The Targaryens were terrible monarchs

[John Doe]

27 minutes ago, Runaway Penguin said:

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

I think the wildling raids are one part of the problem, but not all of it.

1. I guess the Night's Watch has a harder time ensuring general security for its peasants than the neighboring lords have

2. The climate is the worst

3. wildling raids

 

So there's no incentive for people to settle those lands and work them. If I was a peasant on Stark lands, I wouldn't want to live up north closer to the Wall, where its colder and more dangerous. 

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Runaway Penguin said:

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...

Ah, but you are only safe inside a keep or holdfast if you reach it in time. How many places like Queenscrown exist in the Gifts? I guess not so many. And what good is a keep if you want to keep your crops and animals safe? Surely not all of this stuff can be moved behind stone walls in time. Many of the settlements there should have wooden keeps, and wood burns. The raiders don't need siege engines to destroy those.

You also have to keep in mind that it should be a very labor-intensive work up there to even produce enough food to stay alive. People wouldn't have the time to keep a watch all the time and the women and children most likely had no time whatsoever to spend most of the time in some tower.

Not to mention that your life would be worth nothing if one wildling raid happened to steal most or all of your winter provisions in autumn or early winter. If you see your neighbors starving to death in winter, unable to help them because you have only enough provisions for yourself and your own you probably think about staying in that region to suffer a similar fate next winter.

And in general we don't really know how exactly the men in those live. Is it mostly a few families forming a small villages or are we talking about single families living apart from each other? One assumes the people at the coast live closer together but the people tending sheep might be constantly on the move.

We don't even have an idea how exactly the mountain clans live. Those half-noble clansmen would have some keeps considering that they rule those lands. But what about their smallfolk?

3 hours ago, devilish said:

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

It is actually Rickard vs. Roose there, but never mind.

You raise a point that's only relevant insofar as reforms affecting the rights of the lords are concerned. We don't if such things happened all that often. Aegon V tried to implement some reforms and failed, most likely because of the reasons you list.

But there are things a king demands from his lords where he is obeyed in Westeros. There is no hint that lords are able or dare withhold taxes from the Crown, nor is there any hint that it is customary to refuse the king when he calls his banners. Whether it is deeply ingrained in the culture of Westeros that you obey the king in those things or whether he has the means to enforce his will in those issues is technically irrelevant. We know that he is rather powerful in those issues.

3 hours ago, devilish said:

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?

That is another issue. Who has ever said the king wanted to establish a system where there is justice for everybody? And why do you think a medieval king should care whether one of his lords mistreats his peasants?

Some kings might care about that but most wouldn't.

3 hours ago, devilish said:

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.

The dragons aren't super weapons. People fought against the Targaryens during the Conquest despite the fact that they had dragons. Dorne withstood the dragons repeatedly, and the Faith Militant didn't give a fig about Aenys I and Maegor having dragons and their disposal.

The idea that the fact that the Targaryens had dragons means they could do whatever the hell they wanted isn't correct. They could try to do that but they still had to fight to get away with it. Any idea of an organized rebellion against the Targaryens during the days of Viserys I would have been reasonably mad considering that the man eventually controlled about twenty dragons. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

16 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Ah, but you are only safe inside a keep or holdfast if you reach it in time. How many places like Queenscrown exist in the Gifts? I guess not so many. And what good is a keep if you want to keep your crops and animals safe? Surely not all of this stuff can be moved behind stone walls in time. Many of the settlements there should have wooden keeps, and wood burns. The raiders don't need siege engines to destroy those.

You also have to keep in mind that it should be a very labor-intensive work up there to even produce enough food to stay alive. People wouldn't have the time to keep a watch all the time and the women and children most likely had no time whatsoever to spend most of the time in some tower.

Not to mention that your life would be worth nothing if one wildling raid happened to steal most or all of your winter provisions in autumn or early winter. If you see your neighbors starving to death in winter, unable to help them because you have only enough provisions for yourself and your own you probably think about staying in that region to suffer a similar fate next winter.

