Pre Conquest Night's Watch - purely Northen affair?

[Lord Varys]

1 minute ago, direpupy said:

That is most certainly not true i guess you went to wikipedia for this because i can't imagine where else you got this idea. Hell the so called praemia was not even always payed in land sometimes it was paid in coin. But before Augustus veterans where allready setteld outside italy. The whole point of veteran settelment was to integrate the newly conquered territory more firmly into the republic/empire.

Sure, they were also settled in colonies. But that is different from the mass settlement of thousands of veterans in the wake of the civil wars. And especially in the west transalpine Gaul only was available as a place to found colonies since Caesar.

The original point was that Italy had by and far enough manpower to allow the late Roman Republic to conquer its empire. They also grew to use auxiliary units. The the Roman legions were Roman citizens, and Roman citizens lived predominantly in Italy. There were also some in Roman colonies - and certainly exceedingly more in the early Imperial times.

But the army became a standing army from Augustus onwards. They had permanent army camps along the Limes and in other border regions, and also heavily founded colonies in those regions. This wasn't done in the same intensity in the Republican days. In fact, the first colonies outside of Italy were founded during the late Republic. The first colonies outside of Italy were Carthage (the Roman Carthage) and Narbo.

Roman citizenship is also a rather complex thing. Being citizen of colonia didn't necessarily made you a citizen of Rome. If you lived in a real Roman colony - one founded by and for Roman citizens - you were a Roman citizen. If you were in a colony founded by and for Latins, you became citizen of that colony even if you were a Roman citizen (although you would get your citizenship back if you ever returned to Rome).

1 minute ago, direpupy said:

Yes they where only roman citizens but roman citizens did not exclusivly live in italy, and by the point you get to number of 400000 for the roman army, roman citizenship had already been extended to far beyond italy. So your point that including non romans could have greatly increased there army numbers remains false. espesially because with the auxillarys they already included non-citizens.

The point was to compare the size of the Roman soldiers at their peak during the civil wars - which would have been predominantly Italians or emigrated Italians - with the military potential of the Seven Kingdoms. And Italy is much smaller than the Seven Kingdoms.

The Roman Empire could have raised even larger armies if the military culture of Italy had spread to all the conquered territories.

Octavian/Antony vs. Brutus/Cassius are already insane numbers if one takes those numbers seriously.

[Lord Varys]

2 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

I don't have the knowledge or the math for it, but there is a maximum yield of the soil up there, and an accepted minimum caloric intake which dictates how many men could be supported per mile.  If you take an aggressive estimate of 30 people/square mile (which is on the high end of populous Scottish counties in the medieval period, and we'll say that geographically equivalent to the North), that is a population of a 675,000.  If we extrapolate the old "1% of a medieval country's population can be kept under arms" rule, we get to like 4-5 million, tops, for the entire North (which seems about right).  It seems extremely hard for me to believe 10-15% of that was in the Gift at any one time.  More likely, it's a tiny fraction.  Even if it's half that number, it means that, at 325,000, it means that the Gift can only support something like 30-35,000 men, which is probably close to the total strength of the Watch at it's height (see above).  Obviously a lot of extrapolation there.... but now I have to run.  Will update this post later

I don't think you should use numbers such as this.

As I stated above, we have the tiny Crownlands feed not only their many local lords and knights and other nobility but also the 500,000 useless mouths of King's Landing as well as the not insignificant town of Duskendale.

Half of the Crownlands are small islands, bleak and barren Crackclaw Point, and the trees of the Kingswood.

The remaining lands should be much more fertile than the Gifts, to be sure, but you see the point I'm making there.

Whether that's realistic by real world standards isn't really all that relevant.

And note that the peasants from the Gifts only have to feed the Watch. They don't have to produce the resources which allow the men from their midst to join the lord's or king's army in war. They just hand over significant portions of their food to the military order who owns the land they are sitting on. In all the other regions you pay your rent/taxes/whatever and you are obliged to support your lord/king during war, too.

That is different from the normal feudal situation since the volunteers who make up the Watch do not come from the Gifts. They came from everywhere else, basically. 

And in addition to that we still have food coming in from the North and other regions of the Seven Kingdoms.

I mean, just think how the invisible peasants of the depopulated Gifts have stocked the provisions of the Watch Jon inspects in ADwD - with the help of the Northern lords and others, of course). The Watch has enough food to live through quite a few years of winter (before the wildlings come).

If they can have this much food when the land they control is basically empty think about the amount of food they would have had when the Gifts were actually densely populated.

[cpg2016]

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I don't think you should use numbers such as this.

As I stated above, we have the tiny Crownlands feed not only their many local lords and knights and other nobility but also the 500,000 useless mouths of King's Landing as well as the not insignificant town of Duskendale.

Well, the Crownlands are FAR more fertile than the North in general and certainly the Gift.  Second, the Crownlands most certainly do NOT feed Kings Landing, as is made clear in the siege.  The Tyrells besiege the Roseroad, and ONLY the Roseroad, which leaves the vast majority of the Crownlands to feed Kings Landing, and the city immediately begins to have food problems.  It is quite obvious that Kings Landing survives because it imports food from the Riverlands, the Reach, and potentially overseas as well in times of peace.

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

And note that the peasants from the Gifts only have to feed the Watch. They don't have to produce the resources which allow the men from their midst to join the lord's or king's army in war. They just hand over significant portions of their food to the military order who owns the land they are sitting on. In all the other regions you pay your rent/taxes/whatever and you are obliged to support your lord/king during war, too.

It is HIGHLY unlikely that the peasants pay any more of their goods to the Watch than a normal peasant does to his Lord.  Nobles in the South will be interested in taxing their peasantry to essentially the point of self-sufficiency; any excess wealth (in the form of foodstuffs) is going to be vacuumed up in taxes, which is why the peasants are bound to the land and a few bad harvests causes widespread famines and suffering; they aren't allowed to amass wealth.  So my guess is that the peasants in the South actually give substantially more to their lieges, since they almost certainly produce more food per acre.  I agree that the Watch retains more of these taxes-in-kind, since they don't have to pass them up, but that isn't the same.

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I mean, just think how the invisible peasants of the depopulated Gifts have stocked the provisions of the Watch Jon inspects in ADwD - with the help of the Northern lords and others, of course). The Watch has enough food to live through quite a few years of winter (before the wildlings come).

The Watch, right now, has to feed 1,000 people.  Or rather, that is how they stockpiled food.  If you take that historical 85/15 ratio (and again, that is generous, given how poor agriculture is noted to be in the North), that means the Watch only needs about 6,700 peasants to support it's current operations.  Even I'm willing to agree that is low, so let's call it 15,000.  That is 1 person for every 30 (!!) square miles.  I don't even know what I'm arguing for, anymore, but I think my point is that this is an absurdly low population density, and the Watch can support more, though I doubt there were ever 50,000 people in the Watch or anything like that.

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

If they can have this much food when the land they control is basically empty think about the amount of food they would have had when the Gifts were actually densely populated.

Oh, now I remember what we were arguing.  Well, how about this.  The Vale can raise, what?  50,000 men at full capacity?  Something like that, I think is semi-canon and makes sense in terms of the story?  The Vale of Arryn alone is far bigger, and is notably FAR more fertile than the Gift, so how does it make any sense that the Watch was able to raise so many men?  Assuming a reasonably dense population, and the fact that the Watch retains more wealth as a direct overlord than most vassal nobles (where taxes are progressive siphoned off for non-military purposes) and engages in far less conspicuous consumption, and add to that the wealth that is presumably brought or donated to the Watch, plus the little that is captured from the wildlings, and I can see that the Watch might punch well beyond it's theoretical weight.  But hypothesizing vast armies patrolling the Wall is ridiculous.  We have neither a Watsonian or Doylist reason to suspect that the Night's Watch was appreciably under-strength at the time of Aegon's Conquest - maybe by a couple thousand men or something relatively minimal.  That is our one data point, so what do you have to contradict it?  I will agree that in the distant past , like right after the Long Night, there may have been far more Sworn Brothers, but after the Others had faded to legend and myth?  The last several thousand years?  We only have that one piece of info, and I'll stick by it.

[cpg2016]

4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The original point was that Italy had by and far enough manpower to allow the late Roman Republic to conquer its empire. They also grew to use auxiliary units. The the Roman legions were Roman citizens, and Roman citizens lived predominantly in Italy. There were also some in Roman colonies - and certainly exceedingly more in the early Imperial times.

Well this is an interesting question.  There is nothing to suggest that Italy was more densely populated than many other regions of the Mediterranean.  The Romans themselves had implemented a system which allowed for mass conscription, and indeed encouraged the urban poor to enlist, which the Diadochi and other Greek kingdoms could not/would not do.

4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But the army became a standing army from Augustus onwards. They had permanent army camps along the Limes and in other border regions, and also heavily founded colonies in those regions. This wasn't done in the same intensity in the Republican days. In fact, the first colonies outside of Italy were founded during the late Republic. The first colonies outside of Italy were Carthage (the Roman Carthage) and Narbo.

I don't know if this was your point, but the obvious answer here is twofold.  One, less of Italia itself was "Roman" in the Early and Middle Republic, so settling veterans within Italy would have been more politically acceptable.  Second, and far more profound, is that until Marius there was no need to settle veterans, since there was a landholding requirement for service.  It's only after the alienation of most veterans from the land in the late Second Century BC's extended war abroad, and the subsequent Marian reforms allowing for the urban poor to enlist, that settlement of veterans becomes an hot button issue.  So I'm not sure what you're argument is, but there are plenty of reasons why the mid-Republic didn't need to settle massive numbers of veterans.

It is also well worth pointing out that in no sense were "most" soldiers in the army Roman citizens at ANY point up until and including the Civil Wars.  Half the reason for the Social War was that Italians were serving in the legions or in the auxilia alongside Romans in conquering the empire of the Late Republic, and not reaping the same rewards.  During the Civil Wars, huge portions of both Pompey and Antony's troops were local levies.  Pompey's army at Pharsalus was almost entirely recruited from the provinces, or levied from client kings, so it's disingenuous to state that his armies were "predominantly Roman".  Certainly many of them were.  Perhaps even a majority.  But you are making it sound as if this is a massive preponderance in favor of Italian Romans or emigres.  Antony is no different; his power base was Egypt and Egypt and the Near East supplied huge portions of his forces.  Some of them were obviously veteran Roman legions stationed in the area, but by no means all or even most.

