Northern Independence vs Bend the Knee

[Tygett Lannister]

3 hours ago, Pikachu101 said:

He doesn't have the loyalty of the Northerners so he's reliant on the Lannisters and Freys to back him, he can't crown himself king because no one will declare for him

Exactly he needs support of Freys and Lannisters.

[Lord Varys]

Things would be more fucked-up for the people in the North as well as in the rest of Westeros if the North - or any other of the former kingdoms - was independent again.

That would mean more conflict, more exploitation, more war, and at the same time less trade, less cooperation, and less peace.

[A Ghost of Someone]

8 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Yes. Especially since it seems the the mad king probably was the one who broke a peace treaty that Aegon the Conqueror and Torrhen Stark came to with all of their back and forth negotiations. Torrhen agreed to bow in order to not be burnt, but then Aerys went ahead and burned the blood of the north anyway.

Aerys was cruel and insane. Also, regarding Northern Independence, The North was sort of the outcasts to the rest of Westeros anyway. They were never married to the Iron Throne like other regions with the only exception to that being the Iron Born. The North was always sort of looked down upon as barbarians but they were known as great fighters, it took time for their armies to arrive in the South to fight for the Crown like in THE Dance of Dragons. The North also seem to have suffered in probably having been taxed by funds that most likely would have gone to the Night's Watch and the once all manned 19 or so castles. The Iron Throne never benefited the North in my view.

[Tygett Lannister]

28 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Things would be more fucked-up for the people in the North as well as in the rest of Westeros if the North - or any other of the former kingdoms - was independent again.

That would mean more conflict, more exploitation, more war, and at the same time less trade, less cooperation, and less peace.

Yet still more realistic than Iron Throne without dragons to control it.

[Pikachu101]

3 minutes ago, Tygett Greenshield said:

Yet still more realistic than Iron Throne without dragons to control it.

Yup, I do believe House Targaryen's days were numbered the minute they lost their dragons

[Tygett Lannister]

3 minutes ago, Pikachu101 said:

Yup, I do believe House Targaryen's days were numbered the minute they lost their dragons

It was a miracle they stayed on Iron Throne for 130 years without them. They were inbreeding, a lot of them kinda weird, still half-foreigners to Andals and First Men. I am guessing they were still feared and everyone was so used to them that they on subconscious level believed they are rightful Kings over them.

[Pikachu101]

5 minutes ago, Tygett Greenshield said:

It was a miracle they stayed on Iron Throne for 130 years without them. They were inbreeding, a lot of them kinda weird, still half-foreigners to Andals and First Men. I am guessing they were still feared and everyone was so used to them that they on subconscious level believed they are rightful Kings over them.

Guess it was because they needed something as triggering as Aerys killing a liege lord, his heir, and the heir of another liege lord to finally unite Westeros. Also the War of the Ninepenny Kings created a lot of ties between lords with the Targaryens nowhere to be seen because Jaehaerys was too young to fight. So it was cumulation of Targaryen tyranny, alliances between lords, and a strong contender for the throne (in the form of Robert Baratheon) to finally overthrow the Targaryen dynasty. 

[Orphalesion]

First of all Stannis is not gonna be king of anything. Ever. Get over it. All he's ever gonna be is a pretender/rebel, dead and possibly some sort of Other/Wight.
Second I still don't get the fascination people have with splitting up Westeros. I have explained many, many times why this would be unecessary and undesirable, so I'll just list some key points.

No language barrier (no reason to split because of that)

Almost no cultural barriers (everything from the Neck to the Passes of Dorne is one culture, so no reason to split because of that)

Almost no religious barriers (everything from the Neck to the Passes of Dorne worships the Seven, no reason to split along those lines)

No/Almost no ethnical barriers, most of Westeros is a happy mish-mash of Andals and First Men (as confirmed by the author) So no reason to split along those lines. 

The Ironborn need to be kept under the heel.

