Cruelty is accepted

[Only 89 selfies today]

and might indeed be expected from the nobles.  The common people do not seem to hold it against them.  I give you two examples.

The people cheered for their king (King Aerys II) at the great tournament held at the God's Eye.  Their love for their king seemed genuine enough.  It was no secret that Aerys was a cruel man.  That doesn't seem to have given them pause.  Steelshanks and the Bolton soldiers don't seem to dislike Roose.  They must have known of his cruelty.  Is it likely that most people of that time see cruelty as normal?  Hey, it's just our beloved lord keeping law and order.  Cruel punishment is a deterrent in their minds

[Rose of Red Lake]

Those types of people are either deceived by cruel leaders and cheer for them or they think like them themselves. It doesn't mean that cruelty is a justified norm or that these types of leaders will be widely accepted. They'll suffer in the long run. 

[Loose Bolt]

I assume that whole system in Westeros works following logic of organized crime. Or might makes anything right and so any claim without enough power and will to use it would be worthless. So any VIP who is not ready to use violence against anyone who is challenging their status would be a failure.

Besides usually best protection against evil nobles was nasty and powerful king. After all main problem for an average commoner was not a king but local lordling. 

[SeanF]

Nobody in-universe would dispute that capital punishment is justified, nor that torture and mutilation are legitimate forms of punishment.  This is a medieval world, where one would expect to see the remains of criminals hanging from gibbets, on one’s travels.  If anything, Martin pulls his punches;  we don’t witness hanging, drawing and quartering, impalement, boiling, or sawing in half, for example. Few of the Smallfolk fell victim to Aerys II, so why would they not cheer him?

[TheLastWolf]

Only 89 rapes and murders today, Ramsay !? It's our duty to be cruel and rule our subjects. Look at that incompetent Ned. A peaceful people, a peaceful land? I said that!? Pfft

Spoiler

OP 

Just no

 

[John Suburbs]

19 hours ago, Only 89 selfies today said:

and might indeed be expected from the nobles.  The common people do not seem to hold it against them.  I give you two examples.

The people cheered for their king (King Aerys II) at the great tournament held at the God's Eye.  Their love for their king seemed genuine enough.  It was no secret that Aerys was a cruel man.  That doesn't seem to have given them pause.  Steelshanks and the Bolton soldiers don't seem to dislike Roose.  They must have known of his cruelty.  Is it likely that most people of that time see cruelty as normal?  Hey, it's just our beloved lord keeping law and order.  Cruel punishment is a deterrent in their minds

It's a harsh world. Even when a boy king has his betrothed stripped and beaten before the court because her rebel brother is winning battles and killing Lannisters on Lannister soil, nobody thinks this is out of bounds. Sansa is the crown's hostage, and this is what happens to hostages -- unfortunate as it may be. It certainly would not cause anybody to think Joffrey just likes to beat up highborn maids just for fun.

[Lord Lannister]

Applying modern day morality to medieval times is often a futile effort. A culture's morality takes time to develop and grow just as any other aspect of it.

[Nathan Stark]

13 minutes ago, John Suburbs said:

It's a harsh world. Even when a boy king has his betrothed stripped and beaten before the court because her rebel brother is winning battles and killing Lannisters on Lannister soil, nobody thinks this is out of bounds. Sansa is the crown's hostage, and this is what happens to hostages -- unfortunate as it may be. It certainly would not cause anybody to think Joffrey just likes to beat up highborn maids just for fun.

Um... no. Tyrion puts a stop to Sansa's abuse. We know Arys Oakheart feels guilt over his participation in her treatment as well, but his king gave him orders. There's the rub. Joffrey is the King, who has already shown himself to be unstable and violent. Everyone at court knows full well that Joffrey's abuse of Sansa is abnormal and that highborn hostages are expected to be given better treatment. But whose gonna stick their neck out and risk getting their head on a pike?

[Hugorfonics]

The smallfolks cruelty is outstandingly disgusting

Quote

In the market square at the town's heart stood a fountain in the shape of a leaping trout, spouting water into a shallow pool. Women were filling pails and flagons there. A few feet away, a dozen iron cages hung from creaking wooden posts. Crow cages, Arya knew. The crows were mostly outside the cages, splashing in the water or perched atop the bars; inside were men. Lem reined up scowling. "What's this, now?"