4 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The Roman Empire could have raised even larger armies if the military culture of Italy had spread to all the conquered territories.

Octavian/Antony vs. Brutus/Cassius are already insane numbers if one takes those numbers seriously.

 

What the Roman Empire could raise and what they could sustain are two vastly different questions  As you say, there may have been as many as 400,000 men at Phillippi (though at least half would have been 

 

[Free Northman Reborn]

I just need to say I love all these extrapolations on how the Gift can feed so many people. It is a refreshing change in the normal position that the North is a half starved wasteland. If the Gift can do what is being suggested now, then the North as a whole must be vastly more populated than previously suspected.

As for the Watch, for me it is an issue of need. 30k men, of which 10k are warriors, sitting on a virtually impregnable Wall will be twiddling their thumbs for thousands of years. The Stewards and Builders will be busy, but 10k fighting men can only be justified if there were repeated major threats orginating from the Lands Beyond the Wall.  A hundred thousand men would be mind bogglingly unnecessary. A needless expense year on year, for millenia on end.

[direpupy]

8 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Well, technically, they also raised most of the 100,000 men they lost at Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae in Italy as well, and these were all occuring within the same short time period, so my point was more to the fact that the Italian population could support an armed forces well in excess of 8 legions at once if the Senate desired it.

Yes that is true but that did include non-roman citizens and after cannae even freed slaves because they did not have enough people with citizenship left. But your point is valid.

8 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

I'm actually wrong on the low side.  Castle Black once housed 5,000 fighting men, according to AGOT Ch. 19, which means 15,000 men for that castle alone by our given breakdown.  We have no idea how that compares relative to the size of the whole Watch, but even assuming current ratios, that means Castle Black was housing approximately half the fighting strength of the Watch.

Yes that is true it does say 5000 fighting men but taking the roman legions as an example again, the legionaries also had other tasks the building of roads forts an bridges was done by the fighting men of the legion. We also have a medieval example of this in the form of the Anglo-Saxon Fyrd who where not just fighting men but where also responsible for the building and maintenance of forts and roads. So 5000 men being able to fight does not mean they where all rangers. That's also the thing thing about that statement in AGOT it say's fighting men not rangers, so the men that are able to fight regardless of weather they are ranger, builders or stewards.

8 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

 

The legions stationed in Britannia during the Pax Romana were the II Augusta, XX Valeria, and VI Victrix.  None of those legionary encampments were stationed at/along Hadrian's Wall, and even if you assume that there were significant vexellations guarding it, one cannot reasonably conclude that the main legionary forces were in any position to come to the aid of an immediate attack.  Indeed, Roman fortifications all along the limites were more about defense-in-depth than preventing crossings.  I'd be highly interested to know where you're sourcing those numbers.

 

 From the Notitia Dignitatum it is a list of offices and the troops they have under there command, it is however of the late empire somewhere around 390 AD. the numbers are the troops under the Dux Britanniarum who was responsible for the defense of Northern Britain.

The two legions you mention where the troops stationed in Britain in they early empire and where like all other legions heavenly reformed by Emperor Diocletian during his reign from 284 AD to 305 AD. The troops i am talking about in my numbers are as said the late Roman army where units where much smaller and spread out, the Dux Britanniarum had 83 units under his command of which at least 16 are identified as cohorts and one as a legion (whose strength was 1000 as of the reforms) the rest being numeri and alae.

[direpupy]

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Sure, they were also settled in colonies. But that is different from the mass settlement of thousands of veterans in the wake of the civil wars. And especially in the west transalpine Gaul only was available as a place to found colonies since Caesar.

And Greece and Spain before that there where extensive colonies before Caesar and of veterans outside Italy, then there are the conquered city's that where given citizenship these people where not veterans hell they where not even Italian.

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But the army became a standing army from Augustus onwards. They had permanent army camps along the Limes and in other border regions, and also heavily founded colonies in those regions. This wasn't done in the same intensity in the Republican days. In fact, the first colonies outside of Italy were founded during the late Republic. The first colonies outside of Italy were Carthage (the Roman Carthage) and Narbo.

That is not true at all the standing army came with Gaius Marius and his reforms who died 23 years before Augustus was born. And the first roman province outside Italy was Transalpine Gaul which was created because of the founding of the Colonia Narbo martius a settlement of veterans outside of Italy. This is long before they conquer Carthage.

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The original point was that Italy had by and far enough manpower to allow the late Roman Republic to conquer its empire. They also grew to use auxiliary units. The the Roman legions were Roman citizens, and Roman citizens lived predominantly in Italy. There were also some in Roman colonies - and certainly exceedingly more in the early Imperial times.

No from the late republic about half of the roman citizens lived outside Italy and they certainly did not have the ability to raise there entire force from Italy.

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Roman citizenship is also a rather complex thing. Being citizen of colonia didn't necessarily made you a citizen of Rome. If you lived in a real Roman colony - one founded by and for Roman citizens - you were a Roman citizen. If you were in a colony founded by and for Latins, you became citizen of that colony even if you were a Roman citizen (although you would get your citizenship back if you ever returned to Rome).

Complex or not the point that the legions where not exclusively raised in Italy still stands.

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The point was to compare the size of the Roman soldiers at their peak during the civil wars - which would have been predominantly Italians or emigrated Italians - with the military potential of the Seven Kingdoms. And Italy is much smaller than the Seven Kingdoms.

At there peak most roman citizens where no longer of Italian origin by the time you get to the 400000 number Italians are a minority among the citizens, actually from Trajan onward even the Emperors were no longer of Italian origin.

9 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The Roman Empire could have raised even larger armies if the military culture of Italy had spread to all the conquered territories.

Octavian/Antony vs. Brutus/Cassius are already insane numbers if one takes those numbers seriously.

No they could not because they already raised from all there conquered territories, the legion I Italica was so named because it was they only one still raised in Italy during the early empire.

9 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Octavian/Antony vs. Brutus/Cassius are already insane numbers if one takes those numbers seriously.

And those numbers where not created solely from Italians most of these came from the provinces of the republic.

[Lord Varys]

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Well, the Crownlands are FAR more fertile than the North in general and certainly the Gift. 

Still, large regions of the Crownlands are obviously not used predominantly as farmland.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Second, the Crownlands most certainly do NOT feed Kings Landing, as is made clear in the siege.  The Tyrells besiege the Roseroad, and ONLY the Roseroad, which leaves the vast majority of the Crownlands to feed Kings Landing, and the city immediately begins to have food problems.  It is quite obvious that Kings Landing survives because it imports food from the Riverlands, the Reach, and potentially overseas as well in times of peace.

There is truth to that (although we don't know whether a government expecting a siege could have taken measures to break the city dependency of food imports from outside), but the comparison to the Wall still stands in the sense that Watch never only lived off the Gifts. They always received generous support from the Hundred/Seven Kingdoms.

Now, it would have been a logistical nightmare to get some carts of lemons and oranges from Dorne to the Wall - but considering that Dornishmen always joined the Watch one also assumes they always sent them support.

And once the First Men got around to build themselves some navies - which the Gulltowners, Stormlanders, Riverlanders, Hightowers and Redwynes clearly would have done since the early days - they could always send entire fleets full of food up to Eastwatch.

This kind of scenario isn't less convincing than the fact that the Reach and the Riverlands also support KL.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

It is HIGHLY unlikely that the peasants pay any more of their goods to the Watch than a normal peasant does to his Lord.

It actually isn't. Again, the average peasant would owe his lord rent/taxes for the lands he holds - as well as for other privileges he might possess - in addition to the duty to support the lord in war with additional things (like sending men to fight in the lord's host, providing the lord's army with animals and food, etc.).

For the Watch the latter doesn't seem to be the case. Nobody calls upon the denizens of the Gifts to come to Castle Black and fight alongside the men of the Watch (Jon invites the people from Mole's Town to come and seek shelter at the Watch, and some volunteer, but they are not obliged to do either).

In that sense it might be possible that the smallfolk in the Gifts had to pay more rent/taxes in kind than the other peasants did.

And again - keep in mind the possibility that a strong Watch who had stewards to spare could have actually farms on their land which they tended themselves. If the Watch was so strong at one point that a portion of their men could become farmers themselves they would have done so, just as many a nobleman claimed the most fertile land for himself, having his people work it rather than giving it away to peasants who would only pay him fixed rents.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Nobles in the South will be interested in taxing their peasantry to essentially the point of self-sufficiency; any excess wealth (in the form of foodstuffs) is going to be vacuumed up in taxes, which is why the peasants are bound to the land and a few bad harvests causes widespread famines and suffering; they aren't allowed to amass wealth.  So my guess is that the peasants in the South actually give substantially more to their lieges, since they almost certainly produce more food per acre.  I agree that the Watch retains more of these taxes-in-kind, since they don't have to pass them up, but that isn't the same.

We actually don't know very much about the economy there. For one, we have the whole winter thing which everybody needs to prepare for (which essentially completely destroys any attempt to compare the thing to the real middle ages - nobody in the real middle ages had to prepare for winters who could last at least up to six years). In addition, we have no idea how many rents and taxes were paid in coin instead of in kind. One expect that the former was more common in more developed regions south of the Neck (and in the Manderly lands close to White Harbor, too, of course).

We also know that there is a lively economy involving food. Littlefinger has the Graftons store their food so that they can sell it at a higher price later on, the Tyrells are rich because their lands are so damned fertile, etc. In that sense, the whole subsistence thing would be common in the North and some of the other bleaker places (the Fingers, say).

Jon actually thing coin from the Iron Bank will allow him to guy food on the market in the Vale - which would only make sense if you actually can rather easily buy food in that economy.

How this fits with the lords pretty much taking all of the food from their peasants, keeping them under the thumb I really don't know. There seem to be wealthier peasants in the Riverlands and the Reach (and presumably in the West, too).

