[SPOILERS] Jaehaerys and Alysanne

[The Grey Wolf]

@Ran

The issue, or rather, one of the issues, is that this isn't born out by the text. More women die in Westeros than the RL Middle Ages, not vice-versa as GRRM claims and part of that is his disturbing predilection for child-brides.

And again, I never said the Maesters were "around modern levels" so please don't put words in my mouth. Having said that the Maesters most definitely are much better than their RL 14th/15th century equivalents, which should make a difference, however negligible, and that is pointed out as well as explained by one of the hyperlinks in the Tumblr post I uploaded.

[Ran]

15 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf said:

@Ran

More women die in Westeros than the RL Middle Ages

That's impossible to say given the extremely limited subset of women featured in the text. And, as some have noted, women giving birth to Targaryens seem to be unusually likelier to have difficult or deadly births. Which is something related to magic, presumably, more than to science.

Again, much ado about nothing as far as the maesters go. George has shown them to be somewhat better than medieval barbers and surgeons. He has also shown that childbirth is still dangerous, despite this. 

[Bernie Mac]

27 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf said:

@Ran

The issue, or rather, one of the issues, is that this isn't born out by the text. More women die in Westeros than the RL Middle Ages, not vice-versa as GRRM claims and part of that is his disturbing predilection for child-brides.

 

How on earth have you came to this conclusion?  Where is the evidence for this, which medieval dynasties are you using for your reference?

And is this debate considering Fire and Blood is a history book and covering multiple generations. They all die, regardless of gender. 

[The Grey Wolf]

Read the linked post and the posts linked to it as well before you try to dispute my points.

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Maia said:

The maesters also base their technics on observation and experiments, rather than philosophy. Etc.

I have no idea about this medicinal history debate, but I will say the maesters seem to have a much more empirical bend than was around the actual western world until the renaissance/enlightenment.  Mostly just find this interesting - nothing too "problematic" about it other than one would expect they'd make many more advances across a host of fields than is depicted in Westerosi history, but that complaint is old hat.

[Ran]

22 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf said:

Read the linked post and the posts linked to it as well before you try to dispute my points.

I read them. I do not see a problem. You may think the deaths are inordinately high, but as the person you quote says, she is unable to prove it because we only have a selection of characters, and we don't necessarily know the fates of all of them or their causes of death.

If I flip a coin 100 times, the odds are 50-50 on how they land. If I then choose out half of them, and that half shows 40 heads and 10 tails, it does not mean that the odds have changed -- it merely means a selection bias on my part.

The maesters can be better than the Middle Age equivalent (by a bit -- George said "not quite" as deadly, not "not at all", which suggests he envisions a relatively small improvement) and he can still mention an inordinate number of women who died in childbirth. But as far as I know, no one has actually done a study of all women who are known to have died vs. women known to have died in childbirth. There are, according to one list, over 1800 named female characters in all the ASoIaF legendarium. How many are said to have died in childbirth? 50? 100? 500? I do not know. Neither do you.

 

@DMC

Still took well over a century for modern medicine to develop, despite the enlightenment. And a big part of that was certain discoveries that do not exist in Westeros. They don't have microscopes, for one thing.

It's hard to imagine, but miasma theory was still chugging along until the mid-to-late 1800s, and that in itself more two centuries after microbes were first observed and the germ theory was first put forward.

 

[DarkSister1001]

The arguing of childbirth mortality seems like a moot point.  You can look at the hard numbers of each period and compare the amount of successful births with the number of unsuccessful.  That's hard to do.  Not only do we not have 100% accurate birth records from the Middle Ages but neither do we have a consensus of Westeros and a full birth record for them.  Literally, the only other way to know which was worse is to ask the author of the fictional realm and he's made his statement.  We're just beating a dead dragon.

[Bernie Mac]

4 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf said:

Read the linked post and the posts linked to it as well before you try to dispute my points.

Sorry to disappoint, but you are not the first person to bring that Tumblr topic up. At no point in that article is there evidence that women die younger than men or they die sooner in Westeros than they die in the middle ages. 

