GRRM's mistake: Essos Militaries.

[marsyao]

On 7/10/2016 at 1:03 AM, Abdallah said:

 The Unsullied are a mix of Mamluks and Spartans.

Why unsullied has anything to with Mamluks? Mamluks,were original from central asian Turkic tribes, they were calvary and Unsullied were infrantry, they were freed after they finished their tranining, and Unsullied were slave for their entire life,Unsullied were Eunuchs, Mamlucks were CETAINLY NOT Eunuchs

[Werthead]

Yup. And the port of Volantis is described as being so large that the entirety of Braavos can fit into it. Braavos is certainly the richest and most powerful of the Free Cities in that it can pay huge mercenary armies and it certainly has the largest fleet, but Volantis is physically larger and has a larger population. It's just that a lot of that population is made up of slaves, so overall it is a poorer city.

[Abdallah]

3 hours ago, marsyao said:

Why unsullied has anything to with Mamluks? Mamluks,were original from central asian Turkic tribes, they were calvary and Unsullied were infrantry, they were freed after they finished their tranining, and Unsullied were slave for their entire life,Unsullied were Eunuchs, Mamlucks were CETAINLY NOT Eunuchs 

While you are correct for the most part, the entire purchase slave children to train as soldiers is possibly based on the Mamluk system, either inspired him or at the very least very similar. Even if they weren't based on the Mamluks it would have been a better alternative tot he Unsullied we have now. 

[marsyao]

3 minutes ago, Abdallah said:

While you are correct for the most part, the entire purchase slave children to train as soldiers is possibly based on the Mamluk system, either inspired him or at the very least very similar. Even if they weren't based on the Mamluks it would have been a better alternative tot he Unsullied we have now. 

Actually Mumluk were bought a little later of them age, teenages or even in early twenties

[Abdallah]

10 minutes ago, marsyao said:

Actually Mumluk were bought a little later of them age, teenages or even in early twenties

Yeah Mamluks mostly started at adolescents according to David Nicole's Mamluk Askhari. If the average was say 13, Unsullied starts theirs at 5. But thats not a huge difference. Granted the Mamluks were treated far better. But if GRRM simply had the Unsullied trained as Mamluks they wouldn't have to deal with questions about their abilities to combat Westerosi armies.

On another note the slave soldiers of Norvos remind me of the Tabardaiyya, a special corps of Mamluks armed with axes mentioned in Hillenbrand's Crusades's: Islamic Prospective.  

[Fredwin]

3 hours ago, Abdallah said:

Yeah GRRM is a real anti war kind of guy, he isn't the kind to obsess over warrior cultures. It's too bad he didn't consult a military expert. But the books are brilliant non the less. ready for TWOW

Exactly, and I think one of the main reasons he's so inconsistent with numbers(as far as the amount of soldiers that different forces have) because he figures they are going to be devoured by snow in the end.

The things he's really weak with that have bothered me from a nitpicking standpoint have always been the naval aspects of our Westerosi Kingdoms. It's never made sense to me that the major seafaring kingdoms of Westeros are all on the West Coast where they would be landlocked from easy trade with the neighboring continent(where you'd think trade would flourish). 

The Ironborn seem to have the most powerful fleets as far as distance able to travel and wherewithal but they have barely explored Planetos? There are a lot of mysterious locations super close to Pike in nautical terms that they seem to just not care about. That doesn't really fit with their culture. The other fleets suffer from the same problem and to this day I don't understand how the Ironborn continue to win naval battles despite having vast inferiority in numbers and being spread so thin as a small island nation. It just one of many things that doesn't jive with the world GRRM has put into existence.

[Abdallah]

Just now, Fredwin said:

Exactly, and I think one of the main reasons he's so inconsistent with numbers(as far as the amount of soldiers that different forces have) because he figures they are going to be devoured by snow in the end.

The things he's really weak with that have bothered me from a nitpicking standpoint have always been the naval aspects of our Westerosi Kingdoms. It's never made sense to me that the major seafaring kingdoms of Westeros are all on the West Coast where they would be landlocked from easy trade with the neighboring continent(where you'd think trade would flourish). 

The Ironborn seem to have the most powerful fleets as far as distance able to travel and wherewithal but they have barely explored Planetos? There are a lot of mysterious locations super close to Pike in nautical terms that they seem to just not care about. That doesn't really fit with their culture. The other fleets suffer from the same problem and to this day I don't understand how the Ironborn continue to win naval battles despite having vast inferiority in numbers and being spread so thin as a small island nation. It just one of many things that doesn't jive with the world GRRM has put into existence.