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

The Watch, right now, has to feed 1,000 people.  Or rather, that is how they stockpiled food.  If you take that historical 85/15 ratio (and again, that is generous, given how poor agriculture is noted to be in the North), that means the Watch only needs about 6,700 peasants to support it's current operations.  Even I'm willing to agree that is low, so let's call it 15,000.  That is 1 person for every 30 (!!) square miles.  I don't even know what I'm arguing for, anymore, but I think my point is that this is an absurdly low population density, and the Watch can support more, though I doubt there were ever 50,000 people in the Watch or anything like that.

We have reason to believe that there were much more people living in the Gift(s) once. As I said above repeatedly, aside from the fertility issues, Brandon's Gift would have been the best place for peasants to live throughout most of the history of the Seven Kingdoms. The Watch takes no part, which means an army only crossed those lands when a wildling king had crossed the Realm or when the kings of men were sending forces to deal with a treasonous Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.

No Bolton, Stark, Umber, Glover, etc. would have ever dared invade the Gift, stealing the crops there, mistreating the peasants there, etc.

In that sense, the population of the Gift could grown slowly but steadily overtime until it reached a very high number, supporting an equally high number of black brothers.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Oh, now I remember what we were arguing.  Well, how about this.  The Vale can raise, what?  50,000 men at full capacity?  Something like that, I think is semi-canon and makes sense in terms of the story?  The Vale of Arryn alone is far bigger, and is notably FAR more fertile than the Gift, so how does it make any sense that the Watch was able to raise so many men?  Assuming a reasonably dense population, and the fact that the Watch retains more wealth as a direct overlord than most vassal nobles (where taxes are progressive siphoned off for non-military purposes) and engages in far less conspicuous consumption, and add to that the wealth that is presumably brought or donated to the Watch, plus the little that is captured from the wildlings, and I can see that the Watch might punch well beyond it's theoretical weight.  But hypothesizing vast armies patrolling the Wall is ridiculous.  We have neither a Watsonian or Doylist reason to suspect that the Night's Watch was appreciably under-strength at the time of Aegon's Conquest - maybe by a couple thousand men or something relatively minimal.  That is our one data point, so what do you have to contradict it?  I will agree that in the distant past , like right after the Long Night, there may have been far more Sworn Brothers, but after the Others had faded to legend and myth?  The last several thousand years?  We only have that one piece of info, and I'll stick by it.

Well, I'd like to assume that the decline began much earlier so that we can make sense of the whole scenario. I mean, the belief in the Others must have gradually eroded. People didn't wake up one day and collectively agreed that the Others were nonsense. When that came, people would have gradually become less eager to join the Watch - although it may have still been a good career choice for poorer and unsavory people like bastards, since one can rise very high there simply by merit.

While the belief in the Others declined, the belief that joining the Watch was a noble calling isn't still completely gone to this day. Even many noblemen still remember their duty to support the Watch, independently of the efforts of some Targaryen kings to do so, and that leads them to support them till this day.

I assume that the idea to allow/offer criminals to join the Watch is an idea of the lords and kings to continue their duty to the Watch. They can't force anyone to take the black, but they can sweeten the deal to men they would execute, main, imprison, or otherwise punish for their crimes.

With that, the Watch would also fall more in disrepute overtime, since many of the idealistic men joining the Watch wouldn't want to serve alongside an ever more growing number of criminals.

The idea that the Watch was as strong as they were in their best times during Aegon's Conquest simply doesn't make a lot of sense in light of the time that passed. The effects of the slow decline must have set in much earlier. I mean, it is already insane to believe that people constantly warring against each other would keep such an institution alive for millennia, but it is even more insane to assume that the belief in the Others survived for all that time in combination with the belief that the Watch was a noble calling.

And it is not that the belief that it was a place of criminals and thugs is all that common in the days of the series. The Starks still treat the black brothers with a lot of respect, and there is obviously no talk about the level they have sunken to in Winterfell.

Else Jon would have never developed the delusions and misconceptions he has about the Watch.

8 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I just need to say I love all these extrapolations on how the Gift can feed so many people. It is a refreshing change in the normal position that the North is a half starved wasteland. If the Gift can do what is being suggested now, then the North as a whole must be vastly more populated than previously suspected.

The North isn't a geographical unity. There would be more fertile and less fertile reaches of the North. Obviously the Gifts were rather fertile than other regions. The fact that they once were much more densely populated doesn't mean that this is also true for the North.

We have no reason to believe that the empty Barrowlands Robert and Ned are riding through in AGoT were once more densely populated, right? But we do have such reasons for the Gifts.

8 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

As for the Watch, for me it is an issue of need. 30k men, of which 10k are warriors, sitting on a virtually impregnable Wall will be twiddling their thumbs for thousands of years. The Stewards and Builders will be busy, but 10k fighting men can only be justified if there were repeated major threats orginating from the Lands Beyond the Wall.  A hundred thousand men would be mind bogglingly unnecessary. A needless expense year on year, for millenia on end.

The rangers are not only warriors. They also do a lot of ranging. Exploring the forests, possibly doing some hunting, etc. And it is never said that the rangers were always a third of the Watch. Could very well be that the stewards and builders greatly outnumbered them for most of the time. One assumes that builders were the largest order in the Watch for centuries - which the Watch was build ever higher in every generation. You do need a lot of workers to pull that off

But for the hundredth time - technically all black brothers are fighters. The rangers are just the elite. This is a military order where every men is trained and expected to fight.

[cpg2016]

On 11/28/2017 at 0:21 AM, Free Northman Reborn said:

I just need to say I love all these extrapolations on how the Gift can feed so many people. It is a refreshing change in the normal position that the North is a half starved wasteland. If the Gift can do what is being suggested now, then the North as a whole must be vastly more populated than previously suspected.

I think the argument would be that Winter in the North is almost an extinction-level event.  Men go out into the snow to die, so women and kids can live?  The North is thinly populated because every decade or so (I assume), a statistically significant percentage of the population is effectively forced to commit ritual suicide, which keeps the population from growing.

And in the South, the peasants are made to live at essentially subsistence level most of the time, it seems, and Winter hits them too

[cpg2016]

On 11/28/2017 at 9:15 AM, Lord Varys said:

The idea that the Watch was as strong as they were in their best times during Aegon's Conquest simply doesn't make a lot of sense in light of the time that passed. The effects of the slow decline must have set in much earlier. I mean, it is already insane to believe that people constantly warring against each other would keep such an institution alive for millennia, but it is even more insane to assume that the belief in the Others survived for all that time in combination with the belief that the Watch was a noble calling.

I had a long, wonderful post that got eaten, but I am retyping the answer to this section in particular because I think it's illustrative of my theory in general.

The strength of the Watch has literally nothing to do with belief in the Others, and hasn't for thousands of years (since we're pretty sure that they had become legendary by the time of the Andal arrival).  Maybe in the very earliest days, but not later.  The Watch as an institution remained strong because it was a dumping ground for all the knights and nobles and men-at-arms that were captured in war and not ransomed; like today, they got the choice between the headsman and the Wall.  This meant, since warfare was seemingly endemic between the Seven Kingdoms, that there was a constant stream of nobles and knights "choosing" to serve on the Wall with some semblance of honor, instead of choosing execution.  Which means that when the next round of warfare ended, the captured men from that war could look at the Night's Watch and see an institution in which their social and cultural values were being upheld; there was no dishonor in going to serve with a bunch of other nobles and knights and even former kings (see: Conquest of Dorne, Nymeria's)!  This pattern kept itself up for thousands of years.  Losers in war go to the Wall, establishing a culture where the chivalric values of the Seven Kingdoms were being upheld by the highborn members of the Watch.  You can't underestimate the importance of finding people with similar upbringing and values as a carrot to service, much the way immigrants tend to cluster in enclaves of people from their place of origin in our world.  Time goes by, another war happens between some kingdoms, rinse and repeat.  As long as there is a relatively steady influx of this happening every so often, there is no reason for service on the Wall to lose it's cachet; it's more honorable to the family name than going bandit/sellsword, and the ability to rise high on merit, or at least serve with a bunch of likeminded nobles (many of whom you probably just fought alongside), is a powerful recruiting drive.

So what one political paradigm shift do we know of that changes all this?  Aegon's Conquest.  All of a sudden, there is less fighting, because the Targaryens have forged a single political entity.  And what's more, the Targaryens seems to be more extreme in their handling of rebellious vassals (either mass pardons, a la Aegon, or mass incineration a la Rhaenyra or Aegon II), most likely because their draconic power is utterly ucontested, and allows them to be merciful or harsh in a way that traditional nobles can't be.  So now, in the space of a few years, the flow of highborn prisoners and recruits to the Wall suddenly cuts off.  Now the institution has little social standing, because a noble serving there is essentially doing so without any Brothers of his own social standing (which explicitly still matters on the Wall, meritocracy be damned).  So fewer do.  Which means now, on those rare occasions when nobles might choose the Wall over the axe, the Wall looks less appealing.  Because now manpower is being maintained from literal criminals, not just losers in war; rapists and murderers and thieves.  Which starts a death spiral which gets out of control, really really quickly, because the Watch can't replace it's own numbers through procreation.  In the space of a couple generations, the Night's Watch loses all it's cachet as an honorable way to spend out your days, and becomes a hive of scum and villainy (lol).  And this spirals and spirals until the only people who esteem the Watch are those directly benefitting from it, Northerners who are protected from wildling raids (and who presumably have a slightly more vivid cultural recollection of the Others than the Andal South).  We don't see one single noble voluntarily join the Watch who isn't from a First Man House.

So yeah.  Longwinded.  But the operative point is that the Seven Kingdoms existed in a state of cultural, demographic, technological, economic, and political stasis or stagnation, for thousands of years, prior to the coming of the Targaryens.  Far from assuming the Watch was exempt from this, we should assume that it also reflected that, without other knowledge or facts.  We know of one major paradigm shift in Westeros, and that's the Conquest.  That also happens to mark a turning point in our knowledge of the Night's Watch.  We know that before, it was pretty well staffed, with at least ten times the numbers of the today.  We know that between 50-100 years (probably about 75) after Aegon's Conquest, the Watch is in such dire straits that it needs to have it's lands doubled in order to survive (Jaehaerys ascends the throne in 48 AC, and the Great Council, in which the Starks vote against him in part because of being forced to give up the New Gift, is in 101).  That is an incredibly precipitous decline and the ONLY event which could possibly have caused it is Aegon's Landing.