And in general we don't really know how exactly the men in those live. Is it mostly a few families forming a small villages or are we talking about single families living apart from each other? One assumes the people at the coast live closer together but the people tending sheep might be constantly on the move.

We don't even have an idea how exactly the mountain clans live. Those half-noble clansmen would have some keeps considering that they rule those lands. But what about their smallfolk?

It is actually Rickard vs. Roose there, but never mind.

You raise a point that's only relevant insofar as reforms affecting the rights of the lords are concerned. We don't if such things happened all that often. Aegon V tried to implement some reforms and failed, most likely because of the reasons you list.

But there are things a king demands from his lords where he is obeyed in Westeros. There is no hint that lords are able or dare withhold taxes from the Crown, nor is there any hint that it is customary to refuse the king when he calls his banners. Whether it is deeply ingrained in the culture of Westeros that you obey the king in those things or whether he has the means to enforce his will in those issues is technically irrelevant. We know that he is rather powerful in those issues.

That is another issue. Who has ever said the king wanted to establish a system where there is justice for everybody? And why do you think a medieval king should care whether one of his lords mistreats his peasants?

Some kings might care about that but most wouldn't.

The dragons aren't super weapons. People fought against the Targaryens during the Conquest despite the fact that they had dragons. Dorne withstood the dragons repeatedly, and the Faith Militant didn't give a fig about Aenys I and Maegor having dragons and their disposal.

The idea that the fact that the Targaryens had dragons means they could do whatever the hell they wanted isn't correct. They could try to do that but they still had to fight to get away with it. Any idea of an organized rebellion against the Targaryens during the days of Viserys I would have been reasonably mad considering that the man eventually controlled about twenty dragons. 

I rather doubt that bulk goods like crops, sheep, horses or cattle are raided by the Wildlings in any meaningful number. It kind of boggles the mind that they could hoist anything the size of cows or horses over the Wall, and goods like grain, flour etc. would only really be useful in bulk quantities transported by wagon or cart. Again, not really something you can carry on your back over a 700 foot Wall.

Besides, they do hit and run, not pillage on a mass scale, which requires time and prohibits a fast escape. Escaping with a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep, or a wagon or two of grain or flour is not really going to be a quick thing. Apaches raided horses and livestock in the Old West, but they just drove them into the open wilderness. They did not have to get any of their stolen goods across a 700 foot Wall.

Nope. It would seem that Wildling raids are limited to stealing women, and maybe some easily transportable valuables, like swords, iron knives, clothes and maybe whatever trinkets they can gather at any village they may have struck.

 

[Lord Varys]

9 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I rather doubt that bulk goods like crops, sheep, horses or cattle are raided by the Wildlings in any meaningful number. It kind of boggles the mind that they could hoist anything the size of cows or horses over the Wall, and goods like grain, flour etc. would only really be useful in bulk quantities transported by wagon or cart. Again, not really something you can carry on your back over a 700 foot Wall.

Besides, they do hit and run, not pillage on a mass scale, which requires time and prohibits a fast escape. Escaping with a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep, or a wagon or two of grain or flour is not really going to be a quick thing. Apaches raided horses and livestock in the Old West, but they just drove them into the open wilderness. They did not have to get any of their stolen goods across a 700 foot Wall.

Nope. It would seem that Wildling raids are limited to stealing women, and maybe some easily transportable valuables, like swords, iron knives, clothes and maybe whatever trinkets they can gather at any village they may have struck.

Well, that's one of the points where realism in those books comes to an end. George didn't really realize what a 700 feet high wall actually entails (e.g. arrows reaching the top of the Wall in ASoS!).

But winter provisions might very well include mostly frozen meat and the like. After all, we can reasonably assume that a winter this far north would have freezing temperatures all day or at least places where freezing temperatures all day are easily available (e.g. the frozen soil).

If some people still have living livestock at this point - which would be ridiculous in winter considering that you have to feed the animals as well as your people - the wildlings could easily enough kill those animals, and transport the meat back across the Wall.