It is also flawed due to the fact that it ignores the many dead men, GRRM is not doing this out of sexism; the list from that site in red

1. Quote

   Lyanna Stark 

Ned has two dead siblings, Brandon and Lyanna. Why is one evidence of sexism and the other not. 

1. Quote

   Elia Martell

Elia, like her husband and her uncle, is dead. Should be noted that House Martell has more female living characters now than male, only Oberyn and Quentyn have died in the actual story. 

1. Quote

   Ashara Dayne

Like Arthur Dayne, she also is dead. 

1. Quote

   Rhaella Targaryen

Like her brother/husband , she is dead.  Should be noted that one of the two main characters of the series is her daughter who long outlived her brother in the series. 

 

1. Quote

   Joanna Lannister

Yup, Tywin's wife, two brothers and parents are dead. He is pushing 60. 

1. Quote

   Cassana Estermont

Died with her husband, how horribly sexist (sorry for the snark, but I think its called for)

1. Quote

   Tysha

Is she dead? 

She is a peasant, there is zero reason why she should have appeared in the first five books on a series loosely based on the War of the Roses

1. Quote

   Lyarra Stark

 

Just like her husband. 

1. Quote

   the Unnamed Princess of Dorne (mother to Doran, Elia, and Oberyn)

Can you tell me anything about their father?

[The Grey Wolf]

Except all those men get more characterization and names, which is one of that post's main points. For example, can you tell me the name of Doran's mother? She is not only the only female Lord Paramount of her time but also the only Lord Paramount of her time that doesn't have a name. Furthermore, what can you tell me about Lyarra Stark? At least you can say a thing or two about her husband.

Anyway, this thread has gone way off topic so I'm just going to drop the subject at this point.

[Ran]

1 minute ago, The Grey Wolf said:

Except all those men get more characterization and names, which is one of my main points. For example, can you tell me the name of Doran's mother? 

And Doran's father? As Bernie indicates, George has been pretty even-handed in his not caring very much about the progenitors of the current batch of Martells.

[lysmonger]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

An improvement on medieval medicine takes a massive leap to get to modern medicine. Again, they do not have Germany theory. They don't believe in contagion but rather understand things as miasma. Their understanding of antiseptics is better than that of their medieval counterparts, but is not rigorous enough, nor complete.

We can go around and around on this, but it's all quite clear. A master knows to wash his hands -- with what, and how thoroughly, and how often? Did she realize a glancing touch on a cup or bedding means he had to do it all over again? Etc. Etc. Etc.

Maestars could be really really far into medicine, but that means very little because the maestar's are  a closed in order that cant have kids. A lot of development in Westeros cant happen because of the controlled spread of knowledge, and higher learning sometimes comes with   a vow of no procreation.

[Ran]

1 minute ago, lysmonger said:

Maestars could be really really far into medicine, but that means very little because the maestar's are  a closed in order that cant have kids. A lot of development in Westeros cant happen because of the controlled spread of knowledge, and higher learning sometimes comes with   a vow of no procreation.

It's an interesting idea. I certainly think there's an aspect of the maesters that some have noticed, namely that they obviously have an institutional bias towards certain points of view -- they may be somewhat more empirical than medieval doctors, but they clearly have not settled many significant matters, such as the cause of disease or how much time has passed in the recorded history of the world, and they are quick to try and find alternative explanations to "it was magic" despite acknowledging it was once a force in the world. 

But the other part is really George deciding that they have simply not hit on some of the key breakthroughs that propelled rapid evolutions in various fields -- no gunpowder, no microscopes, no steam engines, and so on. 

[lysmonger]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

That's impossible to say given the extremely limited subset of women featured in the text. And, as some have noted, women giving birth to Targaryens seem to be unusually likelier to have difficult or deadly births. Which is something related to magic, presumably, more than to science.

Again, much ado about nothing as far as the maesters go. George has shown them to be somewhat better than medieval barbers and surgeons. He has also shown that childbirth is still dangerous, despite this. 

I've noticed with Aerys ll and Rhaellla's failed pregnancies are caused from normal typical  incest problems you see in history like the Hapsburgs.  

Then again there also seems to be a general decline in Targaryens ever since the death of dragons. 

