Size of King's Landing

[Aldarion]

Westeros is considered to be a feudal society, which has certain limitations: namely, lack of administration, political decentralization and so on. But this map implies something completely different. City is extremely densely settled, and Tyrion in ASoS states that city has "half a million" people. That is not something a feudal society can produce. Medieval Constantinople at its height had a population of maybe up to 500 000 during 9th and 10th centuries - some estimates go up to 800 000, but it may have been as low as 150 000. Next largest city in Europe was Cordoba at 110 000. But neither of these existed in the context of Western European feudal societies, where largest cities were sitting at 50 000 each (Palermo, Venice, Seville, Kiev, Regensburg...). In 1450., largest cities were Paris and Venice at 150 000 each, with most cities at below 50 000.

But Constantinople in particular benefited from not only its status as a major port, but also the administrative and logistical capacities inherited from the Roman Empire of antiquity. Byzantine administration was in fact closer to that of antiquity, with well-structured, efficient (if relatively small) civil administration as well as highly professional military which was far ahead of what most of the Europe was capable of deploying at the time. Indeed, level of professionalism of medieval Byzantine army will not be reached in rest of Europe until introduction of professional armies in Hungary (border fort garrisons, 1420s., Black Army, 1458.) and France (Compagnies d'Ordonnance, 1439.). That time is, unsurprisingly, also the time when urbanization as well as sizes of individual cities in Europe set off on an upwards trajectory. For King's Landing to reach half a million people, administration there would have had to be capable of administering import of grain by ship in extreme quantities - and such sort of administration would also be capable of administering a centralized state the size of Roman Empire quite easily, thus obviating the need for feudalism in the first place.

In fact, such a centralized state would not be required just to sustain a half-a-million strong megacity, but also to produce it to begin with. City needs to be built around something, to provide a service - be it a port, a market, or an administrative center. A city which grew to hundreds of thousands always combined all three of these functions, being a major port, a major trade hub, and a major administrative center (typically a capital of an empire), last of which allowed access to taxes pulled from all across the empire. Yet the Iron Throne apparently has very limited taxation apparatus, and in fact the feudal system itself would limit how much taxes central government is capable of pulling from the provinces (even highly centralized states with powerful monarchs had that problem). But to produce a city the size of King's Landing, Iron Throne would have to be capable of pulling awesome amounts of taxes, in coin, from all across the rest of Westeros. Which again means a standing, fully professional army.

And King's Landing is not the only city of significant size. Which introduces another problem: at such sizes, cities such as King's Landing, Oldtown, Lannisport and White Harbour should, in essence, be their own feudal lords, and treated as such. Yet there is no mention of troops of these cities being present in Lords Paramount armies; rather, cities appear to be under direct control of major lords residing in them (Hightower, Lannister branch and Manderly, respectively) - which are, it should be noted, feudal lords rather than just masters of the city. But realistically, all these cities should be free of direct feudal control, meaning that while Manderly might have allegiance of White Harbour, city should pretty much run itself.