A hundred raiders plundering a single village where, say, the same amount of people live should be able to take away quite a little bit of food. And even if they cannot carry away everything stealing your furs or destroying the village you live in by, say, burning it down is going to kill you, too, because it is pretty damn cold in winter.

Means of transportation don't have to be all that quick, either. A remote village is a remote village and if you kill everybody nobody is going to come for you. If you rob them of their means to of quick travel (i.e. take or kill their horses and cattle) nobody is coming for you soon, either. And if you attack them in winter they will most likely not be able to travel to the next holdfast/castle anyway because the snow is going to make a journey slow and difficult. Nobody in his right mind would want to travel far in the middle of winter. You need much more food to sustain yourself on such a journey in comparison to spending the entire day at your hearth.

[devilish]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

 

It is actually Rickard vs. Roose there, but never mind.

You raise a point that's only relevant insofar as reforms affecting the rights of the lords are concerned. We don't if such things happened all that often. Aegon V tried to implement some reforms and failed, most likely because of the reasons you list.

But there are things a king demands from his lords where he is obeyed in Westeros. There is no hint that lords are able or dare withhold taxes from the Crown, nor is there any hint that it is customary to refuse the king when he calls his banners. Whether it is deeply ingrained in the culture of Westeros that you obey the king in those things or whether he has the means to enforce his will in those issues is technically irrelevant. We know that he is rather powerful in those issues.

That is another issue. Who has ever said the king wanted to establish a system where there is justice for everybody? And why do you think a medieval king should care whether one of his lords mistreats his peasants?

Some kings might care about that but most wouldn't.

The dragons aren't super weapons. People fought against the Targaryens during the Conquest despite the fact that they had dragons. Dorne withstood the dragons repeatedly, and the Faith Militant didn't give a fig about Aenys I and Maegor having dragons and their disposal.

The idea that the fact that the Targaryens had dragons means they could do whatever the hell they wanted isn't correct. They could try to do that but they still had to fight to get away with it. Any idea of an organized rebellion against the Targaryens during the days of Viserys I would have been reasonably mad considering that the man eventually controlled about twenty dragons. 

 Was it Rickard? I was under the impression that Ramsey was slightly older to Robb. My mistake

The king would find it far easier to command his Lords to do something which affects him directly like for example raise an army for him, collect X amount of taxes etc. However the King's power dilutes exponentially the more to orders go in the detail and the further the land is from the capital city. The reasons are various

a- there's no way for the king to know if that order had been implemented. Real time data is non existent, investigators can be bribed or killed, there's a certain level of omerta which makes it impossible for even the most righteous of kings to know what's going on in his realm. These sort of things still exist in old school regions (ex Sicily) despite its a smaller region to Westeros, there's more education and access to real time data etc. Central authorities find it very difficult to crack down the mafia because Sicilians are traditionally reluctant to trust central authority whom they see as distant and foreign to their ways. Among the many names the mafia is called, one of the most popular is cosa nostra which literally means 'our thing' (or our issues)

b- Would a king even bother risking a revolt by micromanaging a powerful nobleman? Most of these noblemen came from the same group of families, they are the ones who put food on the King's table by collecting taxes and put soldiers in disposal whenever the country is invaded or he wants to expand the realm. Westeros is also unique in terms that families seem to be able to rule the same plot of land for centuries if not millenia. Therefore its extremely difficult to replace these families in the first place. 

Dragons are Westeros version of nukes. Concepts which are well ingrained in medieval warfare like impregnable castles that can annihilate an entire army if the king is stupid enough to try and breach them, the numbers and the quality of the troops that usually decided the tide of war and the difficult terrain that could create an exception to the case (ex Battle of Bannockburn) melted in front of dragons. Dragons could turn the most impregnable of fortresses into ovens, it could turn enormous armies into ashes and it could breach the most difficult of fortresses by simply flying into the throne room. Great kings like William the Conqueror or King Richard the Lionheart would probably sell their mother for a weapon like that. 

