How rich are the Starks pre series

[Lord Varys]

17 minutes ago, Tarellen said:

So your saying the Starks are poorer at the beginning of the series then when they were kings? Also karstark farmhands are aperentally all pikemen

The Starks should have had more assets and money while they were kings, yes. Since the Conquest the Crown collects taxes in the North, after all. They have lost their independence.

As to the second thing - it seems that way. Alys Karstark says that they couldn't bring the harvest in because they lacked the men. That means that the men necessary to bring the harvest in marched off to war.

Alys could have said that they had just difficulty bringing the harvest in but still could save a decent portion of the crops. But she didn't say that.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

8 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

To summarize: If the North's agricultural land is not fully occupied, then clearly the North has not reached its full carrying capacity yet. So it is not the land that limits the population, but rather the fact that the population has grown too slowly over 8000 years to reach its full potential again.

Spot on.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, the problem I see there is just that it is understandable how the Holy Roman Empire needed all those many castles (there were tens of thousands in Germany alone) but the uses they actually had in the real world seem to have nothing to do with the uses they had in Westeros.

Castles were a means to control an unruly and unsafe land and to control streets and collect tolls. Militarily they were often used to defend some sort of border land regions against invasions.

In Westeros castles might have fulfilled similar roles in the times of the petty kings and to a lesser degree also during the Seven Kingdoms but the landscape doesn't really reflect the political realities. For instance, one should expect a lot of strong castles at the western coast from the Wall to the Arbor to defend the land against the Ironborn raiders. Yet there aren't more castles in those regions than anywhere else.

One really wonders what the need for castles in Westeros is since the Targaryen Conquest.

@Free Northman Reborn

Are there considerably less people north of the Wall than in the North itself? I guess so, but 100,000 wildlings against three million Northmen would make the threat they pose look like a joke.

Just check D&E for the use of castles in Westeros. With  slightly different outcome, Standfast would have been sieged. And yes, there are castles all over Westeros, tens of thousands of them. Like Standfast. Or Queenscrown. Or LF's tower. Or the abandoned one where Ser Armory Lorch sieges the NW.

 

Yes, there are. Yes, the wildling "threat" was basically a joke. Not for the first poor schmocks to be raped and murdered on their farms, but for the North itself.

[Lord Varys]

4 minutes ago, Bright Blue Eyes said:

Spot on.

Just check D&E for the use of castles in Westeros. With  slightly different outcome, Standfast would have been sieged. And yes, there are castles all over Westeros, tens of thousands of them. Like Standfast. Or Queenscrown. Or LF's tower. Or the abandoned one where Ser Armory Lorch sieges the NW.

I know that there are castles. I just think that this fact doesn't make much sense if you look on the whole thing from a meta level.

And within the land they don't help one bit. In fact, they are a threat to royal power and allow no-name guys like the Webbers and Osgreys to grow bold. If Eustace and Rohanne had lived in some manses without high walls and all then they wouldn't have been so keen to use violence as a means to settle a quarrel.

I mean, such petty conflicts existed in history, too, but only in places where there is no powerful central authority. The citizen of my hometown (a Freie Reichsstadt, only responsible to the emperor until the end of the Holy Roman Empire) occasionally sacked the monastery five kilometers away because they had quarrels with the monks there over some land and church issues.

4 minutes ago, Bright Blue Eyes said:

Yes, there are. Yes, the wildling "threat" was basically a joke. Not for the first poor schmocks to be raped and murdered on their farms, but for the North itself.

But it wasn't. The wildlings raided not only in the Gifts but also in the Umber lands and the lands of the mountain clans. If those regions weren't about as sparsely populated as the lands beyond the Wall (or even less so) then the those ragged bands of wildlings couldn't have possibly carried away as many women and goods as they apparently did.

There is a reason why Crowfood Umber wanted the skull of Mance Rayder for a drinking cup.

[Lord Giggles]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

There is no unused agricultural land. If you don't plant anything and don't tend your fields then the forest/wild will quickly take them back.

