How would you abolish feudalism?

[Chatty Duelist]

You're the Louis XIV of Westeros.

You're King of the Iron Throne, and your mission is to abolish feudalism and create a modern, centralized state.

How would you go about it?

What i would do (in chronogical order).

Reform the taxation system (To the modern, universal ,European one.)

Replace the Crown lords with governors and bureaucrats from minor nobility and the middle-class.

Build a new system of infrastructure and urbanize the countryside.
Now with the support of the lower nobles, commoners and merchants, i'll create a standing army of men loyal to the King only.

Beat down on the landed noblemen one by one, starting at the weak vassal lords and going up from there until i've stripped every Great House of their wealth (Especially the Lannisters and their gold.)

Create a new meritocratic court of justice with a codified laws and outlaw the archaic Trial by Combat.

Expand the Small Council into a senate with limited powers.

Reassign roles to the favored classes, adding rights to the commoners and wiping away the privileges of the nobles.
Now the realm should more or less be an Absolute Monarchy.

[Pod The Impaler]

Create something like a hybrid of the British parliamentary system, crossed with Imperial China and its emphasis on a class of educated civil servants serving the crown.

[Stan the Man Baratheon]

Create something like a hybrid of the British parliamentary system, crossed with Imperial China and its emphasis on a class of educated civil servants serving the crown.

With a hint of Shogunate.

[SeanF]

Like Louis, I'd need a big standing army. I'd outlaw private war among the nobility; impose restrictions on the ability of the nobility to raise armies of their own; select my Small Council and other royal officials from the middle classes and minor nobility; establish royal courts of justice whose rulings took precedence over any noble court; ensure that only such courts were entitled to impose the death penalty; make the collection of taxes the responsibility of royal civil servants, or tax farmers appointed by the Crown.

The crucial point is to have a big standing army.

[Chatty Duelist]

Like Louis, I'd need a big standing army. I'd outlaw private war among the nobility; impose restrictions on the ability of the nobility to raise armies of their own; select my Small Council and other royal officials from the middle classes and minor nobility; establish royal courts of justice whose rulings took precedence over any noble court; ensure that only such courts were entitled to impose the death penalty; make the collection of taxes the responsibility of royal civil servants, or tax farmers appointed by the Crown.

The crucial point is to have a big standing army.

How big?

[SeanF]

Say, 150,000.

[Tall Tyrion Lannister]

Feudalism is great for lords, it shares power. The Seven Kingdoms suits feudalism quite well, if I was King then I wouldn't seek to change it. But, if I did then I'd do it this way. Similar to Louis XIV.


Increase taxes and use this money to support a national standing army. Lords are banned from having more than 100 men at arms.

Force nobles and their heirs to spend alternate years in living in King's Landing, this reduces their power as they are under your control. You'd probably need to build a new palace.

Take away a Lords right to justice and create regional courts.

Take away Lords rule by right, replace with centrally appointed governors.

Issue new rights to peasants, guaranteeing their support against the nobles.


Use standing army to destroy those nobles who want to rebel.

[Chatty Duelist]

Say, 150,000.

:uhoh: Shit, that's one big army, how can the treasury support that kind of Army?

[The Marquis de Leech]

Require the nobility to attend my big lavish parties!

[The Marquis de Leech]

:uhoh: Shit, that's one big army, how can the treasury support that kind of Army?

Louis XIV bankrupted the country. It's to be expected.

[Chatty Duelist]

Require the nobility to attend my big lavish parties!

Bobby did that already, did'nt abolish feudalism...wait a second...i see what you mean to do...

[SeanF]

:uhoh: Shit, that's one big army, how can the treasury support that kind of Army?

You'd have to be like Octavian, finishing up with an enormous army at the end of a civil war. It then becomes *the* army, supported out of general taxation. Perhaps the ultimate winner of the Game will be in that position.

Alternatively, you finish up like the Tudors. They had the resources of the Duchies of York and Lancaster, and Earldom of March. It would be like being Lord Paramount of Dorne, the Reach, and the Stormlands, as well as King. Your revenues and military power would dwarf anyone else's.

[Lion of the West]

I wouldn't. I know for sure that I don't have nearly the skills to undertake something like this and to abolish feudalism in Westeros would mean outmanovering and outfighting all Great Houses and their loyal bannermen, and some in addition to that, and I don't for a second think that I would be able to fix that. And really, if I was king then I probably wouldn't even want to change something. Status que would suit me fine.

[Woman of War]

In 1740 on the Prussian throne arrived enlightened absolutist Friedrich II the Great (1712-1786). He started out as sensitive young man, tortured by his father who only favored soldier competences and abilities. Friedrich was gay, tried to esccape with his boyfriend and live a life of an intellectual and musician. but his father had his friend executed before Friedrich's eyes, kept his son prisoner, definitely tried to destroy the personality of his child.

Friedrich tried to be different after the death of his father. He saw himself as the state's first servant, an obligation, not an entitlement.

The enlightened absolutism is a new form of absolute monarchy that emerged in the 18th century. The rulers have sought to implement economic and administrative reorganization of the state and eliminate the worst abuses of the feudalism, but not crossing the feudal social frames.