[DarkSister1001]

Quote

One of the fighters (though no knight) was revealed to be a woman, a wildling girl who had been captured by rangers north of the Wall and given to one of Lord Manderly’s household knights to foster. Delighted by the girl’s daring, Alysanne summoned her own sworn shield, Jonquil Darke, and the wildling and the Scarlet Shadow dueled spear against sword whilst the northmen roared in approval.

I found this to be VERY interesting.  A woman dressing as a man to participate in a tourney (I'm looking at you, Lyanna).  I'd like to know more about her.  Why she was fostered at White Harbor instead of somewhere closer, like WF?

Also, in the picture of the King and Queen he looks much older than she does.  Perhaps it's the hair color. 

http://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2018/09/27/a-fire-blood-excerpt-just-for-you/

[DMC]

37 minutes ago, Ran said:

Still took well over a century for modern medicine to develop, despite the enlightenment. And a big part of that was certain discoveries that do not exist in Westeros. They don't have microscopes, for one thing.

It's hard to imagine, but miasma theory was still chugging along until the mid-to-late 1800s, and that in itself more two centuries after microbes were first observed and the germ theory was first put forward.

Interesting.  It just strikes me that even in the prose of both F&B and the world book each maester seems preoccupied with evaluating and presenting evidence (most of the time) that sounds a lot like a modern academic.  I guess this could be a new development, but if we assume this has been how maesters generally conduct themselves for the past few hundred years, it'd be fair to expect society to be considerably more advanced based on actual history.

[lysmonger]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

It's an interesting idea. I certainly think there's an aspect of the maesters that some have noticed, namely that they obviously have an institutional bias towards certain points of view -- they may be somewhat more empirical than medieval doctors, but they clearly have not settled many significant matters, such as the cause of disease or how much time has passed in the recorded history of the world, and they are quick to try and find alternative explanations to "it was magic" despite acknowledging it was once a force in the world. 

But the other part is really George deciding that they have simply not hit on some of the key breakthroughs that propelled rapid evolutions in various fields -- no gunpowder, no microscopes, no steam engines, and so on. 

Religion sometimes decreases rates of knowledge gained. Roman sources were much more empirical to observations of the universe than religious bards in the 1400s. 

But given the amount of paper or writing material used carelessly and how many treaties and histories that have been reproduced, I feel someone wouldve discovered Calculus by now.  

[lysmonger]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

Interesting.  It just strikes me that even in the prose of both F&B and the world book each maester seems preoccupied with evaluating and presenting evidence (most of the time) that sounds a lot like a modern academic.  I guess this could be a new development, but if we assume this has been how maesters generally conduct themselves for the past few hundred years, it'd be fair to expect society to be considerably more advanced based on actual history.

There history in there time is much more complete and analyzed than anytime in medieval europe. 

[HexMachina]

15 minutes ago, DarkSister1001 said:

I found this to be VERY interesting.  A woman dressing as a man to participate in a tourney (I'm looking at you, Lyanna).  I'd like to know more about her.  Why she was fostered at White Harbor instead of somewhere closer, like WF?

Also, in the picture of the King and Queen he looks much older than she does.  Perhaps it's the hair color. 

http://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2018/09/27/a-fire-blood-excerpt-just-for-you/

Closer to White Harbour than White Harbour?  the tourney was held by Manderly at WH

[DarkSister1001]

3 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Closer to White Harbour than White Harbour?  the tourney was held by Manderly at WH

Haha!  No, silly!  She was captured North of the Wall.  WF is closer in relationship as well as distance to the Wall than White Harbor is to the Wall.  It's also odd that she was given to a Household Knight and not the Lord himself. 

[HexMachina]

10 minutes ago, DarkSister1001 said:

Haha!  No, silly!  She was captured North of the Wall.  WF is closer in relationship as well as distance to the Wall than White Harbor is to the Wall.  It's also odd that she was given to a Household Knight and not the Lord himself. 

Oops! My bad...

could have been carried by ship. And it’s not like the Lord is going to want some unkempt wildling as his Ward, Manderly possibly just palmed her off wherever he could