[Lord Varys]

13 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

I think the argument would be that Winter in the North is almost an extinction-level event.  Men go out into the snow to die, so women and kids can live?  The North is thinly populated because every decade or so (I assume), a statistically significant percentage of the population is effectively forced to commit ritual suicide, which keeps the population from growing.

The effect of winter cannot be stressed enough, not just in the North but everywhere in Westeros. Unfortunately, we don't have any statistics on the length and severeness of winters. We have two six-year-winters in the last two centuries, one beginning during the Dance, the other after the end of King Maekar's long summer.

Even if such devastating winters happened only 1-2 times a century (with a tendency to increase in severity and frequency since the Doom and the death of the last dragon) the effect cannot be overestimated.

Once people no longer have stored food - nor the ability the get food from somewhere else - they will starve and die. That way, tens of thousands of people could die in winter, and one assumes that is most severe in the North and beyond the Wall.

The Watch has the advantage that everybody in the Seven Kingdoms supports them. So it is not that unlikely that the peasants in the Gift would have had a much better chance to survive a severe winter than, say, some peasants from remote regions like Cape Kraken, the Stony Shore, or Sea Dragon Point. Because they could ask the Watch for help - who would actually have the ability to ask the kings in the south for help and support.

The Starks and the lords and smallfolk in the North have neither the right nor the ability to force the people in the south to help them during a dire winter. At least not in the days before the Conquest. And even afterwards, they would have to petition or plea the Iron Throne for help.

While the people still believed in the mission of the Watch and honored the black brothers the Gardeners, Hightowers, Lannisters, Arryns, Durrandons, and Dornish would have been willing to support them with food in the fifth or sixth year of winter - assuming they had food left to spare.

In general, there is no reason to believe the population of Westeros is stable in any meaningful sense. There are not only the long winters but also plagues like the Great Spring Sickness - which may have been as devastating as a long winter for KL and Oldtown. If three quarters of the population are gone they won't return overnight.

This is part of the reason why it is completely silly to project the numbers from the main series back to the Conquest or the Dance or the Blackfyre Rebellions. For instance, the population of Westeros obviously differs remarkably in THK and TSS due to the Great Spring Sickness. This would also have affected the military potential of the entire continent, putting Dorne and the Vale in much stronger position than anyone else because they were not affected by the plague.

But in the North the winter must have really have teeth. One really bad winter could kill half the peasants or more.

13 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

And in the South, the peasants are made to live at essentially subsistence level most of the time, it seems, and Winter hits them too

In the sense that the people have to have provisions for very long winters subsistence would only work as a concept there if it includes production to live through years long winters. And in addition, we do know that there is a large-scale market and an entire economy involving food (in the Vale, in the Reach, etc.). That suggests that the people there - and in the Riverlands and the West as well - do produce more than enough food to be able to sell it not only to people in the regions but also to export in to other kingdoms and even Essos (just as the Flatlands and other regions in Essos are more than fertile enough to allow a large food trade with Westeros and other regions).

We also know that winters usually grow milder down in the south. The Riverlands and even the KL region see snow during winter, but we don't know if the snow there (and at the bottom of the Vale) has to be continuous throughout the season.

Around Highgarden snow is a rare thing, and it shouldn't be much different in the Rainwood and adjacent regions. If the North can have its summer snows - which should also greatly reduce the fertility up there; if the summer snows hit a couple of fields at the wrong time an entire harvest might be destroyed - then certain regions in the south may have their 'winter thaws' during which the snow melts and the weather grows warmer and more pleasant for some time. Just as it did during the False Spring - which would have been such a period of mild not in a few limited regions but the entire continent.

In Oldtown and Dorne it snows 'almost never'.

In our winter it will snow and freeze everywhere, of course, anything else would be a huge letdown, but there is a pretty good chance that the Dornishmen and the people in the southern Reach actually can plant and harvest certain crops throughout winter. And in milder, shorter winters there might be a chance for people in the northern Reach, West, or event the Riverlands to do something similar.

Such a continuous - yet reduced - food production - if it takes place - could have enabled the Targaryens to ensure that all their subjects are fed by distributing food across all the Realm when entire regions were threatened by starvation.

Prior to the Conquest such things would have been much more difficult. The Gardeners or Hightower would have seen little reason to ship food to the North or even the Riverlands, say, unless they were properly paid for their efforts.

[Free Northman Reborn]

59 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The effect of winter cannot be stressed enough, not just in the North but everywhere in Westeros. Unfortunately, we don't have any statistics on the length and severeness of winters. We have two six-year-winters in the last two centuries, one beginning during the Dance, the other after the end of King Maekar's long summer.

Even if such devastating winters happened only 1-2 times a century (with a tendency to increase in severity and frequency since the Doom and the death of the last dragon) the effect cannot be overestimated.

Once people no longer have stored food - nor the ability the get food from somewhere else - they will starve and die. That way, tens of thousands of people could die in winter, and one assumes that is most severe in the North and beyond the Wall.

The Watch has the advantage that everybody in the Seven Kingdoms supports them. So it is not that unlikely that the peasants in the Gift would have had a much better chance to survive a severe winter than, say, some peasants from remote regions like Cape Kraken, the Stony Shore, or Sea Dragon Point. Because they could ask the Watch for help - who would actually have the ability to ask the kings in the south for help and support.

The Starks and the lords and smallfolk in the North have neither the right nor the ability to force the people in the south to help them during a dire winter. At least not in the days before the Conquest. And even afterwards, they would have to petition or plea the Iron Throne for help.

While the people still believed in the mission of the Watch and honored the black brothers the Gardeners, Hightowers, Lannisters, Arryns, Durrandons, and Dornish would have been willing to support them with food in the fifth or sixth year of winter - assuming they had food left to spare.

In general, there is no reason to believe the population of Westeros is stable in any meaningful sense. There are not only the long winters but also plagues like the Great Spring Sickness - which may have been as devastating as a long winter for KL and Oldtown. If three quarters of the population are gone they won't return overnight.

This is part of the reason why it is completely silly to project the numbers from the main series back to the Conquest or the Dance or the Blackfyre Rebellions. For instance, the population of Westeros obviously differs remarkably in THK and TSS due to the Great Spring Sickness. This would also have affected the military potential of the entire continent, putting Dorne and the Vale in much stronger position than anyone else because they were not affected by the plague.

But in the North the winter must have really have teeth. One really bad winter could kill half the peasants or more.

In the sense that the people have to have provisions for very long winters subsistence would only work as a concept there if it includes production to live through years long winters. And in addition, we do know that there is a large-scale market and an entire economy involving food (in the Vale, in the Reach, etc.). That suggests that the people there - and in the Riverlands and the West as well - do produce more than enough food to be able to sell it not only to people in the regions but also to export in to other kingdoms and even Essos (just as the Flatlands and other regions in Essos are more than fertile enough to allow a large food trade with Westeros and other regions).

We also know that winters usually grow milder down in the south. The Riverlands and even the KL region see snow during winter, but we don't know if the snow there (and at the bottom of the Vale) has to be continuous throughout the season.

Around Highgarden snow is a rare thing, and it shouldn't be much different in the Rainwood and adjacent regions. If the North can have its summer snows - which should also greatly reduce the fertility up there; if the summer snows hit a couple of fields at the wrong time an entire harvest might be destroyed - then certain regions in the south may have their 'winter thaws' during which the snow melts and the weather grows warmer and more pleasant for some time. Just as it did during the False Spring - which would have been such a period of mild not in a few limited regions but the entire continent.

In Oldtown and Dorne it snows 'almost never'.

In our winter it will snow and freeze everywhere, of course, anything else would be a huge letdown, but there is a pretty good chance that the Dornishmen and the people in the southern Reach actually can plant and harvest certain crops throughout winter. And in milder, shorter winters there might be a chance for people in the northern Reach, West, or event the Riverlands to do something similar.

Such a continuous - yet reduced - food production - if it takes place - could have enabled the Targaryens to ensure that all their subjects are fed by distributing food across all the Realm when entire regions were threatened by starvation.

Prior to the Conquest such things would have been much more difficult. The Gardeners or Hightower would have seen little reason to ship food to the North or even the Riverlands, say, unless they were properly paid for their efforts.

So much wrong here. You can't have it both ways. You can't suggest that Winter kills off half the North's population (or whatever portion you wish to claim), and then suggest that the Watch somehow gets through it without similar problems. Other than their primary source of food, which is the Gift, the Watch is dependent on what the lords give to them, and as we learn from Bowen Marsh, the lords are generous when their harvests are bountiful. Meaning they already have filled their own stores and have plenty to spare.

And since the Watch lives primarily from the produce of the Gift - which is in the coldest part of the North - the produce of their lands cannot be dramatically different from the rest of the North (unless it is dramatically worse, than for example the Manderly or other more fertile, warmer areas).

In any case, we already know how much food the North produces and stores. I have proven it before, based on the facts provided in the books.

The normal rule is to store a fifth (20%) of each harvest, for Winter. We learn that from Bran's chapter in Winterfell, after Robb has left. Meaning they only ever use four fifths (80%) of a harvest for all the other stuff, such as feeding the population in Summer, paying taxes, providing goods for trade and economic activity and feed armies required for war.

Now, consider that because Summer lasts for years on end, there will be multiple harvests per year. Let's make it only two harvests per year, since we have replaced normal winter with an ongoing summer, giving us a second harvest season in each year. (But for all we know there are 3 harvests a year even. Let's stick with two, though).

So that's two times 20% = 40% of a full harvest that is stored for Winter each year. While still having enough left over to fuel all the other normal activities of summer, like trade, etc.

So, for each year of Summer, they can store 40% of a full harvest. So let's say Winter and Summer are equally long. That means you have 40% of a full harvest stored for each year of Winter. Except, we have forgotten about the last harvest, of course, which will be fully stored, as they know Winter is about to break. So if there were two years of Summer, that's 3 harvests x 20% of each harvest =60% of full harvest, plus 100% of the last harvest stored. Which gives you 1.6 harvests stored for an expected two years of Winter.

