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Egg’s Objective


Moiraine Sedai

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36 minutes ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

What kind of social reforms was Aegon trying to force on the great houses? He was expecting resistance.  Did the reforms include wealth transfers to the peasant class?

These questions won’t have any concrete answers until we get more Dunk & Egg stories. 
But my guess is that he was probably demanding the lords to raise wages for their servants, spend more money on infrastructure, that sort of thing. It would explain why there’s only one university and one library in all of Westeros.

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I think that Egg's journeys with Dunk throughout the kingdom will make him much more sympathetic to the common folk than the nobility is comfortable with, as it threatens their dominion and their bottom line. I imagine that he expected resistance of some sort, though he probably underestimated the extent of the resistance.

The rough outline of Egg's arc seems to be 1) growth from a bright but sheltered boy to a thoughtful leader 2) crisis and resistance eventually bringing the thoughtful leader to desperate thoughts and actions, 3) some sort of tragic death wrapped up in an effort to conjure dragons. But the details beyond that are a completely mystery.

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2 hours ago, Canon Claude said:

These questions won’t have any concrete answers until we get more Dunk & Egg stories. 
But my guess is that he was probably demanding the lords to raise wages for their servants, spend more money on infrastructure, that sort of thing. It would explain why there’s only one university and one library in all of Westeros.

Well, its a feudal society. So unless he wants to reconstitute slavery like the Romans...

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Serfdom does not exist, but practically, the lords have power of life and death over the smallfolk.  In my head canon, his reforms were about making justice a royal, rather than lordly, prerogative.

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Thanks all of you. I enjoyed reading your answers to my question.  :)

Egg was a weak king because of the way he got to throne. Do you all think that gave the lords leverage over Egg? The Council gave him the throne. He would find it difficult to oppose them.  

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On 3/19/2022 at 3:04 AM, SeanF said:

Serfdom does not exist, but practically, the lords have power of life and death over the smallfolk.  In my head canon, his reforms were about making justice a royal, rather than lordly, prerogative.

Similar to Ally’s reforms in the north.

 

 

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On 3/18/2022 at 12:48 PM, Moiraine Sedai said:

What kind of social reforms was Aegon trying to force on the great houses? He was expecting resistance.  Did the reforms include wealth transfers to the peasant class?

I don't think it was wealth transfers or anything like that. More likely it was civil and criminal reforms, ie, commoners have some legal protections against abuse by the nobility.

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24 minutes ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

Egg was a weak king because of the way he got to throne. Do you all think that gave the lords leverage over Egg? The Council gave him the throne. He would find it difficult to oppose them.  

I think this makes sense  , especially that we don't yet know what happened to little Maegor who was before Egg in line of succession through both his parents. too much opposing the lords and they could force him to abdicate and put Maegor on the throne.

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On 3/18/2022 at 5:48 PM, Moiraine Sedai said:

What kind of social reforms was Aegon trying to force on the great houses? He was expecting resistance.  Did the reforms include wealth transfers to the peasant class?

I doubt it. If we look at historical examples of such reforms - which were extremely opposed by the nobility - these included:

1) removing tax privileges of higher classes (in some cases, magnates had to pay no taxes at all, or even profited from state taxation)

2) legal protection of peasants from abuse by their lords

3) increased legal status of cities (a measure, I might add, that was intended specifically to weaken nobility)

4) increased power of central government in terms of administration and military might (a measure which required overall increase in taxation - leading back to point 1)

Direct wealth transfers are a very modern concept (closest things we had was using taxation to finance what was basically social state), and having that in a pseudo-medieval setting would be completely out of place. So I certainly hope that wasn't part of the concept.

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3 hours ago, Moiraine Sedai said:

Thanks all of you. I enjoyed reading your answers to my question.  :)

Egg was a weak king because of the way he got to throne. Do you all think that gave the lords leverage over Egg? The Council gave him the throne. He would find it difficult to oppose them.  

Nope, Aegon's policies and children alienated him from the nobles. Egg had very powerful allies like the Baratheons or the Lannisters but between him and his children he managed to piss everyone off. No wonder he thought he could only rule via dragons.

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I can only guess but it was an attempt to enact laws which gave the people the right to be treated like somebody who have rights.  The law would have included which offenses are punishable and dictated what the punishment would be for specific crimes.  It would have prevented cruel and unnecessary torture.  

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Something like this. Coded, or written laws.

On 3/19/2022 at 3:04 AM, SeanF said:

Serfdom does not exist, but practically, the lords have power of life and death over the smallfolk.  In my head canon, his reforms were about making justice a royal, rather than lordly, prerogative.

 

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