"Justice," answered a woman at the fountain.

"What, did you run short o' hempen rope?"

"Was this done at Ser Wilbert's decree?" asked Tom.

A man laughed bitterly. "The lions killed Ser Wilbert a year ago. His sons are all off with the Young Wolf, getting fat in the west. You think they give a damn for the likes of us? It was the Mad Huntsman caught these wolves."

Wolves. Arya went cold. Robb's men, and my father's. She felt drawn toward the cages. The bars allowed so little room that prisoners could neither sit nor turn; they stood naked, exposed to sun and wind and rain. The first three cages held dead men. Carrion crows had eaten out their eyes, yet the empty sockets seemed to follow her. The fourth man in the row stirred as she passed. Around his mouth his ragged beard was thick with blood and flies. They exploded when he spoke, buzzing around his head. "Water." The word was a croak. "Please . . . water . . . "

The man in the next cage opened his eyes at the sound. "Here," he said. "Here, me." An old man, he was; his beard was grey and his scalp was bald and mottled brown with age.

There was another dead man beyond the old one, a big red-bearded man with a rotting grey bandage covering his left ear and part of his temple. But the worst thing was between his legs, where nothing remained but a crusted brown hole crawling with maggots. Farther down was a fat man. The crow cage was so cruelly narrow it was hard to see how they'd ever gotten him inside. The iron dug painfully into his belly, squeezing bulges out between the bars. Long days baking in the sun had burned him a painful red from head to heel. When he shifted his weight, his cage creaked and swayed, and Arya could see pale white stripes where the bars had shielded his flesh from the sun.

"Whose men were you?" she asked them.

At the sound of her voice, the fat man opened his eyes. The skin around them was so red they looked like boiled eggs floating in a dish of blood. "Water . . . a drink . . . "

"Whose?" she said again.

"Pay them no mind, boy," the townsman told her. "They're none o' your concern. Ride on by."

"What did they do?" she asked him.

"They put eight people to the sword at Tumbler's Falls," he said. "They wanted the Kingslayer, but he wasn't there so they did some rape and murder." He jerked a thumb toward the corpse with maggots where his manhood ought to be. "That one there did the raping. Now move along."

"A swallow," the fat one called down. "Ha' mercy, boy, a swallow." The old one slid an arm up to grasp the bars. The motion made his cage swing violently. "Water," gasped the one with the flies in his beard.

She looked at their filthy hair and scraggly beards and reddened eyes, at their dry, cracked, bleeding lips. Wolves, she thought again. Like me. Was this her pack? How could they be Robb's men? She wanted to hit them. She wanted to hurt them. She wanted to cry. They all seemed to be looking at her, the living and the dead alike. The old man had squeezed three fingers out between the bars. "Water," he said, "water."

Arya swung down from her horse. They can't hurt me, they're dying. She took her cup from her bedroll and went to the fountain.

"What do you think you're doing, boy?" the townsman snapped. "They're no concern o' yours." She raised the cup to the fish's mouth. The water splashed across her fingers and down her sleeve, but Arya did not move until the cup was brimming over. When she turned back toward the cages, the townsman moved to stop her. "You get away from them, boy - "

"She's a girl," said Harwin. "Leave her be."

"Aye," said Lem. "Lord Beric don't hold with caging men to die of thirst. Why don't you hang them decent?"

"There was nothing decent 'bout them things they did at Tumbler's Falls," the townsman growled right back at him.

The bars were too narrow to pass a cup through, but Harwin and Gendry offered her a leg up. She planted a foot in Harwin's cupped hands, vaulted onto Gendry's shoulders, and grabbed the bars on top of the cage. The fat man turned his face up and pressed his cheek to the iron, and Arya poured the water over him. He sucked at it eagerly and let it run down over his head and cheeks and hands, and then he licked the dampness off the bars. He would have licked Arya's fingers if she hadn't snatched them back. By the time she served the other two the same, a crowd had gathered to watch her. "The Mad Huntsman will hear of this," a man threatened. "He won't like it. No, he won't."

"He'll like this even less, then." Anguy strung his longbow, slid an arrow from his quiver, nocked, drew, loosed. The fat man shuddered as the shaft drove up between his chins, but the cage would not let him fall. Two more arrows ended the other two northmen. The only sound in the market square was the splash of falling water and the buzzing of flies.