Since they only used 80% of each harvest during Summer (storing 20%, remember) we know that they need less than 80% of a harvest to feed them for a year. In fact, if they go on Winter rations, and use all the available food just for feeding the population, rather than all the other acitvities the 80% previously covered, they would likely need substantially less than 80%. Probably more like 50%. Meaning 1.6 harvests would give them enough for more than 3 years of Winter.

So as we can see, if Summer and Winter are more or less equally long, the North does just fine. And that's without any hunting or fishing or the like during Winter itself. It is only when Winter is dramatically longer than the preceding Summer, that they have a problem. But arguably so would all of Westeros, just to a lesser degree.

As for the Watch, they would face the same problems as the rest of the North.

EDIT

In fact, if you consider that in the real world there is one harvest per year, meaning one harvest season out of every four seasons (spring, summer, winter and autumn), we have actually forgotten to include harvests brought in during Westerosi Spring and Autumn (which we know take place, as these seasons can sometimes span quite a long time). Meaning there could be two or even more additional harvests not included above, which further adds to the stores built up for Winter.

[Lord Varys]

14 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

I had a long, wonderful post that got eaten, but I am retyping the answer to this section in particular because I think it's illustrative of my theory in general.

I don't think your idea holds much water. For one, we would have to assume that the nobility of the older days was more extreme than dealing with their enemies than the Targaryens were. And there is actually no reason to assume they were. Sure, in the very ancient days things would have been much more savage, etc. but those are a thing of the past.

Nobles are a ransomed. That's the way it is done. Common soldiers are either killed in battle or later pardoned/sent back home. They are not seen as people who have their own political agency. They do what they are told. In that sense, they wouldn't be punished all that severe.

The sole exception could see would be commoners who become outlaws and/or leaders of their own rebel movement (like some commoners due during the Faith Militant Uprising). Such people were most likely punished very harshly because they were threatening the social order.

I'm not saying that some people were convinced to join the Watch in the wake of some of the many wars that were fought throughout the millennia - just that we actually have essentially no textual evidence that this was the case. The sole meaningful example is Nymeria and the kings she captured - and that was part of her conquest, a way to rid herself of men she could not allow to remain in Dorne, less they end up raising again as soon as she looks the other way.

When the Lannisters, Gardeners, Durrandons, Arryns, River kings, etc. war with each other, there is no indication that any kings or lords participating in those wars were sent to the Wall.

Not even during the history of the Stark conquest of the North are any such examples - which is pretty odd, considering that the Watch would have been quite an effective and obvious way for the Starks to rid themselves of some of the more quarrelsome Boltons.

In that sense I still think that volunteers were the backbone of the Watch for most of its existence. Eventually things began to shift from honest volunteers to criminals and outlaws who were effectively forced to go there. The idea that men who were honorably defeated and bent the knee, etc. were giving this choice is not all that likely. They would have been treated much better.

14 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

We don't see one single noble voluntarily join the Watch who isn't from a First Man House.

We have Ser Denys Mallister, the commander of the Shadow Tower. A casual glance also indicates that Othell Yarwyck (Westerlands), Eddison Tollett (Vale), and Thoren Smallwood (Riverlands) joined the Watch of their own free will. Jarman Buckwell (Crownlands), too, possibly, the same with Ser Ottyn Wythers (Reach).

You are right that there are no noble recruits aside from Samwell Tarly showing up during the series, but this is hardly surprising considering the state the Watch is in.

And there is no longer any difference between First Men and Andal houses. The houses with First Men origins in the south are just as Andal as those houses that were founded by Andals and continue to bear Andal names. The Gardeners, Hightowers, Lannisters, Durrandons, etc. adopted Andal culture completely, and may have intermarried more with Andals than some of their subjects in remote and isolated corners of their kingdoms did - the common people would have only mingled where Andal settlers were actually taking possession of the land.

In that sense, the decision of Waymar Royce to join the Watch isn't something one would attribute to the First Men origins of the Royces - just as it is ridiculous to assume that the First Men roots of the Tarlys compelled Randyll to send Samwell to the Wall instead of making him a maester or septon.

14 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

We know of one major paradigm shift in Westeros, and that's the Conquest. 

That is not true, either. We have the coming of the Andals as another such shift, and also the formation of the final Seven Kingdoms which followed the Andal conquest.

The major cultural shift in Westerosi history took place during that era. The Andals brought the art of writing to Westeros (and presumably also parchment and other means of book-making), along with the Faith, chivalric culture, steel-making, even certain new techniques of architecture (the round tower, for example).

14 minutes ago, cpg2016 said:

That also happens to mark a turning point in our knowledge of the Night's Watch.  We know that before, it was pretty well staffed, with at least ten times the numbers of the today.  We know that between 50-100 years (probably about 75) after Aegon's Conquest, the Watch is in such dire straits that it needs to have it's lands doubled in order to survive (Jaehaerys ascends the throne in 48 AC, and the Great Council, in which the Starks vote against him in part because of being forced to give up the New Gift, is in 101).  That is an incredibly precipitous decline and the ONLY event which could possibly have caused it is Aegon's Landing.

There may be certain effects due to the Conquest. Economic success and prosperity and the spread of education due to efforts of the Citadel (which most likely blossomed in the wake of the Conquest) leading to many men searching for career paths in KL, say, instead of the Watch. 

[Lord Varys]

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So much wrong here. You can't have it both ways. You can't suggest that Winter kills off half the North's population (or whatever portion you wish to claim), and then suggest that the Watch somehow gets through it without similar problems. Other than their primary source of food, which is the Gift, the Watch is dependent on what the lords give to them, and as we learn from Bowen Marsh, the lords are generous when their harvests are bountiful. Meaning they already have filled their own stores and have plenty to spare.

Before the Conquest, the Watch could ask the Gardeners, Hightowers, Arryns, Durrandons, Lannisters, etc. for help. The average Northern lordling or peasant - and even the Kings in the North - could not really do that. A king usually doesn't feet the population of some foreigner/enemy.

But the Watch was as much the responsibility of the King of Highgarden than the King of Winterfell. That is very much established fact.

Assuming the kings could spare some food - and were still true in their support of the Watch which they would have been for millennia - there would have been ships of food passing the entire North to drop food at Eastwatch. The Watch had the holy mission to protect the realms of men.

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

And since the Watch lives primarily from the produce of the Gift - which is in the coldest part of the North - the produce of their lands cannot be dramatically different from the rest of the North (unless it is dramatically worse, than for example the Manderly or other more fertile, warmer areas).

We actually don't know that the Gifts are the coldest places in the North. They are not mountainous, so there could be a milder climate there than in the lands of the clansmen, say. The Vale is also further north than the Reach yet it is one of the most fertile regions in all of Westeros.

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So as we can see, if Summer and Winter are more or less equally long, the North does just fine. And that's without any hunting or fishing or the like during Winter itself. It is only when Winter is dramatically longer than the preceding Summer, that they have a problem. But arguably so would all of Westeros, just to a lesser degree.

That doesn't make a lot of sense because it doesn't account for food going bad during storage. Food stored in the first year of summer (let alone spring) most likely isn't going to survive until autumn. I mean, you do know how quickly crops and meat rot, right? Even if some of it miraculously survived this long a significant percentage is going to get lost.

The Watch can store their stuff within the Wall where it remains (reasonably) fresh for a long time, giving them a huge advantage over the Northmen (who can also freeze food, but only in autumn/winter itself, when the temperatures are (continuously) below freezing.

But frozen meat should usually be eaten within a year of freezing (at least by our standards). Could be that it still doesn't kill you after 3-4 years, but what about after 10-15 years, say?

The North at large has no such effective measure to preserve food. Nor is there any indication they have multiple harvests each year.

You cannot survive on hunting or fishing alone. People would die of scurvy and other such deficiencies in a couple of months.

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

As for the Watch, they would face the same problems as the rest of the North.

Not in the same intensity. They have the better storage facilities and people who might be willing and obliged to help them out. The North doesn't.

[AlaskanSandman]

On 11/24/2017 at 3:12 AM, TMIFairy said:

Was the Wall and the NW a purely Northern concern in the Waring Kingdoms period?

Did the Kingdoms south of the Neck care about the NW?

I know that Nymeria sent defeated Dornish reguli to the Wall - but apart from that, did the South support the NW?

You may be interested in my thread 1 kingdom, 1 curse, and 1 wall. I dont cover all the years between the Long Night and present just yet (There is some important things happening 1300 years ago, among others.), that further show what is happening. I do how ever try to show the basis for the connection. The Wall pertaining to obligations of Valyria. In my next thread i was gonna show the Faith, Andals, and Valyria connection more than i've already mentioned. Like Valyria coming from the Andals. Not vice versa. This should give an idea of what i think the relations are. As evident by Valyria staying away from Westeros up till 600 years ago, then Valyria is wiped out with in 200 years of that. Possibly by Lannister gold to the Faceless men. This last part being something im still trying to understand. As it being put on House Lannister seems odd as it should be the Faith. Though, Lannisters may be big patrons, and they needed they're gold? 

To give you an idea of 1300 years ago, Maderly's are kicked out North, the Andals invade OldTown and found the Sept, Hightower take over, and Glass Candles coming to OldTown supposedly from Valyria. Among the Rhoynish wars starting up that century, and the Falcon crown was created, first worn by Ser Artys Arryn. 

I know im on the fringe from what seems to be the consensus, but i think it's worth a look.

[AlaskanSandman]

Look at it like this. Hard home is growing to become a city beyond the Wall. How did this happen? When did the Watch start to shrink? Well this is 700 years after the Andals and Faith took Old Town and the Faith Militant would have been going around Westeros stealing recruits to a much easier life of a soldier in their army. Thus did the Andals muck up the purpose of the Watch, and Hardhome grew. To which Valyria responds by sacking Hardhome and taking Dragonstone. Yet still, the Valyrians dont invade. Not for 200 years under Aegon Targaryen, at a point when his family is almost extinct. Why is his family almost extinct? Sure it could just be problems with reproducing. What if it is something else though. Lets not forget this ancient sept on Dragonstone. The Faith are aware of Valyria and may have helped bring down Valyira via Lannister Gold to the Faceless Men. A possible response to Valyria arriving on Dragonstone, so close now. The Valyrians seem to install the Freys at the crossing at that time 600 years ago too, taking control over movements North and South. 

