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Most Powerful Houses- what evidence?


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18 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It is actually not clear who can collect taxes. Chances are that the lowest lords don't actually get taxes but merely rent (for the land their retainers and peasants have). We know some lords also get taxes but not which - or what kind of taxes they can collect

Lowest lord or lowest land owner? Eustace may just get rent but Rohanne surely has a few Eustaces of her own.

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23 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

No, I still think there is only a rough idea of what a vassal can provide. There was a SSM from Martin a few years ago - which I have struggled to find again - where he touched on the issue of the variability of vassal strength. I think the example he used was the banner lord who promises to raise a thousand men for his liege but then pitches up with 50 men, due to lack of commitment from his own vassals,  as a result of the harvest, or maybe just because he has grown poorer over time and his House cannot logistically support that force anymore.

And the issue then was how many times such a vassal could get away with such empty promises before his liege exacted some retribution on him in some form or another.

I wish I could find that quote again. I might be misremembering some of the detail.

I remember something like that, but wasn't it a Tyrion PoV?

In either case, I believe most lords can't get past the 200 mark;

40 Mountain Clans to date have provided fewer than 4000 and most with Stannis shouldn't even count as they don't even have proper arms and armor.

We have also seen Crownlands contributing 4000-5000 men 3 times at least. And thanks to book of swords, we know there are around 20 vassal houses there, and each with their own vassals as well since we are given some 40 houses in CL in the wiki. 

So for an example, Hayfords with at least one vassal, Hoggs, has around 200 men, going by Maegor's numbers. 

Do bear in mind though that 4000 also included a weakened Harrenhal and also Duskendale which has 1500-2000 men by itself so average lord may field just 100 men and still have vassals contributing in that number.

This became longer than intended, my main point was to say that 1000 to 50 was a poor and impossible analogy. I think I'll add the above to Military Strengths.

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5 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Lowest lord or lowest land owner? Eustace may just get rent but Rohanne surely has a few Eustaces of her own.

Lady Rohanne has knights in her service, yes, but we don't know if she has any landed knights or whether those are just household knights and sworn swords. A landed knight is a man with his own lands and castle/keep who doesn't have to serve his lord or hang out at his castle unless he is needed in war. Household knights man the castle, serve as sworn swords, masters-at-arms, etc.

Whether landed knights actually pay taxes or just rent to their lords is completely unclear at this point. One also gets the vibe that the incomes (through taxes) of the Iron Throne are different from the ways the local lords finance themselves - considering the ways they do this must have been in place long before the Targaryen Conquest.

And that, in turn, means that unless Aegon I or Jaehaerys I actually fundamentally changed certain things in the tax system throughout the land whatever taxes the Iron Throne collects from all its subjects (smallfolk and/or lords) are taxes in addition to the taxes those people already paid to their lords and kings before the Conquest.

I expect that the Iron Throne takes away more than just a good chunk of the incomes through taxes the various lords and kings originally could take from the great cities and towns, but we simply have no clue how much rent, taxes, etc. peasants and minor houses actually do have to pay - nor to whom. This is not something George cares much about.

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3 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Lady Rohanne has knights in her service, yes, but we don't know if she has any landed knights or whether those are just household knights and sworn swords. A landed knight is a man with his own lands and castle/keep who doesn't have to serve his lord or hang out at his castle unless he is needed in war. Household knights man the castle, serve as sworn swords, masters-at-arms, etc.

I think Inchfields are one such house. All the Castellans we have seen so far are either from houses that serve that noble house, or relatives. Since Lucas Inchfield died without any issue(no son in sworn sword), his relative Brienne sees must have been from the line of a cousin or a brother, not part of the Webber household.

 

As for tax/rent, yeah no idea.

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On 8/8/2018 at 2:57 PM, Lord Varys said:

I mean, how should this work? If you don't know how many peasants there you don't know how much crops you could have, making it literally impossible to prepare for winter.

You cannot just consult some dusty old book when you want to know how many smallfolk you have. You actually would have to count them. And one assumes that this is done after a severe winter.

Just because lords do does not mean that the King gets the numbers every spring. The assessments of movable property for fifteenths and tenths stayed frozen 1334 to 1624, except for downwards revisions.

And that was through the reign of Henry VIII, who succeeded in Reformation, Dissolution of Monasteries, beheading two queens and a lot of nobles. What even he could not do was a sustained rise of direct taxes English gentry would pay - Elizabeth, James I and Charles I were still on short purse strings.

 

It is not implausible for the lords to agree to a population assessment/scutage rate which they feel they can endure after a harsh winter - and then resist recounts, to ensure that the windfalls from long summers and mild winters are pocketed by lords, who do hold recounts, rather than passed on to Iron Throne.

