The Antler Men

[The Sleeper]

During Clash of Kings, Varys reports to Tyrion that a group of businessmen wish to see Stannis king and so have armed several hundred followers and plan to open a gate when Stannis attacks. Later these become collectively known as Antler men due to having antlers named to their heads and launched with trebuchets during the battle.

Apart from the fact that these appear out of nowhere, it sounds a bit incongruous for Stannis, who is notoriously unpopular to have a grassroots movement in favor of his ascension. Particularly businessmen, as he has never shown any sign of interest in finances. The incongruity is made greater by the inclusion in the number of the antler men of Salloreon, a master armorer who specializes in craftin elaborate and ornate armor for the nobility. Stannis himself seems of a mind with Jon Arryn and Ned of looking for functionality over ostentation.

Were they indeed Stannis' supporters? Twice over the course of the following books this group is linked to Littlefinger. Tyrion discovers that many of them are recipients of loans from the crown. Jaime discovers that one of them had purchased an office in the dungeons and assumes that he did that through Littlefinger.

Now consider the way that Littlefinger managed the Crown's finances. He loaned or invested the majority of the Crown's incomes. He had to have had partners and associates in those endevors.

I beleieve that these associates were the Antler Men. Rather than them being Stannis supporters, Varys saw an opportunity to undermine LF's infrastructure and influence in King's Landing. This would have the added effect of weakening the Crown's economy as well as paving the way for Illyrio to take over when he eventually arrived.

[The Drunkard]

Self-interest would have them side with Stannis. He looks more likely to win, having just gained the majority of Renly's chivalry (and with the news about the infantry yet to reach the city). He has a reputation for taking his duties and obligations very seriously, and they would be doing him a major favour by tipping the scales during the battle, so they could expect reward. He's also known for being stable and responsible, in complete contrast to the Lannister regime, which would be good for their businesses. 

Plus, if they were Littlefinger's men, they wouldn't want to help Stannis (given that keeping Stannis off the throne has been a consistent motivation for LF). If this entire thing was cooked up by Varys and they weren't planning on helping Stannis at all, they would've blabbed at some point. 

[mankytoes]

23 minutes ago, The Sleeper said:

During Clash of Kings, Varys reports to Tyrion that a group of businessmen wish to see Stannis king and so have armed several hundred followers and plan to open a gate when Stannis attacks. Later these become collectively known as Antler men due to having antlers named to their heads and launched with trebuchets during the battle.

Apart from the fact that these appear out of nowhere, it sounds a bit incongruous for Stannis, who is notoriously unpopular to have a grassroots movement in favor of his ascension. Particularly businessmen, as he has never shown any sign of interest in finances. The incongruity is made greater by the inclusion in the number of the antler men of Salloreon, a master armorer who specializes in craftin elaborate and ornate armor for the nobility. Stannis himself seems of a mind with Jon Arryn and Ned of looking for functionality over ostentation.

Were they indeed Stannis' supporters? Twice over the course of the following books this group is linked to Littlefinger. Tyrion discovers that many of them are recipients of loans from the crown. Jaime discovers that one of them had purchased an office in the dungeons and assumes that he did that through Littlefinger.

Now consider the way that Littlefinger managed the Crown's finances. He loaned or invested the majority of the Crown's incomes. He had to have had partners and associates in those endevors.

I beleieve that these associates were the Antler Men. Rather than them being Stannis supporters, Varys saw an opportunity to undermine LF's infrastructure and influence in King's Landing. This would have the added effect of weakening the Crown's economy as well as paving the way for Illyrio to take over when he eventually arrived.

I don't think it's that unlikely a group would support Stannis, I mean Robert was economically incompetent, and Joffrey showed no signs of being anything competent. As in the real world, people will just hope for some change in that situation. If it was a lie by Varys, it was a clever, plausable one.

But that's a good point about Salloreon, he's not exactly a Stannis kinda person.

Overall, it seems likely they weren't really Stannis guys. From a narrative perspective, their inclusion (and repeated references) seems fairly pointless if they were. It's also notable, if I remember correctly, that they all plead their innocence until the end, none of them cursed Joffrey and proclaimed for Stannis, even as they were being brutally murdered.

Littlefinger was generally fucking up Varys' plans by causing so much trouble. With Petyr out the city, it seems like a good opportunity to wipe out a few of his creatures, if nothing else.