The Riverlands will be everyone's bitch again, even more so than they are now.

The Crownlands will be everyone's bitch again.

There will be constant warfare along the Dornish borders again.

If the Ironborn are not kept under the Heel they';; rape everyone along the Western Coast again.

It's just a bad idea and I honestly don't get why people are so obsessed with it.

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, Tygett Greenshield said:

Yet still more realistic than Iron Throne without dragons to control it.

If you are talking about realism then the notion that the Starks could actually rule a land as vast and undeveloped as the North for as long as they did.

In a medieval setting - especially in this kind of early medieval setting - the power of a king only extended to his immediate surroundings. Without any infrastructure of their own at all the Starks (and the Lannisters, Gardeners, etc.) shouldn't have ruled much more land than the immediate surroundings of their castle.

[Tygett Lannister]

16 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

If you are talking about realism then the notion that the Starks could actually rule a land as vast as undeveloped as the North for as long as they did.

In a medieval setting - especially in this kind of early medieval setting - the power of a king only extended to his immediate surroundings. Without any infrastructure of their own at all the Starks (and the Lannisters, Gardeners, etc.) shouldn't have ruled much more land than the immediate surroundings of their castle.

Yeah all the dynasties shouldn't be able to rule their Kingdoms for such a long time. As it is hard to believe a state big as Kingdom of the North could exist since:

https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-dba018137a046b4158174b8f4482862c

In Westeros ravens help a lot with communication since they are reliable and fast. But the road system is pretty much the same and when someone rebels only way to stop him is to go there with your army, faster letters only help calling the banners faster. Early ages mean 500-1000, while Westeros is more of high/late middle ages 1000-1500. Starks, Gardeners, Lannisters do control only castle and surrounding cities, villages like Capets (Kings of France) controlled Paris and Orleans. This is why it is also always show that liege lords actually don't have enough power to force vassals to do their duty. And that vassals have high autonomy and some vassals can actually control more land than King (Planatgentes). Officially King of France was liege lord of King of England yet he had no power over him, he showed once or twice to bent the knee and that was it.

http://c8.alamy.com/comp/FF8P3X/king-philip-iv-of-france-n1268-1314-known-as-philip-the-fair-king-FF8P3X.jpg

Best way to control big amount of land was Habsburg strategy (a.k.a. Frey), have a huge dynasty and grant land to your dynasty members while you have someone that is Head of the House so they don't fight each other. Right now Freys control 3 major castles in Riverlands which makes them really powerful but I am afraid they will start fighting each other while Habsburgs managed to be united family. On the other hand you have Capets that ruled France since 987 until the end of middle ages (987-1500 which is 500 years) and even after that (but that doesn't matters anymore). For the most part they had little power but with victories over England they gained power and managed to centralize.

North is hardly a realistic medieval kingdom while other are mostly possible since they are wealthier and smaller. Something like Kingdom of Iron Throne was? Maybe for 50 years (Frankish empire under Charlemagne and Louis the Pious).

 

 

 

[Bael's Bastard]

On 10/20/2017 at 5:16 AM, Lollygag said:

TWOIAF—The Wall and Beyond: The Night’s Watch

 

The vast expense in sustaining the Wall and the men who man it has become increasingly intolerable. Only three of the castles of the Night's Watch are now manned, and the order is a tenth of the size that it was when Aegon and his sisters landed, yet even at this size, the Watch remains a burden.

 

Some argue that the Wall serves as a useful way of ridding the realm of murderers, rapers, poachers, and their ilk, whilst others question the wisdom of putting weapons in the hands of such and training them in the arts of war. Wildling raids may rightly be considered more of a nuisance than a menace; many wise men suggest that they might be better dealt with by allowing the lords of the North to extend their rule beyond the Wall so that they can drive the wildlings back.

