How rich are the Starks pre series

[direpupy]

4 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

 

Aside from religion and tourneys there is no difference between the Starks and the other houses on a cultural level. Especially not in the military field. The Starks also have knights, they just don't call them that, and they also use the very same steel weapons and armor the Andals introduced in Westeros on a large scale.

We know that from Gyldayn's story of Aegon's Conquest. There was the falcon crown, young King Ronnel's crown, and Sharra Arryn's coronet as the Queen Regent. She handed all of them to Visenya.

The driftwood crowns were a thing of the past after the Kingsmoots were a thing of the past, no? After that the Iron Kings would have worn actual crowns.

Actually TWoIaF mentiones more than a few cultural differences so that they are not different is an wrong assuption on your part.

Okay but there being a crown for the queen is not special al queens would have had one probably a more feminen version of the kings crown, so as for the crowns of kings with Ronnels crown that makes 2.

But my point on there being no description of them still stands, you don't know if they where made of gold.

As to the Ironborn and there crowns, after the driftwood crowns they switched to iron crowns so no gold or Jewels there.

[Lord Varys]

3 minutes ago, direpupy said:

Actually TWoIaF mentiones more than a few cultural differences so that they are not different is an wrong assuption on your part.

What would those be? The tourneys is all I can remember, and the guest right, of course, but that I'd have counted among the religious differences.

3 minutes ago, direpupy said:

Okay but there being a crown for the queen is not special al queens would have had one probably a more feminen version of the kings crown, so as for the crowns of kings with Ronnels crown that makes 2.

Well, it is not the crown of a queen consort, it is the crown of the person who rules in the king's stead. That is a difference.

3 minutes ago, direpupy said:

But my point on there being no description of them still stands, you don't know if they where made of gold.

As to the Ironborn and there crowns, after the driftwood crowns they switched to iron crowns so no gold or Jewels there.

Did they? Could be, but the Ironborn are a special case, too. They certainly could afford to make themselves some golden crowns if they wanted to, nobody contests that. In their case it might have been tradition. In the Starks case it could have been tradition and a lack of gold. And I'm not so sure if Harren still bore an iron crown. Harrenhal suggests that he really wanted to show off his wealth and power. His father and grandfather clearly lived more modest, though.

[direpupy]

23 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

What would those be? The tourneys is all I can remember, and the guest right, of course, but that I'd have counted among the religious differences.

Well, it is not the crown of a queen consort, it is the crown of the person who rules in the king's stead. That is a difference.

Did they? Could be, but the Ironborn are a special case, too. They certainly could afford to make themselves some golden crowns if they wanted to, nobody contests that. In their case it might have been tradition. In the Starks case it could have been tradition and a lack of gold. And I'm not so sure if Harren still bore an iron crown. Harrenhal suggests that he really wanted to show off his wealth and power. His father and grandfather clearly lived more modest, though.

I will look them up for you.

Do we know if she had a new crown made or did she just use the crown of queen consort for this purpose? Is this ever mentioned, because if it is not then its an assumption that it is a regents crown. Which would actually be odd because a regent normaly does not get a crown of his/her own.

Yep black iron to be presice, and Harren is not mentioned to have made a new one so we can't be sure he did. He still called himself Ironborn so he would have to show some outward sign of being one a crown would be a good way to do that.

[Kytheros]

The King in the North's Iron Crown is Iron because the North is a hard land, harsh and unforgiving.

There's a bit in the books about the Northern Crown and the symbology behind it. It's points are shaped like swords (or spears, can't remember), it's a harsh crown for a harsh land and people.

 

The original Kings of Winterfell may well have had a bronze crown, before the First Men learned to work iron, certainly, but the North would have had Iron for probably something like six millenia, if not longer, so the fact that the First Men didn't start out with iron is largely irrelevant.

In the crypts beneath Winterfell, the kings have an iron sword across them to keep them/their spirits from rising. Iron has long ago become important amongst the First Men culture.
For that matter, if you're a people who can work bronze, but are only just starting to work in iron, having an iron crown is, in fact, a display of massive wealth.
 