[gcarlsson]

Assuming I'm remembering it correctly, a while ago there was a thread speculating that there would occasionally be a culling of businessmen in order to keep the economy/realm in stasis, using the Antler Men as an example.

[Nyrhex]

The obviouse reason was because the Antler Men were in debt to the crown, and wanted a chance to get thier debts wiped by gaining either Stannis' or Renly's favor in the battle.

 

Robert wasn't economically incompetent. He may have splashed around with funds, but nowhere close to the sort of expenses that can get those sort of debts, and stuff like the Hand's Tourney serves both as "bread and circuses" and adds considerably to the city's incomes from all those who come and pay for services in the city. Lords and thier retinues and the mercantile class fill every inn worth the name, commoners fill everything else. They buy food and hire washer women to wash thier clothes, etc if nothing else. But more also make bets, the merchants and lords close trade deals, make contacts, etc. And plenty of them stay in town for longer than the tourney itself. Large events bring large amounts of income, and money usually works its way up because there is more to tax. Large prizes bring more interest, which brings more people and more wealth.

The overwhelming bulk of the crown's expenses were investments themselves, which makes Robert the single largest economic drive in Westerosi history, far more than any of the Targaryen kings. The main issue is that people usually think that to be in debt means you are doing something wrong and means you are broke, and that having cash locked up in a vault is wealth. That's not how economy works. Up until the WOT5K Robert was still able to keep to his periodic payments, and even after over a year of warfare, the crown only really gets in trouble after Littlefinger leaves and a string of incompetent Masters of Coin (Tyrion, Rosby, Swyft) follows him, and after Cersei orders a fleet of the largest warships in Westerosi history. 

Littlefinger was given control of the customs at Gulltown around 289, around the time the crown had to deal with the expenses of the Greyjoy Rebellion, and increased the usual income that was collected there by 200%. That ability got him named Master of Coin around 292. Within 6 years, the crown's incomes have increased by 900%. 

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Oh, he was clever. He did not simply collect the gold and lock it in a treasure vault, no. He paid the king's debts in promises, and put the king's gold to work. He bought wagons, shops, ships, houses. He bought grain when it was plentiful and sold bread when it was scarce. He bought wool from the north and linen from the south and lace from Lys, stored it, moved it, dyed it, sold it. The golden dragons bred and multiplied, and Littlefinger lent them out and brought them home with hatchlings.

Tywin taking on the Iron Bank's debt of Aerys II wasn't sound policy or fixing the economy, it was a rich lord taking on the king's debt in hope of gaining favor. Didn't work so well, but Tywin was already wealthy enough that it didn't hit him too bad. After all, the man had the plot gift of the Reyne-Tarbeck revolt*, and what is likely a handsome pay for ~20 years as Hand**, on top of the plot gift of the legendary mines of Casterly Rock that somehow grant him the ability to print money without ever bringing about an inflation crisis.

Aerys II's treasury being full of gold does not make him wealthy, it menas that he hoarded his gold. Much like a dragon is wont to do. Tywin took on his debts, and gives Robert loans more to gain favors with the king again, more than because he wants to put his money to work. 

Under Robert, Littlefinger went on to delay expenses with promises, while using the existing funds and loans taken from the Lannisters, Tyrells, Faith, Iron Bank etc to make investments. This included purchasing of raw goods, means of transportation and storage, and selling finished products at a high profit. He also provided loans for the mercantile class to allow more merchants to conduct trade, and they pay back the crown with interest, on top of increasing taxes by increased trade.

Those merchants are the "Antler Men", and as Tyrion finds out later, many of them owed considerable sums to the crown. Aiding either Renly or Stannis with opening the gates of King's Landing mid-battle would have likely granted them a boon - striking off thier debt to the crown.

Of course Tyrion let's Joffrey throw them with a trebuchet with little thought, then blames him for why the crown now cannot go to dead men and expect them to continue thier interest payments. Because even if the crown confiscated thier wealth, it would only be what they kept in King's Landing, while a merchant's worth is usually in wealth he puts to work. Littlefinger's investments are also gone with him, and all Tyrion and Rosby and Swyft and even Kevan can later think of is either to raise taxes, get new loans, or to put thier hands into the coffers of Casterly Rock and covering the debt. Because none of them has any idea of how to run on debt, they were used to having money because they have large incomes since they were born the sons of great lords, and lords in Westeros usually look down on "new money".

