't that bad . Their major failure was they did not completely unify the realm around them . They did not honor the terms of the pact of ice and fire and marry a Targaryen princess to the Winterfell heir , nor did they marry into either the Lannisters or Greyjoys.

[Jasta11]

On 27/10/2016 at 10:47 AM, The Grey Wolf said:

There were quite a few terrible kings, some controversial ones, and a few undeniably good ones. I think therefore it would be more accurate to say that the Targaryens are unrealistically underachieving. In nigh three centuries of rule over a continent the size of South America and the resources of pre-modern Europe they barely do anything.

1. They built only ONE city (King's Landing) and never bothered to give any towns like Maidenpool or Duskendale charters to become cities

2. They never built any schools

3. They built only ONE castle (Summerhall)

4. They built only a few Septs (so far as we know that included Aegon I and Baelor I)

5. They didn't establish any Chivalric Orders (the Kingsguard doesn't count because it only has seven members and is celibate)

6. They never established a proper system of courts, judges, and sheriffs (except with the possibility of Aegon V)

7. They never built any canals or bridges

8. All the roads they built were DIRT even though they came from freaking Valyria and thus knew that roads could be better made in STONE

9. The laws after Jaehaerys I and Viserys II revised were not revised again so far as we know

10. Apart from Viserys II no other Targaryen king is mentioned to have attempted to improve trade, coin a new mint, or revise the royal household and its functions

11. They never built a bank or a playhouse even though they know such institutions exist (in Braavos at least) and in the case of the former actually rely on one (that's foreign to boot (talking about the Iron Bank here to be clear))

12. Despite holding to the Faith of the Seven you don't see any evangelizing from any of them

13.They never tried to conquer anything apart from the 7K, which is weird in the sense that there should have been an ambitious king or two who tried to permanently conquer the Stepstones and some of the Free Cities such as Tyrosh but that brings up the world-building problem that Westeros and Essos ridiculously never get into wars with one another.

On top of this you have reigns like Viserys I and Daeron II where there is more than a generation of peace and prosperity yet MOST of the above is NOT mentioned to have occurred.

 

As Lord Varys (the poster, I mean) justly pointed out, that's a casualty of Martin's world actually not being that realistic, or at least detailed, as far as the nitty gritty of governing and medieval life goes. As far as we know, Westeros barely had any public works projects in its history, has almost no written code of laws or courts of any kind, literally one known center of learning for the entire continent, a fairly insignificant caste of merchants and artists that are almost never brought up, there's no actual administration in the kindgoms beyond the local Lord whatever he wants that day, so on and so forth. All these things are at odds with how much of the medieval world actually worked.

So that's why you get lines like ''Viserys I's reign was prosperous'' but you never know what that actually means. Low taxes leading to business bomming in coastal cities? An overflowing treasury leading to a slew of public works? Royal patronage leading to the founding of new universities or great works of art? Stop asking questions; it was prosperous, deal with it.

It's understandable to me; Martin is building a world, sure, but he's mostly writing a story, and no one wants to read about how many local sheriffs or administrators Robert pays, or that King Something the Second founded a school in Duskendale in 154 AC. But it does leave some rather gaping hole in the setting's believability, IMO.

[the conquering bastard 25]

On 10/28/2016 at 8:26 PM, The Grey Wolf said:

Out of curiosity why Henry V and Edward IV? So far as I know both were mainly known for their military exploits and left behind child heirs that promptly dragged England back into civil war. And which William? William I was pretty unpopular and William II is pretty grey to say the least if you ignore the monks.

Yes, they left civil unrest however they were popular with the people. while Edward III may have started the English on the path of a national identity it was Henry V that cemeted it with the annexation of France. I tend to think if either man had lived to see their heir live to majority history would have turned differently.

Had Henry survived Henry VI wouldn't have inherited a throne at 9 months but after he came of age. Had Henry survived there would have been more children, Katherine Valois has 3 or 4 kids by Tudor. When Henry had his mental breakdowns no need to turn to York but another prince of the blood and completely cut Margaret out of the picture. Cuts down on a lot of that later civil unrest as York and Edward out of the immediate line of succession.

