[TWOIAF Spoilers] Discussions of TWOIAF

[Wmarshal]

We've seen how effective a reputation for ungovernable brutality and betrayal works for the Skaggs, Others, Dothraki, etc. Nobody bothers trying to conquer them because even if you subdue them on the field you'll never rule the land. The dornish plan wasn't to be heard out in court, it was to convince the crown that conquest was not worth the cost of acquisition and maintenance.

They did conquer Skaggs, they tried annihilate the Others, and no body tries to conquer the dothraki because they are landless parasites. Which didn't work, the realm demanded bloody vengeance.

[Red Tiger]

Oh noes indeed, the invader has no reason to hear them out every again and has reason to remove every noblemen and replace them.

Yeah, good luck doing that without dragons.

[Wmarshal]

Yeah, good luck doing that without dragons.

Daeron did do that.

[cgf]

They did conquer Skaggs, they tried annihilate the Others, and no body tries to conquer the dothraki because they are landless parasites. Which didn't work, the realm demanded bloody vengeance.

Did they? I haven't read the skagos parts yet and didn't remember if the books explained how the rebellion got put down, whether the northerners just captured important hostages while repulsing the skagosi armies back to the sea, or if they set sail and conquered the island itself like the greyjoy rebellion. Either way Skagos, like Dorne, have a lot more freedom to rule themselves than do most lands in the seven kingdoms and I'd put a lot of that down to how remote they are and their untrustworthy/brutal reputations and memories of just how high the blood-cost of the conquest was.

And yet the Others are still around, free to do what they want in the lands cold enough to sustain them as far as we know. So trying to annihilate them at best lead to men building a big ass wall after the long night ended and they had retreated to the lands of always winter.

The realm did, but how long and how much would the realm have sunk into getting their bloody vengeance? Americans wanted their bloody vengeance for 9/11 but a decade of pointless deaths and many billions of dollars changed that. The Dornish have had to suffer through almost as much historically as afghanis have in our world, and so even if the realm rained down retribution, what would it have really meant? Probably many Dornish nobles getting killed while the rest went into hiding until the bloodletting forced the crown to abandon Dorne.

[Ser Lepus]

Yeah, I'm actually having trouble suspending my disbelief on this one. Casterly Rock is comically huge. Even if most of it is mountain, how do you garrison this thing? If it's two leagues across, it has a circumference at its base of (about) 20 miles, and God knows how much surface area or how many miles of tunnel. You can't possibly defend every potential entrance at once.

And if the attacker knows the internal layout...say, maybe, they were in charge of all the drains and cisterns at one point, this really should be an easy siege.

Casterly Rock is basically a natural hill/rock by the sea that has been tunneled all over the centuries. It may be three times as tall as the Wall and two leages wide, but 99 % of its volume probably is solid rock, so it may not be so huge from inside.

As for defending it: the windows and shafts for ventilation are probably all on high places, close to the top (and the top probably is a lot narrower than the foot), with only a few gates at defensible places. You only really have to defend the gates; a solid rock can't be mined or battered to dust, and if you try to climb to the windows you have to go all the way up to the top while they throw rocks to you from above.

[AryaNymeriaVisenya]

I still think we need to take note of underground spaces all over westeros the children probably used. They are likely warded. The caverns in casterly rock, the caverns in storms end Mel used, the winterfell crypts, the raventree crypts, the hollow hills etc...

[Perfidious Algernon]

Casterly Rock is basically a natural hill/rock by the sea that has been tunneled all over the centuries. It may be three times as tall as the Wall and two leages wide, but 99 % of its volume probably is solid rock, so it may not be so huge from inside.

As for defending it: the windows and shafts for ventilation are probably all on high places, close to the top (and the top probably is a lot narrower than the foot), with only a few gates at defensible places. You only really have to defend the gates; a solid rock can't be mined or battered to dust, and if you try to climb to the windows you have to go all the way up to the top while they throw rocks to you from above.

