If you could change anything about ASOIAF's worldbuilding, what would it be?

[Hugorfonics]

1 hour ago, Daenerysthegreat said:

I also did a bit of research on china. In the 8th century. China had an army of 500000 and that was when the country was divided in civil war

Word, Cao Cao famously claimed to attack Red Cliff with a million, historians and contemporaries say it's only 400k lol. That was around the year 200, mad feudal.  

In the west was my boy Severus-Septimius Severus who manged to rule all the entirety of the Roman Empire (for like 15 min lol) because he bought it from the cops.

History is weird, there's no constant.  And when dealing with magical skinchangers I think we should just accept their semi ridiculous standinga

[StarksInTheNorth]

The frequency of tween pregnancy and childbirth and the seasons. The first issue has been debated to death of course, but I find it highly unrealistic and not particularly defensible on GRRM’s parts. A few of them make sense, but most don’t. I think it could be an easy fix if he tried, but it’s not something he seems to care about fixing so I’ve given up arguing on it. It will continue to annoy me, though, and I am watching with trepidation how he addresses Arya’s growth and sexuality and Sansa’s future marriage.

As for the second, I wish the seasons were a bit more thought out or explained early on. I don’t expect the narrators to have the same understanding a modern weatherman might, but it seems at times like “longer seasons” was a random idea he liked and didnt ever think to further develop. Early on, Tyrion says he’s loved through seven or eight winters, but that’s false based on other parts of the book. Even after F&B, there are still many periods of time we don’t know the season for. There’s also no explanation for why a year is twelve moons, even though our world has it based on the science of the seasons partially. 

[Lord Lannister]

51 minutes ago, StarksInTheNorth said:

As for the second, I wish the seasons were a bit more thought out or explained early on. I don’t expect the narrators to have the same understanding a modern weatherman might, but it seems at times like “longer seasons” was a random idea he liked and didnt ever think to further develop. Early on, Tyrion says he’s loved through seven or eight winters, but that’s false based on other parts of the book. Even after F&B, there are still many periods of time we don’t know the season for. There’s also no explanation for why a year is twelve moons, even though our world has it based on the science of the seasons partially. 

I touched on this briefly in the things unrealistic in the books thread. It would seem to be there would be massive changes on a cultural level due to these longer seasons. Everything from their calendar, migration patterns, farming and commerce if you're in a constant growing season and so forth.  Food preservation would seem to be a huge concern for winter that lasts "years" as well, but that's barely ever touched upon either. Just that food is stockpiled somehow and often there are famines. 

Seems to me you'd see people migrating south in winter and north in summer in large numbers to escape the worst of the climate. Since you're moving for "years" putting down roots for awhile is less of a big deal. You'd think Dorne and the North would be having to deal with an influx of people coming and going each respective season seeking livable land or farmland that would be at a premium since you're in a constant growing season. The "neat" idea of different seasons could've led to a completely unique societal structure instead of just a similar copy of our own world despite that huge difference. 

[Jaenara Belarys]

I'm also a bit confused with how Westeros feeds its people. Sure, you have long summers that allow you to stock food up, but in order for a winter in the north lasting three years....no growing opportunities, unless you have a glass garden, your food stores would have to be massive. 

[Loose Bolt]

16 hours ago, Hugorfonics said:

Ok but Peter the Great or like Cathrine the great or Alexander (not the great lol) led Russia with its massive army without railroads and steamships, (and maybe some without shoes too)

Actually if one writes about Alexander I and war that made Finland part of Russia (1808-9) army of Imperial Russia had 2 reasons that made it superior than Swedish army cabbages and boots.

Soldiers of Sweden may had been free men and most soldiers in army of Russia were serfs. But Swedes ate only bread and porridge when Russians got necessary vitamins with their food and so were healthier than their colleagues. After all during that time main killer in any army was diseases. Or cabbages were similar secret weapon for Imperial army than lemon juice was for British navy :)

As a free men Swedish soldiers would had to pay their own boots when as a property of state some lucky Russian soldiers got new boots from state. Or Imperial army had with them a lot of spare boots and even some boot makers. After all anyone in Finland during winter without working shoes would die sooner or later. Besides good luck of marching anywhere without working shoes even during summer. 