If winter or a plague or other catastrophes really depopulated a region then it would take a long time to repopulate it. You have the people to do that, after all. If hypothetically a hard winter killed most of the people living in the Karstark forest then the few survivors will most likely leave the place thereafter and nobody should go back until such times as there are no other good places to settle.

Living in a wood is no easy life, after all, so you just don't go there if the benefits do not outweigh the risk.

One also guesses that there are a lot of regions in the North where really pretty much nobody lives. Sea Dragon Point is empty enough that the North might cede it to the Ironborn, Cape Kraken should be a place where nobody would want to live considering its long history of warfare, and then there is the Stony Shore. Who would want to live there?

Keep in mind with how few men Theon and Aeron could raid the Stony Shore. This doesn't suggests that many people live there. The Shield Islanders would have made short work with that few Ironborn.

Unless the agricultural land is used for pasture for animals, maintaining its usefulness whilst requiring minimal human effort(hence why it was a popular thing to do post Black Death). 

As to the Stony Shore, Theon is sent to raid villages there. Of course those villages aren't going to put up as good a defence as the Shield Islands would. The villages on the Stony Shore are precisely that: villages that have been far removed from wildling raids and so won't have any kinds of defence against raids. By contrast, the Shield Islands are specifically meant to defend the Reach from Ironborn raids so they're going to be far better prepared for such an event. 

Also, Varys you mentioned earlier that aurochs were bred in the Riverlands. Where is that said in the books? I don't remember it being said. 

 

[Señor de la Tormenta]

1 minute ago, Lord Giggles said:

Unless the agricultural land is used for pasture for animals, maintaining its usefulness whilst requiring minimal human effort(hence why it was a popular thing to do post Black Death). 

As to the Stony Shore, Theon is sent to raid villages there. Of course those villages aren't going to put up as good a defence as the Shield Islands would. The villages on the Stony Shore are precisely that: villages that have been far removed from wildling raids and so won't have any kinds of defence against raids. By contrast, the Shield Islands are specifically meant to defend the Reach from Ironborn raids so they're going to be far better prepared for such an event. 

Also, Varys you mentioned earlier that aurochs were bred in the Riverlands. Where is that said in the books? I don't remember it being said. 

 

I hardly think the north can sustain catle. A big population wont have any kind of means to survive with pastures covered by snow through such long times in winter.

 

So I would rule out any kind of extensive production.

[Lord Giggles]

1 minute ago, Señor de la Tormenta said:

I hardly think the north can sustain catle. A big population wont have any kind of means to survive with pastures covered by snow through such long times in winter.

 

So I would rule out any kind of extensive production.

The same could be said for the entirety of Westeros when it comes to both livestock and people

[Señor de la Tormenta]

2 minutes ago, Lord Giggles said:

The same could be said for the entirety of Westeros when it comes to both livestock and people

I dont think all westeros is covered by snow in winter, and if it does, I hardly think it lasts as long as in the north.

 

I asume north livestock feeds from the reseves gathered in summer, but you cant breed large packs in summer depending in pastures and keep the numbers during winter. Just not possible. After the winter you wouldnt had any catle to start again.

[Lord Giggles]

3 minutes ago, Señor de la Tormenta said:

I dont think all westeros is covered by snow in winter, and if it does, I hardly think it lasts as long as in the north.

 

I asume north livestock feeds from the reseves gathered in summer, but you cant breed large packs in summer depending in pastures and keep the numbers during winter. Just not possible. After the winter you wouldnt had any catle to start again.

Which is why livestock gets slaughtered as winter is coming. Reduces the flocks/herds to a feedable size and helps keep you alive through the winter. 

[Señor de la Tormenta]

1 minute ago, Lord Giggles said:

Which is why livestock gets slaughtered as winter is coming. Reduces the flocks/herds to a feedable size and helps keep you alive through the winter. 

