Universal Sword Donor

2 hours ago, Potsk said:

That's how you get knighted. Sword to one shoulder, "in the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave," sword to other shoulder "in the name of the Mother I charge to defend the weak and innocent," et cetera.

Right but that’s being described as a requirement to him, not him swearing to do it. And again we haven’t seen the entire process play out, merely a small portion. We know Glendon ball was dubbed but there’s no mention of swearing anything. And any knight can make a knight, so even if it’s supposed to happen it’s not a guarantee.

knighthood irl took centuries to fully adopt all the religious accoutrement. 
 

edit: forgot about beric and gendry. Obviously beric isn’t a follower of the seven after his resurrection and he knights gendry naming the gods but not specifically the seven. So we have multiple knights who have either forsworn the seven or never swore to them at all. 

On 2/5/2024 at 5:57 PM, James Steller said:

Do you mean Rolland let the garrison surrender?

I meant Loras let the garrison sail off.

The siege of dragonstone is definitely over. No doubt in my mind about that. If I had to pick between two options -- Renly let the garrison surrender and sail off to join stannis or it was stormed and Loras isn't really hurt -- the former is the more likely but the latter seems more like GRRM.

On 2/4/2024 at 11:50 AM, boltons are sick said:

So, do you agree with the decision to list Walder Frey as Near Pure Evil or not?

No. I do not and it's pretty stupid to do so.

4 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

What about forcing someone to marry your daughter when he is on his way to lift the siege of your liege lord?

 

You want to be a part of breaking the king's peace and also want someone else to be part of it? Better pay up

2 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

I’d argue not really a fair point.  Robert has three children (allegedly) with Cersei and the heir to the throne.  A completely different situation than Baelor’s.  There is a consistent history with annulling a non consummated marriage.  

It's a completely fair point. You argued no king had had their marriage set aside. No conditions or qualifications on that.

The who, what, when, where, why and how are all very different, but blanket statements are usually set aside for that very reason. 

2 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

A knight’s wife is not a queen.  No King of Westeros had ever been able to set aside his wife successfully, outside of having her killed.

Is Baylor the Blessed not considered a king anymore?

On 1/28/2024 at 1:28 PM, the trees have eyes said:

It's always a troll thread when The Red Wedding is reduced to some legitimate resolution of a dispute between House Frey and treacherous House Stark over "honour" as if the murder or taking hostage of so many Northern and River Lords is something that never happened and can be brushed under the carpet.  It's all about how Walder was wronged with the broken marriage agreement as if hacking off the heads of wedding guests under your roof or burning their armsmen to death in rigged feast tents is an irrelevance that their families will forget.

If he'd have just withdrew his levies and protected Frey land against all comers like he did in the beginning of AGoT, absolutely no one would have blamed him.

If he'd have withdrawn his levies from Robb and declared for Joffrey, absolutely no one would blame him if he had his troops track down Robb and behead him on the spot.

Instead he essentially welcome a new negotiation under a flag of truce and butchered someone he just agreed to be an ally to. The closest thing in Westeros history to what Walder Frey did was the Dornish killing Daeron I at a parlay under a white flag, and even at that point the crown knew the Dornish were enemies who they expected to honor the white flag. Killing Craster under his own roof is probably a distant second or third if you've got a third one I forgot..

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

In that scenario, yes, I think Robert would marry her.

But what if Jon lived?  Robert would want the boy killed, which would make the wedding impossible.

And, what if it turned out Lyanna went willingly?  He might kill her, too.

Hear me out - 

Ned: Lyanna if you want your son to live, we have to pretend he's my son and I could leave him to be raised in KL with you. If not, Robert will smash his head with a Warhammer and you will be a silent sister in the best case scenario. You could also end up with a smashed head. Or you could play dead and run away with basically no money and no protection

Lyanna: Hmmmm

I would not even legitimately know which decision she would make -- wolf blood and all -- but I'd imagine she would pick one where Jon lives. Scenario #3 is probably best case scenario with Ned up in WF and Arryn acting as HotK. "She looks after me as a mom, not an aunt" flies when you're the only blood relative within 1000 miles.

On 1/25/2024 at 9:10 PM, Gilbert Green said:

Read what you want.  Some books mention them.   Far more do not.  Which is why the argument from silence does not work.

