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TWOIAF only serves to confirm the great flaw of the series


Aryss

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I’d say the reason the Valyrians never conquered the world was that there was no need. Valyria had the best of everything in the world, both magic and technology. Their only rivals were possibly Quaith and Ass’hai, and both were sufficiently far away that they never interfered with Valyrian interests. They had their sphere of influence that granted them sufficient booty, slave and wealth for their needs.



Another thing to remember is that after conquest, you also have to rule the conquered peoples. You need to garrison troops in the cities. You need to seed the population with loyalists. You need to build road and communications to your new cities. All these things cost money, and if the conquered land is not wealthy enough, it’s not worth it. In most cases with a far-flung empire, the cost of maintaining the empire is more than it is worth.



In real life Rome and Britain both fell into their Empires almost by accident. They started off having overseas colonies and client kingdoms. That was profitable; they had a reliable source of tribute/trade and minimal outlay. It was only as the client kingdoms became unmanageable that Rome and Britain had to step in to keep the trade flowing. Eventually they over-reached and collapsed.



With regards to the Targs and Dorne, they didn’t conquer Dorne because they didnt need to. A guerilla war involving 90% of the native population is difficult to fight against - you either need to install a puppet native government to rule on your behalf, or you need to seed it with your own people and gradually breed them out.



They had the easy option of marrying a daughter of Dorne and incorporating it into the empire. At this point they were already the undisputed power of Westeros, and any alliance would be a de facto conquest. By marrying a daughter, they gain a cooperative population, all the wealth of Dorne, a closer ally than any of the other competing Houses, and a seamless transition to full rule. The other option was to burn the country to the ground and start from scratch. A no-brainer in my book.


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No it isn't, it is a modern example. Terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and ISIS didn't exist during the Middle Ages, why do you think that is? After all, all you need to do to win a war is to go terrorist style unlike those idiotic people in basically every pre-modern human civilization everywhere who tried gathering in armies instead...

Your soldiers staying in hiding doesn't count for much if you leave your entire kingdom and population wide open to looting and destruction like the Dornish did, and you have no effective means to coordinate guerilla operations between your different groups anyway, without either telephones or radios or any other advanced infrastructure really*. They'd just be a bunch of bums scattered around the desert in small bands who'd never amount to much.

*Sure there are ravens, but they can only fly to castles. Castles that the Dornish let Aegon take over due to their "guerilla tactics".

WHAT???

No such thing as small bands of terrorist groups who hid in desserts and took down vastly superior armies?

I assume this is a joke...

And if not do some research on the Crusades which were certainly comparable tech level to what Westeros is portrayed as

Entire countries and states were felled by bands of screaming savages in places like Middle East, Asia, and even North America

They seemed able to organize without fielding a standing army or having modern communications

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WHAT???

No such thing as small bands of terrorist groups who hid in desserts and took down vastly superior armies?

I assume this is a joke...

And if not do some research on the Crusades which were certainly comparable tech level to what Westeros is portrayed as

Entire countries and states were felled by bands of screaming savages in places like Middle East, Asia, and even North America

They seemed able to organize without fielding a standing army or having modern communications

There were no guerrilla bands hiding in deserts and taking down whole kingdoms during the crusades.

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  • 2 weeks later...

And they were well organized steppe armies, not vastly inferior guerrillas.

why is it assumed that the dornish were a, not organized and b, inferior fighters ... Guerrilla warfare is a tactic that if utilized correctly can bring down a seemily superior force.

The steppe warriors often used asymmetric tactics again the more traditional battlefield massed formations

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Why didn't Valryia conquer westros?



My thought is its similar to why china didn't colonize the world before the europeans did. They could have if they wanted to, but they didn't. Maybe colonization is cultural, or based on profitable trade, or religious. Maybe westros was an unrulable backwater they wanted no part of?


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I suppose Aegon and his sister(s) could burn Dorne to the ground but only after they realised they could not rule it. If you can't be conquered, you will be killed. I'm not sure why they didn't bother teaching that to the Dornish. Also, how did the Dornish manage to burn half the Rainwood and the lands surrounding Oldtown when they had their hands full with the Targaryen invasion?


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why is it assumed that the dornish were a, not organized and b, inferior fighters ... Guerrilla warfare is a tactic that if utilized correctly can bring down a seemily superior force.

The steppe warriors often used asymmetric tactics again the more traditional battlefield massed formations

Yeah, I just don't why you included the Timurids in this. Timur had a vast empire, and had long campaigns where he had the numbers, not the enemy.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Let's look a that for a while. We see in TWOIAF that Aegon can fly to Dragonstone from King's Landing, stay there and brood for a while, and then fly back and return the next day. Meaning that he in around 24 hours (or maybe a few hours longer I guess) covered a distance that is about the same as flying across all of Dorne where it is at its widest. And that's including the break on Dragonstone...

Considering that destroying a village with a dragon as large as the one he had shouldn't take more than a few moments, and that he can cover the distance between them incredibly fast (medieval villages were usually no more than a few km from each other, so traveling between them on dragonback would also just take the blink of an eye) he could destroy a huge number of settlements each day, and still be able to return to safe havens in the Reach, Stormlands or occupied areas of Dorne.

Lets say 10 villages per dragon per day (which might be low balling it, but then again he'd need to take breaks and do other kingly stuff now and then). That's about 11 000 villages destroyed in a year. If we say that Dorne has 3 million inhabitants, which is an estimate that Ran made in some thread IIRC, and most of them live in villages with say an average population of 200 people. That means that Aegon with three dragons in one (1) year could destroy almost 75% of all Dornish settlements. Probably killing most of the inhabitants of them in the process. Since they'd die to exposure or starvation even if they didn't die to the dragons themselves.

This is not taking into account that he'd have a big army invading the place too.

Yeah. I call BS. "Dornish master race" should become a new thing, to go with the Northern one.

Okay, lets just not take in to account that after the first village is destroyed every single man, woman and child is fleeing for the Mountains and Deserts until the dragons are gone, they return and when one of the three-two dragons are seen anywhere near a village, town, castle then the population vanishes. As for the giant armies invading there most likly wiped out due to not knowing the deserts or how to survive in them once the Dornish cut there supply lines. Pretty sure thats how Harlen Tyrell's army dissapeared.

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Okay, lets just not take in to account that after the first village is destroyed every single man, woman and child is fleeing for the Mountains and Deserts until the dragons are gone, they return and when one of the three-two dragons are seen anywhere near a village, town, castle then the population vanishes. As for the giant armies invading there most likly wiped out due to not knowing the deserts or how to survive in them once the Dornish cut there supply lines. Pretty sure thats how Harlen Tyrell's army dissapeared.

It doesn't matter if they run to the mountains. If their villages and fields are all burnt by the dragons then they will quickly starve to death upon returning anyway. The end result will be the same.

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