 

Now while the Antler Men would have likely gone to Renly as well, Stannis would have probably been better suited to dealing with the crown's debts. He is introduced in ACOK already heavily in debt, and is still going strong.

 

 

 

* During the Reyne-Tarbeck revolt Tywin massacared two wealthy noble families and took thier lands and incomes and wealth and had a weak and sickly king on the throne that for some reason didn't order him executed for mass murder and illegal warfare. He also calls back all the previous loans of his father, and sitting on this massive pile of stolen cash and incomes, he gets the unnatural fear aura of someone who can just do that and get away with it for the next ~38 years.

** Littlefinger is a poor lord of a the miserable  "Drearfort", but he is Master of Coin, so no one bats an eye when he establishes an expensive network of brothels in King's Landing. The pay of the Small Council is likely very good, on top of the chance to dabble in embezzlement.

[Kytheros]

To be fair to Tyrion, I suspect that Littlefinger was falsifying the books to inflate revenues from investments, and also embezzling on top of that. And had been doing so for years. It's not entirely unreasonable for it to take a significant amount of time to review the financials of a major government, even had Littlefinger not been doing nonstandard things with the Treasury.

Oh, I suppose that applies to the others as well, but my primary point is that even if a succeeding Master of Coin is generally competent, the financial books for a major government are complicated at the best of times, and Littlefinger's actions would have served only to make them more complicated, even if Littlefinger had been doing everything completely above-board and there wasn't any wrongdoing whatsoever, which seems unlikely.

 

 

Also, GRRM doesn't seem to know how economies work. At all. This is probably one of the primary factors in why even a relatively cursory examination of the economic information given in the books doesn't make sense.

 

 

However, as a general rule of thumb, a tourney should make money for the host. The host gets a cut all the legitimate/above-board betting, food and drink sales, visitors renting rooms, an entry fee for spectators, a (massive) spike in patrons of brothels, the increase of other services, etc. And that doesn't even consider that any Tourney would likely have an associated market fair.

A tourney is basically a major sporting event today, and a high profile tourney, which basically every tourney hosted by the King would be by definition, is, or should be, like a hosting the Superbowl or World Series. Sure, it's expensive, but done properly, it should also make loads of money.

 

 

I can see Ned not knowing that tourneys should make lots money, since they're not a thing in the North, not even in the more Andalized region around White Harbor and Manderly lands, and so Ned wouldn't be familiar with the benefits of hosting them.

[Nyrhex]

1 hour ago, Kytheros said:

To be fair to Tyrion,

-snip-

I can see Ned not knowing that tourneys should make lots money, since they're not a thing in the North, not even in the more Andalized region around White Harbor and Manderly lands, and so Ned wouldn't be familiar with the benefits of hosting them.

First of all, I don't see a reason to be fair to Tyrion. His entire shtick is that he is meant to be smart. He repeatedly fails to deliver, and is pissed that he doesn't get credit even when none is due. He gets overruled, he won't gather some of the men his father uses for his finances to go over the records with him, and his only idea of how to get out of the mess they are in is to ask his daddy for money. 

Yeah, I feel comfortable to say that he was an incompetant Master of Coin.

 

And the North cares about tourneys and everything fancy about the south every bit as southrons do. They are just poorer, and have fewer events,  don't buy thier "tough men" propaganda. They have tourneys, Mandely took part in tourneys when he was younger, Roose laments that Domeric would have been a great jouster, Jory for all his shit-talking went to compete in the Hand's Tourney, Ned Stark and his siblings went to the largest tourney of their generation, there was a great Melee at Last Hearth in 170 AC that was infamous for the large number of dead, and wounded it produced. 

Robb laments that he has so few knights, and Luwin has to promise that his other heavy horse are just as good. Even when we have word of auther and every single description of them that they are closer to the Norman knights in mail that invaded England in 1066, while the southrons walk around in different levels of plate armor that gets closer to early 15th century. There are also knights in most Northern families or households, with the north-eastern portion having the least, being the more traditionalist region. So much so that they still practice the First Night whenever they feel like they can get away with it.

Ned not knowing can be from a bunch of reasons, but most likely because the book was meant to be the first of a trilogy, and the more stuff that is added up the more issues come out. Ned also has a big fight with Robert over Jaime getting to be Warden of the East, and we later see just how meaningless that title is. Ned is also convinced that Jaime would one day inherit his father, though in the same book we hear that the Kingsguard serve for life. The books have issues, and so it is a bit difficult to say what was intentional and what wasn't, because Martin can change his mind between SSMs, between books, between chapters, and sometimes within the same chapter.