I don't get the sense that the tunnels are all that limited: there's cave systems carved out by thousands of years of tides, hundreds of mine shafts, a fairly large port, and more than enough history for a few vulnerabilities to be forgotten about. Heck, if you had a map you could probably dig into the mines or a storeroom from the caves. With that much territory to patrol, the Lannisters wouldn't see you for weeks.

Even if they do know where all the vulnerabilities are and have the men to defend them, how do you coordinate a defense across a space that huge? It would take over an hour for a messenger to get from one side to the other. Much longer for 100 soldiers. I don't know how long it takes to climb 2100 ft, but I'll bet it's a long time. An attacker would have the advantage of being able to see at least half the battlefield, and could communicate with his troops much more easily.

[RumHam]

I still think we need to take note of underground spaces all over westeros the children probably used. They are likely warded. The caverns in casterly rock, the caverns in storms end Mel used, the winterfell crypts, the raventree crypts, the hollow hills etc...

Apparently Casterly Rock may also be the only castle that can withstand a dragon assault.

[Darth Pipes]

Small detail but a very interesting one. Tywin wanted to appoint his brother Tygett as master-at-arms of the Red Keep but Aerys chose Ser Willem Darry instead. A minor decision at the time but that's pretty much what ended up saving the Targaryen dynasty. Still, it's noted that Tywin had a stormy relationship with Tygett as well as Gerion (the books had already made this clear). Would have been even more interesting if it had been Tygett who had ferried Viserys and Dany to safety in Essos.

[Werthead]

Yeah, I'm actually having trouble suspending my disbelief on this one. Casterly Rock is comically huge. Even if most of it is mountain, how do you garrison this thing? If it's two leagues across, it has a circumference at its base of (about) 20 miles, and God knows how much surface area or how many miles of tunnel. You can't possibly defend every potential entrance at once.

And if the attacker knows the internal layout...say, maybe, they were in charge of all the drains and cisterns at one point, this really should be an easy siege.

Casterly Rock is based on the Rock of Gibraltar. The Rock of Gibraltar is 1,400 feet tall (twice the height of the Wall) and is just under 2 miles (1/3 of a league) long along its major axis. It's about 0.6 miles wide at its widest point.

Casterly Rock is clearly a lot bigger. I suspect that only part of it is the actual castle/fortress.

[King Brandon Ice Eyes]

Still haven't got the book because I live in Brazil so it will take a few weeks.

Just wanted to know if there is informations about Bloodraven, Shiera, the Boltons and the Night King in TWoIF. If somebody answers me thank by antecipation.

[Wmarshal]

Did they? I haven't read the skagos parts yet and didn't remember if the books explained how the rebellion got put down, whether the northerners just captured important hostages while repulsing the skagosi armies back to the sea, or if they set sail and conquered the island itself like the greyjoy rebellion. Either way Skagos, like Dorne, have a lot more freedom to rule themselves than do most lands in the seven kingdoms and I'd put a lot of that down to how remote they are and their untrustworthy/brutal reputations and memories of just how high the blood-cost of the conquest was.

And yet the Others are still around, free to do what they want in the lands cold enough to sustain them as far as we know. So trying to annihilate them at best lead to men building a big ass wall after the long night ended and they had retreated to the lands of always winter.

The realm did, but how long and how much would the realm have sunk into getting their bloody vengeance? Americans wanted their bloody vengeance for 9/11 but a decade of pointless deaths and many billions of dollars changed that. The Dornish have had to suffer through almost as much historically as afghanis have in our world, and so even if the realm rained down retribution, what would it have really meant? Probably many Dornish nobles getting killed while the rest went into hiding until the bloodletting forced the crown to abandon Dorne.

They invaded Skagos, at the cost of their lord, but put it down.

Because they are mystical creatures who can turn babies into them, are really trying to compare their survival to Dorne's?

Long enough to take every castle and control the rivers, basically ruling Dorne. This war and that war aren't the same at all. The smallfolk have no say and the lords are proud and in control. There is no wide spread media so everyone is going on the word and mouth of the SK on what is going down.

[Veltigar]

re: Summerhall, does it seem to be saying that Dunk died saving someone or someones?

I'm betting that was a pregnant Rhaelle.