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14 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

I think Inchfields are one such house. All the Castellans we have seen so far are either from houses that serve that noble house, or relatives. Since Lucas Inchfield died without any issue(no son in sworn sword), his relative Brienne sees must have been from the line of a cousin or a brother, not part of the Webber household.

Keep in mind that families have different branches and younger sons have to move around to find employment. Lucas Inchfield could be from a landed knight family or a petty lord family or just a family with a name. All we know is that there are Inchfields and that one such served Lady Rohanne and her father as castellan.

It makes it reasonably likely that the Inchfields live in the region of the Webbers, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are sworn to them.

10 minutes ago, Jaak said:

Just because lords do does not mean that the King gets the numbers every spring. The assessments of movable property for fifteenths and tenths stayed frozen 1334 to 1624, except for downwards revisions.

And that was through the reign of Henry VIII, who succeeded in Reformation, Dissolution of Monasteries, beheading two queens and a lot of nobles. What even he could not do was a sustained rise of direct taxes English gentry would pay - Elizabeth, James I and Charles I were still on short purse strings.

This people don't live in a world with freak seasons. Preparing for winter should be a duty the kings of Westeros - both before and after the Conquest - should take very seriously. It would be a duty not left to lords - or at least not completely.

I'm not saying they had the capabilities to make a census every decade or so, but whenever a harsh winter or great plague killed half or more of the population in a given region people would have known that, and the guys in charge would have wanted to know what that would mean for the preparation for the next winter.

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I still think this tax system is vastly over estimated in terms of its capability. I don't think the King has a clear idea of demographic changes in Westeros, or that taxes adjust annually based on accurate updated information.

I think there is tax on trade, customs and maybe a predetermined amount that each Lord Paramount pays to the Crown. And this amount could have been set 300 years ago, for all we know. With some haggling, horse trading and other shenanigans over the centuries to try and move it up or down, depending on unique occurences. For example, when the Targs took the New Gift from the Starks, a placating gesture could have been to reduce their tax burden by some arbitrary amount.

Certainly not based on any kind of accurate assessment of the population of the Gift, but by some amount deemed appropriate for whatever reason. And that's where it stayed for maybe a generation or 5, until some other arbitrary event led to it going up or down.

This idea that it is periodically adjusted based on accurate population counts sounds extremely suspect to me, the more I think about it.

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On the question of taxation of lords:

TWoIaF, Aerys II:

 

Quote

The Defiance of Duskendale began quietly enough. Lord Denys, seeing that Aerys's erratic behavior had begun to strain his relations with Lord Tywin, refused to pay the taxes expected of him and instead invited the king to come to Duskendale and hear his petition. 

ADwD, Epilogue:

Quote

Unless a new source of coin could be found, or the Iron Bank persuaded to relent, he would have no choice but to pay the crown's debts with Lannister gold. He dare not resort to new taxes, not with the Seven Kingdoms crawling with rebellion. Half the lords in the realm could not tell taxation from tyranny, and would bolt to the nearest usurper in a heartbeat if it would save them a clipped copper.

ASoS, Jon:

Quote

The plan would have required the Watch to yield back a large part of the Gift, but his uncle Benjen believed the Lord Commander could be won around, so long as the new lordlings paid taxes to Castle Black rather than Winterfell. 

There's a couple of other such passages. So as far as taxation goes, yes, nobility are taxed in Westeros. How these taxes are determined, we do not know for sure, but given that there is a bureaucracy under the master of coin, and given our prior discussion about the fact that there must be some efforts to collect information for the purpose of being able to make use of the king's rights to tax his subjects that would provide a means by which someone could start determining things like how many soldiers ought to be expected from certain lrods or places, there must be some apparatus for official assessments to be made.

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7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I still think this tax system is vastly over estimated in terms of its capability. I don't think the King has a clear idea of demographic changes in Westeros, or that taxes adjust annually based on accurate updated information.

I think there is tax on trade, customs and maybe a predetermined amount that each Lord Paramount pays to the Crown. And this amount could have been set 300 years ago, for all we know. With some haggling, horse trading and other shenanigans over the centuries to try and move it up or down, depending on unique occurences. For example, when the Targs took the New Gift from the Starks, a placating gesture could have been to reduce their tax burden by some arbitrary amount.

Certainly not based on any kind of accurate assessment of the population of the Gift, but by some amount deemed appropriate for whatever reason. And that's where it stayed for maybe a generation or 5, until some other arbitrary event led to it going up or down.