But the argument from non silence does!

Yes because if anything he held her in a perfect hypothetical that Med clearly didn’t agree with. She can’t be “spoiled” if she were taken by “that dirty targ” or whatever he wanted. 
 

he doesn’t good enough job ignoring serious issues as king at every point we see

On 1/24/2024 at 12:22 PM, Lord Varys said:

Aemon was a man in his prime and an accomplished and useful maester when he took the black. And he is still useful as hell as a frail and blind old man.

And of course the Watch takes care of their old and frail as well as those who are injured and crippled while protecting the realms of men ... but the Watch isn't the soup kitchen for useless highborn cripples. Aegon II has no skills he can offer the Watch.

Gyldayn contrasts Aenys and Maegor - nice mediocre warrior, paranoid super warrior - but he doesn't do that for all the princes. Viserys I's martial abilities - whose spitting image Aegon II is - aren't discussed, either.

Jeor would take him in a KL minute:

The Night's Watch has become an army of sullen boys and tired old men. Apart from the men at my table tonight, I have perhaps twenty who can read, and even fewer whocan think, or plan, or lead.

On 1/24/2024 at 1:58 PM, Gilbert Green said:

So what?  That makes it a perfect analogy to such volumes as THE TALES OF DUNK AND EGG, A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, books 1 through 5, THE WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE, and FIRE & BLOOD, PART !.

None of which claim or purport to be definitive books focused on certain Westerosi religious wars that may or may not have happened 300, 700, 1200, 2000, or 4000 years earlier.

I guess I’ll just read the contemporary epics written by the troubadours about this particular pre Protestant schism 

7 hours ago, maesternewton said:

Let's say, Rhaenyra's 3 sons are trueborn. Somehow, she managed to have legitimate children with Laenor. Due to not having the bastard allegations, Rhaenyra's boys are not given dragon eggs but claim the older dragons like Vermithor and Sliverwing. 

She is the perfect heir, spends her time in King's Landing, does royal progresses, basically she is Jaehaerys with teats. When Viserys dies, she is in King's Landing. 

What would the Greens do in this scenario?

They do nothing. They already lost when the babies were legitimate and got the big dragons. 

21 hours ago, Gilbert Green said:

Except the Cathar Heresy / Albigensian Crusade is not once mentioned in NOTRE DAME DE PARIS by Victor Hugo.  You could easily fill an entire bookshelf with volumes that meet this criterion.

I wasn’t aware that notre dame was the definitive book of notable French religious wars. Fairly lacks anything about Charles Martel, Charlemagne, or Vikings either. 
 

On 1/21/2024 at 8:53 AM, Gilbert Green said:

GRRM, IIRC, has vaguely compared the Sparrows to the Protestant Reformation.  Which of course started as a protest before it became a schism.

Religious schisms prior to the Protestant Reformation were not of such great relevance that they would be very likely be mentioned in a handful of books of Western Literature not particularly concerned with Church issues.   The "argument from silence" depends on the premise that if schisms had happened they would have been mentioned.  And that is just not true, if real world books are any indication.

I’d push back a bit on the relevance of those. Some obviously were smaller (eg waldensians, lollards) but there was entire crusade to wipe out catharism in France, which included multiple kings and 20 years of nonstop warfare.

1 hour ago, the trees have eyes said:

That's more accurate, I suppose.  Harrenhall is on the edge of the tail end of a war zone with the only River Lords yet to submit (Blackwood and Brynden in lieu of Edmure Tully) under siege.  The area is full of broken men and law and order will need time to restore, years maybe (the sack of Saltpans, the BWB as you point out).  But Harrenhall is recovered territory (if not exactly friendly) and the inhabitants are to be offered the protection of the law, rather than treated like an occupied enemy.

What I mean is Jaime would punish soldiers under his command who carried out rape (in peacetime or wartime).  He's not exactly Stannis and his track record with honour is spotty to say the least but he would punish rape.  However, men under one of his father's bannermen clearly committed atrocities at Harrenhall when it was in rebellion against the Iron Throne (or it's Lady/Lord was), including a whole lot of rape and he does not punish this. 

