Instances of Poor World Building

[Corvo the Crow]

As the title says. What are some examples you can give in regards to the world building being poorly done?

I'll start off with the Ravens.

Quote

 

Both." Stannis snapped the word out. "A maester's raven flies to one place, and one place only. Is that correct?"

The maester mopped sweat from his brow with his sleeve. "N-not entirely, Your Grace. Most, yes. Some few can be taught to fly between two castles. Such birds are greatly prized. And once in a very great while, we find a raven who can learn the names of three or four or five castles, and fly to each upon command. Birds as clever as that come along only once in a hundred years."

 

Ravens fly to one place and one place only. Then for this messaging app of Westeros to work, say for example Robert to send nude doodles of himself to ladies of the realm, get replies and send more, there must be a constant traffic of Ravens being carried around but not only are we not shown any such thing but also it would be very hard during times of war and  impossible during winter. Not to mention even during times of peace and such a traffic existing but not shown it would be very slow going. You'd have  perhaps a few ravens at most (per destination that is) but these would quickly run out(or fly out?) during a prolonged exchange, in fact, sending riders would become much faster since they won't be carrying around cages upon cages of Ravens.

Edited October 26, 2022 by Corvo the Crow

[Craving Peaches]

How Slaver's Bay area actually sustains itself. It might be a bit nitpicky but if I think about it for more than 5 minutes I don't understand why it has not collapsed by now. Same with Dothraki. They must be running out of places to loot. Same with Ironborn. How can they support enough people to crew all those ships? How did they get enough wood to rebuild all their fleet after it was wrecked? I don't think people would give them any, no fleet means no trouble from Ironborn.

[Lady Misery]

Why does Westeros only have two languages? Russia is of a similar size as Westeros and they have 36 official languages and roughly 100 minority languages, if not more. So why does every one from Dorne to the Frostfangs speak common?

[SeanF]

In Essos, 75-85% of the population are chattel slaves, yet so far, there has been no successful slave revolt.  Some of the cities rely upon slave soldiers, who have made no effort to seize power for themselves.

Neither would be likely in real life.

[Alden Rothack]

the fact the iron islands apparently has two or three times the population density of the mainland despite being described as rocky with thin soil when their lifestyle should mean that every battle they lose costs them a demographically significant portion of their men

[Aldarion]

Everything in Essos except maybe for Braavos. Societies don't work, militaries wouldn't work, political relations wouldn't work, cultures wouldn't work... but Dothraki and the Slaver's Bay are likely the worst offenders. You can't have an economy based entirely on slave trade, and then there is also the stuff that @SeanF has pointed out.

Fact that Westeros has only two major languages and three ethnic groups. Also the fact that it exists as a unified kingdom at all, when it is roughly ten times the area of the Holy Roman Empire.

And if GRRM really intends for majority of Westerosi soldiers to be conscripted peasants marched off against their will, then a) that would never work, b) has never been done historically and c) he portrayed it really, really poorly because Westerosi armies actually behave like real medieval armies based on retainer... in other words, armies of well-trained soldiers, not just peasants given some weapons.

Then there is also the fact that you have ocean-going galleys using ramming as a primary means of combat... for reference, ramming-to-sink stopped being used after antiquity, when ships started being built ribs-first instead of hull-first and were thus far stronger. And a lot more other problems as well.

In short: EVERYTHING.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Aldarion

[Tyrosh Lannister]

There are no dialects in Westeros. A peasant from the Dornish desert speaks in the same language and dialect as a wildling raider from hardhome and they both can 100% understand and fluently talk to each other 

[Tyrosh Lannister]

On 10/26/2022 at 8:50 PM, SeanF said:

who have made no effort to seize power for themselves.

 

Vogarro's whore of Volantis tells Jorah and Tyrion that the slaves of volantis are waiting for Dany. Thing is, they don't need Dany to be present in Volantis to start a revolution. They can do it themselves; they outnumber freedmen 5 to 1, and the armies have a huge number of slave soldiers and they may also have support from the red temple. A revolution should be easy enough without Dany.

[Corvo the Crow]

On 10/26/2022 at 12:41 PM, Lady Misery said:

Why does Westeros only have two languages? Russia is of a similar size as Westeros and they have 36 official languages and roughly 100 minority languages, if not more. So why does every one from Dorne to the Frostfangs speak common?