One logical possibility to reduce Starks´ tax burden in return for New Gift might have been to drop from Crown´s scutage lists not only New Gift, which no longer paid the Starks, but also the mountain clans, which still did.

If Stannis at his job at Small Council took the opportunity to read and memorize the scutage lists, then the mountain clans would not have been there.

If a nosy tax collector came around asking questions, the formal excemption would have been in a valid charter from King Jaehaerys. But it was standard practice that the tax exceptions, even though formally approved and not just a matter of "overlooking" existed in separate documents, and comprehensive lists of taxes that did fall due did not mention what the excemptions were.

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@Ran

The crucial tidbit there is Kevan's thoughts on the matter. That really confirms that all lords in Westeros do pay taxes to the Crown. 

That is an aspect in which Westeros is completely different from most medieval kingdoms where nobility and church were paying no taxes whatsoever. Considering the relative weakness of the Crown in Westeros this is really a very odd fact.

What we don't know is how much taxes the peasants and other smallfolk pay on a regular basis, nor to whom. And it seems clear that in the large cities the Crown actually has officials collecting taxes and tariffs and the like, independent of the lords. The Crown thus not only tax lords but also the smallfolk - at least in cities (and possibly also in larger towns).

10 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I still think this tax system is vastly over estimated in terms of its capability. I don't think the King has a clear idea of demographic changes in Westeros, or that taxes adjust annually based on accurate updated information.

Again, this does not necessarily have anything to do with taxes, but with preparation for winter. If you are the King in the North or the King on the Iron Throne you want to know if part X of your kingdom still can produce Y amount of grain throughout the next spring/summer/autumn or whether the last winter has killed too many peasants there.

You want to know that for tax reasons but for survival reasons because you might be dependent on the food that's produced by the people living in that particular region.

Such numbers could then also be used for tax purposes and to guess the military potential of a region.

But since a society like Westeros - where winter is not a matter of months but of years, and it is impossible to predict how many years! - cannot possibly hope to survive if it doesn't prepare for winter it makes no sense at all to assume the people in charge would not count their assets.

And considering that every lord of note has a maester chances actually are that there exist very accurate numbers on those things, numbers the Iron Throne could actually acquire rather easily if it worked through the Citadel.

Thinking about that: Not sure the Martells could hide the true numbers of Dorne from their maesters and thus from the Citadel.

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17 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

@Ran

The crucial tidbit there is Kevan's thoughts on the matter. That really confirms that all lords in Westeros do pay taxes to the Crown. 

That is an aspect in which Westeros is completely different from most medieval kingdoms where nobility and church were paying no taxes whatsoever. Considering the relative weakness of the Crown in Westeros this is really a very odd fact.

What we don't know is how much taxes the peasants and other smallfolk pay on a regular basis, nor to whom. And it seems clear that in the large cities the Crown actually has officials collecting taxes and tariffs and the like, independent of the lords. The Crown thus not only tax lords but also the smallfolk - at least in cities (and possibly also in larger towns).

Again, this does not necessarily have anything to do with taxes, but with preparation for winter. If you are the King in the North or the King on the Iron Throne you want to know if part X of your kingdom still can produce Y amount of grain throughout the next spring/summer/autumn or whether the last winter has killed too many peasants there.

You want to know that for tax reasons but for survival reasons because you might be dependent on the food that's produced by the people living in that particular region.

Such numbers could then also be used for tax purposes and to guess the military potential of a region.

But since a society like Westeros - where winter is not a matter of months but of years, and it is impossible to predict how many years! - cannot possibly hope to survive if it doesn't prepare for winter it makes no sense at all to assume the people in charge would not count their assets.

And considering that every lord of note has a maester chances actually are that there exist very accurate numbers on those things, numbers the Iron Throne could actually acquire rather easily if it worked through the Citadel.

Thinking about that: Not sure the Martells could hide the true numbers of Dorne from their maesters and thus from the Citadel.

It is irrelevant whether all lords pay taxes to the Crown or not, because one would assume that for logistical reasons such taxes are collected centrally and then paid over to the Crown in bulk - as in the Starks gather the taxes of the North and then pay a portion of that over to the Crown.

Else you would have two sets of tax collectors running around all over the place which seems a monumental waste of recources given the primitive setting.

So the North might have a set hundred thousand dragons per year owed to the Crown and it is then up to the Starks how they collect that. In this way the Crown has little insight into the internal demographics of the North, and only cares about the Starks living up to their obligations. And it is then up to the Starks to argue for a rebate in years of famine or calamity. Much like the Starks expect a certain tax or number of armed men from a bannerlord and it is up to the bannerlord to come up with that number or explain why he could not.