Maybe he doesn't see this as his business, as he was not in command of those men so although he doesn't approve he doesn't think he has the right or authority to interfere retroactively with another's orders and punish them (which authority he does have now and makes his view very clear).  Feudal right of justice belongs to the lord unless you took a grievance or complaint up the line - as the villagers who were initially pillaged by Gregor's men did by appealing directly to the King / Ned in Robert's absence.  But I find that a bit unlikely as it would prevent Jaime (or anyone) from intervening in any way when they found a crime being committed.

So I tend to think he knows the men are guilty of crimes but that the "wartime vs peacetime" distinction means he feels obliged to overlook what their own Lord / officers permitted against an enemy, albeit an enemy civilian population.  It's not quite the same as an amnesty but like Dany after the Sack of Meereen it's not going to be punished, though new offences will.

Westeros doesn't have a written penal code afaik so the penalty for rape is not set in stone - rapists seems to be offered a choice of castration or joining the NW - Daereon I think; Jon Snow has a black brother who was a serial rapist of septas and tattooed himself for every victim - but Jaime has him executed.  Why? Military discipline or making an example to restore that discipline?  Licence to pass sentence as the lord sees fit?  An attempt to be true to the vows of knighthood, given that spotty record to date?  Fondness for Pretty Pia who Bolton sent to him as a bed warmer and who he turned away, mixed with anger at the knowledge of what she must have endured?

The wartime / peacetime distinction is an attempt to understand Jaime's actions - ignoring past actions and punishing the present rape - when rape is obviously a crime.  Westeros seems to blur the line in wartime as to whether rape will be punished (Stannis obviously, Ned and others most likely, Tywin and his like will ignore it or punish it depending on the benefit to be gained) without using rape and sexual enslavement as a tactic, indeed a motive, like the Ironborn.

We know exactly why he does what he does. It’s in a POV chapter 

7 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

Yes, I said he restores military discipline and the rule of law at Harrenhall as it is now peacetime.  I also said what he doesn't do is go over past events, take a witness statement from Pia and seek to punish crimes that were committed during the war.  Any crime from this point on is punished.  You'll note that the man implicates all his colleagues in raping Pia earlier but Jaime does nothing about this. 

It's definitely not peace time, RR and Blackwoods are still holding out. Stannis holds DS and SE. Stoneheart and the rest of the Brave Companions are wreaking havoc in the RL. The IB are raiding the entirety of the coastal Reach. Jaime does what can to restore rule of law and leaves behind the holy hundred to help, but even he doubts if it's enough.

Your statement just felt a bit contradictory, starting out with its peacetime and then saying he never punished someone for a war crime, which he actually did on multiple occasions, the Lannister soldier who raped Pia and the Lannister deserter, among others, who occupied the ruins of the Wode's tower houses.

1 hour ago, Moon Man said:

As I say, there are many logical reasons to dismiss this as nothing. My question is why the author chose to structure the chapter in this way. For related reasons, I don't see Ockham's razor as a useful tool for investigating literature. Certainly not mystery stories primarily concerned with perspective, intrigue, and deception. This isn't history or science.

That said, I agree it's fairly clear that Manderly built his fleet of his own volition. But did he get money from Winterfell first? Did Robb ever know? These are questions I think we are meant to be able ask after a close reading.

Thanks for the details.

As windy as he was vast, he began by asking Winterfell to confirm the new customsofficers he had appointed for White Harbor. The old ones had been holding back silver for King's Landing rather than paying it over to the new King in the North. "King Robb needs his own coinage as well," he declared, "and White Harbor is the very place to mint it." He offered to take charge of the matter

Grant me the gold and within the year I will float you sufficient galleys to take Dragonstone and King's Landing both."

It’s pretty certain where he got the money 

29 minutes ago, Moon Man said:

Thanks for all this. I do think the big ships vs longship distinction is a possible, logical explanation for why Rodrik deferes one plan but orders another. But for me it's more about the structural element. The order sticks out in a chapter repeatedly about deferring to Robb. Manderly's request is deferred to the king, then a relatively similar plan is approved, and the Manderlys are implicitly ordered to carry it out, and the Umbers ordered to assist. The shades of difference between the two (or three: Manderly, Umber, and Rodrik) plans offers a reason for us to stop looking into it. But the structural foreshadowing of something still calls out to me.