Of course that doesn't mean that they are perfect. People can resist a dragon invasion through guerilla warfare or simply by showing total disregard to people's lives and send waves upon waves of cretins to their death. However do you really believe that the average run in the mill nobleman would want that sort of life? I doubt it

 

 

 

 

 

[The Grey Wolf]

6 hours 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.

Some of the most successful kings were also capable military commanders, such as Henry II and Edward III so you can't deny the two are related to a certain degree.

Anyway, I should have made my position more clear. We certainly need to have an understanding of history that is based on our own values and beliefs but that needs to be tempered by an understanding of the historical context of whatever period is being discussed as well as by an understanding of the perspective of the people living in that time period if we are to again avoid falling into presentism and other biases. After all, we have only come so far by building on the successes of previous generations/civilizations and learning from their mistakes, no?

On your ideas for the dragon vs. post-dragon bureaucracy and the pre-uprising Faith vs. post-Uprising Faith structure: That would have been interesting indeed and much appreciated. Do you have any specific thoughts or ideas on that you'd like to share?

[John Doe]

6 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

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?

It's not problematic at all, it's the only way of properly judging historic characters. Sure, if you want to draw conclusions for modern times, you have to see it from a modern point of view, but you can't project modern believes on historic characters and expect to make a fair assestment of those.

[Lord Varys]

1 minute ago, John Doe said:

It's not problematic at all, it's the only way of properly judging historic characters. Sure, if you want to draw conclusions for modern times, you have to see it from a modern point of view, but you can't project modern believes on historic characters and expect to make a fair assestment of those.

Sure, but murder and wars of aggression where pretty much always wrong. Just as it was wrong to mistreat people, etc. Our morals developed a lot since Antiquity in certain aspects, but there are things that did not really change.

I mean, just take Christian morals. Take the writings of some Church father and that check whether, say, Charlemagne stuck with that. Making excuses like 'Well, kings are exceptional' or 'The prosperity of the realm justified/demanded decades of warfare' don't sit well with me.

The main problem with that kind of thing usually is that our sources are very often biased in favor of the victorious conquerors/kings and less so towards monarchs who met a pitiful end. And that bias usually includes justifications for stuff that should, today, not be justified (and perhaps not even back then).

11 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf said:

On your ideas for the dragon vs. post-dragon bureaucracy and the pre-uprising Faith vs. post-Uprising Faith structure: That would have been interesting indeed and much appreciated. Do you have any specific thoughts or ideas on that you'd like to share?

Ah, well, I just thought a Targaryen dragonrider might have been more like Darth Vader in the Imperial hierarchy. Not part of the official military or bureaucratic hierarchy but still able to boss around pretty much everybody in the Empire unless it was outright treason against the Emperor. Thus a dragonrider would have been able to give commands to the Hand, the Small Council, the lords, knights, and so on as well taking charge of whatever assets of the Realm he wanted to use. And such dragonriders would also have followers and parties the way Alicent and Rhaenyra had during the reign of Viserys I.

The king would just have been the head of this brood, often more concerned with moderating the demands of his own family than governing the Realm.

The idea that common lords enjoyed much power as, say, Viserys I's advisers had was sort of irritating to me. Of course a king should have been able to banish or exile a dragonrider but those dragonriders having the king's favor should have been at the heart of power.

The Faith could have had chapters of the Warrior's Son at every Andal royal court ensuring that the kings do not blaspheme against the Seven or issue laws that do not meet the favor of His High Holiness. There could also have been a lot of Faith justices around the Realm punishing spiritual crimes and the likes. We know there were chapters of the Warrior's Sons and Faith courts but we never got the size of those and there are no hints that the Faith actually dominated any of the Andal royal courts. Only under the late Teague kings were the Faith Militant confirmed to be very powerful.

One could also assume that there were Faith bishops all over the place. But them going away would have needed a major reform.

[Runaway Penguin]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, that's one of the points where realism in those books comes to an end. George didn't really realize what a 700 feet high wall actually entails (e.g. arrows reaching the top of the Wall in ASoS!).