[SeanF]

On ‎6‎/‎15‎/‎2016 at 10:48 AM, Lord Varys said:

@direpupy

Actually, if you check your medieval literature you'll realize that pretty much all those kings and knights and heroes of all those stories are running around in golden clothes and armor, have swords and other weapons full of jewels and stuff, and own huge treasures where pretty much everything is full of gold, silver, and jewels.

This is a strong sign that in the actual middle ages the standard for richness was indeed having a lot of treasure. The fact that people owning cows were also reasonably wealthy isn't in dispute but kings and such should own gold and other treasures or else they weren't really rich.

Historically, the word 'rîch' refers in Middle High German not only to people being rich in our sense (having goods, land, and valuables, etc.) but also means that you are powerful and mighty. Rich people are powerful people in a medieval setting. You cannot be rich and powerless and neither can you be powerful and poor.

In that sense the Starks certainly aren't poor. But they aren't very rich, either, by comparison to the actual rich people. Even back in the days of the Kings in the North the Starks wore modest crowns of iron and bronze which confirms that they didn't own much (or any) gold and silver in those days. Else those metals would have been used for the crown. Noble metals do not only look good, they also do not corrode. Unless the Stark crown included magical iron it must have been full of rust by the time it was handed to the Conqueror.

Westeros does seem to have a monetary economy which works at least for traveling nobles and the richer commoners. Dunk sells a horse in Ashford and is paid in coin not in kind, and he also needs coin to buy himself an armor. When you want to stay at an inn you usually also need to pay the inn keep in coin, and so forth.

While the real world middle ages seem to have included bartering in many occasions, Westeros seems to be more progressive than that. You usually don't buy armor in cattle. I expect that local markets and whatever 'trade' there is between the smallfolk in villages would not necessarily use coin, but it is the common currency at tourneys.

As to the crops:

I know that there are plants that can sustain some frost, but it seems that this is not the case for the crops that are planted in the North. Or rather, that the climate/weather is too bad for that. We know that the cold killed the crops the Glovers planted at Deepwood Motte - before snow storm begun.

The real standard for richness in medieval societies was land.  With land came both wealth, and power.  For sure, many nobles and rich bourgeois liked to display jewels and gold.  But whereas rich bourgeois might have most of their wealth in jewels and gold and silver plate, the nobility had most of their wealth in land.

[House Cambodia]

6 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The real standard for richness in medieval societies was land.  With land came both wealth, and power.  For sure, many nobles and rich bourgeois liked to display jewels and gold.  But whereas rich bourgeois might have most of their wealth in jewels and gold and silver plate, the nobility had most of their wealth in land.

Er, no. Productive land. That's kind of the whole point of the thread.

[SeanF]

9 minutes ago, House Cambodia said:

Er, no. Productive land. That's kind of the whole point of the thread.

There is much productive land in the North.  Less productive than in the Riverlands, Reach, or Crownlands, but probably as productive as say, Medieval Sweden and Norway.

[Lord Varys]

Just now, SeanF said:

There is much productive land in the North.  Less productive than in the Riverlands, Reach, or Crownlands, but probably as productive as say, Medieval Sweden and Norway.

We don't know that. Medieval Norway and Sweden didn't have year-long winters. The North has. And the South doesn't have to the same degree (with George confirming that snow in Highgarden isn't not that prevalent and that it 'almost never' snows in Oldtown and Dorne).

Only the North suffers from those summer snows - which essentially could mean that the North has 'mild winters' in the season they call 'summer'. In my book that doesn't mean we are talking about an especially fertile land and climate. We are talking about the opposite.

[SeanF]

12 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

We don't know that. Medieval Norway and Sweden didn't have year-long winters. The North has. And the South doesn't have to the same degree (with George confirming that snow in Highgarden isn't not that prevalent and that it 'almost never' snows in Oldtown and Dorne).