In the end, the Faith succeeds it would seem in extinguishing Valyria with the last being House Targaryen. Yet, their efforts to even bring down the house (Southern Ambitions theory and all with the Maesters), is what brought about the last Targaryens. Jon and Dany. Who only were born by the Starks coming south and interfering with affairs, they otherwise would not have been present for. The Maesters brought the Starks south, and brought about the last Targaryens that are Jon and Dany.

In an effort to avert prophecy, the Faith-Old Town-Hightowers, may have actually brought about the fulfillment of the prophecy. 

[cpg2016]

On 11/29/2017 at 6:15 PM, Lord Varys said:

I don't think your idea holds much water. For one, we would have to assume that the nobility of the older days was more extreme than dealing with their enemies than the Targaryens were. And there is actually no reason to assume they were. Sure, in the very ancient days things would have been much more savage, etc. but those are a thing of the past.

Nobles are a ransomed. That's the way it is done. Common soldiers are either killed in battle or later pardoned/sent back home. They are not seen as people who have their own political agency. They do what they are told. In that sense, they wouldn't be punished all that severe.

Right, but sometimes a ransom can't be paid.  Sometimes a ransom isn't offered.  Sometimes, ransoms don't make sense (for a 4th son, perhaps).  I don't see why the Wall is considered "more savage".  Especially since the Wall used to be considered an honorable place to serve.

On 11/29/2017 at 6:15 PM, Lord Varys said:

In that sense I still think that volunteers were the backbone of the Watch for most of its existence. Eventually things began to shift from honest volunteers to criminals and outlaws who were effectively forced to go there.

Your theory doesn't account for the fact that the Watch loses a majority of it's strength in the space of a couple generations.  Any theory that doesn't account for this is invalid.  A theory of gradual decline posits that the Watch must have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of men strong for most of history.  Which is prima facie ridiculous.

On 11/29/2017 at 6:15 PM, Lord Varys said:

We have Ser Denys Mallister, the commander of the Shadow Tower. A casual glance also indicates that Othell Yarwyck (Westerlands), Eddison Tollett (Vale), and Thoren Smallwood (Riverlands) joined the Watch of their own free will. Jarman Buckwell (Crownlands), too, possibly, the same with Ser Ottyn Wythers (Reach).

We have no idea whether Denys Mallister, Othell Yarwyck, or Thoren Smallwood joined of their own free will.  Thoren Smallwood, at least, may not have, as his friendship with Alliser Thorne may predate their service, but that is just headcanon.

Edd Tollett did join up willingly, you're right.  However, he also mentions that he grew up as poor as the poorest of smallfolk (assuming the average wildling lives in similar poverty to very poor smallfolk, which is mostly reasonable I think).  Which sort of underlines the point - the Watch is for the dregs of society; he's so poor that despite being a cadet branch of a notable noble House, his only chance of getting laid is by being a Sworn Brother.

On 11/29/2017 at 6:15 PM, Lord Varys said:

And there is no longer any difference between First Men and Andal houses. The houses with First Men origins in the south are just as Andal as those houses that were founded by Andals and continue to bear Andal names. The Gardeners, Hightowers, Lannisters, Durrandons, etc. adopted Andal culture completely, and may have intermarried more with Andals than some of their subjects in remote and isolated corners of their kingdoms did - the common people would have only mingled where Andal settlers were actually taking possession of the land.

In that sense, the decision of Waymar Royce to join the Watch isn't something one would attribute to the First Men origins of the Royces - just as it is ridiculous to assume that the First Men roots of the Tarlys compelled Randyll to send Samwell to the Wall instead of making him a maester or septon.

I think it's reasonable to think that the First Men Houses maintain different traditions than their Andal counterparts. Not being inculcated in the mysteries of the Faith is a point in that direction at the very least.

Obviously I don't know that is why Waymar Royce joins the Watch.  But again, the only people who we know voluntarily join the Watch despite having better options (better way to put it, I think), they're all First Men Houses.  Why is it absurd that they'd have different traditions?  Andal kids (or rather, kids who grow up with the traditions of the Faith) are taught the history of Andalos and the Faith.  First Men kids learn stories of the Long Night and the heroism of "their" ancestors.

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Right, but sometimes a ransom can't be paid.  Sometimes a ransom isn't offered.  Sometimes, ransoms don't make sense (for a 4th son, perhaps).  I don't see why the Wall is considered "more savage".  Especially since the Wall used to be considered an honorable place to serve.

Why should we think people whose ransom isn't paid end up at the Wall? What would the profit of the guy who actually wanted some ransom in that equation?

It is certainly possible that some noble prisoners in war ended up volunteering for the Watch, but the idea that this kind of thing was the backbone of the Watch for centuries or even millennia doesn't convince me.

2 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Your theory doesn't account for the fact that the Watch loses a majority of it's strength in the space of a couple generations.  Any theory that doesn't account for this is invalid.  A theory of gradual decline posits that the Watch must have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of men strong for most of history.  Which is prima facie ridiculous.

We have no reason to assume that those 10,000 swords during the Conquest represent the Watch at the peak of their strength. If we had reason to believe that we would need a pretty good explanation for the sudden decline during the Targaryen reign. But we don't have any reason to believe that.

I tossed around the idea that the Watch may have had 100,000 men at their peak. But that's just an idea. It could also have been 70,000, 50,000, or even fewer (40,000, perhaps).

If we imagine the decline to have started at a number of 40,000 and if we assume it accelerated somewhat in the end then the Watch could easily enough have lost 10,000 men every 500-700 years, or so. Which would then mean the decline began 2,000-3,000 years before the series. If the Wall was 6,000 years old (which we don't know) that sounds not unconvincing.

2 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

We have no idea whether Denys Mallister, Othell Yarwyck, or Thoren Smallwood joined of their own free will. 

But we have no reason to believe those men joined the Watch against their will. Since we know people actually do volunteer for the Watch there is no reason denying this possibility. Donal Noye, a Stormlander, (not a nobleman, but a guy with a family name) also joined the Watch of his own free will. Squire Dalbridge (the former squire of King Jaehaerys II) may also have taken the black of his own free will (although we don't know anything about his likely rather interesting life).

2 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Thoren Smallwood, at least, may not have, as his friendship with Alliser Thorne may predate their service, but that is just headcanon.

Ser Jaremy Rykker took the black along with Thorne. They fought in KL together. We don't know whether Smallwood was with them or not. They could only have met and become friends at the Wall. As far as I know there is no indication that the Smallwoods fought with Rhaegar at the Trident. If that was the case Thoren could have been with the loyalists in the city during the Sack.

2 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Edd Tollett did join up willingly, you're right.  However, he also mentions that he grew up as poor as the poorest of smallfolk (assuming the average wildling lives in similar poverty to very poor smallfolk, which is mostly reasonable I think).  Which sort of underlines the point - the Watch is for the dregs of society; he's so poor that despite being a cadet branch of a notable noble House, his only chance of getting laid is by being a Sworn Brother.

Edd's tales may not portray things exactly the way they happened. But the point here is that Eddison Tollett is of Andal descent and voluntarily took the black.

2 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

I think it's reasonable to think that the First Men Houses maintain different traditions than their Andal counterparts. Not being inculcated in the mysteries of the Faith is a point in that direction at the very least.

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The people south of the Neck are all Andals. They all follow the Seven. The Blackwoods are the only exception to that.

The Hightowers, Gardeners, Durrandons, Lannisters, Tullys, etc. all have bloodlines stretching back before the arrival of the Andals, but they still became Andals by blood, culture, and religion when they married Andals, adopted their culture, and converted to the Faith.

Every family has some heirlooms and the like, but the idea that there is any difference between the Andal houses with Andal names and the First Men houses in the south who only married Andals and converted to the Faith doesn't make any sense. Thousands of years passed since the arrival of the Andals.

2 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Obviously I don't know that is why Waymar Royce joins the Watch.  But again, the only people who we know voluntarily join the Watch despite having better options (better way to put it, I think), they're all First Men Houses.  Why is it absurd that they'd have different traditions?  Andal kids (or rather, kids who grow up with the traditions of the Faith) are taught the history of Andalos and the Faith.  First Men kids learn stories of the Long Night and the heroism of "their" ancestors.

The stories of the Night's Watch are known everywhere in Westeros. There are houses who honor the Watch more than others, that's obvious. The Lannisters are of First Men descent, too, yet Lord Tywin couldn't care less about the needs of the Watch.

[cpg2016]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Why should we think people whose ransom isn't paid end up at the Wall? What would the profit of the guy who actually wanted some ransom in that equation?

It is certainly possible that some noble prisoners in war ended up volunteering for the Watch, but the idea that this kind of thing was the backbone of the Watch for centuries or even millennia doesn't convince me.

We should assume that the Watch is a viable option for any captured noble/knight.  Why is Alliser Thorne at the Wall?  We know he fought for the losing side in Robert's Rebellion.  Obviously he couldn't afford a ransom (or he would be a free man), so that means he was given the choice between death and the Wall.  Moreover, it makes sense that captured nobility are given the option of "honorable" service at the Wall; after all, this is kind of a part of the social contract.  Today's winners could be tomorrow's losers, as any noble knows.  If I capture you in battle today, I give you the choice between life in honorable exile over execution, because tomorrow I might be the prisoner, and would want that option.

But again, take what we know.  We know that the Watch was once an institution with a significant population of nobles/knights.  We know that in the immediate aftermath of Aegon's Conquest, the Watch sees a significant and rapid decline in overall membership, and that some time in the past the composition of the Watch goes from one with a fair number of highborn members to one in which not only are there very few nobles, but most of the membership are literal criminals.  Aegon's Conquest is the only major political shift that could cause such a demographic change, and this explanation is far and away the most likely.  Is it possible the Watch was undergoing a long, millenia-long period of decline before the Conquest?  Sure.  I don't think it's likely, but it's possible.  But the period from 1 AC to 101 AC is extremely short in Westerosi-time, and the decline is prima facie more drastic than in years prior, because I think it's possible for us to agree that the Watch couldn't possibly have been shedding thousands of members a century for thousands of years.