Yet one can't rewrite history. With that being said the question  was why?  If one was to base them upon their strengths and doings in their own time period and not those of the standards of our  PC times one gets a different perspective. The English seals depect the king doing two different but very interwinned activities, defending their people ( leading armies), and justice. Henry excuted an old friend to stop an uprising before it happened. now am I saying his motives were altristic? Hell no, but to save the many he was willing to sacrifice the few. Because of his popularity and partial because of the shortness of his reign he only had 2 minor disputes domestically. Compared to other kings that's a really good track record. John, Henry III, Edward II, Richard II. 1417, Marks the start of English being the language of government in England. Good enough statesman that the Holy Roman Emperor started off trying to make peace between France and England and yet left England having signed a treaty supporting the Englishs claim. To make peace and save more lives in the war in France he wed Katherine. It was the dauphin and later the mad maid of Orleans that continued the war.

As for Edward was more of an idiot in his private life than in hia judgement. Edward suffers from an impulse contol. women, wine and war. Granted a lot of his earlier works could be contributed to the Kingmaker. Yet a wise king knows how to spot and cultivate talent. Edward was again poplular, do not discount the love of the common people. Henry the 8 at the height of his unpopularity never had to fear the people they loved him and would forgive him his wrong doings. Agree or not Henry the 8 is another great English king not just the most notorious. Edwards royal motto: method and order. the laws and justice hat ad been sorely lacking in Henry VIS reign were greatly restored. so by the merits of a medieval standard both men promoted the ideals of a good king. it's only under the eye of a 21 century witness of history are we able to pick apart their actions.

However but comma if we are going to be real here if Motimer and Isabella hadn't taken it upon themselves to kill the king history again wouldn't have turned out as such. They set a nasty precedent and in the next hundred yrs 3 kings dying bloody. This precedent also led to the deaths of Mary Queen of Scots and later Charles I. Because history doesn't happen in a vacum. the ones before inform the next gemeration. so does one knock point off Edward IIIs record because of the actions of his mother and her lover.

William   I yes unpopular... so was Aegon after the conquest. I would imagine that those lords and ladies that lost their status weren't happy with the new status quo.  Yet I have to give the man props for having his inheritance snatched from him and then promptly snatching a bone out of the usurper ass for the aggrivation. 

On 10/28/2016 at 8:36 PM, PCK said:

Henry V and Edward IV were Lancasters and Yorks respectively. Many consider Richard II to be the end of the Plantangenets. As far as those two go, Henry IV is considered a mediocre king, and Henry VI was weak and insane (probably partial inspiration for Aerys.) And many are very split on Richard III. Point stands, great kings are few and far between. GRRM nailed that point. 

I am very familiar with whose a Lancaster and whose a York. Most historians classify  Richard III as the last Platagenet king as both houses stymied from house Platagent.Can't have a York without Lancaster blood and can't have a Lancaster without York blood and both are grandchildren of Edward III. To strenghen his claim to the dynasty Richard York, went by the name Richard Plantagent. The same cannot be said about the usurpering Tudors. Richard II and Henry IV claimed the Beaufort clan as legitimate but both kings and pope via patent letters that they had no claim to the throne.

 

Also it's a good thing in my original post I said nothing about Henry IV or VI, nor did I mention Richard III with his murky actions. yet if one was to use logic he had no motivation to kill Edward V and Henry didn't have the means, but the dukes of Buckingham descended from the last son of Edward III had both.

My point was and still is that these men based upon their times were good decent even great kings.

 

[The Grey Wolf]

1 hour ago, the conquering bastard 25 said:

Text

Thanks for responding. I agree that history needs to be viewed from the perspective of the time period and the people living in it lest we fall into presentism or become judgmental.

2 hours ago, Jasta11 said:

Text

I understand and agree with Lord Varys's point. Nonetheless it is disappointing, particularly with TWOIAF having been an opportunity to rectify the issue.

[Light a wight tonight]

On 10/29/2016 at 1:12 AM, John Doe said:

What is yours?

Essentially to protect the realm from invaders, keep the nobles from engaging in excessive warfare, dispense a little justice, and encourage trade and prosperity. These guys are at the top of the privilege pyramid and aren't overly concerned about the rights of the downtrodden or social justice.