House Wyl was already pretty nasty during Aegon's Conquest, what with the chopping off of prisoners' hands (though Orys got his revenge on them in the end), but during the Young Dragon's invasion they, as Smithers put it, crossed the line from everyday villainy to cartoonish supervillainy.

The bastards!

[The Dragon Demands]

The descriptions of the westerosi regions as well as the other lands. Sothoryos sounds like hell on earth.

Actually, I think it was *vaguely implied* that a lot of that was false reports spread by the Summer Islands: yeah the northern parts of Sothoryos aren't very hospitable.....but who knows about the regions further south? It's a huge continent, at least as large north-south as Essos is running west-to-east. There's this point where he says that the Summer Islanders don't give really reliable information about lands further south, because they know it will only encourage the slavers to expand there.

Oh I loved that point about Jaehaerys I and the New Gift: it's not just that the Starks were annoyed at giving up land, but that they *accurately predicted* that this plan wouldn't really work on the long-term. They pointed out that the Night's Watch is more concerned with governing the Wall and turning its attentions northwards....not south. So they didn't administer the New Gift very well, and its people suffered from wildling attacks rounding the oceans beside the Wall. How would the Night's Watch, based at the Wall, even defend a coastline that large, or lands that vast? Their numbers were already dwindling.

So the Starks' point was "we can administer this land more effectively, rule it and defend it better, and just give the Night's Watch what they need from it". And that is EXACTLY how it played out: Yandel outright states that the Gift itself is so thinly populated now that it can't really support the *barely 1,000 men* of the Night's Watch, which still primarily relies upon *donations from the rest of the North*. Giving them the New Gift gave them a short-term boost but...in a generation or two, it actually made matters worse. It's so logical how that played out.

[cgf]

They invaded Skagos, at the cost of their lord, but put it down.

Because they are mystical creatures who can turn babies into them, are really trying to compare their survival to Dorne's?

Long enough to take every castle and control the rivers, basically ruling Dorne. This war and that war aren't the same at all. The smallfolk have no say and the lords are proud and in control. There is no wide spread media so everyone is going on the word and mouth of the SK on what is going down.

Ah, had that wrong in my head then, cause I was picturing the stark lord who died dying as he captured one of the skagosi armies that hadn't yet been pushed from the mainland, one that happened to be retreating with their skagg king and/or heirs. Which I knew wasn't what was written but I had assumed that was cause it wasn't explained and that's what my brain came up with to fill in the gaps. Still loops back into the greater autonomy they experience right now because that tragic cost of conquest is remembered.

And it would appear that magic was greatly weakened or restricted after the long night ended, so it's not that far from the Rhoynar having had great magic of their own once as well, magic powerful enough to resist the dragons in multiple battles. We see that this magic of the Others is rising now, or at least that's what we're lead to assume by the wights we've seen, so why shouldn't that strengthen the Rhoynish magic that dornish used to wield? I don't think it really is that dissimilar, but I do tend to find characterizations of the Others as pure evil, non-human, ice-demons boring, so comparing them to the savagery of human kingdoms under similar circumstances is very interesting to me.

Who do you think fights in the Lords' armies but nobles, landless knights/sellswords, and "smallfolk" of their lands, aka people who'll return to those lands once the battle or their term is done? So why shouldn't they bring back stories of the savagery they faced in dorne from the elements and the people there? And if everybody's bringing back stories about these dangerous dornishmen who could slit your throat at any time, why shouldn't people grow tired of sending their sons off to die in the games their highlords play? Either casting them down through revolution/rebellion for new lords that won't lead the people to slaughter or for new political structures? Yes the internet and media make it easier to research the stories we hear and to get a better sense for the scope of these stories, but I suspect I'm not the only one with friends who have served over there and brought back war stories that made me ill. Having wikileaks verifying stories similar to what I've heard and the internet to read from people with more local experiences makes it easier for me to be convinced such stories hold truth to them, but that doesn't mean that the information wasn't coming back to me without the internet/media. Why information shouldn't similarly travel back from Dorne with the men who served/died there doesn't make sense to me.