[Nihlus]

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Robb laments that he has so few knights, and Luwin has to promise that his other heavy horse are just as good. Even when we have word of auther and every single description of them that they are closer to the Norman knights in mail that invaded England in 1066,

Their use as shock cavalry completely negates any comparison to Hastings-era Norman knights. Those fought in an entirely different manner. They're more like 12th century or 13th century knights.

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The overwhelming bulk of the crown's expenses were investments themselves, which makes Robert the single largest economic drive in Westerosi history, far more than any of the Targaryen kings. The main issue is that people usually think that to be in debt means you are doing something wrong and means you are broke, and that having cash locked up in a vault is wealth. That's not how economy works.

I've ranted about this at length before. Supposedly the economy under Tywin was doing great because at the end of a massive civil war, the vaults were full of gold. Robert actually investing money in the economy, to the point where the capital of the Crownlands is as prosperous as ever barely a decade after Tywin brutally sacked it, is viewed as a waste of perfectly hoard-able money, as if that makes any sense. Robert was notable only in that he was actually using that money instead of acting like Smaug; he loaned out a massive amount of cash to various businesses, strengthened Westerosi ties with foreign banks (improving their credit), and appointed a Master of Coin who explicitly made the crown's incomes far higher than they were.

The Targaryens, by contrast, built a few hundred kilometers of shitty dirt road to connect to another dirt road built by the Storm Kings, then renamed it "the King's Road." That is the sum total of investment in the continent's economic development and infrastructure by the previous 300 years of kings.

[Nyrhex]

28 minutes ago, Nihlus said:

Their use as shock cavalry completely negates any comparison to Hastings-era Norman knights. Those fought in an entirely different manner. They're more like 12th century or 13th century knights.

I wouldn't say it completely negates the comparison. Same as I wouldn't say that Martin using the word pike makes any formation we see a pike block or a Schilthorn.

We know that Robb's group at the Battle of the Camps failed to break the Lannister shield wall (the Blackfish having more surprise to his aid, and the southern camp was not attacked) and needed Blackwood to sally and take them in the rear, and Cassel's cavalry broke the Ironborn because they specifically can't hold a shield wall. Jaime's cavalry rides into an ambish including archers shooting his horse from under him, and while everything around him turns into a melee he still made his way with some men to Robb through his personal guard before going down. Stafford's camp didn't even bother with sentries and was overrun. Ramsay's "cavalry" force had more men with greatsowrds and battleaxes than with lances, and took most of the day to scatter Cassel's force. 

Where do we see the Northmen perform a meaningful shock charge?

Plus it's Martin's words, and they are described as wearing mail and halfhelms/nasal helms whenever there is description, which is closer to Hastings-era.

But I think this is a bit too much of a derail for the thread for now.

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I've ranted about this at length before. Supposedly the economy under Tywin was doing great because at the end of a massive civil war, the vaults were full of gold. Robert actually investing money in the economy, to the point where the capital of the Crownlands is as prosperous as ever barely a decade after Tywin brutally sacked it, is viewed as a waste of perfectly hoard-able money, as if that makes any sense. All of that money that Robert "wasted" was funneled directly into the economy; he loaned out a massive amount of cash to various businesses, strengthened Westerosi ties with foreign banks (with the potential to improve their credit), and employed a man who explicitly made the crown's incomes far higher than they were.

The Targaryens, by contrast, built a few hundred km of shitty dirt road to connect to another dirt road built by the Storm Kings, then renamed it "the King's Road." That is the sum total of investment in the continent's economic development and infrastructure by the previous 300 years of kings.

 

It actually may well have been named the "King's Road" while the Storm Kings ruled the Riverlands. The path starts at Storm's End and goes to the furthest reaches of the realm of the Storm Kings, while the Northern portion is pretty much what the Starks used to get from Winterfell to the Wall, and the portion to Moat Cailin is practically non-existant, and with little use. Robert mentions how there aren't any inns all the way to Winterfell, and Theon remembers how they had to sent the van to prepare the way for the army. Trade with the North is done almost exclusively via White Harbor.

[Kytheros]

As far as the King's Road goes ... I'm not actually sure how much of it the Targaryens would actually have built.