 

Only the fact that the Northmen themselves greatly honor the Watch has kept it functioning, and a great part of the food that keeps the black brothers of Castle Black, the Shadow Tower, and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea from starving comes not from the Gift but from the yearly gifts these Northern lords deliver to the Wall in token of their support.

 

 

 

Excellent response to the obvious troll attempt.

[Pikachu101]

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

If you are talking about realism then the notion that the Starks could actually rule a land as vast and undeveloped as the North for as long as they did.

There's a difference, House Stark was an old family who ruled the North for thousands of years they had roots and followed the same culture, religion, and tradition as their people. The Targaryens on the other hand were invaders who minus converting to the Seven never made an attempt to assimilate and relied on their dragons to prevent natives from rebelling. They saw themselves as above the Westerosi and that's going to cause problems. 

[Tygett Lannister]

5 hours ago, Orphalesion said:

First of all Stannis is not gonna be king of anything. Ever. Get over it. All he's ever gonna be is a pretender/rebel, dead and possibly some sort of Other/Wight.
Second I still don't get the fascination people have with splitting up Westeros. I have explained many, many times why this would be unecessary and undesirable, so I'll just list some key points.

No language barrier (no reason to split because of that)

Almost no cultural barriers (everything from the Neck to the Passes of Dorne is one culture, so no reason to split because of that)

Almost no religious barriers (everything from the Neck to the Passes of Dorne worships the Seven, no reason to split along those lines)

No/Almost no ethnical barriers, most of Westeros is a happy mish-mash of Andals and First Men (as confirmed by the author) So no reason to split along those lines. 

The Ironborn need to be kept under the heel.

The Riverlands will be everyone's bitch again, even more so than they are now.

The Crownlands will be everyone's bitch again.

There will be constant warfare along the Dornish borders again.

If the Ironborn are not kept under the Heel they';; rape everyone along the Western Coast again.

It's just a bad idea and I honestly don't get why people are so obsessed with it.

It is not people being obsessed with it it is what realistically makes sense of course it would be better if they stay united but there is many ambitious men who want to call themselves kings and have power to do so.

[Lord Varys]

38 minutes ago, Pikachu101 said:

There's a difference, House Stark was an old family who ruled the North for thousands of years they had roots and followed the same culture, religion, and tradition as their people. The Targaryens on the other hand were invaders who minus converting to the Seven never made an attempt to assimilate and relied on their dragons to prevent natives from rebelling. They saw themselves as above the Westerosi and that's going to cause problems. 

That is not actually true. There was no 'North' back in the good old days of the Hundred Kingdoms. The Starks were just petty kings among others, who gradually conquered a large territory, eventually creating a kingdom of their own which finally was known as 'the North'.

And in the lands of the Red Kings of the Dreadfort, say, Winterfell and the Starks would have been as foreign or distant a place as Lannisport and Oldtown were.

There were also royal bloodlines that were (rumored to be) much older than the Starks - the Barrow Kings, for instance.

The idea that the Starks (or Durrandons, Lannisters, Gardeners, etc.) have any 'right' to rule the kingdoms they eventually came to rule because they were fellow First Men doesn't make a lot of sense. If you are of that opinion you could also just say being French or German means you can have a right to conquer/rule all of Europe.

But the real issue simply is that neither the Starks nor the Gardeners ever had the means to really permanently subdue as many lords and permanently control as much territory as they did. After all, they did not have any dragons.

It is a tidbit more believable with the Gardeners due to their very special status as a semi-divine royal bloodline, ruling from a living throne and going back to the eldest son of Garth the Green, etc. as well as the interrelatedness and intermarriage of most of the Reach houses from the start, but the Stark conquered most of their territories in bloody wars.

Even if all their subjects loved them - which they don't - the problem simply is that a kingdom as large as the North cannot be administered and controlled by the kind of infrastructure the Starks had - which includes no standing army, no police force, no royal bureaucracy of any kind, no cities and towns with a healthy economy, no vast network of streets which could serve both as trade routes as well as means to move armies throughout the kingdom, etc.