Only the North suffers from those summer snows - which essentially could mean that the North has 'mild winters' in the season they call 'summer'. In my book that doesn't mean we are talking about an especially fertile land and climate. We are talking about the opposite.

It's productive enough, on Ran's estimate, to support about 5 people per square mile.  Even by medieval standards, that's a very sparse population, but it's still a few million.

[Lord Giggles]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

I mean, did some Stark just show up on Dragonstone or Driftmark with a lot of coin/gold/silver and bought such a greatsword? He certainly would have paid in actual currency considering that the Valyrians wouldn't have had any use for land in the North.

It's not impossible. Or, if the Starks didn't have sufficient actual cash to purchase Ice at the time that they did so(which I believe is unlikely), they could have bought Ice and then paid the cost in installments over a number of years or months or whatever the deal was. We have evidence of similar arrangements in history. One notable one was that Edward I had an arrangement with a group of Italian bankers, the Riccardi of Lucca, that they would give him essentialy unlimited credit meaning that he could borrow as much money from them as he needed and they would then collect the debt from English customs on wool, meaning that Edward had a ready supply of cash when he needed it and the Riccardi could be certain they'd eventually get their money back(it was this system that enabled Edward to raise such enormous forces of infantry during the Welsh wars). 

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Well, aside from the Greyjoys any other great house should have more assets than the Starks, both in kind and in coin. Thanks to the milder climate, the greater population density, and the trade in the South.

Why do people still think there is no trade going on in the North? Nowhere in the medieval era in Europe was so isolated that no trade went on, not even places which were the back of beyond like Scotland and Wales. Admittedly, the Welsh and Scots rulers made less money from customs on trade than the ruler of a medieval superpower like England or France but it still(in the case of the Scots at least) amounted to a decent amount. Now we have already agreed that the North will be exporting timber to the Iron Islands at the very least for the smelting of iron and tin and the building of ships(yet another reason why Balon's decision to attack the North was stupid). I'd also be willing to wager they exported a fair amount of timber to the Westerlands for the smelting of silver ore and gold ore as there's no way enough timber is cut in the Westerlands to supply them with enough to smelt all of the gold and silver mined there and it's going to be cheaper to buy and transport it from the North than from the Stormlands. In addition to this the North will export things like wool and hides(although here they'll admittedly have competition from the Riverlands, Vale and probably Westerlands too). We have no conclusive evidence for whether the North has any metals other than silver but I'd be willing to bet they also have iron and at least tin. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Did they? Could be, but the Ironborn are a special case, too. They certainly could afford to make themselves some golden crowns if they wanted to, nobody contests that. In their case it might have been tradition. In the Starks case it could have been tradition and a lack of gold. And I'm not so sure if Harren still bore an iron crown. Harrenhal suggests that he really wanted to show off his wealth and power. His father and grandfather clearly lived more modest, though.

Hang on. Am I reading this right? Are you actually saying that you have no doubt that the Ironborn could afford golden crowns, but in the Starks' case you are unsure?

I'm starting to give up on a rational debate on this topic.

By the way, just to put to bed the far fetched idea that gold is virtually non-existent in the North, Wyman Manderly pays 3000 gold dragons ransom for Wyllis's release without breaking a sweat. This after building fortifications on a massive scale, including a mile long, 30 foot tall Harbor wall, with watchtowers every 100 yards. And after building 50 warships and recruiting every soldier that can hold a spear. And he tells Davos his vaults are still overflowing with silver despite these expenses, which appear seemingly negligible to him.

And we are meant to believe that his overlords - House Stark - cannot afford to repair a single broken Tower? Or afford a single crown made from gold?

Oh and regarding the length of the Starks' rule. They have been petty Kings since the Long Night. And according to the World Book, they united the entire North under their rule when the very first Andal longships started crossing the Narrow Sea. So in others words, since before House Arryn even existed in the Vale.

[TheSTARKempire]

I would be really glad if that person(I am not gonna name) can really make rational arguments, rather than behaving so stubbornly to present ridiculous ideas like there is no trade in the north, years-long winter makes the starks so poor, etc.