[Lord Varys]

On the Plantagenet kings:

Not sure why you perpetuate the standard historical matrix of warmongers being great kings. Surely we use different standards today to judge great statesmen than 'he subdued France' or 'he conquered a lot of land'? In general, a ruling monarch is not that different from a mobster. Personal patronage is everything and whatever wealth you have you or your ancestors actually stole from other people.

6 hours ago, The Grey Wolf said:

Thanks for responding. I agree that history needs to be viewed from the perspective of the time period and the people living in it lest we fall into presentism or become judgmental.

That is a problematic way to judge history. Sure, you can judge a warrior-king by a warrior-king's standards and a fascist dictator by his own but that is leading you nowhere nor it is helping you to find out what kind of monarchy or society in general you want. You have to understand the time period a person was living in to talk about it but you as a historian live in the present and you cannot ignore your own values and beliefs in any case. Why not admit that and also say that this or that time period was fucked up and the people living there could have been living better lives if they had other values and/or better education?

That is most glaring with the coming of the dark ages. No age in European history is more depressing than Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages because of the decline of civilization and culture in those centuries. And people shape their times as much as time shapes the people. 

6 hours ago, The Grey Wolf said:

I understand and agree with Lord Varys's point. Nonetheless it is disappointing, particularly with TWOIAF having been an opportunity to rectify the issue.

He could have done something in that regard. But the basic setting is established in the series. He cannot possibly give us craftsmen guilds, a powerful royal bureaucracy, or an intricate hierarchy of the Faith when there are no traces of any of that in the main series. Granted, he could have given us some of that by having the Targaryen administration in the dragon days being much different from the dragonless days (I for one imagined that all the dragonriders were above the law and in the royal sphere, so to speak, with the mortal men serving the royal family as a whole rather than directly the king - that would have been a much better background for favor-seeking and infighting at court) or by putting more focus on the Faith's structures prior to the Faith Militant Uprising.

22 hours ago, devilish said:

The Targs weren’t bad or good rulers. They were no rulers at all (apart from the Crownlands). The rest of Westeros was ruled by their respective Lord Paramount who were all but kings in name.

That is how it seems in light of the real power a King of Westeros should have. But it is not how things actually are. The king is neither seen nor treated as a powerless figurehead only nominally in control of the Realm. He is seen as a guy with very real and nearly absolute power. Cat and Ned are afraid of Robert in AGoT. They wouldn't feel that way if it wasn't crystal clear that the Lords of the Realm would obey their king if that king decided to turn against the Lord of Winterfell.

The King on the Iron Throne demands and gets fealty. He does not have to bribe or sweet-talk his lords into obeying his commands. Granted, if there is a civil war and things look bad for the king then not everybody is going to rush to his banners but the overwhelming majority of the lords will obey their king under normal circumstances.

Quote

That’s how the feudal system worked especially in big countries (and Westeros is not just a big country but an entire continent). Many French kings barely had control over all France as noblemen could easily challenge the king or ignore his calls. Catharine the Great lamented that her reforms barely ever left Moscow let allow reach the far ends of its enormous domain.

One would assume it is this way in Westeros, too, and it is true that the king rules through his lords. But the lords actually obey their king in Westeros never mind the fact that they should have sufficient power to ignore him.

Realistically Westeros could never be a centralized monarchy. Hell, even lands like the North or the Reach are too vast to ever be under the control of a single monarch ruling from a single capital.

In the early middle ages royal authority eroded the very moment the king's party left a county or shire. The idea that people who never saw a king for decades (or perhaps even centuries) would continue to do homage to that guy is ridiculous in such a setting.

Yet that's how things are in Westeros. That only makes sense if the mindset of the Westerosi is very different from the mindset of real medieval people. In the mind of Westerosi the king is a very revered and powerful figure - the shadow on the wall they universally see as being the guy in power. If that wasn't the case then there wouldn't be any Seven Kingdoms nor an Iron Throne in this series.

We have hints of that when a man like Cregan Stark - who actually took the field against Aegon II - felt it was a detestable crime to murder an anointed king with poison.