Yeah the Ironborn should have the best fleet in ASOIAF. They should have several hundred wargalleys, more than the Arbor's fleet. 

[Universal Sword Donor]

6 hours ago, Carey Snow said:

We have to remember that the vast majority of Westerosi armies are not made up of knights or trained archers. The majority is untrained commoners very lightly armored and welding hoes and clubs, or whatever else they can find. I do expect her army to fare much worse than she expects because they do not have a clue of how to fight together. Also, her dragons are mostly untrained and unreliable. I think she losses the battle for Westeros but saves the day against the Others with her young dragons. 

No

 

 

[Fredwin]

2 minutes ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

No

 

 

That post doesn't even begin to try and explain how the world GRRM has built can sustain armies of that size. Where are all the lands these thousands of knights hail from? Where do they get the raw materials for so much steel? Where are all the mines? Who feeds these armies that stay together for months and years at a time? They just forage for thousands of men out of the same stretch of plains? It's the exact type of stuff GRRM is inconsistent about as he did not deem it necessary to contact experts to help him make things more plausible for his world.

[marsyao]

23 minutes ago, Abdallah said:

Yeah Mamluks mostly started at adolescents according to David Nicole's Mamluk Askhari. If the average was say 13, Unsullied starts theirs at 5. But thats not a huge difference. Granted the Mamluks were treated far better. But if GRRM simply had the Unsullied trained as Mamluks they wouldn't have to deal with questions about their abilities to combat Westerosi armies.

On another note the slave soldiers of Norvos remind me of the Tabardaiyya, a special corps of Mamluks armed with axes mentioned in Hillenbrand's Crusades's: Islamic Prospective.  

Bit Mamluks were not cut, and when they became Mamluks after finishing their training, they were grant freedom, hene they were not slave soldiers

[Abdallah]

5 minutes ago, marsyao said:

Bit Mamluks were not cut, and when they became Mamluks after finishing their training, they were grant freedom, hene they were not slave soldiers

True. Granted it would be a small thing to simply keep them slaves in the books. The cutting of the Unsullied is extremely foolish in the books. Now the Unsullied aren't as strong as regular men. 

[lujo]

1 hour ago, Fredwin said:

The things he's really weak with that have bothered me from a nitpicking standpoint have always been the naval aspects of our Westerosi Kingdoms. It's never made sense to me that the major seafaring kingdoms of Westeros are all on the West Coast where they would be landlocked from easy trade with the neighboring continent(where you'd think trade would flourish). 

The much, much more contrived thing is how come only some guys have a navy. Westeros is effectively an island, everybody would have a navy. The North would have obliterated the Iron Islands, and the Stark-Lannister war would look like this: Starks stick some men on Moat Cailin, board ships, land in the Westerlands and f**k them up righteously and also lift the seige of Riverrun because Riverrun is almost IN Westerlands.

I live on the Dalmatian coast in the Adriatic sea - every single village on it had a pirate fleet at one point in history, they even had pirate wars going on between towns. If Westeros was realistic, everybody who could see the coast from their keep would be doing some piracy on the side, to begin with.

1 hour ago, Fredwin said:

The Ironborn seem to have the most powerful fleets as far as distance able to travel and wherewithal but they have barely explored Planetos? There are a lot of mysterious locations super close to Pike in nautical terms that they seem to just not care about. That doesn't really fit with their culture. The other fleets suffer from the same problem and to this day I don't understand how the Ironborn continue to win naval battles despite having vast inferiority in numbers and being spread so thin as a small island nation. It just one of many things that doesn't jive with the world GRRM has put into existence.

The Ironborn make no sense on so many levels it's not even funny. He wanted Lovecraftian Vikings, which is cool as hell, he got Lovecraftian Vikings. Except real world Vikings were primarily traders who'd loot on the side and who'd also conquer if they looted. Also, and this is important - Scandinavians had an inexhaustible supply of timber, and scandinavia is as big as, if not bigger than england. What he did way stretch england to the size of a continent, and shrink scandinavia to the size of the Isle of Man.

Epic worldbuilding, much gritty, very realism.

Cool though.