I don't remember reading from the book that the North is so poor. It is repeatedly mentioned that the North is a harsh land, but bear in mind that it is general reference about the North and it does not mean the entire North's land must be so infertile as to cause extreme poverty to the inhabitants. Were the North as destitute as some would like us to believe, lots of people would have migrated to the South. Yet, we know of no other houses or common people from the North migrating to the south. I would wager that land immediately to the North of neck up to Cerwyn land surely must be fertile enough. 

[Maia]

Having read this thread, looked at ADwD map and thought what was shown in the books, my conclusion is that agricultural enclaves in the North need something extra to make farming viable.  Let's not forget that not only would there be no harvests during years of Winter, but Spring and Autumn harvests also aren't guaranteed and would not provide peak yields. Which is why, for any concentrations of the populace to be feasible, the areas where they happen need to have several big  advantages at once, such as very fertile land, that will could provide decent harvests despite short growing seasons, occasional summer snows, etc., micro-climates that could extend said seasons and somewhat protect the crops from the worst, alternative sources of food, such as fishing and hunting, etc.  And that locations of northern castles and surrounding farmland are very much informed by this.

For instance, according to TWoIAF,  the Shivering Sea contains excellent fishing grounds, and sure enough, a lot of important castles in the east are placed on or close to the eastern shore, are connected by rivers to it, have bays close by,  etc.

Winterfell and the Last Hearth are the only castles that aren't situated close to sea, rivers and lakes. In the former's case, I guess that the hot springs don't just warm Winterfell, but create a favorable micro-climate in the area, which allows agriculture to flourish, makes up for the lack of fishing, etc. And, of course,there is the Wolfswood to suplement their food resources. The latter, I don't know.

Anyway, I wholly agree that this is why Karstarks and Umbers, as they complained to Bran in ACoK, were unable to bring the whole harvests in, due to the lack of men. Because,  given the time constraints of mobilisation, they could mainly take men from the agricultural enclaves surrounding their castles, rather than from the larger, but widely dispersed population of crofters eking out their sustenance in the woods, etc.

As to the question of utility of the castles in the North - I imagine that they exist, in part, to protect the lords and their people against the neighbors who weren't fortunate enough to lay in sufficient stores for the Winter, and who at some point have to decide between robbing others or starving to death. The tradition of smallfolk gathering together in the winter town evolved for a reason, I am sure.

Which is why it doesn't really make sense that according to TWoIAF the northeners didn't habitually raid the Riverlands during harsh winters, back when they were separate kingdoms.

[Free Northman Reborn]

18 minutes ago, Maia said:

Having read this thread, looked at ADwD map and thought what was shown in the books, my conclusion is that agricultural enclaves in the North need something extra to make farming viable.  Let's not forget that not only would there be no harvests during years of Winter, but Spring and Autumn harvests also aren't guaranteed and would not provide peak yields. Which is why, for any concentrations of the populace to be feasible, the areas where they happen need to have several big  advantages at once, such as very fertile land, that will could provide decent harvests despite short growing seasons, occasional summer snows, etc., micro-climates that could extend said seasons and somewhat protect the crops from the worst, alternative sources of food, such as fishing and hunting, etc.  And that locations of northern castles and surrounding farmland are very much informed by this.

For instance, according to TWoIAF,  the Shivering Sea contains excellent fishing grounds, and sure enough, a lot of important castles in the east are placed on or close to the eastern shore, are connected by rivers to it, have bays close by,  etc.

Winterfell and the Last Hearth are the only castles that aren't situated close to sea, rivers and lakes. In the former's case, I guess that the hot springs don't just warm Winterfell, but create a favorable micro-climate in the area, which allows agriculture to flourish, makes up for the lack of fishing, etc. And, of course,there is the Wolfswood to suplement their food resources. The latter, I don't know.