The 'king' of such a 'kingdom' would be nothing more than a figurehead in this setting if we were looking a things realistically.

In that sense, the Targaryen rule makes somewhat more sense because they forged their realm with dragonfire and then they kept in shape afterwards because people had grown accustomed to their rule and were actually thriving in this united realm which had greatly reduced the constant warfare and was also good for trade.

[UFT]

Quote

 

It's just a bad idea and I honestly don't get why people are so obsessed with it.

 

by your logic, we should have kept around the roman or british empire, rather than the smaller countries we know today. i demand an end to such imperialism and the targ greed was the only reason the bent the knee in the first place to become one. 

"it was the dragons we bowed to, and theyre all dead". independence is inevitable

[Prince Yourwetdream Aeryn]

On 20.10.2017 at 10:38 AM, Pikachu101 said:

Greyjoys: I don’t think they’ll last, would love George so much if he just killed off the Iron Born entirely. 

 

In world of ice and fire there is special chapter about ironborn with this title: Are first men really first?

For George, they have great importance.

[Wolf's Bane]

On 10/19/2017 at 9:26 PM, UFT said:

so should the north be its own separate kingdom like pre conquest days?

and then others follow suit somehow, for example stannis can be a storm king, edmure is a river king. and mace is king of the reach

The northmen are full of pride but let's see how much of that pride is left after the Others take Winterfell and zombify their majority.  They will be crying for help from the south to save their bacon from the White Walkers.

[Free Northman Reborn]

On 2017/10/22 at 0:28 AM, Lord Varys said:

That is not actually true. There was no 'North' back in the good old days of the Hundred Kingdoms. The Starks were just petty kings among others, who gradually conquered a large territory, eventually creating a kingdom of their own which finally was known as 'the North'.

And in the lands of the Red Kings of the Dreadfort, say, Winterfell and the Starks would have been as foreign or distant a place as Lannisport and Oldtown were.

There were also royal bloodlines that were (rumored to be) much older than the Starks - the Barrow Kings, for instance.

The idea that the Starks (or Durrandons, Lannisters, Gardeners, etc.) have any 'right' to rule the kingdoms they eventually came to rule because they were fellow First Men doesn't make a lot of sense. If you are of that opinion you could also just say being French or German means you can have a right to conquer/rule all of Europe.

But the real issue simply is that neither the Starks nor the Gardeners ever had the means to really permanently subdue as many lords and permanently control as much territory as they did. After all, they did not have any dragons.

It is a tidbit more believable with the Gardeners due to their very special status as a semi-divine royal bloodline, ruling from a living throne and going back to the eldest son of Garth the Green, etc. as well as the interrelatedness and intermarriage of most of the Reach houses from the start, but the Stark conquered most of their territories in bloody wars.

Even if all their subjects loved them - which they don't - the problem simply is that a kingdom as large as the North cannot be administered and controlled by the kind of infrastructure the Starks had - which includes no standing army, no police force, no royal bureaucracy of any kind, no cities and towns with a healthy economy, no vast network of streets which could serve both as trade routes as well as means to move armies throughout the kingdom, etc.

The 'king' of such a 'kingdom' would be nothing more than a figurehead in this setting if we were looking a things realistically.

In that sense, the Targaryen rule makes somewhat more sense because they forged their realm with dragonfire and then they kept in shape afterwards because people had grown accustomed to their rule and were actually thriving in this united realm which had greatly reduced the constant warfare and was also good for trade.

Let's not conflate "right to rule" with being part of a cultural heritage and national psyche going back thousands of years.

The Starks have been in the North since before the Long Night. They have ruled Winterfell for 8000 years. Going by the World Book, they have ruled the Barrowlands, Sea Dragon Point, the Wolfswood and surroundings for 6000 or more years, having conquered these areas fairly early in their reign. The Umbers, Flints and the like followed not long there after. Let's make it 5000 years ago.