I mean, the section through the Neck and Moat Cailin has to be ancient, otherwise Moat Cailin would never have been needed to defend the North, because nobody's going to send an army through the Neck without the roadway. If there's a road through the Neck, it was likely connected to Winterfell, and from Winterfell to the Wall, though perhaps not to Castle Black.

I think that the Targaryens at most, relocated sections, and possibly performed some measure of improvements on some sections. The majority of it was probably already existing roadway.

[Daemon Blackfyre IV]

A big part of me thinks that LF and Varys have been in it together the whole time.

[Nihlus]

3 hours ago, Nyrhex said:

I wouldn't say it completely negates the comparison. Same as I wouldn't say that Martin using the word pike makes any formation we see a pike block or a Schilthorn.

Pike blocks actually are described in the books.

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Where do we see the Northmen perform a meaningful shock charge? Plus it's Martin's words, and they are described as wearing mail and halfhelms/nasal helms whenever there is description, which is closer to Hastings-era.

Closer to Hastings-era, but not literally Hastings-era, more Third Crusade era.

We don't see much of anything as far as any battles go, since they're 90% off-screen. But the Northern cavalry are explicitly described as heavy lancers and the direct equivalent of other mounted knights. This would not be the case if they fought anything like Hastings-era Norman knights.

By 14th-15th century standards, essentially where the Westerosi are, Hastings-era knights would be the definition of light cavalry (albeit well-armored light cavalry). They were essentially an entirely different type of troop altogether with an entirely different battlefield role. They didn't couch their lances; instead they would ride up, throw javelins and darts, probe the enemy formation with their spears at a slow pace, withdraw, and repeat. When it came time to ride down the enemy, they didn't shock charge, they rode up relatively slowly and stabbed at the enemy with lances held with a one-handed over-the-head grip (as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry) or cut them down with swords (as depicted on the Tapestry and told to us by William of Poitiers). 

EDIT: Going by how they were described, most of Ramsay's 600 Dreadfort were probably light cavalry with a core of heavy cavalry, while the "armored lancers" of Robb's host explicitly were, well, lancers

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Theon watched them charge and wheel and charge again, chopping the larger force to bloody pieces every time they tried to form up between the houses. He could hear the crash of iron axeheads on oaken shields over the terrified trumpeting of a maimed horse. 

 

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The Dreadfort men made their way across the moat and through the inner gates. Theon descended with Black Lorren and Maester Luwin to meet them in the yard. Pale red pennons trailed from the ends of a few lances, but many more carried battle-axes and greatswords and shields hacked half to splinters

 

[Lost Melnibonean]

In Tyrion XI, Clash 49, Varys informs on the Antler Men. Much later in Storm, Tyrion learns that many of the Antler Men conspirators had taken loans from the royal treasury through Petyr. This at least suggests that Varys may have informed on them to weaken Petyr’s support in King’s Landing. Alternatively, this might suggest that Petyr had the information on the conspirators of the Antler Men passed to Varys to rid himself of them. But I suspect Varys understood that these men owed the royal treasury, and without their enterprise, the Royal treasury’s income on its loans would be that much lower, contributing to the weakness of the current rulers.

[Walda]

Yeah, I thought the Antler men had trade deals and loans with the Master of Coin, and also had business interests in common with Petyr Baelish, and were effectively Renly supporters while Robert was alive, and after Robert and Renly died, would swing the way Petyr Baelish swung. So they (at most) has a preference for a Baratheon ascendant.

If Varys and Petyr are working together, the Antler men on the list Varys gave Tyrion were business partners that had outlived their usefulness to Petyr Baelish when he headed out of Kings Landing. So they would have known of his conspiracy to get Robert to put Cersei aside for Margaery, or of lords and knights Petyr had recruited to Renly's cause at the Tourney of the Hand, or details of Petyr's preferred supply lines during the famine of Kings Landing.

If Varys and Littlefinger are not allies, it could be tit for tat. Note that Cersei was disenchanted with Varys, had set him aside when Littlefinger had Alayaya brought to her. It is then Varys goes to Tyrion with his list of traitors, every one of whom is a useful supporter of Petyr Baelish. Varys never tells Tyrion outright that it was Baelish that bought Janos and his goldcloaks (with Ned's money), and then killed Ned, and Ned's household guard, and Barra, and Barra's mother, and came after Gendry with what looks a lot like a Royal Warrant (although it was sealed, so there might not have been any warrent inside), and was definitely an attempt to kill the boy.  The bastards of the King, and Eddard the Hand,  and the whorehouse that can be reached via tunnel from the Red Keep are all Varys' business, that Petyr Baelish is intruding on. 