Cows cant breed until they are two years old in most of the races. Then it takes 9-10 months until a calf is born. Theres just not time enough to build back the numbers after a winter ends to get full use of land as pastures.

 

The north cant breed catle using pastures as a base. No extensive production is possible at all with that kind of seasons . 

 

 

[Bright Blue Eyes]

42 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I know that there are castles. I just think that this fact doesn't make much sense if you look on the whole thing from a meta level.

And within the land they don't help one bit. In fact, they are a threat to royal power and allow no-name guys like the Webbers and Osgreys to grow bold. If Eustace and Rohanne had lived in some manses without high walls and all then they wouldn't have been so keen to use violence as a means to settle a quarrel.

I mean, such petty conflicts existed in history, too, but only in places where there is no powerful central authority. The citizen of my hometown (a Freie Reichsstadt, only responsible to the emperor until the end of the Holy Roman Empire) occasionally sacked the monastery five kilometers away because they had quarrels with the monks there over some land and church issues.

But it wasn't. The wildlings raided not only in the Gifts but also in the Umber lands and the lands of the mountain clans. If those regions weren't about as sparsely populated as the lands beyond the Wall (or even less so) then the those ragged bands of wildlings couldn't have possibly carried away as many women and goods as they apparently did.

There is a reason why Crowfood Umber wanted the skull of Mance Rayder for a drinking cup.

Well, yes, they are a threat to royal power. So what? Nothing new about that. Westeros doesn't have the infrastructure for absolutism.

 

Yes, the Wildlings raid into the North sometimes. So what? So did the Schinderhannes - and he lived in the late 18th century in central Germany.

[tugela]

On ‎6‎/‎3‎/‎2016 at 11:32 AM, Tarellen said:

Okay so the stark are the rulers of the north but there not the richest family that honor going to the mandrelys. They have a big castle but it has a derelict tower. There personal land holdings seem to be small with there not being many outright Stark men. They have only one known castle. There land is concentrated around winter fell. So how rich are the Starks?

The north is poor and sparsely populated in general. That was the reason why Robb's army was not given much chance in it's rebellion, since it would have to fight much larger and better equipped armies.

Winterfell appears to be a rat hole in a poor state of repair, so clearly the Starks themselves are not wealthy.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Lord Giggles said:

Unless the agricultural land is used for pasture for animals, maintaining its usefulness whilst requiring minimal human effort(hence why it was a popular thing to do post Black Death). 

I didn't consider that agricultural land but you are right, of course. But we should also keep in mind that while sheep can at least keep the trees away a lack of trees also can cause erosion, and this way you can turn fertile land into wasteland, basically.

I'm not saying that happened everywhere but if you have vast pasture in the North where there aren't so many people you don't give a damn about whether people in a thousand years might want to plant some crops there.

And there certainly are wide straps of land where nothing is planted, the Barrowlands attest to that. Nobody seems to be living where the ancient kings have their burial mounds (the place where Robert and Ned are riding in AGoT).

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As to the Stony Shore, Theon is sent to raid villages there. Of course those villages aren't going to put up as good a defence as the Shield Islands would. The villages on the Stony Shore are precisely that: villages that have been far removed from wildling raids and so won't have any kinds of defence against raids. By contrast, the Shield Islands are specifically meant to defend the Reach from Ironborn raids so they're going to be far better prepared for such an event.

Yeah, but a tradition of fighting and resilience could have developed there, too. I mean, it did develop on Bear Island. The people there are fierce and would do anything in their power to fight off the Ironborn whatever way they could.

I'm not saying they should be able to throw an entire fleet back (like the Shield Islanders who also have weapons and ships) but there could at least have been some holdfasts and keeps where the smallfolk might hold out in the case of such attacks. The fact that there seem to be none (or at least not enough) suggests that there really aren't many people there.

Quote

Also, Varys you mentioned earlier that aurochs were bred in the Riverlands. Where is that said in the books? I don't remember it being said.

