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The Power of Pentos (Spoilers all)


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Seriously, why isn't Pentos the most powerful free city? It is located farther away from any free cities than any other free city. It has Thousands of miles of flatlands and gentle hills, stretching from Andalos to a branch of the Rhoyne to a giant peninsula the size of Cape Wrath. Don't get me wrong, I understand the Braavosi likely won their wars with the Pentoshi because they blockaded Pentos, but still, why couldn't pentos have mustered a larger fleet? Everything works in their favor, even their personalities.  

As the Pentoshi Magisters are called Cheese Mongers, I would think that they gain a large amount of their wealth from cows and other produce. This is understandable given their enormous flatlands. I basically imagine a city full of Ambros Butterwells(which is hillarioius when you think about it "hullo, good day to you milord. Why, of course I didn't try to overthrow your whole house!" A bunch of fat, greedy bastards who care more about power through trade than military. But still, JUST LOOK AT THE LOCATION!

Pentos is located at the back of a natural harbor rivaling Braavos. The city is hundreds of miles closer to Kings Landing(the largest city in Westeros), located almost directly across the bay. Why aren't they the major transcontinental trading hub instead of Braavos? When Tommen sailed to Dorne he stopped at Braavos. It would be so much more convenient for him to stop at Pentos! And Pentos certainly had time to develope, as it is older than every other free city(hold Lorath) predating the Valyrian expansion. T hey are very close to the giant forests of the Kingswood and Cape Wrath and are down stream, not up(like Braavos) from the forest of Qohor.

The Pentoshi have the greed of Tyrosh, the wealth of Volantis, and the resources of Braavos.

Basically, they have the money, the location, the land, and the resources at their disposal to have the mightiest fleet east of the Narrow Sea. 

SO WHY DON'T THEY? 

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How nice a city looks on a map does not determine its power. If you look at a real world map, you'll see that some of the apparently great spots to place a cool city are not occupied by one.

The easiest answer to justify why Pentos is not as powerful as you expect is just the fact that they lost the war with Braavos. Since then, Bravos has imposed its hegemony in the zone and has even limited the number of warships Pentos can have. Surely they also included other trade restrictions in the resulting treaty.

But there are many other elements that may contribute to its relative weakness, such as the lack of fresh water (there are no rivers around to be seen, which may limit its population) or the exposure to Dothraki attacks (Braavos does not need to bother to pay them tributes).

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  • 3 weeks later...

First off, Pentoshi Magisters are called “cheesemongers” as a euphemism, not because they literally make their money through the cheese trade.  Westerosi lords, who come from a martial tradition and count “wealth” in terms of lands owned, and not necessarily cash, look down on the merchant classes who are cash-rich and land poor, and as a result, would rather pay than fight when it comes to conflict.  This is perfectly analogous to the real-world tension between old-style nobility (noblesse d’epee) who came from knightly classes, and newer nobles (noblesse de robe) who were basically rich men, the bourgeoisie, who were appointed to administrative roles in the state (those examples are specific to France but broadly applicable to the medieval world transitioning into the Early Modern period).  Cheesemonger is just the epithet, not the literal description (though I am sure many of them do actually trade in cheese).

Furthermore, all the land in the world doesn’t matter if no one lives there.  The Pentoshi hinterland is Andalos, a region we know has been the scene of at least one mass emigration in history, and likely further depopulation by Valyrian slaverys, and the various wars in the Century of Blood and the wars with Braavos.  Secondly, Pentos was (and still is, in practice) a slave-holding society; if the example of the Triarchy holds, 60-75% of the inhabitants of Pentos are slaves (3 slaves for every 1 citizen).  This means that barring slave soldiers, which aside from the very small examples of the Unsullied and the Tiger Guards in Volantis we don’t hear of, Pentos is punching well below its geographic weight in terms of army size.  We know they pay off the Dothraki, and presumably hire sellswords, the same way Myr or Tyrosh or Lys does, when they need to fight. 

Braavos, by contrast, is a highly advanced industrial state with a freeborn citizen body.  They have obvious naval superiority, and while they wouldn’t be in a position to blockade Pentos after defeating her at sea, it’s worth asking what the goals of any such war are.  Braavos wants local preeminence and an end to slavery.  Who knows what Pentos wanted, but think about it this way.  Pentos derives all its wealth from trade, and certainly the wealth of the ruling classes.  Trade, for them, must be seaborne.  So while the Braavosi are probably incapable of conquering Pentos (and, in fact, were not able to despite pretty clearly winning most of those wars), they are certainly capable of impoverishing her.  So why would a Magister of Pentos, who after all is concerned mostly with trade/wealth, throw all that away for nothing?  They cannot beat the Braavosi, they can only not outright be conquered.  From a military perspective, Braavos is more populous (since the Pentoshi won’t arm their slaves), more technologically advanced (see: the Arsenal), and more ideologically committed (to the elimination of slavery).  All of that conspires to mean that while Braavos is probably incapable of outright conquering Pentos, it can force the ruling class into effective submission by depriving the political elite of the source of their power, which is the economic livelihood.

So yeah, there are a lot of institutional reasons that Pentos is a secondary power to Braavos, despite the geographic advantages it enjoys.  Braavos’ nearest real world analogue, Venice, was a richer and more powerful state than many of its contemporaries despite holding less land and a smaller overall population.

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