[Dorian Martell]

On 7/9/2016 at 10:03 PM, Abdallah said:

 The Dothraki are based off the Mongols. 

and the Hunns, and the Souix, Alans and the Cheyene.

[Abdallah]

26 minutes ago, Dorian Martell said:

and the Hunns, and the Souix, Alans and the Cheyene.

yeah and basing them partly off native americans is probably why they don't have armor. the Natives got their horses during the time of Gunpower where armor was useless. Medieval age you need armor. 

[Fredwin]

1 hour ago, lujo said:

The much, much more contrived thing is how come only some guys have a navy. Westeros is effectively an island, everybody would have a navy. The North would have obliterated the Iron Islands, and the Stark-Lannister war would look like this: Starks stick some men on Moat Cailin, board ships, land in the Westerlands and f**k them up righteously and also lift the seige of Riverrun because Riverrun is almost IN Westerlands.

I live on the Dalmatian coast in the Adriatic sea - every single village on it had a pirate fleet at one point in history, they even had pirate wars going on between towns. If Westeros was realistic, everybody who could see the coast from their keep would be doing some piracy on the side, to begin with.

The Ironborn make no sense on so many levels it's not even funny. He wanted Lovecraftian Vikings, which is cool as hell, he got Lovecraftian Vikings. Except real world Vikings were primarily traders who'd loot on the side and who'd also conquer if they looted. Also, and this is important - Scandinavians had an inexhaustible supply of timber, and scandinavia is as big as, if not bigger than england. What he did way stretch england to the size of a continent, and shrink scandinavia to the size of the Isle of Man.

Epic worldbuilding, much gritty, very realism.

Cool though.

Yeah, whenever I read I try not to focus on the aspects that ruin my suspension of disbelief. So many times I have to take what is written with a grain of salt to stay invested in the characters. It's scary how well he is able to write without giving much thought to these things. Then again, it's better to have things not make sense than to keep him bogged down in minutia I guess, huh?

Also, what you said about how conflicts would actually play out with troops being transported is 100% true. The thing is GRRM doesn't really have a handle of the technology level of Westeros, he goes back and forth on the type of equipment and ships used by the different houses. None of it really fits with how advanced people were during the actual war of the roses era.

[lujo]

1 hour ago, Fredwin said:

Yeah, whenever I read I try not to focus on the aspects that ruin my suspension of disbelief. So many times I have to take what is written with a grain of salt to stay invested in the characters. It's scary how well he is able to write without giving much thought to these things. Then again, it's better to have things not make sense than to keep him bogged down in minutia I guess, huh?

The more I think about it (and the more loony fans I meet) the more it seems to me that the series is running on the opposite of "excellent world building" or "realism". Having everyone be human let's everyone be able to have sex with everyone, and everyone be described in terms somewhat relatable to even a simpleton. And everybody in-universe taking the world seriously makes this world seem serious - the less of the actual world the audience has seen in their life, the better. And it's got more characters in it than most folks know IRL, so if all those characters take it seriously, then it's gotta make sense.

The funny thing is how people will get into arguments over the believability or convinvingness of this or that. 

1 hour ago, Fredwin said:

Also, what you said about how conflicts would actually play out with troops being transported is 100% true. The thing is GRRM doesn't really have a handle of the technology level of Westeros, he goes back and forth on the type of equipment and ships used by the different houses. None of it really fits with how advanced people were during the actual war of the roses era.

I've been asked "why doesn't he just write historical fiction, why does it need to be fantasy", and I think that's the answer. You can pass of relatively lousy historical fiction, stick your favorite stuff from other people's work in too, and sell it as fantasy. Makes for good pulp fiction, though, although I don't think anyone's going to be repeating the sucess of this one very soon.

[Fredwin]

9 minutes ago, lujo said:

The more I think about it (and the more loony fans I meet) the more it seems to me that the series is running on the opposite of "excellent world building" or "realism". Having everyone be human let's everyone be able to have sex with everyone, and everyone be described in terms somewhat relatable to even a simpleton. And everybody in-universe taking the world seriously makes this world seem serious - the less of the actual world the audience has seen in their life, the better. And it's got more characters in it than most folks know IRL, so if all those characters take it seriously, then it's gotta make sense.

The funny thing is how people will get into arguments over the believability or convinvingness of this or that. 