Note I'm not morally justifying the dornish betrayal of the white banner, just pointing out that with dorne's difficult nature and lucking into Baelor's forgiveness, they have similar autonomy to the Skagosi and Others. And so in the long run that viciousness did work, even if not enough to officially cast off their conquerors, though the need for this was mitigated by the Targ-NymMart marriages .

[Veltigar]

Say, does the Targaryens Dayne heritage mean that one of them (well you know Jon) might wield Dawn in the coming days? Do Sword of the Mornings need to be of House Dayne or of the blood of House Dayne?

Oh I loved that point about Jaehaerys I and the New Gift: it's not just that the Starks were annoyed at giving up land, but that they *accurately predicted* that this plan wouldn't really work on the long-term. They pointed out that the Night's Watch is more concerned with governing the Wall and turning its attentions northwards....not south. So they didn't administer the New Gift very well, and its people suffered from wildling attacks rounding the oceans beside the Wall. How would the Night's Watch, based at the Wall, even defend a coastline that large, or lands that vast? Their numbers were already dwindling.

So the Starks' point was "we can administer this land more effectively, rule it and defend it better, and just give the Night's Watch what they need from it". And that is EXACTLY how it played out: Yandel outright states that the Gift itself is so thinly populated now that it can't really support the *barely 1,000 men* of the Night's Watch, which still primarily relies upon *donations from the rest of the North*. Giving them the New Gift gave them a short-term boost but...in a generation or two, it actually made matters worse. It's so logical how that played out.

I have been saying this for years :D Though I was surprised that the Starks at the time were savy enough to predict that. I thought Jaeherys and Lord Stark had a gay old time and decided to give the NW the New Gift, thinking that they were so very clever. As it turned out, it's actually better.

[The Dragon Demands]

Well, in all fairness, Jaehaerys I and Alyssane *tried* to help....probably the only king who went so far as to pay for NEW forts to be built on the Wall. The Night's Watch is still grateful.

And hey, for all we know....maybe things were REALLY bad at that point in Jaehaery I's reign for the Night's Watch, like as bad as they were during the War of the Five Kings. Not just gradual attrition but "oh crud, we need to give an emergency boost to the Night's Watch, another King-Beyond-the-Wall is on the move."

Of course, it would have been nicer to have a long-term, systemic plan for raising taxes *throughout* Westeros to pay for the Night's Watch....but who outside of the North would gladly pay taxes for the Wall, defending against wildlings wielding bone weapons?

[Dofs]

I don't get the sense that the tunnels are all that limited: there's cave systems carved out by thousands of years of tides, hundreds of mine shafts, a fairly large port, and more than enough history for a few vulnerabilities to be forgotten about. Heck, if you had a map you could probably dig into the mines or a storeroom from the caves. With that much territory to patrol, the Lannisters wouldn't see you for weeks.

Even if they do know where all the vulnerabilities are and have the men to defend them, how do you coordinate a defense across a space that huge? It would take over an hour for a messenger to get from one side to the other. Much longer for 100 soldiers. I don't know how long it takes to climb 2100 ft, but I'll bet it's a long time. An attacker would have the advantage of being able to see at least half the battlefield, and could communicate with his troops much more easily.

Well, it is said that every single entrance into the rock is guarded with stone walls, oaken gates and portcullises. So, defending the Rock, you can just seal off every entrance and there will be hardly anything an enemy could do. You can just sit inside and do nothing. The only way to get in would be to break its gates with a ram but considering that it's basically a huge rock by the sea, I wonder if you even can carry a huge ram to its doors.

[Mithras]

Say, does the Targaryens Dayne heritage mean that one of them (well you know Jon) might wield Dawn in the coming days? Do Sword of the Mornings need to be of House Dayne or of the blood of House Dayne?

I think the Dayne blood of current Targaryens was provided by George to fuel the fire for "Dawn is Lightbringer, whooray" theories. Just like A+J, that is a false flag too IMO.

[Red Tiger]

Daeron did do that.

No he didn't, Daeron did not kill every last nobleman, until they're dead they can always rise up again.