We have no idea if the Umbers or Rodrik were complicit at all. Rodrik dies before we hear of anything else and there is absolutely no mention of Umber help / lumber or even Umber refugees anywhere around WH or Manderly lands, which are already flush with more than enough timber, sailors, and shipwrights to build the galleys we "see" and are told about. Ockham's razor should be telling us Manderly built the fleet of his own volition -- possibly with the tax revenues the customs agents were withholding from King Robb -- in response to the catastrophe at WF and Blackwater.

5 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

Fully agree.  Jaime restores military discipline and the rule of law at Harrenhall.  But it's also now peacetime, the Riverlands are restored to the 7K, the River Lords have made their submissions to the Iron Throne and it's now friendly territory.  He doesn't set about taking a witness statement from Pretty Pia or establishing if (and it's not a very big if) any of the Mountain's Men raped her and she doesn't point the finger.  It's an acknowledgement that what has gone before, under Hoat, Bolton-Hoat and The Mountain is now over (although Jaime doesn't leave her there and she isn't keen to stay) but may not be seen as a strict violation of law because, well, war, rebellion, right of conquest and punishment of rebels / the defeated enemy.  And as Jaime knows, Tywin ordered the Riverlands to be set alight so which atrocities are to be punished and which forgotten?

If Pretty Pia had been a noble daughter of a friendly lord or bannerman somehow caught up in the fighting, a Jeyne Westerling say (absent marriage to or sleeping with the enemy, with wolves) it would be treated as a straightforward case of rape and Jaime would have punished the perpetrators severely.  If it had been a noblewoman from the other side - a daughter of Lady Whent or a Blackwood, say - probably Jaime would have punished the perpetrators out of class solidarity and the political considerations of mollifying the local powers that be and pacifying the resentful countryside more swiftly; and out of personal distaste too.  But Pretty Pia is not important enough for him to start gelding or hanging his own Lannister foot soldiers over, however scummy.  And as the soldiers would say: "But m'lord Bolton / Ser Gregor said we could make use of her".

Uh .... he hangs a Lannister soldier for doing exactly that:

One of the Mountain's men had tried to rape the girl at Harrenhal, and had seemed honestly perplexed when Jaime commanded Ilyn Payne to take his head off. "I had her before, a hunnerd times," he kept saying as they forced him to his knees. "A hunnerd times, m'lord. We all had her." When Ser Ilyn presented Pia with his head, she had smiled through her ruined teeth.

18 hours ago, Moon Man said:

But Rodrik orders the Umbers to supply Manderly with lumber. To "work with" Manderly. Was the Manderly plan already approved by Robb by the time of the Umber meeting? Or did Rodrik decide to approve on his own it between those meetings? Yes, he could be argued to be dreaming up a whole new plan for only longships for defense of the East coast, but we know from Davos later that this is not how the Manderlys interpreted this. They built the big ships. More important for me is what we are to make of the recurrent emphasis on the need to seek Robb's approval and what I see as this singular contradiction. There are lots of logical ways out of this contradiction, such as Robb actually approving the plan by raven. I'm more interested in the pattern and what it might deliberately foreshadow.

Thanks for this

He orders the the Umbers to build longships with Manderly's help. Whether or not that happens we do not know. Longships would really only be useful against wildling raiders and *maybe* smaller pirates. We know they do not stand up to larger galleys -- iron fleet excepted -- and cannot ferry a large group around thanks to Jason Mallister.

We do know that Manderly has been building war galleys for about a year, which is about the time that Rodrik was killed, while the Umbers split their forces between Bolton and Stannis. I doubt Robb ever even heard about the fleet proposal given how hard it was to reach him in the field, the events that followed the harvest feast, and his untimely death. More likely Manderly started preparing for the fleet when he heard about Blackwater, Bran and Rickon's deaths, et al, either to take advantage of the power vacuum -- to preserve stark power or increase his own -- or make sure Robb wouldn't be at a disadvantage against the royal fleet. 

It's still a gray area as what Manderly intends to do with Rickon and this new fleet, but it's pretty apparent he started working on his own without receiving assent from Rodrik or Robb.