Customs duties on trade at major ports and trading hubs excluded from the above, of course, because those are easy to monitor in a concentrated location.

A simple system as described above makes much more sense given Westeros’s level of development.

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9 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

It is irrelevant whether all lords pay taxes to the Crown or not, because one would assume that for logistical reasons such taxes are collected centrally and then paid over to the Crown in bulk - as in the Starks gather the taxes of the North and then pay a portion of that over to the Crown.

There is no evidence that it works like that. Could be - or not. I mean, we don't even know what nature those taxes are. Rent would be a fixed sum every year, perhaps, but we don't know what kind of taxes there are in the Seven Kingdoms.

The relationships lords have with the king is a different relationship than lords have with their liege lords. They are subjects of the king, not subjects of their liege lords. The relationship a vassal has with his lords usually only revolves around duties that come with the land.

I mean, take the silver mines of the Manderlys as an example. If hypothetically the Iron Throne collects a high tax for the right to mine silver then such a tax would only affect those lords with silver mines. And it would actually make sense that the Crown collects such a tax through its own officials rather than bring in a third party who might not have silver mines themselves.

Or take wealth of House Butterwell in cows. If there is a special tax on cows then the IT might collect that directly from such lords who have a lot of cows - which as far as we know are not all lords. And so on.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

There is no evidence that it works like that. Could be - or not. I mean, we don't even know what nature those taxes are. Rent would be a fixed sum every year, perhaps, but we don't know what kind of taxes there are in the Seven Kingdoms.

The relationships lords have with the king is a different relationship than lords have with their liege lords. They are subjects of the king, not subjects of their liege lords. The relationship a vassal has with his lords usually only revolves around duties that come with the land.

I mean, take the silver mines of the Manderlys as an example. If hypothetically the Iron Throne collects a high tax for the right to mine silver then such a tax would only affect those lords with gold mines. And it would actually make sense that the Crown collects such a tax through its own officials rather than bring in a third party who might not have silver mines themselves.

Or take wealth of House Butterwell in cows. If there is a special tax on cows then the IT might collect that directly from such lords who have a lot of cows - which as far as we know are not all lords. And so on.

Similarly there is no evidence that the Iron Throne taxes the “right to mine the ground” anymore than it taxes the right to put up a water mill or the right to use land for growing food.

I lean towards the Starks being given a simple target to pay over to the Crown eachvyear and its up to them to figure out how they collect it.

Ports and perhaps major trading centres incurring additional customs duties on top of the above.

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5 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

@Ran

The crucial tidbit there is Kevan's thoughts on the matter. That really confirms that all lords in Westeros do pay taxes to the Crown. 

That is an aspect in which Westeros is completely different from most medieval kingdoms where nobility and church were paying no taxes whatsoever. Considering the relative weakness of the Crown in Westeros this is really a very odd fact.

Not quite.

In quite many medieval kingdoms, nobility and/or church were paying at least some taxes.

And unlike most medieval kingdoms, Iron Throne does NOT have large amounts of Crown lands. The "Crownlands" are largely held by petty lords (Darklyn, Rosby, Stokeworth...). We do hear of Pennytree as a "royal fief", but otherwise we do not hear of royal lands, castles, castellans and garrisons scattered around 7 Kingdoms. The King cannot "live on his own" and excempt nobility from peacetime taxation - there must be significant incomes from taxation, if at low rates.

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5 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I lean towards the Starks being given a simple target to pay over to the Crown eachvyear and its up to them to figure out how they collect it.

Three things:

1) That figure is derived somehow. In the development of taxation in medieval England following the Norman conquest, you had the old approach of requiring military service for 40 days (with the number of men expected related to the land held in fee), to Henry I's introduction of scutage to allow the substitution of money for military service, to other forms of taxation developing over time. We know there are tax farmers, so to be sure, at the local level you likely have people who pay for the right to "farm" the tax of a place, with the fee corresponding to an assessment of what's expected, and then if they manage to find more they pocket it and if they find less they simply have to eat the loss.

But in all such cases, there has to have been an assessment of what should be raised.. At some point in time, assessments and adjustments have to be made. TAs Jaak noted previously, of course, the adjustments and assessments can take a _very_ long time, with revenue lagging growth. The usual solution was imposition of new taxes when it was felt that there was such a lag, rather than doing a wide reassessment. 

2) You can't punt this downward infinitely. The Starks have to figure out how to raise what they owe -- well, how do they assess how to apply their right to tax and so on to get those funds? Somewhere, someone is making lists of property and movable property and so on and so forth, for tax purposes. I do not know how often this was done in England, but I believe the Spanish crown made up new rolls and registers of its nobility and their property every 7 years.