By 4000 years ago the Wolf's Den seems to have been built at the current site of White Harbor, and one generation later the Neck was conquered.

So for 4000 years they have ruled all of the North except for the Bolton lands. And even the Bolton lands were conquered round 3000 years ago (as the first Andal longships were crossng the Narrow Sea).

So, for every Northerner outside the Neck and the Bolton lands, we are talking 5000 years of Stark rule. That's going back to the time of Noah in our world. Or to before the Great Pyramid of Khufu was built.

And even the Crannogmen view the Starks as their rulers from time immemorial (which 4000 years pretty much are). And for your average Bolton vassal, the Starks have been their Kings since around the time that the Israelites settled in Canaan in our world, or at the latest, when Sparta fought the Persians at Thermopylae.

Compare that to the Targs who arrived a mere 298 years before the start of the books. That's where the issue of comparative legitimacy comes into play, and where the lack of Dragons makes the Targaryen reign rather implausible.

[Lord Varys]

5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Let's not conflate "right to rule" with being part of a cultural heritage and national psyche going back thousands of years.

This is a feudal setting. 'Cultural identity' and nations or 'national psyches' didn't exist in such days. And they don't exist in Westeros. The home of a peasant would have been his village, and a couple of neighboring settlements. The people on Sea Dragon Point would have nothing in common with the people from the Umber lands, and vice versa.

Vice versa, the petty kings and lords controlling a tract of land would consider those 'nations' or care about 'fixed borders'. They would constantly war with each other, trying to extend their own sphere of influence at the cost of their many neighbors, just as their many vassals would try to throw of the yoke of those self-styled lords and kings and carve out a kingdom of their own when their presumed masters showed any weakness.

To assume anything else is ridiculous.

5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The Starks have been in the North since before the Long Night. They have ruled Winterfell for 8000 years.

They ruled their own lands at that point, as petty kings among other petty kings. And the 8,000 years are not confirmed. That is number from song and fairy-tale not confirmed historical knowledge. 

5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Going by the World Book, they have ruled the Barrowlands, Sea Dragon Point, the Wolfswood and surroundings for 6000 or more years, having conquered these areas fairly early in their reign. The Umbers, Flints and the like followed not long there after. Let's make it 5000 years ago.

Stop inventing numbers. We have no idea when exactly the Starks conquered all those territories. What we do know is that they only subdued the Boltons by the time the first Andals come. That's it. We have no idea how when exactly they conquered the other kingdoms in the North. But we do know that it supposedly took thousands of years:

Quote

Even this [the conquest of the Barrowlands] did not give Winterfell dominion over all the North. Many other petty kings remained, ruling over realms great and small, and it would require thousands of years and many more wars before the last of them was conquered. Yet one by one, the Starks subdued them all, and during these struggles, many proud houses and ancient lines were extinguished forever.

And just to clarify - having a new king or royal house doesn't necessarily change the feelings, identity, or loyalties of population. Especially not in a feudal setting where only the guy at the top changed. The levies of the Umbers, Boltons, etc. remained bound to the house they always followed.

The Starks did not built Stark settlements all around the conquered territories, they did not replace the conquered population with their own, they did not have their people intermarry with the people in the conquered territories, etc.

We see that there are strong cultural differences between the Northmen to this day.

5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Compare that to the Targs who arrived a mere 298 years before the start of the books. That's where the issue of comparative legitimacy comes into play, and where the lack of Dragons makes the Targaryen reign rather implausible.

Those are all just big numbers. It doesn't matter whether your royal house rules over you for 100 years or a 1,000 years. All people really care about is whether they grew up under such a rule - and consider it therefore legitimate and normal to be ruled by those people - or whether they - or their elders - still remember a time when it was different.

The Targaryens unified their realm. The Starks didn't really do that, or else they wouldn't have faced as many rebellions as they did. They couldn't even rid themselves of the Boltons for good.

