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Instances of Poor World Building


Corvo the Crow

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1 minute ago, sifth said:

Yup, Jamie is a very different character in the first book, than he is the other 4. 

I really don't think so. The Jaime after the Whispering Woods sounds very, very similar to the Jaime in the dungeons of Riverrun to me. 

I think people can take that outline George wrote too far to heart. It was mostly just a collection of random ideas that he threw together because it was expected, but it was not anything like a real outline of his plans at the time. 

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1 minute ago, sifth said:

Yup, Jamie is a very different character in the first book, than he is the other 4. 

I don't know whether it's just the weirdness of the first book, but Robert also seems quite buddy-buddy with Jaime as well, but Jaime never seems to mention it in his POV chapters. Robert was going to make him Warden of the East and was possibly willing to make him Hand of the King as well. This seems a bit odd to me because Robert still had both his brothers to chose from after Ned. I know they don't get along, but still...Robert and Jaime's relationship in the first book feels a bit funny to me.

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2 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

I don't know whether it's just the weirdness of the first book, but Robert also seems quite buddy-buddy with Jaime as well, but Jaime never seems to mention it in his POV chapters. Robert was going to make him Warden of the East and was possibly willing to make him Hand of the King as well. This seems a bit odd to me because Robert still had both his brothers to chose from after Ned. I know they don't get along, but still...Robert and Jaime's relationship in the first book feels a bit funny to me.

Yea, I thought that strange as well. Is he just doing it to suck up to Tywin, because he’s in debt to him?

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2 hours ago, Ran said:

I really don't think so. The Jaime after the Whispering Woods sounds very, very similar to the Jaime in the dungeons of Riverrun to me. 

I think people can take that outline George wrote too far to heart. It was mostly just a collection of random ideas that he threw together because it was expected, but it was not anything like a real outline of his plans at the time. 

The problem is stuff from that outline does exist in the main series. So it makes people question “is this where GRRM choose to change this plot point”. It’s like watching the pilot to a show and the actual series that goes with it and comparing differences in the pilot to the main show. 

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5 hours ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

Case in point: Jaime ordering his men to kill Eddard's rather than do the deed himself.

I have no idea what you mean. He has no problem ordering men to kill other men. He's a knight who leads men into battle.

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13 hours ago, sifth said:

The problem is stuff from that outline does exist in the main series. So it makes people question “is this where GRRM choose to change this plot point”. It’s like watching the pilot to a show and the actual series that goes with it and comparing differences in the pilot to the main show. 

I do feel that Jaime is a bit more overtly villainous in the first book compared to later books...

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To address the topic: everywhere in everything.

Where should one even begin? Martinverse in notoriously ridiculous, impossible and naïve in how it’s constructed, from top to bottom really. There are of course sufficient reasons for that, major one being a shift in literary genre which happened in part at some point during the conception of the story and its setting and in part in (loooong) periods of time between publication of next instalments and adjacent material. I believe that in the beginning this whole thing was envisioned more as a pulp fantasy saga or series. It bears all the marks. Historical periods spanning thousands and tens of thousands of years. Similarly gigantic, inflated landmasses. Magical swords. Magical bloodlines. Magical bloodlines having claims to magical beasts. And magical swords. Orientalist depictions of vaguely nonEastern countries and peoples (and, by consequence, ‘Occidentalist’ depiction of nonWestern ones, but in my experience that doesn’t bother people nearly as much, wonder why... well, whatever). Cast of characters populated by rather interestingly large quantity of beautiful women and handsome, trained-with-the-blade men – many of them edgy to the point of approaching dangerhair zone. This setting was not meant to be ‘realistic’ in common meaning of the term, at least I don’t believe that it was. And Martin to this day fights with demons which were born out of his decision to move this whole thing thematically in the direction of ‘realistic’ fantasy piece. There are some leftovers though, Essos being a major example of such one.