 

1 hour ago, Tyrosh Lannister said:

There are no dialects in Westeros. A peasant from the Dornish desert speaks in the same language and dialect as a wildling raider from hardhome and they both can 100% understand and fluently talk to each other 

 

Westeros can't be compared to Russia(or most other real world countries for that matter) in terms of how many languages they have, as these real world languages are either  languages of people who were conquered or people that have migrated. What they definitely should have is more dialects and the Northmen who repelled the invaders so efficiently that the Andals never tried again so they should have kept their language free of the "Andal taint", at least until Aegon's Conquest, but what we see instead is even the wildlings speaking the common tongue save for a few tribes like Thenns and the giants.

There should have been two major languages, Old Tongue of the First Men spoken in the North and beyond the wall and the "Common Tongue" of Andals spoken in most of the south and at least three languages spoken in small communities, Old Tongue which should've been spoken among Vale Clansmen and perhaps a few other places that still practice the worship of Old Gods, Rhoynish(actually orphans still speak it) and Valyrian.

 

Note that I'm not including Ironborn since we "don't know" their origins that clearly. 

Edited October 27, 2022 by Corvo the Crow

[John Suburbs]

On 10/26/2022 at 3:59 AM, Corvo the Crow said:

As the title says. What are some examples you can give in regards to the world building being poorly done?

I'll start off with the Ravens.

Ravens fly to one place and one place only. Then for this messaging app of Westeros to work, say for example Robert to send nude doodles of himself to ladies of the realm, get replies and send more, there must be a constant traffic of Ravens being carried around but not only are we not shown any such thing but also it would be very hard during times of war and  impossible during winter. Not to mention even during times of peace and such a traffic existing but not shown it would be very slow going. You'd have  perhaps a few ravens at most (per destination that is) but these would quickly run out(or fly out?) during a prolonged exchange, in fact, sending riders would become much faster since they won't be carrying around cages upon cages of Ravens.

I think what they mean by "one place and one place only" is that they fly back and forth from their home castle to one other seat. So Maester Aemon has a rookery full of ravens, most of them probably homed to Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower and others to Winterfell, Kings Landing, etc. At the same time, each of these seats have birds that home to Castle Black, so they just travel back and forth between those destinations. That's why ravens are only used for messages of high importance and urgency -- dark wings, dark words.

[Usako]

You do realise that the raven thing is actually one hundred percent based on real homing/messanger pigeons, right? A pigeon can only fly back to its what it recognises as its home. Therefore, no matter where you take it, it will always return to base. This is the same with the ravens. And also, these pigeons were returned to active duty by being transported along with forces departing from the homebase back to the field. And this is something that was used from at least as far back as Genghis Khan and up through the WWII as a viable military information service. The ravens are one of those things based on real history.

 

It's my first post, I hope I haven't done wrong.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Usako
extra word, forgot something

[Angel Eyes]

2 hours ago, Tyrosh Lannister said:

There are no dialects in Westeros. A peasant from the Dornish desert speaks in the same language and dialect as a wildling raider from hardhome and they both can 100% understand and fluently talk to each other 

I have a book at home about regional dialects in the US alone, i.e. various words for soda.

[Aldarion]

44 minutes ago, Usako said:

You do realise that the raven thing is actually one hundred percent based on real homing/messanger pigeons, right? A pigeon can only fly back to its what it recognises as its home. Therefore, no matter where you take it, it will always return to base. This is the same with the ravens. And also, these pigeons were returned to active duty by being transported along with forces departing from the homebase back to the field. And this is something that was used from at least as far back as Genghis Khan and up through the WWII as a viable military information service. The ravens are one of those things based on real history.

 

It's my first post, I hope I haven't done wrong.

Problem with that is that ravens are too damn smart. Pigeons receive a message, fly home, and somebody takes a message of them.

Raven receives a message, thinks "what is this?", tears it apart and uses it to build a nest.

[SeanF]

8 hours ago, Aldarion said:

Everything in Essos except maybe for Braavos. Societies don't work, militaries wouldn't work, political relations wouldn't work, cultures wouldn't work... but Dothraki and the Slaver's Bay are likely the worst offenders. You can't have an economy based entirely on slave trade, and then there is also the stuff that @SeanF has pointed out.

Fact that Westeros has only two major languages and three ethnic groups. Also the fact that it exists as a unified kingdom at all, when it is roughly ten times the area of the Holy Roman Empire.

And if GRRM really intends for majority of Westerosi soldiers to be conscripted peasants marched off against their will, then a) that would never work, b) has never been done historically and c) he portrayed it really, really poorly because Westerosi armies actually behave like real medieval armies based on retainer... in other words, armies of well-trained soldiers, not just peasants given some weapons.

Then there is also the fact that you have ocean-going galleys using ramming as a primary means of combat... for reference, ramming-to-sink stopped being used after antiquity, when ships started being built ribs-first instead of hull-first and were thus far stronger. And a lot more other problems as well.