The rulers mediated in the relations between the feudal lords and serfs. They tended to protect small farmers, because they were paying taxes. The reforms were largely remained just as theory because the resistance of the nobility which stubbornly defended their privilege. But some reforms helped the countrys progress, such as the reorganization of the judiciary and the abolition of torture, aiding the establishment of science and scientific academies, building hospitals and organizing prevention of epidemic diseases, irrigation works and the propagation of intensive farming.

Radical demands of the bourgeois ideologists to abolish serfdom, suppressing the influence of the church, freedom of press and personality enlightened absolutists did not accept, because it would have violated the feudal order. Friedrich II was abolished torture, introduced compulsory primary schooling, and founded the Berlin Academy. Friedrich II had constructed famous buildings in Berlin, most of which you could see today, such as the Berlin State Opera, the Royal Library (now State Library Berlin), St. Hedwigs Cathedral, and Prince Henrys Palace (today Humboldt University).

Friedrich II generally supported religious toleration, keeping Jesuits as scholars and teachers in Silesia, Warmia, and the Netze District even after Pope Clement XIV suppressed them. Actually, Friedrich II gave the Jesuits full recognition for their intellectual contribution to the country. His main goal was the prosperity of Prussia, whether he used knowledge Jesuit teachers, Huguenots, or Jewish merchants and bankers. His main accomplishment in religious tolerance was to accept and to promote the immigration of Huguenot French protestants, with all its economic impact and a big cultural influence that lasts until today.

Friedrich II also restricted the oppression of the peasants and gave them wheat for sowing in the lean years. He forbade the expulsion of peasants from the land and helped settle the deserted lands. Friedrich II has banned the export of wool in order to develop domestic weaving production, but still relied on the nobility, guarding their tax privileges and bring them to the highest administrative and military positions. Taxes has consistently increased, not only of military and civil servants but also of all other subjects demanded absolute obedience.

Though Friedrich did not turn out as the epitome of a good ruler. He started wars, consciously killing his people for his personal fame, thus forgetting what philosophers of the enlightment he claimed to be friends with might have told him. He indeed stayed a very troubled personality for the rest of his life, arrogant and lonely although being highly gifted and educated. What could have become of him with a different father and in a different world....

Read here in English:

http://www.historynotes.info/prussia-in-18th-century-1285/

Tortured and abused by his father, small and unattractive, troubled interpersonal relationships, not accepted in his sexuality, started out to "do justice", committing war crimes and yet doing a lot of things right.........See the parallels ......

ETA: Friedrich, although being king and commander, often fought in the first row to give an example to his men. He survived though even if he was rather small anf thin, getting quite old in the end. The plot armor of history :D

[Ahura Mazda]

I don't see why a King should ever wish to abolish feudalism.

Yeah, lords are a pain in the ass, sometimes they rebel and sometimes they win.. ..but what did parliament and written constitution bring to Kings?

Almost all of them sooner or later lost their absolute power and privileges..

..the fact is that abolishing feudalism requires you to spread the idea blood of highborns isn't something special and untouchable in the eye of God - or whatever reason you picked up to justify your own Kingship - and sooner or later small folk and middle class will question your own power too.

A King should empower his own feudal system, avoid selling nobility certificates to people without noble blood who didn't accomplish epic quests.

[Woman of War]

A King should empower his own feudal system, avoid selling nobility certificates to people without noble blood who didn't accomplish epic quests.

The world is changing and rulers can change with it or stem themselves against the tide and get their heads chopped off sooner or later.....

[The Marquis de Leech]

I don't see why a King should ever wish to abolish feudalism.

Because feudalism isn't identical to absolute monarchy (and indeed was often replaced by it)? Abolishing feudalism isn't about making the place more democratic, it's about centralising power.

[Chatty Duelist]

I don't see why a King should ever wish to abolish feudalism.

Yeah, lords are a pain in the ass, sometimes they rebel and sometimes they win.. ..but what did parliament and written constitution bring to Kings?

Almost all of them sooner or later lost their absolute power and privileges..

..the fact is that abolishing feudalism requires you to spread the idea blood of highborns isn't something special and untouchable in the eye of God - or whatever reason you picked up to justify your own Kingship - and sooner or later small folk and middle class will question your own power too.

A King should empower his own feudal system, avoid selling nobility certificates to people without noble blood who didn't accomplish epic quests.

Because it grants him greater power?

Louis XIV became an Absolute Monarch, because the nobles did not have to power to stand up for themselves anymore, their armies stripped from them by the absolute King, who himself has an army loyal only to the Crown.

Should a King of Westeros acquire a big, very big standing army, the Lords Paramount will not dare defy him, it's abandoning their lands, or their heads on shiny spikes.

[Ahura Mazda]

Because feudalism isn't identical to absolute monarchy (and indeed was often replaced by it)? Abolishing feudalism isn't about making the place more democratic, it's about centralising power.

My apologies, I honestly didn't consider the topic from this perspective. Right point.

[Lion of the West]

The world is changing and rulers can change with it or stem themselves against the tide and get their heads chopped off sooner or later.....

In which way is Westeros changing?