But winter provisions might very well include mostly frozen meat and the like. After all, we can reasonably assume that a winter this far north would have freezing temperatures all day or at least places where freezing temperatures all day are easily available (e.g. the frozen soil).

If some people still have living livestock at this point - which would be ridiculous in winter considering that you have to feed the animals as well as your people - the wildlings could easily enough kill those animals, and transport the meat back across the Wall.

A hundred raiders plundering a single village where, say, the same amount of people live should be able to take away quite a little bit of food. And even if they cannot carry away everything stealing your furs or destroying the village you live in by, say, burning it down is going to kill you, too, because it is pretty damn cold in winter.

Means of transportation don't have to be all that quick, either. A remote village is a remote village and if you kill everybody nobody is going to come for you. If you rob them of their means to of quick travel (i.e. take or kill their horses and cattle) nobody is coming for you soon, either. And if you attack them in winter they will most likely not be able to travel to the next holdfast/castle anyway because the snow is going to make a journey slow and difficult. Nobody in his right mind would want to travel far in the middle of winter. You need much more food to sustain yourself on such a journey in comparison to spending the entire day at your hearth.

The Gift was able to support a standing army 10,000 strong. That means there has to be quite some surplus - and a 700-ft tall windbreaker creates a rather good "wind shade", so climate int he Gift might be actually less harsh than a bit further down tot he South.

It also means the settlements were not scattered and isolated - even if you take rather remote areas in Europe, most villages are not so remote that you'd not see a signal fire. Actually for the Gift, a settlement structure similar to say fortified villages on Balkans would make sense - at least villages with fortified church. Again, Balkans have pretty harsh climate in winters and all that - despite being south - and historically they were the "military border", always under threat of raids and incursions. Did not depopulate them, contrary to that, made local Lords incentivize settlements, as they knew that the denser the settlement, the easier the defense. And again, these raids were usually by rather strong paramilitary force.

Sure, wooden holdfast burns. Rather badly actually unless you can prepare it for burning from the inside, pile timber etc. - Wildlings with little to no armor would find it hard to set them on fire. The key Norman tool of conquest - Motte-and-bailey - was wooden. Limes had a lot of wooden parts. Most US Army forts in the West were wooden - heck, during American civil War one of the basic means of road control were wooden blockhouses. Heck, wood was popular material for field fortifications all the way to Balkan wars of 1990s, and that is with all the modern tools such as white phosphorus grenades or flamethrowers. Wooden structures did not fare well against strong besiegers, but they were always pretty expedient way of building fortifications against raiders (which, among others, makes Night Watch castles stupid - a pallisade would make the basicallt impregnable to Wildling sneak attack by climbers, while not pose a problem for Norther lords.

As for transporting stolen goods, meat is even harder to transport than cattle (as cattle moves by itself). As a Wildling raider you carry back only what you carry on your back. If you have to dodge armed bands from villages, with Watch being alerted and blocking your nearest escape over the wall... And you need to do it fast, else you are dead meat. If the villagers are smart, the holdfast would also hold supplies for winter. And a net of villages, combined with the Wall, would allow warning against raids (as esp. if NW dwindled, villages would organize their own lookouts on the Wall).

 

All in all, Westerosi population inability to cope with such a simple problem ties down with their inability to innovate, build up infrastructure and industry unless nudged by their rulers, who come from the same stock  Or rather it is just running into the World of Cool

[Lord Varys]

6 hours ago, Runaway Penguin said:

The Gift was able to support a standing army 10,000 strong. That means there has to be quite some surplus - and a 700-ft tall windbreaker creates a rather good "wind shade", so climate int he Gift might be actually less harsh than a bit further down tot he South.