Not bred, but they live there. It is in AFfC, I think in the same chapter as Meribald's speech. When Nymeria and her pack come up again it is said that she brought down an aurochs.

My guess would be that there are still wild aurochs in the Riverlands.

54 minutes ago, Lord Giggles said:

The same could be said for the entirety of Westeros when it comes to both livestock and people

Cattle is definitely bred in the South. Lord Butterwell was a cow lord, basically, and he was awfully rich because he had so many of them.

One can actually check those dishes George is always listing to get a feeling what kind of stuff is eaten (and thus there) in this or that region.

Checking the 'A Feast of Ice and Fire' book (which might not list every dish mentioned) gives very modest meals for the Wall. The only meat eaten there is mutton/lamb and pork. No beef.

Winterfell has chicken, beef, and aurochs. So we have to assume there is cattle, at least in the summer. Vegetables at Winterfell include turnips, leeks, onions, and beets. The only 'fancy stuff' at Winterfell and the Wall are apples (which they may or may not have in their orchards).

The fancy stuff only is down in the South and in the East.

[Although I must say having cooked a lot of this stuff already especially those modest stuff tastes very well. The turnip and beet recipes are excellent, not to mention the various sweets they have.]

Slaughtering livestock in autumn sounds like a good idea if you have only a few months of winter to deal with. But in Westeros we are talking about a winter that lasts for years. Down in the Oldtown region they might be able to keep the some bigger animals alive if there is no snow, but that's not going to work in the North. However, people might keep smaller animals around as long as they can especially those who might be able to provide them with some sustenance during the early winter (say, chickens for eggs, or sheep for milk).

But technically winter temperatures should allow the people to preserve their meat and other food without much difficulty so there is no need to not slaughter all your livestock as soon as animals and humans feed of the same stored plant food.

29 minutes ago, Bright Blue Eyes said:

Well, yes, they are a threat to royal power. So what? Nothing new about that. Westeros doesn't have the infrastructure for absolutism.

Well, you don't have to be an absolute monarch to not grant some guy a castle or revoke the right of anyone but the Crown to decide who gets a castle and who is allowed to raise one. Most medieval monarchs did that, actually, even the German Kings and Holy Roman Emperors (until the late middle ages when that right passed down to the princes).

But Westeros is a much more centralized state than the Holy Roman Emperor. The emperor was only a figurehead and in the later days, not to mention that he was an elected monarch. 

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Yes, the Wildlings raid into the North sometimes. So what? So did the Schinderhannes - and he lived in the late 18th century in central Germany.

Well, the Northmen should be able to deal with this problem by actually arming those people in the regions threatened by that properly. The wildlings have no discipline and they have no good weaponry which they don't have stolen. Not to mention that they don't have siege engines or technology. One stone keep in each village in the Umber and mountain clan lands should make wildling raids pretty much impossible if you ask me. Not to mention that those parties aren't that strong, usually, so a village of, say, 50-100 men should be able to deal with them just fine, no?

Since that clearly doesn't happen there is no chance the those lands are very populated or the people there well-equipped. The peasants there would be on the same level as the Osgrey levies.

[Nittanian]

59 minutes ago, Lord Giggles said:

Also, Varys you mentioned earlier that aurochs were bred in the Riverlands. Where is that said in the books? I don't remember it being said.

AGOT Sansa I (near the Trident)

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Eddard Stark had left before dawn, Septa Mordane informed Sansa as they broke their fast. "The king sent for him. Another hunt, I do believe. There are still wild aurochs in these lands, I am told."

Warlocks from Qarth slaughtered a bull aurochs when they were trying to make Sam Tarly be braver, and six aurochs are roasted during a feast of the Hand's tourney. Bran eats aurochs during Winterfell's harvest feast.

[Lord Varys]

Just now, Nittanian said:

AGOT Sansa I (near the Trident)

Warlocks from Qarth slaughtered a bull aurochs when they were trying to make Sam Tarly be braver, and six aurochs are roasted during a feast of the Hand's tourney. Bran eats aurochs during Winterfell's harvest feast.