 

[Hugorfonics]

3 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

Actually if one writes about Alexander I and war that made Finland part of Russia (1808-9) army of Imperial Russia had 2 reasons that made it superior than Swedish army cabbages and boots.

Soldiers of Sweden may had been free men and most soldiers in army of Russia were serfs. But Swedes ate only bread and porridge when Russians got necessary vitamins with their food and so were healthier than their colleagues. After all during that time main killer in any army was diseases. Or cabbages were similar secret weapon for Imperial army than lemon juice was for British navy

As a free men Swedish soldiers would had to pay their own boots when as a property of state some lucky Russian soldiers got new boots from state. Or Imperial army had with them a lot of spare boots and even some boot makers. After all anyone in Finland during winter without working shoes would die sooner or later. Besides good luck of marching anywhere without working shoes even during summer. 

 

How interesting! Cabbages, huh.

[Jaenara Belarys]

10 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

After all during that time main killer in any army was diseases. Or cabbages were similar secret weapon for Imperial army than lemon juice was for British navy

Scurvy? 

[Loose Bolt]

9 hours ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

Scurvy? 

Yes. After all it was very common killer among prisoners, sailors and soldiers. Or people who did not had access either fruits, roots or vegetables. But it was only one disease among many diseases that killed people who did not had enough vitamin c in their bodies

PS. Scurvy should be very common also in place where winters last long and most people cannot grow food for themselves during those winters.

[Jaenara Belarys]

12 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

Yes. After all it was very common killer among prisoners, sailors and soldiers. Or people who did not had access either fruits, roots or vegetables. But it was only one disease among many diseases that killed people who did not had enough vitamin c in their bodies

 

I'm fairly certain they do know about scurvy, it just wasn't really important to the story. Look at the Jon chapter, they're talking about the men not having fresh meat and vegetables for winter. They talk about "disease in the ranks" and "bleeding gums". And that seems to be the only time it comes up again if I recall correctly. 

12 hours ago, Loose Bolt said:

PS. Scurvy should be very common also in place where winters last long and most people cannot grow food for themselves during those winters.

Very, very common. How Westeros isn't depopulated entirely is a miracle. 

[Groo]

So, for thousands of years the Nights Watch has only been involved in defending the North from wilding raids. Why would anyone in the south ever care? Why would they send anyone, even prisoners, to the Nights Watch? There needed to have been a more serious persistent threat than just wilding raids to justify and sustain the Nights Watch as the institution it is supposed to be. One possibility would be that the giants are more numerous and a regular threat to the kingdom. Defending against giants would help justify such a huge wall. Adventurous young men throughout the kingdom would be attracted to the idea of fighting giants. The wildings would be hated not just for raids but for being allies of the giants.

[WhatAnArtist!]

8 hours ago, Groo said:

So, for thousands of years the Nights Watch has only been involved in defending the North from wilding raids. Why would anyone in the south ever care? Why would they send anyone, even prisoners, to the Nights Watch? There needed to have been a more serious persistent threat than just wilding raids to justify and sustain the Nights Watch as the institution it is supposed to be.

Yet another problem of Martin deciding to stretch the history of Westeros too far. He says thousands of years, but from a practical storytelling perspective he probably should have kept it at like four or five hundred years or so. I don't think Martin fully appreciates just how bloody long thousands of years are.

[Lord Lannister]

1 minute ago, WhatAnArtist! said:

Yet another problem of Martin deciding to stretch the history of Westeros too far. He says thousands of years, but from a practical storytelling perspective he probably should have kept it at like four or five hundred years or so. I don't think Martin fully appreciates just how bloody long thousands of years are.

Part of me is hoping for a maester's conspiracy to explain this detail away that they were manipulating history for some reason.

[WhatAnArtist!]

Just now, Lord Lannister said:

Part of me is hoping for a maester's conspiracy to explain this detail away that they were manipulating history for some reason.

That would be pretty cool. The maesters definitely have an enormous amount of influence on how history is written and remembered, being practically the only well educated people on the continent. Similar to the situation in the early medieval era in Europe with the clergy being the only educated people, but magnified even more so, since Westeros doesn't seem to have any extant writings from previous eras unlike with the Greeks and Romans in Europe. Sam's POV chapters have the potential to be among the most important and fascinating in Winds.