Valar morghulis, Arya thought.

 

[James Fenimore Cooper XXII]

19 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

I assume that whole system in Westeros works following logic of organized crime. Or might makes anything right and so any claim without enough power and will to use it would be worthless. So any VIP who is not ready to use violence against anyone who is challenging their status would be a failure.

Besides usually best protection against evil nobles was nasty and powerful king. After all main problem for an average commoner was not a king but local lordling. 

I agree with you. 

I would also point out, the lords are pretty much all the same.   One could make the case for Ned being cruel for killing Gared, an obviously traumatized man who was out of his wits.   Steelshanks has seen enough cruelty from the Boltons but from other people as well.  Roose is not too far from the norm.   You are right about the king keeping the nobles in line. 

[James Fenimore Cooper XXII]

On 11/9/2020 at 5:57 PM, Only 89 selfies today said:

and might indeed be expected from the nobles.  The common people do not seem to hold it against them.  I give you two examples.

The people cheered for their king (King Aerys II) at the great tournament held at the God's Eye.  Their love for their king seemed genuine enough.  It was no secret that Aerys was a cruel man.  That doesn't seem to have given them pause.  Steelshanks and the Bolton soldiers don't seem to dislike Roose.  They must have known of his cruelty.  Is it likely that most people of that time see cruelty as normal?  Hey, it's just our beloved lord keeping law and order.  Cruel punishment is a deterrent in their minds

Look at Stannis Baratheon.  He burns his loyal men for eating the dead.  They were suffering from starvation and he punished them for eating the dead.  Those who are left still follow him.  Brutality is normal behavior for lords and monarchs.  The trick is to know when to use it and when forgiveness might be the better choice. 

The people cheered for Aerys because he was their king.  Theirs.  Like he belongs to them.  He's for all people.   Doran is the Dornishman's lord in their eyes.  Robb was the northman's king.  The leader of others.  But the king belongs to all. 

[John Suburbs]

20 hours ago, Nathan Stark said:

Um... no. Tyrion puts a stop to Sansa's abuse. We know Arys Oakheart feels guilt over his participation in her treatment as well, but his king gave him orders. There's the rub. Joffrey is the King, who has already shown himself to be unstable and violent. Everyone at court knows full well that Joffrey's abuse of Sansa is abnormal and that highborn hostages are expected to be given better treatment. But whose gonna stick their neck out and risk getting their head on a pike?

No. Look carefully at why Tyrion put a stop to it.

First, he chastens the knights for the beatings because they are supposed to protect the weak, not abuse them. Then he turns to Joffrey:

Quote

"This girl is to be your queen," the Imp told Joffrey. "Have you no regard for her honor?"

"I'm punishing her."

"For what crime? She did not fight her brother's battle."

"She has the blood of a wolf."

"And you have the wits of a goose."

She is to be your queen. In other words, Joffrey is only damaging himself by degrading his future queen this way. It is to his benefit to treat her gently, not to hers. And the unspoken word in all of this is that whatever he does to Sansa, Jaime gets back ten-fold.

So, no, no one thinks this is out-of-bounds behavior for a king. No one in the crowd utters a peep over it. Joffrey is not pilloried or burned in effigy across the land. And nobody, not even Margaery or Lady Olenna, offer a word of sympathy to Sansa over this. Sansa is Joffrey's hostage, and this is what happens to hostages. If Balon Greyjoy had risen in rebellion again, no one would think Ned was a mad tyrant if he had Theon tortured or even executed in response. In fact, most lords, and Robert as well, would question his fitness as lord if he did not.

So Joffrey is not doing anything that a king should not be doing with a hostage, but Tyrion recognizes that Sansa is a special case because she is also the future queen. In other words, this treatment is no improper, just unwise.

 

 

[Only 89 selfies today]

On 11/10/2020 at 12:32 AM, Rose of Red Lake said:

Those types of people are either deceived by cruel leaders and cheer for them or they think like them themselves. It doesn't mean that cruelty is a justified norm or that these types of leaders will be widely accepted. They'll suffer in the long run. 

That isn't realistic.  A lot of criminals in the real world get away with their crimes.   What the lords do is morally wrong but not considered a crime. 