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

We have no reason to assume that those 10,000 swords during the Conquest represent the Watch at the peak of their strength. If we had reason to believe that we would need a pretty good explanation for the sudden decline during the Targaryen reign. But we don't have any reason to believe that.

I tossed around the idea that the Watch may have had 100,000 men at their peak. But that's just an idea. It could also have been 70,000, 50,000, or even fewer (40,000, perhaps).

I think it's far fewer than than 100,000.  I'm quoting Wikipedia here, so obviously take it with a grain of salt, but it estimates the population of medieval Scotland (a good parallel for the North in general, I think, and it's what Martin based the North on), are a million people on the high end.  That comes out to ~35 people per square mile, which would put the total population of the Gift, if every inch of land was considered equally arable to the Scottish number (highly debatable), at about 300,000 (35 people x (100 leagues x 25 leagues) x (3.4, the league to mile ratio).  Considering that about 85% of pre-modern societies are dedicated to agricultural, that puts a total strength for the Watch at an absolute maximum of approximately 44,000.  And mind you, this is an extremely, extremely high estimate - the whole North almost certainly doesn't have a population in excess of 4,000,000, so its hard to believe the Gift, which is probably the least fertile land, since it's the further north, is constituting 7.5% of the total population of the North.  

I could see the Watch having maybe 20,000 Sworn Brothers as an absolute maximum, and that would be in a period where there were an unusually large number of recruits.  But again... that means that at the Conquest, they were at half strength after thousands of years of "decline", and within a hundred years have lost the majority of that strength.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

If we imagine the decline to have started at a number of 40,000 and if we assume it accelerated somewhat in the end then the Watch could easily enough have lost 10,000 men every 500-700 years, or so. Which would then mean the decline began 2,000-3,000 years before the series. If the Wall was 6,000 years old (which we don't know) that sounds not unconvincing.

Again, 40,000 is a VERY high number to assume, given the total population of the North.  Generally, the rule of thumb for historians is that pre-modern societies can mobilize and support about 1% of their total population on a consistent basis.  Obviously, in times of emergency, this might be higher.  Take the Roman Empire, since some other folks on this thread seem to know their shit.  The population was well in excess of 50,000,000 during the Pax Romana, and it was one of the best organized, most bureaucratic empires in European history, with an efficient system of taxation and a fairly high degree of militarization, and it's total operational strength was pegged at about 375,000 by Gibbon, a number which jives with what we know of Augustan military reforms + auxilia.  That's well under 1%, for a non-feudal society.  Even if we assume the Watch is extremely militarized and tax-efficient because of it's mission as a monastic military order, getting over 10% militarization would be extremely difficult.  That's every non-agricultural laborer being part of the organization, a fact we know isn't true (since places like Mole's Town exist, implying smallish rural settlements with some specialized labor in place).

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But we have no reason to believe those men joined the Watch against their will. Since we know people actually do volunteer for the Watch there is no reason denying this possibility. Donal Noye, a Stormlander, (not a nobleman, but a guy with a family name) also joined the Watch of his own free will. Squire Dalbridge (the former squire of King Jaehaerys II) may also have taken the black of his own free will (although we don't know anything about his likely rather interesting life).

I agree with you.  All I'm saying is the only nobles we KNOW who join the Watch are either from First Man Houses or are essentially so impoverished that the Wall is a socio-economic step up.  My headcanon is that First Man nobles revere the Watch for anthropological reasons; I have as little evidence to support that as you do that those other folks volunteered.  It's just a nice thought that plays reasonably well with what evidence we have about Northern attitudes to the Watch, and confirmed noble volunteers.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Ser Jaremy Rykker took the black along with Thorne. They fought in KL together. We don't know whether Smallwood was with them or not. They could only have met and become friends at the Wall. As far as I know there is no indication that the Smallwoods fought with Rhaegar at the Trident. If that was the case Thoren could have been with the loyalists in the city during the Sack.

Again, agreed.  We just don't know.  In the absence of knowledge, I am giving you my headcanon.  All we know is that the only confirmed volunteers for the Watch come from non-Andal families, and Dolorous Edd, who grew up in a level of poverty commensurate with a peasant, and thus is probably not a great data point.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Edd's tales may not portray things exactly the way they happened. But the point here is that Eddison Tollett is of Andal descent and voluntarily took the black.

I mean... what reason does he have to lie?  He repeatedly claims an extremely poor upbringing, when playing on his name and "high birth" would absolutely put him on a road to advancement within the Watch (which, while meritocratic, openly favors highborn men for positions of power).  The only reason he wouldn't is because he'd be exposed as an extremely impoverished member of a cadet branch.  

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The people south of the Neck are all Andals. They all follow the Seven. The Blackwoods are the only exception to that.

The Royces are noted as being reverent of their own First Man heritage, "boast(ing) proudly of their descent from the First Men", if not openly being noted as worshipping the Old Gods (though I don't think it's ever stated they worship the Seven, either).  And it's possible there are other families, of lesser note.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Every family has some heirlooms and the like, but the idea that there is any difference between the Andal houses with Andal names and the First Men houses in the south who only married Andals and converted to the Faith doesn't make any sense. Thousands of years passed since the arrival of the Andals.

And yet, of all of them, only the Royces are explicitly noted in canon to be openly boastful of that descent, and to still proudly bear heirlooms emblematic of it.  The rune-inscribed bronze armor Yohn Royce wears is doubly evocative this (predating the Andal's iron raiment, and bearing the "magic" runic script of the First Men).  They're also one of the only families, and the only non-Northern family, noted to have it's members openly join the Watch, despite better options.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The stories of the Night's Watch are known everywhere in Westeros. There are houses who honor the Watch more than others, that's obvious. The Lannisters are of First Men descent, too, yet Lord Tywin couldn't care less about the needs of the Watch.

Actually, the Lannisters aren't.  It's explicitly noted that House Lannister now descends in the male line from Joffrey Lydden, an Andal.

That being said, I am not saying that the Watch and it's general history isn't known everywhere.  I'm merely saying that the Long Night, and the fight against the Others, was waged by the First Men.  It's a perfectly reasonable assumption that this great struggle is more vividly remembered, in a cultural sense, by the First Men (and the Northerners in particular).  The Andals are focused on their own history, and the study of their faith encourages that.  The worship of the Old Gods begs the question of why, and the answer to that goes back to the Pact, the Children, and the mutual struggle against the Others.  Anyone promoting or proud of their heritage as a non-Andal (or a First Man, I guess) has to be able to explain to their kids why they still hold to that faith/heritage instead of the far more popular, numerous, and prestigious Andals.

[Lord Varys]

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

We should assume that the Watch is a viable option for any captured noble/knight.  Why is Alliser Thorne at the Wall?  We know he fought for the losing side in Robert's Rebellion.  Obviously he couldn't afford a ransom (or he would be a free man), so that means he was given the choice between death and the Wall.

No, we actually do know Rykker and Thorne were given the choice between the headsman and the Wall by Tywin Lannister. This had nothing to do with them not being able to pay a ransom. This was Tywin being an asshole.

The idea that a captured knight or nobleman is giving the choice between death and the Watch on a regular basis is also pretty silly. I mean, there are cases were killing a nobleman you captured in war is justified - like, if the guy is one of the main instigators of a rebellion, or if he committed heinous war crimes, etc. But there is no reason that such a man has to be punished in any way even if he or his family can't pay the ransom. There would be other ways to resolve this. What about just releasing such a person? That means you are going to be treated kindly as well, if you ever end up in the hands of the family of this person.

Also note that knights and noblemen usually become the individual prisoners of the men who take them. In that sense, such a person can also become the prisoner of a sellsword or freerider - and they are likely going to be content with whatever coin or possessions of worth such a person has.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Moreover, it makes sense that captured nobility are given the option of "honorable" service at the Wall; after all, this is kind of a part of the social contract.  Today's winners could be tomorrow's losers, as any noble knows.  If I capture you in battle today, I give you the choice between life in honorable exile over execution, because tomorrow I might be the prisoner, and would want that option.

Again, why not just honorable release? That's how things are done in this world. There is no indication that a considerable amount of men chose to take the black in the aftermath of the many wars in the Riverlands, say (the Durrandon and Hoare conquest of the region, say). And the many others wars between the major powers would have been fought over territories and spheres of influence, not to destroy the neighbor.

If you sent me to the Wall you would have no guarantee that my brother or cousin would treat you in the same way. I'm no longer there to tell them how kindly I was treated, no?

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

But again, take what we know.  We know that the Watch was once an institution with a significant population of nobles/knights.  We know that in the immediate aftermath of Aegon's Conquest, the Watch sees a significant and rapid decline in overall membership, and that some time in the past the composition of the Watch goes from one with a fair number of highborn members to one in which not only are there very few nobles, but most of the membership are literal criminals.  Aegon's Conquest is the only major political shift that could cause such a demographic change, and this explanation is far and away the most likely.  Is it possible the Watch was undergoing a long, millenia-long period of decline before the Conquest?  Sure.  I don't think it's likely, but it's possible.  But the period from 1 AC to 101 AC is extremely short in Westerosi-time, and the decline is prima facie more drastic than in years prior, because I think it's possible for us to agree that the Watch couldn't possibly have been shedding thousands of members a century for thousands of years.

We don't know how quickly things went down from 10,000-1,000. We have no idea how many men were still up at the Wall when the Nightfort was closed down, say. Could have been still 7,000-8,000.

And why shouldn't the Watch have slowly declined during the centuries? In the end, the numbers decline because the number of men taking the black declines.

What you would have to prove is the idea that 

1. Prior to the Conquest, a significant portion of the men captured during one of the many wars ended up at the Wall.

2. The amount of men who freely volunteered for the Watch was lower than the amount of men who went up there because they were forced to go in the aftermath of those wars.