17 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

It seems quite likely that the lands of the New Gift previously belonged to the Umbers East of the Kingsroad, and to the Mountain Clans West of the Kingsroad. If so, the Umbers and Clan lords would not have been happy at all with the Targaryens' unilaterally annexing their lands and giving it to the Watch. In this light, it is quite easy to believe that they would thereafter have "washed their hands" off of this territory.

That is not unlikely but we cannot ignore the possibility that it might have been lands the Starks held directly for some reason, or that it was given to other people we don't know anything about.

17 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

After all, the feeling would probably have been along the lines of: " They don't want me to earn taxes from these lands anymore, so why the heck should I protect it? Let the Watch do that, since they own it now".

It is then quite clear that the Umbers and Clansmen withdrew their protection from these lands, resulting in its almost immediate decline into a territory too dangerous for the average peasant to survive in. These peasants quite likely moved to the Umber or Mountain Clan lands, or perhaps further South to White Harbor even, in search of a safer life.

That is a problematic assumption insofar as peasants are usually bound to the land. And petty lords and other small lords who held land in the New Gift might not have been willing to give that up. After all, such lands were the only income they had. Sure, the Crown could have compensated them for their losses but unless they were getting other lands and keeps elsewhere one should assume they would have preferred to remain on the land.

And that they might very well have done. We know there are holdfasts and keeps in the New Gift - places like Queenscrown - and those most likely were run/overseen by noblemen. Thus the idea is that the people in the New Gift just paid whatever taxes they paid in kind to Winterfell they now paid to Castle Black. For all we know petty lords and the like actually could be vassals and servants of the Night's Watch.

But even if this is not the case there is no reason to believe that 'Umber or clansmen protection' is some organized thing. They don't have an organized police force. The peasants in some remote valley or the denizens of a remote village have to defend themselves against raiders, they cannot count on the protection of some lord whose castle is dozens of miles away.

17 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Consider how Brandon's Gift is still farmed today by the Stewards of the Watch. They generate some of their supplies from this land. So even with their paltry 1000 men, they are still able to secure at least some portions of the original Gift, closest to the Wall. But it is the no man's land between the Umber lands and Brandon's Gift, which is patrolled by no one. The New Gift. The Watch can't secure it anymore, and the Umbers can't be bothered to protect it, as they don't own it anymore.

I don't think there is a big difference between the two Gifts in that regard. In 298 AC we have about 1,000 Watchmen living off the food their levies produce. And the stewards and rangers among them might actually produce a lot of food themselves (the stewards by tending fields close to the three castles; the rangers by hunting game during their patrols). How many peasants does the Watch need to feed 1,000 men? I have no idea. But if they are doing a good deal of the work themselves it is not likely that they need all that much. At least not in comparison to the amount of land they actually control.

I'm pretty sure the Gifts are mostly deserted where they are no longer needed and the most dangerous. And it is quite clear that the Watch wouldn't have the resources to protect the lands of the Gifts where they are farthest away from the three remaining castles of the Watch. The land across the Kingsroad should be pretty secure. The lands along the route Bran took to the Wall should be as deserted as they are described. And those include the New Gift as well as Brandon's Gift.

[devilish]

36 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

On the Plantagenet kings:

Not sure why you perpetuate the standard historical matrix of warmongers being great kings. Surely we use different standards today to judge great statesmen than 'he subdued France' or 'he conquered a lot of land'? In general, a ruling monarch is not that different from a mobster. Personal patronage is everything and whatever wealth you have you or your ancestors actually stole from other people.

That is a problematic way to judge history. Sure, you can judge a warrior-king by a warrior-king's standards and a fascist dictator by his own but that is leading you nowhere nor it is helping you to find out what kind of monarchy or society in general you want. You have to understand the time period a person was living in to talk about it but you as a historian live in the present and you cannot ignore your own values and beliefs in any case. Why not admit that and also say that this or that time period was fucked up and the people living there could have been living better lives if they had other values and/or better education?

That is most glaring with the coming of the dark ages. No age in European history is more depressing than Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages because of the decline of civilization and culture in those centuries. And people shape their times as much as time shapes the people. 