3) As a separate matter, the wardenries are royal institutions. One supposes there are military expectations, the raising of certain troops when royal armies are needed, so there must be some royal bureaucracy related specifically to making sure the wardens can do what is expected of them.  Given George's familiarity with English and Scottish history, the Wardens of the Marches are doubtless his example, and they directly bore the expense and then crown revenues were remitted to them (at least in theory -- the failure of the crown to make timely reimbursement was a factor in Hotspur Percy's enmity with Henry IV) that would in theory cover those expenses. So the Warden of the North, one supposes, is required to be able to do certain things when asked, and one of those things must be raising troops for a royal host, and so he has double reason to try and keep a good sense of what his vassals owe in military service, and from this one can cross-check against what they're assessed to be able to pay against tax, and so on and so forth.

 

2 hours ago, Jaak said:

Not quite.

In quite many medieval kingdoms, nobility and/or church were paying at least some taxes.

Too-right. France is the famous example, and even there the taille nobility were exempt from was a direct tax. They did pay other, indirect taxes.

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20 minutes ago, Ran said:

Three things:

1) That figure is derived somehow. In the development of taxation in medieval England following the Norman conquest, you had the old approach of requiring military service for 40 days (with the number of men expected related to the land held in fee), to Henry I's introduction of scutage to allow the substitution of money for military service, to other forms of taxation developing over time. We know there are tax farmers, so to be sure, at the local level you likely have people who pay for the right to "farm" the tax of a place, with the fee corresponding to an assessment of what's expected, and then if they manage to find more they pocket it and if they find less they simply have to eat the loss.

But in all such cases, there has to have been an assessment of what should be raised.. At some point in time, assessments and adjustments have to be made. TAs Jaak noted previously, of course, the adjustments and assessments can take a _very_ long time, with revenue lagging growth. The usual solution was imposition of new taxes when it was felt that there was such a lag, rather than doing a wide reassessment. 

2) You can't punt this downward infinitely. The Starks have to figure out how to raise what they owe -- well, how do they assess how to apply their right to tax and so on to get those funds? Somewhere, someone is making lists of property and movable property and so on and so forth, for tax purposes. I do not know how often this was done in England, but I believe the Spanish crown made up new rolls and registers of its nobility and their property every 7 years.

3) As a separate matter, the wardenries are royal institutions. One supposes there are military expectations, the raising of certain troops when royal armies are needed, so there must be some royal bureaucracy related specifically to making sure the wardens can do what is expected of them.  Given George's familiarity with English and Scottish history, the Wardens of the Marches are doubtless his example, and they directly bore the expense and then crown revenues were remitted to them (at least in theory -- the failure of the crown to make timely reimbursement was a factor in Hotspur Percy's enmity with Henry IV) that would in theory cover those expenses. So the Warden of the North, one supposes, is required to be able to do certain things when asked, and one of those things must be raising troops for a royal host, and so he has double reason to try and keep a good sense of what his vassals owe in military service, and from this one can cross-check against what they're assessed to be able to pay against tax, and so on and so forth.

 

Too-right. France is the famous example, and even there the taille nobility were exempt from was a direct tax. They did pay other, indirect taxes.

Yeah, so to be clear, I don't dispute that each lord Paramount has a good idea of the tax situation in his lands. I'm thinking instead that the Crown has far less of an up to date picture, as the Lords Paramount will no doubt be doing everything in their power to project these figures at as low a level as possible.

Given Martin's previous comments on how military figures are roughly correct based on what informed Westerosi outside of a kingdom would consider the strength of a region to be, the impression was created that the internal affairs of each kingdom is very much murky for anyone not the overlord of said kingdom.

This would be easily addressed if you simply assumed that the "7 year update" you referred to above for Spain is in fact a "100 year update" in Westeros. And then only a very vague update, based on some cursory, high level assessments.

As for the Wardens. I have often wondered about that. Are the Wardens still a thing? Or is it an idea that Martin largely discarded as the world developed and he realized it is a pretty meaningless title? How much thought did he actually put into them?

After all, Ned said that when Jaime was promised the Wardenship of the East that put half the armies of the Realm under the command of House Lannister. Is that really a thing? Do the Westerlands and the Vale add up to half the armies of the Realm?

And does that mean that the Warden of the North commands a quarter of the armies of the Realm? If so, does he also command part of the Riverlands and other areas to add up to 25% of the Realm's forces?

I don't think the Warden thing is well constructed.