But with Tyrion, as with Ned, Varys seems to prefer to pose questions, to create a riddle (like the one about the sell-sword) that leads to Baelish as the obvious answer, but he never says so himself. If he isn't in cahoots with Baelish, he is strangely afraid of him. Strangely, because Petyr Baelish has no army, his informants are not more skilled, more loyal, or more able than Varys's,  and Varys himself seems properly wary of him - Petyr is unlikely to poison him or put a sucessful hit on him, assuming he would even feel the need to.

Yet, for whatever reason, Varys let Tyrion go on supposing Cersei gave the orders, and ignore what Cersei told him - that she had only ordered Ned's arrest and intended to pardon him, hence the venue of Baelor's Sept. Cersei wasn't bothered that Ned's household guard died, or that Robert's humiliating bastards in the shadow of the Red Keep had died. She admitted herself that she didn't want to humiliate Joffrey by contradicting his execution order in public (although Ilyn was so eager to swing Ice, and Janos was so quick to push Ned down, that if Cersei had tried to contradict Joffrey's order, she might have been the one to be humiliated.)

I don't think Varys collected all the antler men, or even attempted to. There were no lords or ladies on his list of Names and I'm pretty sure that the Stokeworths and Ser Balman would have been on it if there were. It seems to me that the Antler Men are of the northern Crownlands, from Rosby to Duskendale in particular. It might be that the Antlers of the Antler men are really of House Buckwell, the Targaryen loyalists whose only currently known member is in the Night's Watch on the Wall. Their ancestral home is in the right area for antler-people.

Sorry for not explaining where in the text I found my proofs of all the above. I have not yet posted a long post on the riots of King's Landing that details where I'm getting all this from. I've been writing it up on and off for a year, and still are not done, and so over it, I'm not going to start re-writing it here - just letting you know I have seen hints in the text that the Antler men are Baelish people, that they are likely to be interested in the Rosby inheritance, and various Crownlands houses (Crabbe, Brune, Celtegar, Velaryon, Hollard, Darklyn) that Patchface has foreshadowed are likely to be in with them or at least, know their game.  Also a few other houses ( Estermont, Tarth) that lead up from the Stepstones. The Antler men probably know what happened to the fat High Septon's Crown, and maybe still have Tyrek Lannister.

As the dragon flies, they are between Dragonstone and King's Landing, so their lands are likely to be laid waste when the Dragons they have sewn banners for and drank secret toasts to return. I think there is going to be more about Antler men in Winds of Winter, maybe even an explicit storyline.

On 11/09/2017 at 9:04 AM, Nihlus said:

I've ranted about this at length before.

Please give me a link to your rant/s, I totally agree with you re. King Robert Keynes. Also, it occurs to me that just because you have filled your treasury with hoarded gold doesn't me you are not in debt. We know Aerys was in debt to Tywin when Robert took the throne (might have considered it would secure him Tywin's loyalty, that Tywin would hurry to Kings Landing to defend his gold, if not his King, and get blown up with the rest of the city). And yeah, Robert might have inherited that debt and thought about something better to do with it than keep it sitting in the treasury, pissing off Tywin, guaranteeing him no return on investment and forcing a crippling deflationary recession on King's Landing.

The only think I would quibble with (and only a little) is that I would give Septon Barth (and maybe Jaehaerys I) full credit for the expansion of the King's Road to the Wall, even if it wasn't as magnificent as the Valyrion ones,  and the creation of the sewers of King's Landing. There were agendas that were not all necessarily pro-the-people behind them, but still, they were fine things in their time and proved valuable ever since. I don't believe any Targaryen before or since have invested anything but a few youthful dreams in infrastructure since. Apart from him, only Aegon IV had any  notion of justice for the smallfolk, or fair trade. Every other Targaryen has been more a destructive kind of parasite than anything else.

Even the Code Jaehaerys seems to have been in a way forced on him, a means of uniting the smallfolk behind him and giving him leverage to shut down the Faith Militant without fighting a war. In fact every innovation of Jaehaerys seems to have a military strategy at the bottom of it. But his schemes benefited the whole realm whatever the King's underlying motive really was.