I've been asked "why doesn't he just write historical fiction, why does it need to be fantasy", and I think that's the answer. You can pass of relatively lousy historical fiction, stick your favorite stuff from other people's work in too, and sell it as fantasy. Makes for good pulp fiction, though, although I don't think anyone's going to be repeating the sucess of this one very soon.

What's funny is some of the other fiction he's written, even his sci-fi series, is more realistic at times. He's just really insanely good at writing dialogue(usually, minus the groaners like myrish swamp ), even if he's part hack. Anyone who writes for TV like he has at points has part hack in them.  

The world building elements that are good all involve the strictly historical aspects of Westeros(Only mainland westeros.) As far as the houses go with all their assorted sayings, lineage and sigils, the kingsguard, the maesters, etc.

If he stuck to his strengths and kept the story more focused, it would cut down so many of these little issues that don't add up. For instance, what he does with Dunk and Egg is perfect. Those are well-written self-contained stories that don't need all the inexplicable extra parts of the "world" to bog down good storytelling.

The one other thing I want to say about the Iron born is the fact that when they had to capitulate to the crown quite recently they should have been completely disarmed ships and all. They are not 1930s era industrial Germany. So how did they recover to fully fledged raider status in half a generation?

[lujo]

36 minutes ago, Fredwin said:

the houses go with all their assorted sayings, lineage and sigils

This is what's selling it. I mean, this is what's commendable about it AND selling it, apart from dialogue and rather nice use of stock (and other people's) characters. And he's exhausted what you can do with it, so someone else trying to repeat it would just look like thy're ripping him off and anyone who's read ASOIAF would get disonance if you used the same symbols. What the thing is is esentially a space opera, except things that you can just wave away in a space opera look ridiculous in a low-tech setting (provided anyone stops and thinks about it)

Quote

If he stuck to his strengths and kept the story more focused, it would cut down so many of these little issues that don't add up. For instance, what he does with Dunk and Egg is perfect. Those are well-written self-contained stories that don't need all the inexplicable extra parts of the "world" to bog down good storytelling.

If he just didn't have Dany and stuck to Westeros (several of the seven kingdoms aren't developed at all) it would've been much better. He's rather good at his own brand of McFiction in Ye Olde Bucherede Englande , everywhere else he's not. He arsed up right at the start with making Westeros a continent, if it was just a big island...

Quote

The one other thing I want to say about the Iron born is the fact that when they had to capitulate to the crown quite recently they should have been completely disarmed ships and all. They are not 1930s era industrial Germany. So how did they recover to fully fledged raider status in half a generation?

...then the ironborn could've been a bunch of guys from a largeish mainland peninsula which occasionally invaded. Like, you know, actual scandinavians. Because they never made sense. And they couldn't take their ships away because they use the same ships for everything, it was the same in the Adriatic (for milenia it seems). But the Ironborn would've run out of stuff to build ships with... a long long time ago.

[Dorian Martell]

3 hours ago, Abdallah said:

yeah and basing them partly off native americans is probably why they don't have armor. the Natives got their horses during the time of Gunpower where armor was useless. Medieval age you need armor. 

Or dragons 

[Aegon VII]

2 hours ago, Fredwin said:

. The thing is GRRM doesn't really have a handle of the technology level of Westeros, he goes back and forth on the type of equipment and ships used by the different houses. .

I'm interested to learn more about this. Do you have any examples of these inconsistencies? Or for that matter, any aspects of asoiaf that ruin your suspension of disbelief? 

 

Reading through this thread my first impression would be that people are being a bit unjust to GRRM. Getting bogged down in the minutia of city vs rural proportions in essos does not contribute to the story. We have to assume that if there is an Essos, there's enough farms to feed Essos. And if not, we would have read about it.

And just because we make a comparison between one of his armies and a real army from the past, doesn't mean he is making a mistake when they have differences. Ironborn are not Vikings, their ironborn. We can appreciate the similarities and look to Vikings as an influence, but we cannot critique the ironborn for not being Vikings.

Concerning whether or not Dany has a suitable army for Westeros, I say absolutely she does. She has talent, and she has diversity. Most importantly though, she has Selmy. Without Barristan or a comparable westerosi General, yeah her army would suck. Selmy makes all the difference because he knows how to properly deploy the different forces. Furthermore, he's training them to fight westerosi Knights specifically. Westerosi armies are less diverse, and Selmy knows everything about them. Danys armies are more diverse and know their enemy, whilst their enemy is less diverse and knows very little about them.