[Only 89 selfies today]

15 hours ago, James Fenimore Cooper XXII said:

Look at Stannis Baratheon.  He burns his loyal men for eating the dead.  They were suffering from starvation and he punished them for eating the dead.  Those who are left still follow him.  Brutality is normal behavior for lords and monarchs.  The trick is to know when to use it and when forgiveness might be the better choice.

The people cheered for Aerys because he was their king.  Theirs.  Like he belongs to them.  He's for all people.   Doran is the Dornishman's lord in their eyes.  Robb was the northman's king.  The leader of others.  But the king belongs to all. 

Yes it is

[Rose of Red Lake]

2 hours ago, Only 89 selfies today said:

That isn't realistic.  A lot of criminals in the real world get away with their crimes.   What the lords do is morally wrong but not considered a crime. 

So the story should end with lords and kings chopping off people's body parts for fun, destroying crops and homes, and the people cheering for more, just because you think that's "realism"?

This isn't history written down. It is fiction. Cruel characters will die, fail, or fuck up their legacy as an example of on how not to rule. The story has a moral.

Also. Cruel leaders will face resistance and pushback. THAT is very realistic. Authoritarianism has its limits. 

[The Lord of the Crossing]

Some amount of cruelty is necessary to keep Gregor and his kind under the thumb.  The cruelty needs to have purpose or else it's just sadistic.  Ramsay is sadistic.  What he does is uncalled for. 

[Aldarion]

Cruel world brings cruelty, but even so, I think Westeros is kinda overdone compared to real Middle Ages. In Hungary and Croatia at least, nobles could not really afford to be cruel, and so were not. In fact, the greatest problem people had were taxes, and that too only came about due to Ottoman threat really straining the financial resources of the king and nobility alike - Peasant Revolt of 1573. came about because, when peasants of Franjo Tahi refused to pay rather extreme taxes, Tahi sent troops. Peasants defended themselves - they were armed - and when Croatian Parliament declared them traitors to the state due to resistance, peasants declared a "peasant state" with its own government. Fate of said state is also a case study of why the idea of peasant conscripts is idiotic: peasants were rather quickly crushed by the army. But the point is, peasants had a very clear idea of their rights, and were willing to defend them with weapons. As such, there are really no examples of ASoIaF-style cruelty to compare with, because such cruelty was self-defeating - and thus, in the real world, was extremely rare. Even "cruel" rulers such as Vlad Dracul were not that bad: sure, he was fond of impaling nobles and (perceived) rebels, but so long as you were not a problem, he left you alone. In fact, common people liked him because he established the rule of law and constrained the nobility. Basically everything cruel Vlad did was done to and aimed at the Turks and rebellious nobility; it was not aimless cruelty of the sort you see Ramsay Bolton doing. Then the real cruelty was overblown and misrepresented by Vlad's rival claimants to the throne, much like during Thirty Years War you had posters of Croats eating babies because Western Europeans had no clue how to handle "scorched land" tactics of the Ottoman Border units. But in reality, Vlad was definitely cruel, but he was also just and pious, and his cruelty was far from random: remember that Vlad's Wallachia was under constant state of total war due to Ottoman proximity, while also being threatened by likewise far more powerful Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom to the West.

That being said, while day-to-day cruelty of the kind we see in Westeros (such as lords killing and torturing peasants for fun) was quite clearly unacceptable, there were many examples of extreme cruelty in real life as well: typically during the war or as punishment for certain crimes.

[SeanF]