3. That the amount of common criminals did not balance the amount of hypothetical war prisoners you suppose ended up on the Watch.

And there is no evidence for any of that.

All we know is that the numbers of watchmen declined after the Conquest.

You also have to keep in mind that the more the idea of volunteering for the Watch was seen as a undesirable thing to do the less willing would the various lords have been willing to subject their peers to do that.

If you are already sending rapists and murderers up there, you don't want your sons - or the sons of your enemies and rivals who are nonetheless you peers in the social order - to serve beside such scum.

In that sense, it is pretty obvious that the idea to give criminals the opportunity to take the black was one of the crucial nails in the coffin to that institution. It inadvertently helped to reduce the willingness of the people to volunteer for the Watch.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

I think it's far fewer than than 100,000.  I'm quoting Wikipedia here, so obviously take it with a grain of salt, but it estimates the population of medieval Scotland (a good parallel for the North in general, I think, and it's what Martin based the North on), are a million people on the high end.  That comes out to ~35 people per square mile, which would put the total population of the Gift, if every inch of land was considered equally arable to the Scottish number (highly debatable), at about 300,000 (35 people x (100 leagues x 25 leagues) x (3.4, the league to mile ratio).  Considering that about 85% of pre-modern societies are dedicated to agricultural, that puts a total strength for the Watch at an absolute maximum of approximately 44,000.  And mind you, this is an extremely, extremely high estimate - the whole North almost certainly doesn't have a population in excess of 4,000,000, so its hard to believe the Gift, which is probably the least fertile land, since it's the further north, is constituting 7.5% of the total population of the North.  

Scotland is much smaller than the North, and we are not talking about the North here. We are talking about the Night's Watch - which is essentially a border garrison supported and men by all the Hundred/Seven Kingdoms, not just the North. They have a tract of pretty fertile land which was once populated pretty densely - and which still can support 1,000 watchmen after those lands are essentially depopulated.

The men of the Watch are born (and in part also trained) wherever they are born. They come to join the Watch from everywhere in the Seven Kingdoms. They live in about 18 castles along a Wall that's 300 miles long. The members of the Watch are exclusively male, and no resources are wasted feeding women and children.

And the most important point is that the Watch always got support in food and resources from outside. From all across the Seven Kingdoms, too. In that sense, only the willingness of the lords and kings would have limited the growth of Watch.

You have to keep in mind that those people agreed to found and support the Watch when there was no political unity whatsoever among them. When they were literally a Hundred Kingdoms. They could have only done that if they had felt this was really, really important. And if they thought that they would also have been willing to support them

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

I could see the Watch having maybe 20,000 Sworn Brothers as an absolute maximum, and that would be in a period where there were an unusually large number of recruits.  But again... that means that at the Conquest, they were at half strength after thousands of years of "decline", and within a hundred years have lost the majority of that strength.

Come on, just think how large those kingdoms are, and how many men would be up at the Wall if only 2,000 men per generation and kingdom volunteered for the Watch at any given time. In the Seven Kingdoms scenario (with the Iron Islands as the eighth) that would be already 16,000 men. And chances are that only 2,000 men per generation from the Reach. the Riverlands, or the West joined the Watch in the good old days is just not very convincing. It would have been more.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Again, 40,000 is a VERY high number to assume, given the total population of the North.  Generally, the rule of thumb for historians is that pre-modern societies can mobilize and support about 1% of their total population on a consistent basis.  Obviously, in times of emergency, this might be higher.  Take the Roman Empire, since some other folks on this thread seem to know their shit.  The population was well in excess of 50,000,000 during the Pax Romana, and it was one of the best organized, most bureaucratic empires in European history, with an efficient system of taxation and a fairly high degree of militarization, and it's total operational strength was pegged at about 375,000 by Gibbon, a number which jives with what we know of Augustan military reforms + auxilia.  That's well under 1%, for a non-feudal society.  Even if we assume the Watch is extremely militarized and tax-efficient because of it's mission as a monastic military order, getting over 10% militarization would be extremely difficult.  That's every non-agricultural laborer being part of the organization, a fact we know isn't true (since places like Mole's Town exist, implying smallish rural settlements with some specialized labor in place).

We are not talking about mobilization here, we are talking about people volunteering to join a monastic military order. A central authority in a pre-modern setting rising an army from men who are mostly farmers or working on farms isn't the correct comparison.

The actual comparison would be to compare the Watch to the members of the clergy and monastic orders in the middle ages. The Watch was as pampered and well-fed as most medieval monasteries were. It isn't an army, it is a military order on perpetual guarding duty.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

I agree with you.  All I'm saying is the only nobles we KNOW who join the Watch are either from First Man Houses or are essentially so impoverished that the Wall is a socio-economic step up.  My headcanon is that First Man nobles revere the Watch for anthropological reasons; I have as little evidence to support that as you do that those other folks volunteered.  It's just a nice thought that plays reasonably well with what evidence we have about Northern attitudes to the Watch, and confirmed noble volunteers.

You have no good reason for that kind of belief. The Andals and First Men - especially in the higher nobility - constantly intermarried so there is no meaningful distinction there in the present. The Blackwoods might still pray to the old gods but that doesn't set them apart all that much considering that every ancient castle - even many of the Andal castles - have a godswood with a heart tree. And even the Starks - while not intermarrying all that much with Andals nor ever being andalized the way the south was - no longer believe in the Others or care all that much for the Watch.

Benjen Stark needed to hear a wandering crown speak at Harrenhal to get the motivation to take the black. It wasn't a family tradition or anything. And none of Ned's sons by Catelyn ever considers the Watch as a career path. Nobody thinks that's what Brandon or Rickon should do.

There is certainly evidence that there are houses more friendly to the Watch than others - but that doesn't mean the houses who are friendly to the Watch have to be ancient First Men houses. The Watch could just as well have friends among the Andal houses. For instances, it is said that Lady Whent of Harrenhal was a friend of the Watch, is it not?

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

I mean... what reason does he have to lie?  He repeatedly claims an extremely poor upbringing, when playing on his name and "high birth" would absolutely put him on a road to advancement within the Watch (which, while meritocratic, openly favors highborn men for positions of power).  The only reason he wouldn't is because he'd be exposed as an extremely impoverished member of a cadet branch.  

The idea there is that Dolorous Edd is Dolorous Edd for a reason. He always gives his stories and comments a particular dolorous edge. One gets the impression his talk there is not much different.

But I actually agree with you that no sane person joins the Watch in the present days out of idealism or anything. Nobody believes in the Others anymore. In that sense, Waymar Royce and Jon Snow are not that different from Dolorous Edd. They join the Watch because they think their lives might be better there than down in the south. After all, we do know that Robar Royce, too, was forced to leave Runestone and make a living elsewhere. Either Bronze Yohn doesn't believe in feeding useless second or third sons, or he can't because House Royce is deeply in dept, or something of that sort.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

The Royces are noted as being reverent of their own First Man heritage, "boast(ing) proudly of their descent from the First Men", if not openly being noted as worshipping the Old Gods (though I don't think it's ever stated they worship the Seven, either).  And it's possible there are other families, of lesser note.

Sure, but again - religion would have nothing to do with the Watch. And boasting you are descended from the First Men means you are stressing that you are of a very ancient bloodline - which means of the highest nobility.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

And yet, of all of them, only the Royces are explicitly noted in canon to be openly boastful of that descent, and to still proudly bear heirlooms emblematic of it.  The rune-inscribed bronze armor Yohn Royce wears is doubly evocative this (predating the Andal's iron raiment, and bearing the "magic" runic script of the First Men).  They're also one of the only families, and the only non-Northern family, noted to have it's members openly join the Watch, despite better options.

Well, there is the tidbit that this ancient armor might not be as ancient as the Royces pretend it to be, no?

And especially a family as prominent as the Royces are likely to be Andal as you can possibly get in the Vale. Their high rank and status makes them perfectly suited to intermarry with the Arryns - which they did, as we well know. And to regain the prestigious position they originally lost after the Battle of the Seven Stars they would have begun first by intermarrying with lesser Andal nobility until they had the same standing as before.

The idea that meaningful ancient traditions stretching back to the days before the Andals came survived throughout that entire process doesn't make any sense. If that was the case then many (or all) of the First Men houses 'converting' to the Faith would still secretly worship the old gods - which none of them do. And the Hightowers, Gardeners, and Durrandons were never even forced to convert (the Lannisters, neither). They did that of their own free will. And it took root after a couple of generations.

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

Actually, the Lannisters aren't.  It's explicitly noted that House Lannister now descends in the male line from Joffrey Lydden, an Andal.

That is meaningless. They are still descended from Joffrey Lydden's Lannister wife, the princess, whose name Joffrey Lydden took. To this day, the Lannisters have the golden hair and green eyes of Lann the Clever, no?

9 hours ago, cpg2016 said:

That being said, I am not saying that the Watch and it's general history isn't known everywhere.  I'm merely saying that the Long Night, and the fight against the Others, was waged by the First Men.  It's a perfectly reasonable assumption that this great struggle is more vividly remembered, in a cultural sense, by the First Men (and the Northerners in particular).  The Andals are focused on their own history, and the study of their faith encourages that.  The worship of the Old Gods begs the question of why, and the answer to that goes back to the Pact, the Children, and the mutual struggle against the Others.  Anyone promoting or proud of their heritage as a non-Andal (or a First Man, I guess) has to be able to explain to their kids why they still hold to that faith/heritage instead of the far more popular, numerous, and prestigious Andals.

It is pretty clear that things bled into each other, creating a common cultural history. Songs and stories have knights back in the ancient First Men days, for instance, and the Watch becomes an institution the Andal kingdoms support as much as the First Men kingdoms did before them. In fact, the memory of the Long Night lives in all cultures of Martinworld, and there is no reason to assume that the early Andals doubted the First Men traditions telling them about the Others beyond the wall of ice in the far north.

And again - the nobility in the south may have First Men roots for the most part, but they are still all Andals due to the longstanding tradition of noble intermarriage, the conversion to the Faith of the Andals, and the adoption of Andal culture. Even the Common Tongue is the language of the Andals, a language that even spread to the North and the lands beyond (no idea how, but it happened).