It is not 'Northern patriotism' or something like that leads to the idea to crown Robb Stark. It is the vested interest of certain noblemen to gain more power and independence for themselves and their houses if they are no longer subject to the Iron Throne. The Umbers are subject to both Winterfell and the Iron Throne, if one of them goes away their own power increases. Vice versa, the Riverlords would effectively rule themselves as soon as 'King Robb' returned to Winterfell.

[Free Northman Reborn]

22 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

This is a feudal setting. 'Cultural identity' and nations or 'national psyches' didn't exist in such days. And they don't exist in Westeros. The home of a peasant would have been his village, and a couple of neighboring settlements. The people on Sea Dragon Point would have nothing in common with the people from the Umber lands, and vice versa.

Vice versa, the petty kings and lords controlling a tract of land would consider those 'nations' or care about 'fixed borders'. They would constantly war with each other, trying to extend their own sphere of influence at the cost of their many neighbors, just as their many vassals would try to throw of the yoke of those self-styled lords and kings and carve out a kingdom of their own when their presumed masters showed any weakness.

To assume anything else is ridiculous.

They ruled their own lands at that point, as petty kings among other petty kings. And the 8,000 years are not confirmed. That is number from song and fairy-tale not confirmed historical knowledge. 

Stop inventing numbers. We have no idea when exactly the Starks conquered all those territories. What we do know is that they only subdued the Boltons by the time the first Andals come. That's it. We have no idea how when exactly they conquered the other kingdoms in the North. But we do know that it supposedly took thousands of years:

And just to clarify - having a new king or royal house doesn't necessarily change the feelings, identity, or loyalties of population. Especially not in a feudal setting where only the guy at the top changed. The levies of the Umbers, Boltons, etc. remained bound to the house they always followed.

The Starks did not built Stark settlements all around the conquered territories, they did not replace the conquered population with their own, they did not have their people intermarry with the people in the conquered territories, etc.

We see that there are strong cultural differences between the Northmen to this day.

Those are all just big numbers. It doesn't matter whether your royal house rules over you for 100 years or a 1,000 years. All people really care about is whether they grew up under such a rule - and consider it therefore legitimate and normal to be ruled by those people - or whether they - or their elders - still remember a time when it was different.

The Targaryens unified their realm. The Starks didn't really do that, or else they wouldn't have faced as many rebellions as they did. They couldn't even rid themselves of the Boltons for good.

It is not 'Northern patriotism' or something like that leads to the idea to crown Robb Stark. It is the vested interest of certain noblemen to gain more power and independence for themselves and their houses if they are no longer subject to the Iron Throne. The Umbers are subject to both Winterfell and the Iron Throne, if one of them goes away their own power increases. Vice versa, the Riverlords would effectively rule themselves as soon as 'King Robb' returned to Winterfell.

Incorrect.

The main doubt expressed about the Long Night relates to whether it was 8,000 or 6,000 years ago. No record places it more recently than that, even from the ancient civilizations of the East, which actually have written records going back to that time.

So point one, we know a minimum age for the Long Night, and it is 6,000 years ago. We also have ample evidence for the founding of the Wolf's Den, which predates the Andal arrival by centuries. And we in turn have ample corroborating evidence that the Andal arrival was anything from 2500 - 3500 years ago.

So, since we can work back from the Andal arrival (when the Boltons knelt to the Starks), we can work out very nicely that the Starks gradually conquered the North over thousands of years before that, back to the Long Night.

As for the Starks versus Targs. Don't make me laugh. The Starks united their realm for far longer than the Targs managed to do, and did so without Dragons. The Starks are part of the North's founding myth, with Bran the Builder building the Wall after the Long Night. There won't be a peasant in the North who didn't grow up with some Stark related stories learnt from his wetnurse as part of his upbringing, shaping his very identity.

The Targs, in turn, are upstart ,alien newcomers by comparison.