19 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Cruel world brings cruelty, but even so, I think Westeros is kinda overdone compared to real Middle Ages. In Hungary and Croatia at least, nobles could not really afford to be cruel, and so were not. In fact, the greatest problem people had were taxes, and that too only came about due to Ottoman threat really straining the financial resources of the king and nobility alike - Peasant Revolt of 1573. came about because, when peasants of Franjo Tahi refused to pay rather extreme taxes, Tahi sent troops. Peasants defended themselves - they were armed - and when Croatian Parliament declared them traitors to the state due to resistance, peasants declared a "peasant state" with its own government. Fate of said state is also a case study of why the idea of peasant conscripts is idiotic: peasants were rather quickly crushed by the army. But the point is, peasants had a very clear idea of their rights, and were willing to defend them with weapons. As such, there are really no examples of ASoIaF-style cruelty to compare with, because such cruelty was self-defeating - and thus, in the real world, was extremely rare. Even "cruel" rulers such as Vlad Dracul were not that bad: sure, he was fond of impaling nobles and (perceived) rebels, but so long as you were not a problem, he left you alone. In fact, common people liked him because he established the rule of law and constrained the nobility. Basically everything cruel Vlad did was done to and aimed at the Turks and rebellious nobility; it was not aimless cruelty of the sort you see Ramsay Bolton doing. Then the real cruelty was overblown and misrepresented by Vlad's rival claimants to the throne, much like during Thirty Years War you had posters of Croats eating babies because Western Europeans had no clue how to handle "scorched land" tactics of the Ottoman Border units. But in reality, Vlad was definitely cruel, but he was also just and pious, and his cruelty was far from random: remember that Vlad's Wallachia was under constant state of total war due to Ottoman proximity, while also being threatened by likewise far more powerful Hungarian-Croatian Kingdom to the West.

That being said, while day-to-day cruelty of the kind we see in Westeros (such as lords killing and torturing peasants for fun) was quite clearly unacceptable, there were many examples of extreme cruelty in real life as well: typically during the war or as punishment for certain crimes.

Somebody like Ramsay Bolton would have been considered deviant in a normal medieval society, like Gilles de Rais.  But then, he's considered deviant in Westeros.  Sooner or later, he'll be brought to justice.

What I think the O/P is getting at is more "routine" levels of cruelty.  Nobody questions the morality of capital punishment and torture in principle - even if they may question the specific application of such things.  And few people would question bringing fire and sword to the Smallfolk of a rival lord, during the course of war. Which is true to life.

England was not among the most brutal of medieval societies, but it would have been routine to see criminals hanging from gibbets on one's travels and the heads and limbs of traitors on spikes above city gates.  Nobody would have queried the idea of traitors being hanged drawn and quartered, or burned (unless they were highborn, in which case beheading was the norm), well past medieval times.

[broken one]

Aerys' II cruelty does not affect the common folk, they simply do not care if he bakes several lords. The aristocracy trembles, small folk cheers.

[Aldarion]

20 hours ago, SeanF said:

Somebody like Ramsay Bolton would have been considered deviant in a normal medieval society, like Gilles de Rais.  But then, he's considered deviant in Westeros.  Sooner or later, he'll be brought to justice.

What I think the O/P is getting at is more "routine" levels of cruelty.  Nobody questions the morality of capital punishment and torture in principle - even if they may question the specific application of such things.  And few people would question bringing fire and sword to the Smallfolk of a rival lord, during the course of war. Which is true to life.

England was not among the most brutal of medieval societies, but it would have been routine to see criminals hanging from gibbets on one's travels and the heads and limbs of traitors on spikes above city gates.  Nobody would have queried the idea of traitors being hanged drawn and quartered, or burned (unless they were highborn, in which case beheading was the norm), well past medieval times.

My point was that cruelty was there, but it was not a routine. Vlad III could be extremely cruel, but, with few exceptions, that was not aimless cruelty. Also, it is difficult to know how cruel exactly medieval or ancient rulers were, as cruelty was not actually expected or accepted - which means that chroniclers etc. would ascribe acts of unimaginable cruelty to their political opponents. Was Nero truly as bad as presented? Or Vlad?

But even of we take those descriptions at face value, fact still remains that Martin takes only one side of a character, and usually makes them far worse than a historical example. Yes, Vlad Dracul was described as extremely cruel. He was said to spend time in prison impaling rats for fun (an incident which also shows him to have been extremely charismatic, seeing how he convinced guards to provide him with said rats), he impaled boyars en masse, invited them to a banquet and then massacred them (Roose Bolton and the Red Wedding), scared off the Turks by impaling their whole invading army onto stakes, and is said to have even invaded his own city and impaled entire population. But he also suppressed boyars, reformed the military, introduced rule of law - both military reform and rule of law were made possible by his boyar suppression, introduced economic protectionism, and did many good things which are simply not present in depiction of Roose and Ramsay Bolton. And this watered-down, worse-than-reality sort of depiction is typical for Martin's characters.