He could have done something in that regard. But the basic setting is established in the series. He cannot possibly give us craftsmen guilds, a powerful royal bureaucracy, or an intricate hierarchy of the Faith when there are no traces of any of that in the main series. Granted, he could have given us some of that by having the Targaryen administration in the dragon days being much different from the dragonless days (I for one imagined that all the dragonriders were above the law and in the royal sphere, so to speak, with the mortal men serving the royal family as a whole rather than directly the king - that would have been a much better background for favor-seeking and infighting at court) or by putting more focus on the Faith's structures prior to the Faith Militant Uprising.

That is how it seems in light of the real power a King of Westeros should have. But it is not how things actually are. The king is neither seen nor treated as a powerless figurehead only nominally in control of the Realm. He is seen as a guy with very real and nearly absolute power. Cat and Ned are afraid of Robert in AGoT. They wouldn't feel that way if it wasn't crystal clear that the Lords of the Realm would obey their king if that king decided to turn against the Lord of Winterfell.

The King on the Iron Throne demands and gets fealty. He does not have to bribe or sweet-talk his lords into obeying his commands. Granted, if there is a civil war and things look bad for the king then not everybody is going to rush to his banners but the overwhelming majority of the lords will obey their king under normal circumstances.

One would assume it is this way in Westeros, too, and it is true that the king rules through his lords. But the lords actually obey their king in Westeros never mind the fact that they should have sufficient power to ignore him.

Realistically Westeros could never be a centralized monarchy. Hell, even lands like the North or the Reach are too vast to ever be under the control of a single monarch ruling from a single capital.

In the early middle ages royal authority eroded the very moment the king's party left a county or shire. The idea that people who never saw a king for decades (or perhaps even centuries) would continue to do homage to that guy is ridiculous in such a setting.

Yet that's how things are in Westeros. That only makes sense if the mindset of the Westerosi is very different from the mindset of real medieval people. In the mind of Westerosi the king is a very revered and powerful figure - the shadow on the wall they universally see as being the guy in power. If that wasn't the case then there wouldn't be any Seven Kingdoms nor an Iron Throne in this series.

We have hints of that when a man like Cregan Stark - who actually took the field against Aegon II - felt it was a detestable crime to murder an anointed king with poison.

That is not unlikely but we cannot ignore the possibility that it might have been lands the Starks held directly for some reason, or that it was given to other people we don't know anything about.

That is a problematic assumption insofar as peasants are usually bound to the land. And petty lords and other small lords who held land in the New Gift might not have been willing to give that up. After all, such lands were the only income they had. Sure, the Crown could have compensated them for their losses but unless they were getting other lands and keeps elsewhere one should assume they would have preferred to remain on the land.

And that they might very well have done. We know there are holdfasts and keeps in the New Gift - places like Queenscrown - and those most likely were run/overseen by noblemen. Thus the idea is that the people in the New Gift just paid whatever taxes they paid in kind to Winterfell they now paid to Castle Black. For all we know petty lords and the like actually could be vassals and servants of the Night's Watch.

But even if this is not the case there is no reason to believe that 'Umber or clansmen protection' is some organized thing. They don't have an organized police force. The peasants in some remote valley or the denizens of a remote village have to defend themselves against raiders, they cannot count on the protection of some lord whose castle is dozens of miles away.

I don't think there is a big difference between the two Gifts in that regard. In 298 AC we have about 1,000 Watchmen living off the food their levies produce. And the stewards and rangers among them might actually produce a lot of food themselves (the stewards by tending fields close to the three castles; the rangers by hunting game during their patrols). How many peasants does the Watch need to feed 1,000 men? I have no idea. But if they are doing a good deal of the work themselves it is not likely that they need all that much. At least not in comparison to the amount of land they actually control.

I'm pretty sure the Gifts are mostly deserted where they are no longer needed and the most dangerous. And it is quite clear that the Watch wouldn't have the resources to protect the lands of the Gifts where they are farthest away from the three remaining castles of the Watch. The land across the Kingsroad should be pretty secure. The lands along the route Bran took to the Wall should be as deserted as they are described. And those include the New Gift as well as Brandon's Gift.