Which makes him that much better than Maegor, who only built for himself, or Baelor who also only built for himself, but because he was a septon, a sept instead of a castle or a carpark. And in these works, even this doubtful pair have done more for Westeros, than any of their argumentative and unstable descendants. And than all of their war-mongering antecedents, who were probably exiled from the Valyrian freehold to the backwaters of the planet because of their chilling effect on trade as much as because of the prophecy.

[SeanF]

 

The Crown seems to have been perennially short of money, under Robert, despite the increase in revenues that was supposedly achieved by LF.

There must have been big costs at the outset of Robert's reign, such as rebuilding the Royal Navy that was destroyed at Dragonstone.  The Sack of Kings Landing probably depressed rents and taxes in the City for some time.

But, I'm inclined to think that there was massive corruption at every level in the system, from LF downwards, and that only a fraction of the revenues were actually reaching the government. 

[Nyrhex]

8 hours ago, Nihlus said:

Pike blocks actually are described in the books.

The only time we hear of anything similar is when Tyrion mentions that Kevan's pikemen formed squares between the lines of archers on the Green Fork, and that those same pikemen pushed back the remnants of the Stark host. But both Tywin's and Roose's armies were described as being mainly composed of "men at arms", another term that does not mean what it usually means, here basically everything from cavalry who are not knights to common foot soldiers with "spear and sword and axe". 

And half the time pikemen are little different from spearmen. Bran sees Karstark pikemen arrive at Winterfell, but on the Green Fork Gregor smashes through a Karstark shield wall and they are described as having spears. Manderly's foot have "pikes and spears and tridents", and his cavalry are 200 mounted "lancers and swordsmen and freeriders", there is no real division made. When Tyrion asks his father for weapons for the Clansmen he asks for "swords, pikes, steel spearheads, maces, battle-axes", again without any real division that could tell us if armies used pike square formations or if Martin just throws names of weapons. Danwell Frey is seen leading a column of pikemen out of the Twins, but when Theon sees the Frey infantry in Dance he describes them as "bowmen, spearmen, peasants armed with scythes and sharpened sticks", no pikemen, or at best too few to mention. Did all the pikemen go to Riverrun? Possible, but Cersei says they are "spears", so at best they would be the minority of the force.

From a quick look via A Search of Ice and Fire and with the search function over electronic copies:

ACOK only has Mallister guarding a ford with some archers and pikemen, and Renly saying that he has a 100,000 swords and spears and pikes, but the only pikes we saw in his camp were ones with banners on near tents of lords XYZ. We have no clue regarding the composition of his force. If it was anything like on the Green Fork, it would have still been largely "men at arms" with spear and sword and axe.

ASOS has Gold Cloaks guarding the Red Keep with pikes for some reason. There are a few cases of guards being armed with halberds, but for some reason the dominant infantry weapons remains the simple spear.

Neither AFFC nor ADWD have any mentions of pike as a weapon, only the fish. Same for the gift chapters from TWOW, for the Dunk and Egg tales, for The Rogue Prince and for The Princess and the Queen.

The World of Ice and Fire only mentions that Aegon had men with spears and pikes and archers and crossbowmen in the Field of Fire.

8 hours ago, Nihlus said:

EDIT: Going by how they were described, most of Ramsay's 600 Dreadfort were probably light cavalry with a core of heavy cavalry, while the "armored lancers" of Robb's host explicitly were, well, lancers

And I'm sure they would try thier very best to act like southron lancers, but they are still wearing significantly inferior armor, and have yet to display a meaningful shock charge.

But again, we are derailing the thread. Continue in PM?

 

18 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The Crown seems to have been perennially short of money, under Robert, despite the increase in revenues that was supposedly achieved by LF.

There must have been big costs at the outset of Robert's reign, such as rebuilding the Royal Navy that was destroyed at Dragonstone.  The Sack of Kings Landing probably depressed rents and taxes in the City for some time.

But, I'm inclined to think that there was massive corruption at every level in the system, from LF downwards, and that only a fraction of the revenues were actually reaching the government. 

The Crown under Robert had money on hand to throw the Hand's Tourney with little notice, and only started having issues in the middle of a civil war that saw the Tyrells closing the food shipments, Stannis closing the sea trade, and war on all fronts. And it still took a year of siege and Cersei building a fleet of the largest ships in history to default on its loans.

Corruption existed for sure, but the bulk of the Crown's revenue was being loaned out and used to generate more. Again, having a full treasury is nice if you are building a war chest or if you are planning some similar grand expense. But otherwise you want to use that money.