In short: EVERYTHING.

I think that Westeros could exist as a single state if :

(a) the Kingship is pretty nominal, like Emperor of the HRE.  In that case, the Lords of the various regions would be sovereign in reality, if not de iure;

(b) the alternative is that it has a really powerful bureaucracy, like the Eastern Empire or Imperial China.  The King/Emperor might be powerful, or else, not much more than a figurehead, but the civil servants would keep things running effectively. 

Slavers Bay's economy ought to be based upon slave labour growing cash crops, like cotton, coffee, sugar, spices, and mining for ores, all things that can be readily exported. There would be a substantial slave trade, as workers were brought in to be worked to death.  But, it would be individuals and towns that lived off slave-trading, not whole societies. 

There would be a class of "privileged" slaves, working in the houses of rich, and as artisans, minor bureaucrats, some of whom might actually identify quite strongly with their masters, as opposed to the field hands and mine slaves.  

[Usako]

28 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Problem with that is that ravens are too damn smart. Pigeons receive a message, fly home, and somebody takes a message of them.

Raven receives a message, thinks "what is this?", tears it apart and uses it to build a nest.

Well, yeah. I agree with you completely on that. Ravens are way too smart to be used that way.

[sifth]

How was Balon able to rebuild the Iron Fleet so quickly and why did Robert allow him to rebuild it at all? I get spearing Balon's life, even if I think it's rather dumb, but why give the man his navy back.

[illrede]

Just now, sifth said:

How was Balon able to rebuild the Iron Fleet so quickly and why did Robert allow him to rebuild it at all? I get spearing Balon's life, even if I think it's rather dumb, but why give the man his navy back.

Boats depreciate. If the Iron Fleet existed in the first place on a long term basis, it stands to reason the Iron Islands had the ability to replace a great number of the boats in it over a generation. Because they'd be doing that anyway.

[Arthur Peres]

Money is something that makes no sense in Asoiaf.

We never see anyone in trouble despite being heavily in debt, Aerys was losing a war and still had plenty of gold in the treasury, Littlefinger making money out of air and nobody trying to look into.

[Craving Peaches]

24 minutes ago, illrede said:

Boats depreciate. If the Iron Fleet existed in the first place on a long term basis, it stands to reason the Iron Islands had the ability to replace a great number of the boats in it over a generation. Because they'd be doing that anyway.

The Iron Islands are specifically noted as having few to no trees though. So it should follow that they would then have to obtain wood to rebuild their fleet by trading or buying. But why would anyone do trade or sale with them after they just tried to raid everywhere?

[Corvo the Crow]

2 hours ago, Usako said:

You do realise that the raven thing is actually one hundred percent based on real homing/messanger pigeons, right? A pigeon can only fly back to its what it recognises as its home. Therefore, no matter where you take it, it will always return to base. This is the same with the ravens. And also, these pigeons were returned to active duty by being transported along with forces departing from the homebase back to the field. And this is something that was used from at least as far back as Genghis Khan and up through the WWII as a viable military information service. The ravens are one of those things based on real history.

 

It's my first post, I hope I haven't done wrong.

I know that, I also know of Genghis Khan's tribute in birds which he used to burn a city using that but Westerosi ravens apparently don't work that way since the birds "learn" the castle's names and it would not work at all with the albino white ravens since you don't breed those in the castles and they fly from the Citadel, not towards it. So no, not at all like the real world pigeons.

Quote

 

"Both, Your Grace."

"Both." Stannis snapped the word out. "A maester's raven flies to one place, and one place only. Is that correct?"

The maester mopped sweat from his brow with his sleeve. "N-not entirely, Your Grace. Most, yes. Some few can be taught to fly between two castles. Such birds are greatly prized. And once in a very great while, we find a raven who can learn the names of three or four or five castles, and fly to each upon command. Birds as clever as that come along only once in a hundred years."

 

 

3 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

I think what they mean by "one place and one place only" is that they fly back and forth from their home castle to one other seat. So Maester Aemon has a rookery full of ravens, most of them probably homed to Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower and others to Winterfell, Kings Landing, etc. At the same time, each of these seats have birds that home to Castle Black, so they just travel back and forth between those destinations. That's why ravens are only used for messages of high importance and urgency -- dark wings, dark words.

No, those birds are rare.

 

Who knows, with all the whackjobs at the citadel perhaps they are forcefully skinchanging people into the ravens and since most of these people would be lowborn simpletons, they can only learn one castle and the occasional lower nobility who misbehaved becomes a raven that can learnmore places. 

Edited October 27, 2022 by Corvo the Crow