Military strengths of the Houses of Westeros

[Corvo the Crow]

1 hour ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The Dustins and Manderlys have the most contact with the South. But yes, I agree that they are also, along with the Boltons, the most powerful vassal Houses in the North.

In truth I do not know the comparative strength of the Dustins and Boltons. I suspect they are more or less on a par, most likely.

I would also have your opinion on Tarths; it is a much larger island but not as powerful as Velaryons it seems which is interesting because Velaryons have several hundred men at best, if we don't count men from their ships.

[Corvo the Crow]

A small one on Sisters

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These depredations finally led the Kings of Winter to send their own war fleets to seek dominion over the Sisters—for whoever holds the Three Sisters holds the Bite.

The Rape of the Three Sisters is the name by which the Northern conquest of the islands is best known. The Chronicles of Longsister ascribe many horrors to that conquest: wild Northmen killing children to fill their cooking pots, soldiers drawing the entrails from living men to wind them about spits, the executions of three thousand warriors in a single day at the Headman's Mount, Belthasar Bolton's Pink Pavilion made from the flayed skins of a hundred Sistermen...

How far these tales can be trusted is uncertain, but it is worth noting that these atrocities, whilst oft mentioned in accounts of the war written by men from the Vale, go largely unmentioned in Northern chronicles. It cannot be denied, however, that the rule of the Northmen was onerous enough to the Sistermen for them to send their surviving lords scurrying to the Eyrie to plead for help from the King of Mountain and Vale.

 

[Corvo the Crow]

A small one on demographics through Dothraki and a thought on Wildlings

Khal Drogo had 100000 people in his Khalasar but only 40000 were warriors.
 

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The rest of her people followed: Groleo and the other captains and their crews, and the eighty-three Dothraki who remained to her of the hundred thousand who had once ridden in Drogo's khalasar. She put the oldest and weakest on the inside of the column, with the nursing women and those with child, and the little girls, and the boys too young to braid their hair. The rest—her warriors, such as they were—rode outside and moved their dismal herd along, the hundred-odd gaunt horses that had survived both red waste and black salt sea.

Drogo had called his khalasar to attend him and they had come, forty thousand Dothraki warriors and uncounted numbers of women, children, and slaves. Outside the city walls they camped with their vast herds, raising palaces of woven grass, eating everything in sight, and making the good folk of Pentos more anxious with every passing day.

 

 

This means %40 of the populace is able bodied men, rest are women and children and in this population, slaves.

This rate wouldn't apply to men raised in Westeros of course, but it can give us an idea on Mance's host.

With ~30000 men when rangers first spot them and when Jon joins Mance, they would have 12000 men of fighting age. They would also have spearwives, of the 700 who aren't men of fighting age among Stannis' captives, there are 50-100 spearwives. If this is close to the overall ratio of spearwives, then it means 1/7-1/14 additional fighters among the populace who aren't men of fighting age.

Mance could possibly have 14000-16000 fighters.

[Free Northman Reborn]

9 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

A small one on demographics through Dothraki and a thought on Wildlings

Khal Drogo had 100000 people in his Khalasar but only 40000 were warriors.
 

 

This means %40 of the populace is able bodied men, rest are women and children and in this population, slaves.

This rate wouldn't apply to men raised in Westeros of course, but it can give us an idea on Mance's host.

With ~30000 men when rangers first spot them and when Jon joins Mance, they would have 12000 men of fighting age. They would also have spearwives, of the 700 who aren't men of fighting age among Stannis' captives, there are 50-100 spearwives. If this is close to the overall ratio of spearwives, then it means 1/7-1/14 additional fighters among the populace who aren't men of fighting age.

Mance could possibly have 14000-16000 fighters.

Just to clarify, didn't Jon's scouting team originally estimate a hundred thousand wildlings? They were losing people daily to the cold and to the Others, so by the time they arrived at the Wall they numbered far fewer, but I'm pretty sure I read a hundred thousand estimate at some point in the early books.

And this 100,000 would not have been their original number, as not every single wildling would have agreed to join them, some would have been left behind in their villages, and some would have been lost in the journey to the main gathering. Not to mention losses to the Others before that point, which is what convinced them to join Mance in the first place.

So I'd imagine the original, total wildling population before the start of the series might well have been twice the number that reached Mance.

And this without formalized agriculture, without a medieval social structure, with no infrastructure or formal economy. And in a region that is largely forest and colder and more inhospitable than any of the lands South of the Wall. This is important, because it informs our estimates of the populations of for example the Umber and Karstark lands, which would have a far higher population density than the Lands Beyond the Wall, due to the all of the reasons listed above.