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11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

for the Wardens. I have often wondered about that. Are the Wardens still a thing?

I would assume so, since the offices are treated as important -- Lysa Arryn insists on calling her son the True Warden, the power of the Lannisters with Jaime as Warden of the East is a concern, Roose Bolton is made the new Warden of the North, etc. I agree that the idea has likely evolved, namely that wardens call royal armies together at the behest of the crown, and so it's not like Jaime being warden _really_ meant that they "had" the armies of the Vale under their control outside of a very specific situation.

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

 

After all, Ned said that when Jaime was promised the Wardenship of the East that put half the armies of the Realm under the command of House Lannister. Is that really a thing? Do the Westerlands and the Vale add up to half the armies of the Realm?

The riverlands must fall under one or the other, I'd think. The armies of 3 of the 7 kingdoms may not be quite half, but "half" is a good word to use when you're trying to dissuade someone. I don't believe it makes much sense to break up regions to divide them between wardenries, given the way the vassalage system works.

11 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

And does that mean that the Warden of the North commands a quarter of the armies of the Realm? If so, does he also command part of the Riverlands and other areas to add up to 25% of the Realm's forces?

I suspect the North is the wardenry by itself. The Iron Islands have to fit somewhere, of course, and given Ned's leading role in the Greyjoy Rebellion, it may be the case that the Iron Islands is encompassed there.

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7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Similarly there is no evidence that the Iron Throne taxes the “right to mine the ground” anymore than it taxes the right to put up a water mill or the right to use land for growing food.

It was just an example. If you check your medieval history then privileges and rights granted by the king usually come with a price.

 

5 hours ago, Jaak said:

Not quite.

In quite many medieval kingdoms, nobility and/or church were paying at least some taxes.

That is why I said they were not exempt from all taxes at all times. However, I do actually wonder what kind of taxes the Church paid to the Crown in any medieval kingdom. That wouldn't make much sense considering they usually were either part of the ruling body of the land (in early medieval times) or exempt from everything and collecting taxes themselves.

5 hours ago, Jaak said:

And unlike most medieval kingdoms, Iron Throne does NOT have large amounts of Crown lands. The "Crownlands" are largely held by petty lords (Darklyn, Rosby, Stokeworth...). We do hear of Pennytree as a "royal fief", but otherwise we do not hear of royal lands, castles, castellans and garrisons scattered around 7 Kingdoms. The King cannot "live on his own" and excempt nobility from peacetime taxation - there must be significant incomes from taxation, if at low rates.

That is a conceptual problem in those books. The Iron Throne basically has no power base of its own, but this is a problem affecting other great houses, too. How much land do the Hightower control directly (they are surrounded by the lands of their bannermen in a KL-like situation)? How much the Starks? How much land outside of Casterly Rock and Lannisport is actually Lannister territory?

And so on and so forth.

The way this monarchy is presented the Iron Throne should be weaker than the Holy Roman Emperors in their weakest days considering that they have no lands an fiefs of their own compared to the lands ruled by their bannermen.

The Iron Throne (and all the former royal houses) should have various (former) palaces throughout the Realm, castles and lands overseen by royal officials and representatives (or cadet branches of the royal family). The Starks apparently had that, in some places of their kingdom, in the distant past, but it is shady at best.

Perhaps one can make sense of this in the sense that nobody actually controls much land since all is pretty split up, but that would make real power completely arbitrary and dependent on the personal charisma and character of each lord and king since everybody would constantly be forced to convince his bannermen and vassals to actually do what they are technically supposed to do because no lord would actually have the power to demand that their calls be heard, etc.

3 hours ago, Ran said:

But in all such cases, there has to have been an assessment of what should be raised.. At some point in time, assessments and adjustments have to be made. TAs Jaak noted previously, of course, the adjustments and assessments can take a _very_ long time, with revenue lagging growth. The usual solution was imposition of new taxes when it was felt that there was such a lag, rather than doing a wide reassessment. 

For tax benefits new taxes do make sense to pay for special occasions (the building of the Red Keep, the Great Sept, etc. comes to mind - just as the building of the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome caused the Popes to develop a special system to finance this thing).

But to actually assess the amount of grain, etc. you intend to store for winter lords everywhere (and the Crown, too, if they care about the survival of their subjects - which some kings, at least, would actually have done) you actually do have to keep an eye on the number of farms and fields your peasants do work.

This doesn't mean you can make good calculations, considering that you can't predict the weather, can't make modern agriculture, etc. but without having a realistic view of your own potential in the food-producing department these people would be at a complete loss in winter.