So, that out of the way. Once again: where should I even start? Well, others already pointed one of the most glaring flaws. Westeros all speaks one language, with some very, very minor caveats, minor to the point of nonexistence in my opinion (and some of these caveats are very late to the setting, born out of the effort to ‘rationalise’ the setting undertook by Martin). This is, I’m very strict with my wording here, this is impossible. There is no possible world in which that could have happened, magic or no magic, dragons or no dragons. Westeros is the size of South America, it’s not possible for people there to all speak the same language. There shouldn’t even be a lingua franca among the nobles, given the distance and cultural differences. Language issue is a really glaring, massive flaw. At the barest, absolutely barest minimum there should be seven or eight distinct dialects for each of the Seven Kingdoms (however you would want to count them, let’s say the 7K + Dorne, as it was originally during the Conquest). That would still be impossible, though not to such a degree as we have it in the books. There is no reasonable explanation for why the situation looks like it does. I can imagine some sort of Latin equivalent in usage in the official capacity by the court and so on, and I can imagine important nobles (and POVs are mainly that, classist Martin strikes again) all speaking that. But it does not even approach to explain what we see in the books.

This problem easily skyrockets in extrapolation to each and every other instance of social life of people in Westeros. Folks who live there are mainly divided into groups differentiated by religion and by some small cultural distinctions (no knights in the North or the Iron Isles for example). There should be a metric-cubic-giga-fuck-ton more of that however and you know that. Andals and the First Men should be further divided into many, many smaller groups and nations, to a degree much higher than we see. This continent is just way too massive for things to be as simple as they are.

Religion suffers similarly, and by that I mean mainly Faith of the Seven. Sevenism is actually interesting because the books communicate to the reader that it’s actually a variated faith, with different, so to say, schools of thought. There are more monotheistic Sevenists and there are more polytheistic Sevenists. Henotheistic Sevenists exist as well I would guess. It’s a fascinating notion which should, however, in any realistic scenario, long ago erupted into full blown schisms, religious conflicts and periods of doctrinal flux. Nothing like that of course. Other faiths are plagued by that as well, though we get to know them to a much lesser degree than we do the Faith. 

Hm, what else... Actually at this point I’m out of time, so let me say this: Martin’s worldbuilding is amateur, ridiculous and, to be blunt, bad. He’s not a good writer in that respect. 

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23 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I do feel that Jaime is a bit more overtly villainous in the first book compared to later books...

Yea, I feel much the same. Also GRRM made him into a legendary general, who nearly defeated all of the River Lords, in record time.

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8 hours ago, Ran said:

I have no idea what you mean. He has no problem ordering men to kill other men. He's a knight who leads men into battle.

Sorry I wasn't clear. What I meant is the Jaime of latter books wouldn't order his men to kill and then leave. He'd lead them himself. That's one change I actually liked about the show.

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4 minutes ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

Sorry I wasn't clear. What I meant is the Jaime of latter books wouldn't order his men to kill and then leave. He'd lead them himself. That's one change I actually liked about the show.

Oh, I hated that in the show. It was a display of his arrogance and privilege, to casually order men killed and to leave Ned to watch it happen while he rode off as if he had ordered his men to... I don't know, clean up some trash.

It's absolutely something Jaime would have done through ASoS, at least.

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The lack of an institutionalized common law system and courts is bizarre. The entire continent with so much commerce hardly has clear codified law (there are some tax decrees but no civil code). And while the maesters are something like medieval scholar we don't see any jurists or legal education (Dorne seems to be the exception influenced by Essos).

You simply can't sustain this massive commerce systems with no contract law or clear courts for private law, and trial by lord can hardly provide that 

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10 minutes ago, hnv said:

The lack of an institutionalized common law system and courts is bizarre. The entire continent with so much commerce hardly has clear codified law (there are some tax decrees but no civil code). And while the maesters are something like medieval scholar we don't see any jurists or legal education (Dorne seems to be the exception influenced by Essos).

You simply can't sustain this massive commerce systems with no contract law or clear courts for private law, and trial by lord can hardly provide that 

I agree. I find it harder to interpret the events in a legal manner because it is unclear exactly what the law is. There are some simple things like outlaws = hanged, but for more complex scenarios we need to know more. I cannot wait until King Jaehaerys' Books of Law are published.

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9 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I agree. I find it harder to interpret the events in a legal manner because it is unclear exactly what the law is. There are some simple things like outlaws = hanged, but for more complex scenarios we need to know more. I cannot wait until King Jaehaerys' Books of Law are published.

The Book of Law is a poor man's Corpus Juris. Even if it some civil code, how come there is no caste of professionals that make it their business to litigate? where are the courts?

what exactly is a law? it seems norms are either decrees or customary but nothing statutory.

How come no parliament - in the medieval sense of vassal lords coming to "aid" the liege in trials - appear?