Note the quotes I meant, but fine anyway. Thank you.

I must say you either have a very good memory or you know where to look. I myself don't have so bad a memory, either, but I realize I should reread the series again. Bits and pieces begin to fade.

[Nittanian]

17 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I must say you either have a very good memory or you know where to look.

This works miracles!

[Bright Blue Eyes]

17 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, the Northmen should be able to deal with this problem by actually arming those people in the regions threatened by that properly. The wildlings have no discipline and they have no good weaponry which they don't have stolen. Not to mention that they don't have siege engines or technology. One stone keep in each village in the Umber and mountain clan lands should make wildling raids pretty much impossible if you ask me. Not to mention that those parties aren't that strong, usually, so a village of, say, 50-100 men should be able to deal with them just fine, no?

Since that clearly doesn't happen there is no chance the those lands are very populated or the people there well-equipped. The peasants there would be on the same level as the Osgrey levies.

"A village of 50-100 men" is a well-sized town. Those were rare even in central Europe.

[Lord Varys]

13 minutes ago, Bright Blue Eyes said:

"A village of 50-100 men" is a well-sized town. Those were rare even in central Europe.

The numbers aren't that important, and you know that. The keeps are. Riverland villages tend to have keeps close by who protect them from armed knights. They wouldn't be much bigger than those villages up North if the lands there were organized the same, in principle.

So the mountain clans/Umber villages don't have keeps or there aren't even any villages there. In the Gifts nobody ever sees any villages.

[Free Northman Reborn]

5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

@Free Northman Reborn

We have no textual evidence to lead us to the conclusion that the North was suffering the hardest during the Long Night. It is also possible that people were dying all over the place in Westeros. Or that there weren't all that many humans in Westeros at that time yet, so that not as many could have been killed in the first place. You have to keep in mind that migration might have never really stopped (both within Westeros itself but also of people migrating to Westeros), especially not when the Andals came.

I mean, back during the Long Night the Children of the Forest still owned the forests and such, and they might have been a lot bigger back then than they are now.

We also don't know whether the freak seasons were as twisted as they are now. For instance, if the death of the last dragon made winter colder and and harder then one might assume that winters were generally milder during the days the Valyrians ruled.

A succession of mild winters like the ones during the last couple of decades prior to the beginning of the series could lead to a population growth all over the place, but a hard winter might undo all of that and even more, especially in the North.

Other thing:

We do seem to have pretty decent numbers on the wildling population. How many people were in Mance's huge host? About 100,000, if I remember correctly. That, perhaps plus a few thousand people staying behind, dying on the march, or behaving like Craster seem to be the entirety of the people living beyond the Wall.

Are there considerably less people north of the Wall than in the North itself? I guess so, but 100,000 wildlings against three million Northmen would make the threat they pose look like a joke.

OK, I've been away for a few hours and I see a lot has been said in the interim. So let me respond:

Firstly, I don't think any part of my argument relies on the idea that the North "suffered the hardest" during the Long Night, although I certainly think logic would lead us to that conclusion. Be that as it may, if the Long Night really lasted 10 years then Westeros probably lost 90% of its human population from starvation. So the entire Westeros would have started from a very small base population after the Long Night ended. The Long Night would have caused a population bottleneck similar to the Toba volcanic eruption that reduced humanity to a few thousands breeding pairs 70,000 years ago.

So the equation is simple. Population 8000 years ago - very small. Population today - 40 million or thereabouts. This applies to the entire Westeros.

Now, in the South, the available open space has been filled pretty much to the brink, it would seem. Likely locations next to rivers and in open fields are covered with farms pretty much wherever you would expect. So it would seem that the carrying capacity of the South has been reached thousands of years ago. In short, either the South started off from a higher population base after the Long Night, or its annual growth rate in the years after the Long Night was higher than the North's, or both of the above apply. I suspect the last option is the likely answer, meaning the South both had a higher survival rate during the Long Night and had a higher growth rate in the years thereafter.