[Ivashanko]

I see a lot of people in this thread have already talked about how the variable lengths of seasons would dramatically alter Planetos' society. And they're right: it would result in a political and social order completely different from our own.

My pet plot-hole-filling theory is that the animals/humans in Planetos aren't actually genetically similar to animals/humans in our world. Even with today's technology we would have significant difficulties supplying the entire world with food if winters could last for many years. There is no way any settled civilisation north of a certain latitude could survive. The north would be unpopulated during the long winter years and only parts of it would be resettled during the Spring-Autumn period, and everything north of Winterfell would be a wasteland. You might have a few scattered tribes surviving on the coasts as fishermen, but that's about it*.

What's more, we are never given any hints that fantasy winter-growing crops exist. Indeed, everything we've seen suggests they don't. If I had to come up with an explanation, the only plausible one I can think are is that the humans (and animals, and plants of all sorts) in Planetos are genetically different from us.

Of course the real explanation is that GRRM liked the idea of variable seasons, but didn't really want to mess around with how that would change his world and the story he wanted to tell. And that's cool! I'm fine with it. Suspension of belief and all that.

^{*INB4 someone mentions the Eskimos: the Eskimos were hunter-gatherers, not farmers, and the population-density of those land was extremely small. Far too small to gather an army or to maintain a feudal system. And even they depended on the more or less predictable end of winter to arrive.}

[Ivashanko]

On 5/9/2021 at 8:35 PM, Colonel Green said:

The World of Ice and Fire's backstory for Westeros is totally incompatible with the way the coming of the Andals is represented in the novels themselves. The only region of Westeros that seems all that different as a result is the Vale, and even they have too many houses suddenly deemed pre-Andal.

The books make so much emphasis on the Royces and the Blackwoods' First Men ancestry, but other than the Blackwoods' still worshipping the Old Gods there really doesn't seem to be anything differentiating either house from like half the other southern noble houses, based on TWOIAF.

 

It's important to note that outright genetic replacement is rare in history outside of the New World, where it was made possible by seemingly never-ending plagues. The Arabs didn't replace the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Berbers, or the Libyans. The Mongols didn't replace the Chinese or Russians. The Ghaznavids and their ilk didn't replace the Indians. There were far too many locals and far too few invaders.

It is very likely that the Andals came, took power through the sword, intermarried with the locals, and importer their culture. Basically every family should have primarily First Men blood, just like Italians today aren't that genetically different from Romans or many Turks aren't that dissimilar to the Greeks and etc who held their lands before the coming of the Seljuks. I haven't read The World of Ice and Fire, so it is possible that the origins of too many houses date to pre-invasion myths, but that seems like a pretty common thing in Westeros anyways. I can imagine a lot of houses making up stories that connect their houses to pre-history, if only to be more like the Lannisters and the Starks, the Gardeners and the Durrandons.

[Northern Sword]

On 10/23/2021 at 6:22 PM, Lord Lannister said:

I touched on this briefly in the things unrealistic in the books thread. It would seem to be there would be massive changes on a cultural level due to these longer seasons. Everything from their calendar, migration patterns, farming and commerce if you're in a constant growing season and so forth.  Food preservation would seem to be a huge concern for winter that lasts "years" as well, but that's barely ever touched upon either. Just that food is stockpiled somehow and often there are famines. 

Seems to me you'd see people migrating south in winter and north in summer in large numbers to escape the worst of the climate. Since you're moving for "years" putting down roots for awhile is less of a big deal. You'd think Dorne and the North would be having to deal with an influx of people coming and going each respective season seeking livable land or farmland that would be at a premium since you're in a constant growing season. The "neat" idea of different seasons could've led to a completely unique societal structure instead of just a similar copy of our own world despite that huge difference. 

This is similar to my thinking as well. Such long winters would lead to massive amounts of farming during summers. Who would then store crops in large granaries and food storage for winter. They would be located strategically in the southern half of the north. The idea of migration similar to Wintertown but on a larger scale, say at White Harbor and another near the West coast(Saltspear). For the Starks, food security would be top priority, along with trade. White Harbor is what 25k-30k but built to handle 250k or something like that during winter.