It also means the settlements were not scattered and isolated - even if you take rather remote areas in Europe, most villages are not so remote that you'd not see a signal fire. Actually for the Gift, a settlement structure similar to say fortified villages on Balkans would make sense - at least villages with fortified church. Again, Balkans have pretty harsh climate in winters and all that - despite being south - and historically they were the "military border", always under threat of raids and incursions. Did not depopulate them, contrary to that, made local Lords incentivize settlements, as they knew that the denser the settlement, the easier the defense. And again, these raids were usually by rather strong paramilitary force.

Could very well be. But then, we don't know how many castles were still maintained around the Conquest, or do we? Real problems in the Gifts would only have begun when most of the NW castles became abandoned.

The villages are a nice idea but we don't if any such exist this far north. I'm more inclined to believe those people are more a shepherd and hunter folk. But whoever has good enough lands to plant some crops surviving in this weird summer snow climate might live in the occasional fortified village.

But keep in mind that such villages might not have been necessary while the Watch still could do its job.

6 hours ago, Runaway Penguin said:

Sure, wooden holdfast burns. Rather badly actually unless you can prepare it for burning from the inside, pile timber etc. - Wildlings with little to no armor would find it hard to set them on fire. The key Norman tool of conquest - Motte-and-bailey - was wooden. Limes had a lot of wooden parts. Most US Army forts in the West were wooden - heck, during American civil War one of the basic means of road control were wooden blockhouses. Heck, wood was popular material for field fortifications all the way to Balkan wars of 1990s, and that is with all the modern tools such as white phosphorus grenades or flamethrowers. Wooden structures did not fare well against strong besiegers, but they were always pretty expedient way of building fortifications against raiders (which, among others, makes Night Watch castles stupid - a pallisade would make the basicallt impregnable to Wildling sneak attack by climbers, while not pose a problem for Norther lords.

We are talking about peasants who either dared not or could not deal with the wildling raids. Else they wouldn't have left. Imagining that they should have been able to fight them off doesn't make it so. We have to stick to the facts. But I admit that I've technically to agree with you. The wildlings shouldn't have been able to bother the people as much as they did.

6 hours ago, Runaway Penguin said:

As for transporting stolen goods, meat is even harder to transport than cattle (as cattle moves by itself). As a Wildling raider you carry back only what you carry on your back. If you have to dodge armed bands from villages, with Watch being alerted and blocking your nearest escape over the wall... And you need to do it fast, else you are dead meat. If the villagers are smart, the holdfast would also hold supplies for winter. And a net of villages, combined with the Wall, would allow warning against raids (as esp. if NW dwindled, villages would organize their own lookouts on the Wall).

Well, it seems that they did not. And it would depend on how many holdfasts there were. I doubt there were many. But now we are also talking about how many provisions people living through six-year-winter might have - and we are completely leaving realism here. A village would have to store an insane amount of food to live through such a long period of time without getting any fresh food (aside from meat, if you can continue to hunt in the middle of winter).

If we take that road the series won't survive it.

I guess the wildlings could use sledges in winter to carry what they need. No idea how they would get those over the Wall. And if they capture livestock they could only butcher that when they have reached the Wall.

Not to mention that the larger raiding parties could cross the Bay of Ice using ships.

[Whitering]

Aegon unified the realm, and I think, contrary to many people in the world, that we are generally off better together than apart. Yes, there have been some civil wars, but prior to Aegon showing up, all the Kings were constantly at war with each other anyway.

Stability has been a great boon to the realm as a whole. Look at Dorne, before Nymeria it was probably a desert shit hole with constant raids and fighting, now it's everybody's favourite bastion of equality.

[Lion of the West]

On 2016-10-31 at 10:26 PM, John Doe said:

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. 

Well, I think I disagree in part even if not with the basics. We don't get the actual details on many kings and the details we get are focused on war and power politics, which is the focus of the entire series. For example we are, in my eyes at least, given a great deal of info about early Targaryens reigns but we are very much lacking regarding the middle and late years of the dynasty. For example from Aegon IV's misrule and on to Aerys II's we have very little information on many supposed bad or good kings. We don't know how Aegon conducted his willful misrule, we don't know exactly how Daeron II became known as "the Good" and how he failed to prevent the Blackfyre Rebellion from breaking out, Aegon V's reforms and so on. Thus I would dare say that there's essentially a leap between Viserys II to Aerys II which is obfuscated and we don't know how it went down.