3 hours ago, Ran said:

2) You can't punt this downward infinitely. The Starks have to figure out how to raise what they owe -- well, how do they assess how to apply their right to tax and so on to get those funds? Somewhere, someone is making lists of property and movable property and so on and so forth, for tax purposes. I do not know how often this was done in England, but I believe the Spanish crown made up new rolls and registers of its nobility and their property every 7 years.

That sounds plausible to me. One should expect that after every winter the survivors might have been counted in some form or another. Or at least those farms and fields which were still in operation.

Whether this also involved a new assessment of taxes would be another matter. But one cannot believe that the people had no interest in knowing their resources in the farming department.

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Yeah, so to be clear, I don't dispute that each lord Paramount has a good idea of the tax situation in his lands. I'm thinking instead that the Crown has far less of an up to date picture, as the Lords Paramount will no doubt be doing everything in their power to project these figures at as low a level as possible.

But it would be odd if the king wouldn't actually also double-check those numbers or do some research through his own bureaucracy.

And we do know that only the Dornishmen pay their taxes without oversight from KL. The Masters of Coin might not easily be fooled by some numbers the lords come up.

We don't really know.

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Given Martin's previous comments on how military figures are roughly correct based on what informed Westerosi outside of a kingdom would consider the strength of a region to be, the impression was created that the internal affairs of each kingdom is very much murky for anyone not the overlord of said kingdom.

But we don't know how this tax thing works. You have no textual evidence that all taxes (or many taxes) go to the Crown through the great lord of a region, so there is no reason to believe the Lannisters or Starks can keep their military potential a secret the way the Dornishmen might be able to do.

A person in a key position at court might be able to find out everything there is to be known about the population, taxes, and military potential of the Seven Kingdoms.

In relation to the Wardenship thing it seems to be that this is a military function which gives the Warden the responsibility to actually defend the Realm against an attack - so the Warden of the North is supposed to preserve the King's Peace in his domain against internal and outside (wildlings) foes. The Warden of the South would have had a key role there in the defense against Dornish incursions in the days before the union, whereas the Warden of the East and West would have been of less importance in relation to outside foes (while the Ironborn behaved and Pentos and Braavos did not invade the Vale).

In war times, a warden technically would likely have a higher rank than a mere lord paramount, possibly resulting in a warden taking command of an army assembled by a Baratheon or Tully, etc. And one sees how Roose's authority in the North comes from the fact that he is the Warden of the North. It grants him command not only over all the Northern armies but also over the Frey armies in his domains - which, I think, illustrates the point I just made. A mere lord paramount could not, as such, presume to command the a host assembled by a lord from another domain - whereas a warden, most likely, could do that.

But how this system works is as opaque as the exact hierarchy/command structure between the Protector of the Realm and the Hand of the King when those offices are not in the same hand. A regent would be the ultimate authority during a Regency, but whether the Hand outranks the Protector or vice versa is completely unclear at this point.

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7 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

It was just an example. If you check your medieval history then privileges and rights granted by the king usually come with a price.

 

That is why I said they were not exempt from all taxes at all times. However, I do actually wonder what kind of taxes the Church paid to the Crown in any medieval kingdom. That wouldn't make much sense considering they usually were either part of the ruling body of the land (in early medieval times) or exempt from everything and collecting taxes themselves.

That is a conceptual problem in those books. The Iron Throne basically has no power base of its own, but this is a problem affecting other great houses, too. How much land do the Hightower control directly (they are surrounded by the lands of their bannermen in a KL-like situation)? How much the Starks? How much land outside of Casterly Rock and Lannisport is actually Lannister territory?

And so on and so forth.

The way this monarchy is presented the Iron Throne should be weaker than the Holy Roman Emperors in their weakest days considering that they have no lands an fiefs of their own compared to the lands ruled by their bannermen.

The Iron Throne (and all the former royal houses) should have various (former) palaces throughout the Realm, castles and lands overseen by royal officials and representatives (or cadet branches of the royal family). The Starks apparently had that, in some places of their kingdom, in the distant past, but it is shady at best.

Perhaps one can make sense of this in the sense that nobody actually controls much land since all is pretty split up, but that would make real power completely arbitrary and dependent on the personal charisma and character of each lord and king since everybody would constantly be forced to convince his bannermen and vassals to actually do what they are technically supposed to do because no lord would actually have the power to demand that their calls be heard, etc.

For tax benefits new taxes do make sense to pay for special occasions (the building of the Red Keep, the Great Sept, etc. comes to mind - just as the building of the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome caused the Popes to develop a special system to finance this thing).