[Springwatch]

What annoys me is that the lords are so clueless about storing food for the winter, and have to be kicked along by the likes of Luwin and Littlefinger. But it's the biggest issue in their world!

[Ivashanko]

1 hour ago, Northern Sword said:

This is similar to my thinking as well. Such long winters would lead to massive amounts of farming during summers. Who would then store crops in large granaries and food storage for winter. They would be located strategically in the southern half of the north. The idea of migration similar to Wintertown but on a larger scale, say at White Harbor and another near the West coast(Saltspear). For the Starks, food security would be top priority, along with trade. White Harbor is what 25k-30k but built to handle 250k or something like that during winter.

 

This would require well organised governments with complex bureaucracies and very advanced storage and preservation technology. And it would be outrageously expensive. I'm not sure a system like this could organically come into being.

[Jaenara Belarys]

18 hours ago, Ivashanko said:

This would require well organised governments with complex bureaucracies and very advanced storage and preservation technology. And it would be outrageously expensive. I'm not sure a system like this could organically come into being.

The medieval vassalage system is not exactly a system designed for complex bureaucracies, so scratch that for surviving. But on the other hand, I don't see why advanced methods are needed. I would think smoking and salting meat and fish would be good, and putting up some dried fruit (the North is just a big refrigerator in the winter after all). 

But as said above, there should be massive bouts of scurvy during the winter, because there's no way a poor lord will have the coin to build glass gardens. 

[Ivashanko]

On 11/5/2021 at 3:31 PM, Jaenara Belarys said:

The medieval vassalage system is not exactly a system designed for complex bureaucracies, so scratch that for surviving. But on the other hand, I don't see why advanced methods are needed. I would think smoking and salting meat and fish would be good, and putting up some dried fruit (the North is just a big refrigerator in the winter after all). 

But as said above, there should be massive bouts of scurvy during the winter, because there's no way a poor lord will have the coin to build glass gardens. 

I think you're underestimating the difficulties. I'll list some, but I want to make it clear that the following list is by no means all of the challenges that the North would face:

 

1) Property rights. There would have to be extensive lists detailing who owns what where. Otherwise, when peasants moved back to their farms after winter ends there would be major societal problems. The temptation to overstate the size of one's holdings- or, even worse, to claim land belonging to someone else- would be enormous.

2) Storage. This we've already talked about, but the amount of goods that would be need to be stored for a variable winter is enormous. Some winters in Westeros have lasted longer than six years: this is an incredibly long time to not be producing food. And you couldn't catch that much more food because

3) Most animals do not reproduce in winter, and those that try would face massive die offs. Almost all animals, including and especially fish, would likely migrate to warmer climates for the winter.

4) Given winter storms and general snow, actually transporting new food into the city would be all but impossible. If the city runs out of food, that's it, game over my dudes. Better luck next time.

5) Fuel. The ideal medieval city was typically built in a certain pattern with a ring of trees seperating the end of the city from the farmlands that surround it. That ring of trees is important for cutting down trees for building materials and food. Thing is, in a variable winter where the population suddenly surges, those trees are going to be cut down very quickly. Running out of burning material would be a huge problem.

6) The sudden surge of residents would create its own issues. Sanitation would be a huge problem, especially if the north doesn't have the money to build proper sewage systems. And these systems would need to be constantly maintained, even during the non winter seasons when the population of the city shrinks drastically. That requires a sustained effort to build and support a bureaucracy. Infrastructure in general would be an ongoing issue 

7) Taxes. I'm not sure how they'd even work in a society where significant portions of the population aren't and can't produce anything for years on end. It'd likely require a non-feudal system.

8) Preservation. Vermin of all sorts would flock to the massive storage containers.

9) Maintaining communication within one's kingdom. Depending on how bad the snow got, the sending of messengers might become impossible. Lords far away from Winterfell would become more and more autonomous and might be loathed to return to the fold after the passing of winter. This is especially true for trading harbours that are the most likely to ride out the cold.

There might also be issued maintaining an armed force for policing, dealing with raids, and the scared, starving mass of peasants who have just arrived in massive numbers.

And these are only a small handful of internal problems. The external problems they would face would also be massive. I genuinely don't think it is doable without magic.