How come lords paramount do not consult any big bannermen in legislation? 

The whole realm has something government-like in the small council but the regions themselves are governed like one massive tribe.

Where are royal charters? the guilds don't seem to operate with charters and traditional constraints on infringements 

etc. etc.

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1 minute ago, hnv said:

The Book of Law is a poor man's Corpus Juris. Even if it some civil code, how come there is no caste of professionals that make it their business to litigate? where are the courts?

what exactly is a law? it seems norms are either decrees or customary but nothing similar.

How come no parliament - in the medieval sense of vassal lords coming to "aid" the liege in trials - appear?

How come lords paramount do not consult any big bannermen in legislation? 

The whole realm has something government like in the small council but the regions themselves are governed like on massive tribe.

Where are royal charters? the guilds don't seem to operate with charters and traditional constraints on infringements 

etc. etc.

They need to expand on it more. I agree. Supposedly before the Book of Law each kingdom had its own system but Jaehaerys tried to unify them. There's no indication of how successful this was though. Also, we only see criminal trials, never civil. We see people giving judgement on civil disputes a few times but never a sort of trial process. There is one Master of Laws. There don't seem to be any other people appointed to carry out justice. The Lords are responsible for their own justice but they don't seem to delegate the task to anyone. Who was keeping order in Dragonstone while Stannis was in King's Landing? In Scotland we had Sheriffs but those Sheriffs ended up appointing people who then appointed people to administer justice in their lands, because they were in Edinburgh and not in their own lands much.

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3 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

They need to expand on it more. I agree. Supposedly before the Book of Law each kingdom had its own system but Jaehaerys tried to unify them. There's no indication of how successful this was though. Also, we only see criminal trials, never civil. We see people giving judgement on civil disputes a few times but never a sort of trial process. There is one Master of Laws. There don't seem to be any other people appointed to carry out justice. The Lords are responsible for their own justice but they don't seem to delegate the task to anyone. Who was keeping order in Dragonstone while Stannis was in King's Landing? In Scotland we had Sheriffs but those Sheriffs ended up appointing people who then appointed people to administer justice in their lands, because they were in Edinburgh and not in their own lands much.

Codification is a pain, no way would one man alone could do it. It would have taken the king all of his time just to do the comparative law part to understand the different norms all around.

 

In Dorne Arianna has a book about Dornish law in her room, and we know there is a judiciary in the free cities. So it's an odd omission by GRRM. I think I asked this question over a decade ago and GRRM replied he simply envisioned Westeros as a realm of rule-by-men instead of rule-by-law, but I think he downplays how hard it is to have complex social structure without a proper legal system to maintain them.

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Just now, hnv said:

Codification is a pain, no way would one man alone could do it. It would have taken the king all of his time just to do the comparative law part to understand the different norms all around.

I believe he had others to help him (sounds similar to the situation with Justinian) but I have no idea whether anything actually came of the reforms.

1 minute ago, hnv said:

In Dorne Arianna has a book about Dornish law in her room, and we know there is a judiciary in the free cities. So it's an odd omission by GRRM.

We know that Dorne has its own inheritance laws, and I don't think it would have been included in Jaehaerys' Books as it wasn't part of the Seven Kingdoms at that time. Potentially Dorne also kept its own separate legal system when it joined with the rest of Westeros, like Scotland did with the Act of Union 1707.

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

Oh, I hated that in the show. It was a display of his arrogance and privilege, to casually order men killed and to leave Ned to watch it happen while he rode off as if he had ordered his men to... I don't know, clean up some trash.

It's absolutely something Jaime would have done through ASoS, at least.

Yet, we're constantly told by both Jamie himself and others who know him, that Jamie Lannister, always does his own killing, he doesn't leave that work to other men.

 

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15 hours ago, The Grey Wolf Strikes Back said:

Case in point: Jaime ordering his men to kill Eddard's rather than do the deed himself.

I think you could also look at it as an oath thing: Jaime is a knight of the Kingsguard and sworn to Robert Baratheon. While he did threaten Ned in the scene out of wrath about Tyrion's capture, I'm thinking that it entered Jaime's thought process that he would violate the constraints of his position by acting as a Lannister instead of a Kingsguard if he personally attacked his liege's best friend. So he ordered the Lannister Men at arms to do it for him/for Tyrion, so it's technically not him personally raising arms against Stark.

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