There’s a difference between showing respect or even fear towards a king (especially if he’s a warrior king who would rather spend time killing stuff then ruling) and implementing his rules. Sure the feudal Lords whose close to the crown would agree in implementing his rule and would march to war when the king order them to do so. However would they implement any regulations that go against their interest? Would the king even notice that some Lord in the North had not implemented them?
We’ve got the same situation between Eddard and Roose. Roose marched to war whenever the Starks told him to do so however that hasn’t stopped him from raping a girl even though, I am pretty sure, Ned wouldn’t have liked that. The issue here is purely logistic

a-    Can the king (or the feudal lord of an enormous land) know exactly what their bannermen are doing?
b-    Would a commoner report their Lord misbehaviour? Would he even know that new laws had been implemented in the first place? I mean we’re talking about a system where the commoner’s very existence relies on the goodwill of their Lord. Commoners are cogs in a system, they  were their lord’s lands, they barely every step outside the village and the usually die in the very spot they were born. How would Jack Codd, whose family had been under Bolton rule for centuries living and dying working Bolton’s lands know that some Targ king in KL had decided to increase the salaries?
c-    If let’s say someone does spill the beans is it worth for the King to marching armies to the freezing and unconquerable North and have thousands of people dead simply because the Starks had refused to implement a 2% increase on people’s salary?

The Targs had something that no medieval king, irrespective how powerful he was, didn’t have ie dragons. Name me any medieval weapon who could cover long distances in matter of hours and days, who could quickly reduce castles in ashes and could annihilate armies without barely suffering any damage. Fortresses like Harrenhal or the Eyrie would take years to capture. Aegon turned one into an over and he breached the other one with no effort, taking her ruler up to the sky. 

Once the dragons died out, Lord Paramount worked with the ‘if it is not broken why mend it’ concept. It happened even during the decline of the Roman Empire were lands stuck together not because Rome was able to bring them to their knees but simply because these regions would be worse off without the empire then within it. Irrespective what some idiotic Umber Lord can say, a centralized power had served Westeros well. It stopped the constant bickering and fights between the 7 kingdoms and such peace promoted trade and therefore wealth. A Lannister could travel from CR to KL, up to the wall and back without risking of losing his head. 

Stating that a weak empire, that rely on the good will of third parties to exist, is bound to be broken one day or another. It takes one moronic decision from the king or an invasion from a powerful enemy to cripple the whole thing up. 
 

[Runaway Penguin]

On 30. 10. 2016 at 11:56 PM, Lord Varys said:

I'm not convinced by that. I think a lot of the lands in the farther North are in fact only supporting as few people as they are because the peasants there are regularly losing a good portion of their crops and life stock to wildling raids.

That would be a good explanation aside from the climate to explain why nobody seems to be living in the lands north of Winterfell compared to the people that live further down south.

 

That is actually a laughable explanation. Even the exceptionally strong raid against Castle Black would fail at an inhabited Queenscrown - no siege equipment to take the stone tower, and even if they saw the villagers go across the hidden causeway, it would mean one approach and slaughter. I know GRRM wanted to make the conflict between Wildlings and North more severe than would be in realistic Wildling power, but still...

If you take real history, it would seem you had kinda depopulated belt moving across the country for example in Saxon conquest of Britain (leaping forward few times a generation with arrival of new settlers), but there the Saxons had quite the numerical and military advantage. Raiders were also trying to get through Limes all the time - and left little impression. Steady wave of large bands and armies bent on expansion was something else, esp. with Rome collapsing, but we do not have that here.

Few raiding parties a year would not depopulate such a large area - if anything, they would lead to Watch having quite a good grid of fortified villages / holdfasts throughout the Gift, with people armed and ready to defend themselves - and to, if needed, reinforce the Wall garrison. It's kinda as plausible as Canada being depopulated by Inuit raiders

 

in any case, I guess it is another example of Reality getting into the way of Cool factor

EDIT: To the topic, Targs did not build much, everyone before them as well. Heck, where are free cities the like of Hanse in Westeros? With such low population density even on populated South, any local lord would be hard pressed to act against large trade cities. At the same time there seem to be a host of natural chokepoints for trade where city would spring up on its own - and often on border of two kingdoms (such as Neck), where such cities would be able to haggle for more rights (until becoming independent) by trading their support (and incomes) for influence.