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Why not an explosive population growth of lords


zaphodbrx

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Yes, there's downward mobility as well as upward.

Sometimes it can be downward and upward. The younger son of a lord might be well off enough to endow his eldest son with a fair-sized manor, but he may only have enough money to apprentice his younger sons to a merchant or lawyer (if they don't join the Faith or Citadel). But, if they prosper, they'll then buy a country estate, and maybe resume the practice of arms.

There must be scores of people called Tyrell or Lannister, who aren't of noble status (though having such a surname gives you some status.

It's as Martyn Lannister said to Jaime in the show. We're family, but not TheFamily.

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Historically, it takes lands for one to be a Lord. Population levels can and do rise too much for confort, and that leads to land disputes and to war. That, in fact, is perhaps the main reason why war is such a major part of human behavior: to keep population levels supportable.

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First of all, there are tons and ton of Lords in Westeros we never meet or see. We only tend to see the Lords Paramount and their primary bannermen, not their sub-lords and their sub-lords and landed knights.

Secondly, there may simply be persistent downward social mobility in Westeros, which did indeed happen in England and is sometimes credited as a factor in England's advanced political and economic development relative to its Continental counterparts.

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It's all for plot reasons. A house as old as Stark should have more than a million members at the time this story started. Genghis Khan alone is a common ancestor of like 3% of the world population IIRC, and that was only one man whose death wasn't even 1000 ago. The Starks have 8000 years of history. It should have several different branches and at the very least thousands of members.

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It's all for plot reasons. A house as old as Stark should have more than a million members at the time this story started. Genghis Khan alone is a common ancestor of like 3% of the world population IIRC, and that was only one man whose death wasn't even 1000 ago. The Starks have 8000 years of history. It should have several different branches and at the very least thousands of members.

Could you name 1,000 descendants of Ghengis Khan by name? There should be 180 millions of them. Charlemagne has even more, but can you name even ten of them?

A couple generations down the line, nobody remembers. That's exactly what happened to the Starks. They've got descendants all over the North, all over the Vale and that's just the Houses that directly married a Stark and produced main-line descendants for their own Houses amd directly mentioned in the text. Third cousins not included.

Everybody in Westeros has a little bit of wolf blood.

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It's a bit like asking "why wasn't there a population explosion of nobility during the middle ages?". Because The younger children didn't inherit major titles, by the late middle ages all a parent's titles were passed to the eldest son (mostly). The other male children had to make their own way, either by making a career in the church, becoming knights, merchants, whatever. The female children had much less chance of getting a title in their own right and were married off to other lords.

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Could you name 1,000 descendants of Ghengis Khan by name? There should be 180 millions of them. Charlemagne has even more, but can you name even ten of them?

A couple generations down the line, nobody remembers. That's exactly what happened to the Starks. They've got descendants all over the North, all over the Vale and that's just the Houses that directly married a Stark and produced main-line descendants for their own Houses amd directly mentioned in the text. Third cousins not included.

Everybody in Westeros has a little bit of wolf blood.

Sure, but in Westeros bloodlines are much more sacred than in our world. Logically, there would be several different branches of the Stark family. But it's not just the Starks. The smallfolk should be more numerous, with dozens of large cities spread accross the continent, instead of just five. 8000 years ago, there were only a few million humans on Earth and now we are at 7 billion.

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I thought there were some Stark daughters that married into some other families? When Robb is talking about his heir as KitN, and how he wants to name Jon, doesn't Cat mention that there is some Stark blood in the Vale or something like that? Then Robb counters by saying that the North will not follow some distantly related southron? Other than that, war is a definite factor in trimming down the population, disease as well I'm sure. Also, I'm sure there is a large portion of the population that dies during winter, especially if it is a long and harsh winter. We've yet to see a winter in Westeros, except for the Land of Always Winter beyond the wall, but as we all know, winter is coming.

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As others have said, being Neds fifth cousin four times removed does not make one eligible to inherit Winterfell. I also think there is an unmentioned class of lords, i.e. those lords sworn to the Lords paramount or the other noble houses, who are not worth mentioning but would live upper class lifestyles and have thousands of acres of land. Consider the fact that the Reach is what, the size of France? Wouldn't that make say the Florent's dominion the size of Burgundy or Aquitaine? Surely beneath the Dukes of Burgundy and Aquitaine there were many lords who in turn parceled off land to be managed by knights. These lords underneath the Noble lords might go by Sir in Westeros but their function is the same, they were the Feudal system's middle managers. Thus there may be second cousins of the Stark kids who live in manors in an upper class existence who are not relevent to the story as they are too removed from power to be worthy heirs of Winterfell.

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Sure, but in Westeros bloodlines are much more sacred than in our world. Logically, there would be several different branches of the Stark family. But it's not just the Starks. The smallfolk should be more numerous, with dozens of large cities spread accross the continent, instead of just five. 8000 years ago, there were only a few million humans on Earth and now we are at 7 billion.

Look at the upper graph. Yes, it is in german, but it should be understandable nevertheless: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World-pop-hist-de-2.png

The population started growing with the Industrial Revolution.

By the way, the 8,000 years history is pure legend. Real history of Westeros is vastly shorter, about every scientifically inclined character mentions that.

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Look at the upper graph. Yes, it is in german, but it should be understandable nevertheless: http://commons.wikim...p-hist-de-2.png

The population started growing with the Industrial Revolution.

By the way, the 8,000 years history is pure legend. Real history of Westeros is vastly shorter, about every scientifically inclined character mentions that.

Yeah, you are completely right. In these last twenty years the world population had a growth of like 40%. In the 1990's we were still at 5 billion. You win :P

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Sometimes the population of "lords", ie nobles does expand too much, and you can get cadet branches, landless knights like blackfish, some go to the wall, become Maesters, or strike of adventuring overseas.

In extreme cases you can get people like dolorous Edd - who is in fact a noble of house Tollet, but in practice was no better of materially than a peasant. There were always piss poor nobility in history due to this.

There is always the Clerical route as well, or becoming a landless soldier or other agent of your house like we see with the Freys.

The Starks do seem rather oddly low in numbers to me, however.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Winters coming. Remember Westeros is in the middle of a very long summer, and there hasn't been a really harsh winter in many cycles. I would assume that the seasons have a lot to do with the populations.

Additionally, you also have epidemic diseases sometime like the "Great Spring Sickness" in ASOIAF.

There was a plague epidemic in Europe, which killed about a third of the population. If you have disasters like that or an uncommonly long winter in Westeros, then your population does not increase, but may even decrease, even though people have a lot of kids.

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