Why isn’t Winterfell a city? Why not White Harbour as the Northern Capital?

[Aldarion]

On 7/23/2019 at 10:36 PM, Tyrion1991 said:

Most countries capitals tend to be either the main trading city or the presence of the central state soon creates one. London, Paris, Edinburgh, Moscow.

I can’t think of a major medieval nation that had its capital at what’s really just a big castle in the middle of nowhere. The King might hold court at a castle or palace/manor. But that’s not the same thing as the capital.

Surely either a city would have sprung up around Winterfell or the Starks would hold court at White Harbour and retain Winterfell as an ancestral seat/emergency fortress?

I get that it’s romantic to have the brooding fortress of solitude in the barren winter wasteland.  But it’s not really what would happen. I think Moscow started off as a small fort but once Muscovy got to the size of the North it had become a city. 

I think George also wanted to sharply contrast the Spartan and martial culture of the North. Noble savages. Compared to the decadence of urban Kings Landing; reflecting the South. So having Winterfell be a fortress highlights this.

Not sure why the Kings of Winter wouldn’t want to stay close to where the money and people are. 

 

Long story short, it actually is.

[Jaak]

On 10/8/2019 at 7:40 PM, James Arryn said:

The Frankish court was an extremely itinerant one before Charlemagne, and though he did seem to decide on making a kind of capital, ground wasn’t even broken until ~ 794 and by 870 it was no longer even an political Center...though it continued to be something of a symbolic location...something like a less formalized Rheims...for a long while. So i’m not sure there would have been any time for much of the kind of urban outgrowth the OP was mentioning.

And Charlemagne did not pick any of existing close to but not really cities such as Paris or Cologne.

On 10/8/2019 at 7:40 PM, James Arryn said:

Pavia is a bit closer, but Pavia also was a fairly large by the standards of it’s day, and important quasi-civic buildings like churches and mints were built there during it’s fairly brief (very, very, very brief by Westeros standards) run as a capital. It’s part of the pattern of change. 

But not brief by European standards. Aachen was a centre briefly, but Merovingians did last two and half centuries - without settling down to build an impressive capital. Pavia was capital from Lombard conquest in 568 through Frankish and Ottonian conquests and only stopped being used as capital in 1018 or so. In those 450 years, presence of capital did not make Pavia overshadow the nearby Milan.

On 10/8/2019 at 7:40 PM, James Arryn said:

Winterfell (and to about the same degree Storm’s End and the Eyrie and maybe Highgarden, though we don’t know much about the last yet) don’t seem to possess things like mints and public buildings and other things we associate with political centres. KL, Oldtown, Lannisport and maybe kinda Sunspear do, and who knows wtf goes on on the Iron Islands. Anyways, my point is that that means at least 3 of the major former kingdoms have virtually none of the accoutrements of centralized political power that you’d expect, so I think we need to adjust the expectations.

And have a look at Aachen, or Anglo-Saxon Winchester. Not that impressive public building either.

On 10/8/2019 at 7:40 PM, James Arryn said:

Just as another for instance, the briefest glance at a map of Westeros makes the idea of KL being a fairly uninhabited fishing village for like thousands of years extremely unlikely...bordering on impossible. It’s an extraordinarily obvious ego-strategic/commercial axis point without any obvious detriments like uncontrollable tidal incursions or lack of natural harbourage, so it just woukdn’t have stayed empty that long. Even if, say, Duskendals guarded it’s commercial control zealously and jealously, that would inevitably lead to acquiring control of/developing control if the entrance to one of the major river systems on the continent which stretches all the way to the Westerlands. But, it didn’t happen. Ergo, normal rules don’t apply.

We are told it wasn´t a fishing village through the period - it had had border fortresses built by river kings such as Hooks, but those had been sacked repeatedly and not rebuilt recently. Wonder how recent had the last sack been? By Hoares/Durrandons if it was currently a Hoare/Durrandon march?

[Eli Cross]

On 7/23/2019 at 4:36 PM, Tyrion1991 said:

Not sure why the Kings of Winter wouldn’t want to stay close to where the money and people are. 

There's not much of either in the north.  It is an impoverished region.  The only city in that region is White Harbor.  The level of commerce cannot support a city in the location of Winterfell.  Winterfell is more akin to a military border fort.