So the South grew faster than the North. But only up to a point. Because since agricultural technology has not really improved over the last few thousand years, this growth only continued until the carrying capacity of the land was reached. Which seems to have been reached much earlier in the South. Many thousands of years ago, likely.

By contrast, the North is STILL not back to its full carrying capacity, because of its slower growth rate. The North too will eventually reach the population plateau which signifies the equilibrium between the number of mouths to feed and the amount of food that the land can produce. But clearly it has not come even remotely close to that point as yet.

Because once population pressure arises, you would see forests being cleared out to an increasing extent to make room for farmland, you would see farms next to pretty much every stream and in every field that has potential for conversion to agriculture. As an example, there is no reason why Barrowton should be able to support 9000 people, but the land a hundred miles from it - also in the Barrowlands - has no farms. The reason there aren't farms is because there aren't enough people yet to need that farmland.

There is PLENTY more land that could be converted to farmland in the North, if there were just people to work it. So it is not the land limiting the amount of agriculture, it is the lack of sufficient people to work that land that limits it. That is uncontestable.

So here you have two simple facts, which, when combined give you an undeniable answer.

Fact 1: The population of the North today is hundreds of times as large as the population immediately after the Long Night. So there is clear upward growth trend over time. A linear graph with time on the horizontal axis and population size on the vertical axis.

Fact 2: This growth cannot have been stopped by the natural resources available as yet, because a vast amount of open land and potentially clearable land is still completely untapped.

So these two facts together lead us to the inescapable conclusion that the North's population is still growing.  The South reached its potential millenia ago. By contrast, the North is still not at its full potential. It has still not recovered from the Long Night.

Now please note that this does not mean that the North does not have a larger population today than it had before the Long Night. It most assuredly does. But that is because in those incredibly primitive times population levels would have been lower EVERYWHERE. In both the North and the South. So in truth, the carrying capacity of the North has never been reached. And in the South it was likely only reached some thousands of years after the Long Night.

A few other comments on your assertions in the quoted post:

This whole spiel about the Winters getting colder after the death of the last dragons is totally unsubstantiated superstition. It is almost certainly hogwash.

And lastly, regarding the wildling population. Yes, make it 100,000. But the North's is not 3 million. More like 6 million. Considering the immense logistical challenges of raising and sending an army all the way to the Riverlands from the distant corners of the North, their mobilization rate will without a shadow of a doubt be the lowest of all the Seven Kingdoms. So if the Westerlands are raising 1%, then the North will most certainly be raising half that at best. So a 30k-40k armed potential woulld likely require a 6 million strong population or more.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

31 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The numbers aren't that important, and you know that. The keeps are. Riverland villages tend to have keeps close by who protect them from armed knights. They wouldn't be much bigger than those villages up North if the lands there were organized the same, in principle.

So the mountain clans/Umber villages don't have keeps or there aren't even any villages there. In the Gifts nobody ever sees any villages.

"Close by" meaning less than 500 meters. And they still get raided.

Apart from the 90+% not having a keep close by.

[Free Northman Reborn]

47 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The numbers aren't that important, and you know that. The keeps are. Riverland villages tend to have keeps close by who protect them from armed knights. They wouldn't be much bigger than those villages up North if the lands there were organized the same, in principle.

So the mountain clans/Umber villages don't have keeps or there aren't even any villages there. In the Gifts nobody ever sees any villages.

Hang on, what lengths will this argument go to now?

So does the Vale have no keeps because they suffer from raids by the Clans from the Mountains of the Moon? Raiders by definition strike hard and fast and move on again. In the North with its vast distances and rugged terrain such a tactic becomes even more difficult to neutralize.

There are no villages in the Gift. We have established that already. Because the Night's Watch has become too weak to protect the land in any way or form. Hence everyone moved south to Umber, Karstark and other Stark ruled lands.