PDF Timeline for reference

https://mega.nz/file/tpgxUATJ#F6Q13AE1eAyaM5XMNkLSvzvkN20N77DNzdukLSm9qYw

On 1/14/2024 at 11:54 AM, Alester Florent said:

Eh... less than you might think. For most of history, differing religions has been a case of "we have our gods and you have yours" and everyone was generally ok with that. If you ended up fighting then that was an opportunity to demonstrate that your gods were better than theirs, and if you won you could take all their god-statues and bring them back to sit in your gods' temples to rub that in, but the general attitude was one of live and let live. Roman paganism was basically happy to let you follow whatever gods you felt like so long as you paid your taxes and didn't cause a fuss. 

That we think that different religions by nature actively hate each other is largely a product of the rise of monotheistic religions in the last 1500 years, and in particular monotheistic religions that seek to actively convert because not only are they not playing fair (they don't just not worship your gods, they actively deny their existence!) the people they're converting are the same people who pay for the temple upkeep and lifestyle of the priests. They are, in short, troublemakers, not necessarily because of what they believe but because of what they do. The Romans were perfectly happy to let the Jews and Christians follow their funny, kind-of-boring, god, but it became a problem when their religon meant they refused to pay the necessary obesiance (and/or taxes) to the emperor.

Even monotheistic religions can be quite accommodating. The position in early Islam was that Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians were basically fine, since they were all on the same cosmic team even if they were mistaken about a few of the details. So long as they didn't cause trouble or seek to spread their religion (and paid the necessary taxes) they were A-OK, at least until the Crusades made a mess of things. The western Church has gone back and forth a few times on the Jews, at times seeing them not only as acceptable but actually necessary, and at others encouraging their persecution (although the real horrors of persecution during the Middle Ages tended to be driven by secular or popular figures, for largely secular reasons).

Man not to wade into a real life mess but that's a pretty inaccurate picture of what happened. To say nothing of the ongoing conflicts between the major sects of Islam -- these existed because Mohammed's family literally went to war over who would lead and how to lead islam -- the treatment of Christians by Muslims in the Middle East wasn't great. Obviously nor was the treatment of Jews by Christians , all of this obviously pre-crusades. Massacres of christian pilgrims in Asia Minor and Syria / Palestine were pretty common. One of the first emirs of Egypt, al Hakim, destroyed all the churches and synagogues under his rule and killed a lot of jews and christians (and allied turks in his government) in a manner very similar to what the first bands of crusaders did in Germany and France en route to the Holy land. 

Lot of shitty stuff going on in the the religious world at the time. 

5 hours ago, Moon Man said:

I think it's effectively, politically the same who ever is actually in the meeting. They are all representing their lords. I think this is about authority not manners. And for me it's more about the highlighting of a pattern and it's subversion. Thanks for reading

The issue really being there's nothing to subvert. There need be no pretext in private meetings and the Manderlys and Umbers are trying to solve for different problems. Manderly wants to build an offensive force -- war galleys -- to end the war in Robb's favor.

“Lord Manderly also proposed to build Robb a warfleet. “We have had no strength at sea for hundreds of years, since Brandon the Burner put the torch to his father’s ships. Grant me the gold and within the year I will float you sufficient galleys to take Dragonstone and King’s Landing both.”

The Umbers want to build a patrolling force -- longships -- to prevent wildings on ersatz drift boat rafts from sailing around the wall.

“Hother wanted ships. “There’s wildlings stealing down from the north, more than I’ve ever seen before. They cross the Bay of Seals in little boats and wash up on our shores. The crows in Eastwatch are too few to stop them, and they go to ground quick as weasels. It’s longships we need, aye, and strong men to sail them.”

Umbers being loud and blustery for no real reason isn't exactly new as we see Greatjon do it to Robb on the march south. Robb set his wolf on him and set him straight. Rodrik, Robb's representative in the north, tells More to STFU and go build ships. Pretty straightforward in light of a vassal's obligations and feudal governance.

On 1/8/2024 at 4:46 PM, Aejohn the Conqueroo said:

Can you cite a single passage from any book which demonstrates this?  Something other than Cersei saying 'I love my children", please. I can't call any evidence to mind of Cersei's love for anyone but Cersei. As far as I can tell, her kids are just props and mirrors and means to power to her.

" "

I've included every single excerpt from the series that would support or demonstrate that claim.