Anyway, I wholly agree that this is why Karstarks and Umbers, as they complained to Bran in ACoK, were unable to bring the whole harvests in, due to the lack of men. Because,  given the time constraints of mobilisation, they could mainly take men from the agricultural enclaves surrounding their castles, rather than from the larger, but widely dispersed population of crofters eking out their sustenance in the woods, etc.

As to the question of utility of the castles in the North - I imagine that they exist, in part, to protect the lords and their people against the neighbors who weren't fortunate enough to lay in sufficient stores for the Winter, and who at some point have to decide between robbing others or starving to death. The tradition of smallfolk gathering together in the winter town evolved for a reason, I am sure.

Which is why it doesn't really make sense that according to TWoIAF the northeners didn't habitually raid the Riverlands during harsh winters, back when they were separate kingdoms.

This presents a number of misconceptions. Let's start with the very last point. It utterly ignores the logistical and distance implications in a Medival environment. The Riverlands are located hundreds of miles south of the North, through an almost impassable swamp. What point is there in raiding it of bulky foodstocks like grain and other perishable items? How the heck are you going to transport this stuff back to the North? You can't.

And this leads us to the other point. People in the North don't eat what the North as a whole produces. People eat the food that is produced in the 30 or so miles immediately surrounding their holdfasts. Else they don't eat. Because you can't just transport "food aid" to areas hundreds of miles away, in bulk.

We see the best example of what a Northern village would have looked like from Bran's point of view at Queenscrown. There is a watchtower, built at some expense on an island in the middle of a lake, with a causeway designed with some complication to delay invaders from reaching it. Next to this watchtower we have the abandoned village, and around it we have the good farmland that in previous centuries would have carried the harvests that supported the village and its lord.

These people would not have been fed from the Umber or Karstark lands hundreds of miles away. They would have fed themselves through Winter. The same would apply for the next group of villages 10 or 20 or 30 miles away, and the next and the next.

And this was the very coldest part of the North, right up against the Wall. The vast majority of the North's population would be rural, living off the farms they themselves were working on. But there is no reason why you would only find such farms in isolated pockets, separated by hundreds of miles of nothing. They would occur anywhere that there is workable land, with a good water source and some wood to provide fuel and building materials. Most of these however would have no roads leading to them, and would be very difficult to reach even for the villagers from the next valley, 10 miles away.

But from the evidence there was nothing that makes Queenscrown any more special than the next likely patch of land 10 miles away. If there were orchards, farmland and water there, the same would apply at any other such location in the North. No "special hot vapours from the ground" required to make one spot warmer than the next.

As for Winterfell, nope. The hot springs warm the Godswood only. Even the areas inside the walls, but outside the godswood are covered by snow. So again, nothing special is making the land outside Winterfell's walls more fertile than that 50 or 100 miles away. If the land next to Winterfell can be farmed, so can the land in the next valley, or on the next plain beyond the next hill.

 

[direpupy]

5 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

As for Winterfell, nope. The hot springs warm the Godswood only. Even the areas inside the walls, but outside the godswood are covered by snow. So again, nothing special is making the land outside Winterfell's walls more fertile than that 50 or 100 miles away. If the land next to Winterfell can be farmed, so can the land in the next valley, or on the next plain beyond the next hill.

 

Thats not true the great keep is spesifically mentioned to have been build over a part of the hot springs so its not just the godswood.

[Free Northman Reborn]

4 minutes ago, direpupy said:

Thats not true the great keep is spesifically mentioned to have been build over a part of the hot springs so its not just the godswood.

My point is that from Theon's own evidence, it was warm in the Godswood during Ramsay's wedding while in the yard outside it was freezing and covered in snow.

So yes, we know that the warm water from the hot springs is piped through Winterfell's walls. But the hot springs clearly don't warm the entire 3 acres of the Winterfell complex. Hence, it will play no role in warming the miles of farmland that feeds Winterfell and its surrounding lands.

[direpupy]

Just now, Free Northman Reborn said:

My point is that from Theon's own evidence, it was warm in the Godswood during Ramsay's wedding while in the yard outside it was freezing and covered in snow.