To end this, I'll say that I agree with you that we have enough information to form an opinion on the matter, but until we get the GRRMarillion then we can't form a final verdict on the Targaryens.

[John Doe]

21 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Sure, but murder and wars of aggression where pretty much always wrong. Just as it was wrong to mistreat people, etc. Our morals developed a lot since Antiquity in certain aspects, but there are things that did not really change.

I mean, just take Christian morals. Take the writings of some Church father and that check whether, say, Charlemagne stuck with that. Making excuses like 'Well, kings are exceptional' or 'The prosperity of the realm justified/demanded decades of warfare' don't sit well with me.

The main problem with that kind of thing usually is that our sources are very often biased in favor of the victorious conquerors/kings and less so towards monarchs who met a pitiful end. And that bias usually includes justifications for stuff that should, today, not be justified (and perhaps not even back then).

Wasn't Charlemagne hailed as one of the greatest kings ever in medieval times, despite of his numerous wars?You shouldn't forget that wars of aggression were often justified, just like they are today. When Charlemagne attacked the saxons, his casus belli was a saxon raid. When William the Bastard attacked England, the reason he stated was his claim on the throne. 

Mistreating people was considered wrong of course, but they didn't have the same standards of what qualified as mistreating people. Just look at how medieval law was compared to our modern law. 

[the conquering bastard 25]

On 11/1/2016 at 4:30 AM, 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.

I listed warmonger kings as you call them because going by the time period and what was important to project as a great king making war and defending your people was one of if not the key component to being a good king.

John when he decided to play at war got lost all of his ancestral lands in France. Look at his war actions in Ireland. While John overall was just incompetent one of the major flaws with his rule was that he was not seen as a strong king that could influence his will. Not like Henry II or Richard I. John ruled through scare aND fear tactics.

HENRY III, is generally forgotten about because really what major contributions did he ? Failed to regain control of French territories, failure to conto the barons twice, had to rule mainly through charters. Royal authority continued to flounder until the reign of his son Edward Longshanks. History certainly remembers this Edward as a great king and he's a throw back to his ancestors Henry II and  Richard.

The kings that I mentioned being a warmonger was only one part of their appeal. They were strong and effective enought that their actions have been written large across the landscape of history. 

YET IT STILL STANDS THAT IT'S ONLY THOUGH HINDSIGHT AND A VERY DIFFERENT MIND SET THAT WE ARE ABLE TO CRITICIZE THESE MEN AND THEIR ACTIONS. THE 21 HAS MADE MAN MORE POLITICALLY CORRECT AND HAS LOST THE STOMACH TO GO THE DISTANCE . THESE MEN HAD THE STOMACH BUT ALSO THE BRAINS TO IMPLEMENT THEIR WILL AND SHOULD THE NEED TO WERE WILLING THAT SEE HEADS ROLL, ALL THE WHILE GIVING THEIR PEOPLE A KING OR LEADER THEY COULD BE PROUD OF.

[SeanF]

Re monarchs and wars of aggression, in real life,  Catholic Christianity condemned such wars , and taught that the only war that was legitimate was a Just War.  But, in practice, monarchs, nobles, and prelates were infinitely flexible in terms of framing their campaigns as Just Wars. Take the Hundred Years War.  Philip VI went to great lengths to justify his confiscation of the Duchy of Acquitaine from a rebellious vassal, and Edward III went to equally great lengths to justify his war, firstly as resistance to a tyrannous overlord, and then as simply enforcing his rightful claim to be King of France. Both of them thought they were waging war for a just cause, and as a last resort - having given their opponent the opportunity to surrender.

In trying to work out how good a medieval King was, prowess in War was certainly important.  One might not admire the kind of King who waged wars of conquest endlessly, while bankrupting his kingdom and ruining its administration.  But, nor can one admire a king who was useless in war.