But to actually assess the amount of grain, etc. you intend to store for winter lords everywhere (and the Crown, too, if they care about the survival of their subjects - which some kings, at least, would actually have done) you actually do have to keep an eye on the number of farms and fields your peasants do work.

This doesn't mean you can make good calculations, considering that you can't predict the weather, can't make modern agriculture, etc. but without having a realistic view of your own potential in the food-producing department these people would be at a complete loss in winter.

That sounds plausible to me. One should expect that after every winter the survivors might have been counted in some form or another. Or at least those farms and fields which were still in operation.

Whether this also involved a new assessment of taxes would be another matter. But one cannot believe that the people had no interest in knowing their resources in the farming department.

But it would be odd if the king wouldn't actually also double-check those numbers or do some research through his own bureaucracy.

And we do know that only the Dornishmen pay their taxes without oversight from KL. The Masters of Coin might not easily be fooled by some numbers the lords come up.

We don't really know.

But we don't know how this tax thing works. You have no textual evidence that all taxes (or many taxes) go to the Crown through the great lord of a region, so there is no reason to believe the Lannisters or Starks can keep their military potential a secret the way the Dornishmen might be able to do.

A person in a key position at court might be able to find out everything there is to be known about the population, taxes, and military potential of the Seven Kingdoms.

In relation to the Wardenship thing it seems to be that this is a military function which gives the Warden the responsibility to actually defend the Realm against an attack - so the Warden of the North is supposed to preserve the King's Peace in his domain against internal and outside (wildlings) foes. The Warden of the South would have had a key role there in the defense against Dornish incursions in the days before the union, whereas the Warden of the East and West would have been of less importance in relation to outside foes (while the Ironborn behaved and Pentos and Braavos did not invade the Vale).

In war times, a warden technically would likely have a higher rank than a mere lord paramount, possibly resulting in a warden taking command of an army assembled by a Baratheon or Tully, etc. And one sees how Roose's authority in the North comes from the fact that he is the Warden of the North. It grants him command not only over all the Northern armies but also over the Frey armies in his domains - which, I think, illustrates the point I just made. A mere lord paramount could not, as such, presume to command the a host assembled by a lord from another domain - whereas a warden, most likely, could do that.

But how this system works is as opaque as the exact hierarchy/command structure between the Protector of the Realm and the Hand of the King when those offices are not in the same hand. A regent would be the ultimate authority during a Regency, but whether the Hand outranks the Protector or vice versa is completely unclear at this point.

If the strengths were that well known, Martin would not have been at pains to point out how the general belief of a well informed Westerosi is different from the actual strength of a region.

As for the Iron Throne, yes, it is a very weak institution, without Dragons. It is extremely dependent on the goodwill of the Lords Paramount. If 2 or 3 of them become really pissed off, the Crown teeters on the brink of collapse.

As we saw in Robert’s Rebellion.

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9 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

If the strengths were that well known, Martin would not have been at pains to point out how the general belief of a well informed Westerosi is different from the actual strength of a region.

That isn't really part of the novels, though. And I'm not sure what 'well-informed' means in that context, etc. Knowing stuff about taxes and farms and the like doesn't transfer to a correct assessment of military figures considering we don't know who is supposed to answer the call of a lord to arms, etc. in this world, and how long those people are expected to serve in a military capacity, or high the ratio of people is that can afford to answer a call to arms.

That might differ from season to season, region to region, village to village.

9 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

As for the Iron Throne, yes, it is a very weak institution, without Dragons. It is extremely dependent on the goodwill of the Lords Paramount. If 2 or 3 of them become really pissed off, the Crown teeters on the brink of collapse.

As we saw in Robert’s Rebellion.

But that goes for every lord paramount in turn, too. Their power base is not stronger than that of the Iron Throne.

And, in fact, it is not that Robert's Rebellion was a clear thing. The fact that Aerys II was an incompetent madman and Rhaegar Mr. Absent for most of the war is what resulted in their loss. If Aerys had been a competent madman (like Maegor, say) or Rhaegar had shown up and taken things in his hands before Robert even arrived in the Stormlands, the war may have been over in a fortnight.

And even with Aerys II's mad and cruel actions and his commands to execute Ned and Robert there were still Lords of the Vale and Stormlords siding with Aerys against the rebels.

In my book that indicates there was a rather strong devotion to the Targaryen king and dynasty in Westeros even during the Rebellion.

I mean, if Stannis had been Lord of Storm's End in place of Robert, his garrison would have most likely delivered him chained, naked, and gagged to the loyalist Stormlords - just like Argella Durrandon was delivered to Orys Baratheon.

What made the Rebellion a success was the ability and charisma of Robert Baratheon.

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