So yes, we know that the warm water from the hot springs is piped through Winterfell's walls. But the hot springs clearly don't warm the entire 3 acres of the Winterfell complex. Hence, it will play no role in warming the miles of farmland that feeds Wintefell and its surrounding lands.

No not al of it but but you said only the godswood and that is wat i corrected you on. I made no comment on its influence on the surrounding farmland because i actually agree with you on that. The glass garden is probably the part that they used to at least get some food grown in winter, but apart from that hot springs would have no influence on harvests. 

[Free Northman Reborn]

1 hour ago, Lord Giggles said:

It's not impossible. Or, if the Starks didn't have sufficient actual cash to purchase Ice at the time that they did so(which I believe is unlikely), they could have bought Ice and then paid the cost in installments over a number of years or months or whatever the deal was. We have evidence of similar arrangements in history. One notable one was that Edward I had an arrangement with a group of Italian bankers, the Riccardi of Lucca, that they would give him essentialy unlimited credit meaning that he could borrow as much money from them as he needed and they would then collect the debt from English customs on wool, meaning that Edward had a ready supply of cash when he needed it and the Riccardi could be certain they'd eventually get their money back(it was this system that enabled Edward to raise such enormous forces of infantry during the Welsh wars). 

Why do people still think there is no trade going on in the North? Nowhere in the medieval era in Europe was so isolated that no trade went on, not even places which were the back of beyond like Scotland and Wales. Admittedly, the Welsh and Scots rulers made less money from customs on trade than the ruler of a medieval superpower like England or France but it still(in the case of the Scots at least) amounted to a decent amount. Now we have already agreed that the North will be exporting timber to the Iron Islands at the very least for the smelting of iron and tin and the building of ships(yet another reason why Balon's decision to attack the North was stupid). I'd also be willing to wager they exported a fair amount of timber to the Westerlands for the smelting of silver ore and gold ore as there's no way enough timber is cut in the Westerlands to supply them with enough to smelt all of the gold and silver mined there and it's going to be cheaper to buy and transport it from the North than from the Stormlands. In addition to this the North will export things like wool and hides(although here they'll admittedly have competition from the Riverlands, Vale and probably Westerlands too). We have no conclusive evidence for whether the North has any metals other than silver but I'd be willing to bet they also have iron and at least tin. 

Just from Davos's chapter in Sisterton, Lord Borrell says there is regular trade between Sisterton and White Harbor. He list the trade items they receive from the North as being wool, lumber and hides.

This is one example. Based on what Sisterton most needs. They obviously cannot maintain the number of sheep and cattle on the Sisters to provide all the wool and leather they need. And they obviously don't have enought forests to provide them with the lumber they require. So they import this from the North. I'm sure Braavos would import even more lumber from the North, seeing as they have none whatsoever.

In any case, this was one small example. Which will by no means be exhaustive.

Davos mentiones a dark beer brewed in White Harbor that fetches as much as Arbor Gold per barrel, in Braavos and Ibben. Trade will exist.

[Free Northman Reborn]

2 minutes ago, direpupy said:

No not al of it but but you said only the godswood and that is wat i corrected you on. I made no comment on its influence on the surrounding farmland because i actually agree with you on that. The glass garden is probably the part that they used to at least get some food grown in winter, but apart from that hot springs would have no influence on harvests. 

Ok, agreed. I was responding to Maia about the springs being the reason why there is farming around Winterfell. Which is clearly not the case. Which buildings inside the Winterfell complex has some of that heat channeled into them would be up to the engineering and design of the structures.

[direpupy]

2 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Ok, agreed. I was responding to Maia about the springs being the reason why there is farming around Winterfell. Which is clearly not the case. Which buildings inside the Winterfell complex has some of that heat channeled into them would be up to the engineering and design of the structures.

wel truth be told only the great keep is mentioned as having been build on top of one the springs so it is possible that that is they only heated building in Winterfell.

Apart from the glass garden that is.