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Instances of Poor World Building


Corvo the Crow

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George is the first to admit that he's not a linguist, and has minimized the existence.of other languages as much as is possible in the main setting of the story. So the critique is one that I think he's happy to agree with, but it made writing the narrative much easier for him.

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57 minutes ago, Ran said:

George is the first to admit that he's not a linguist, and has minimized the existence.of other languages as much as is possible in the main setting of the story. So the critique is one that I think he's happy to agree with, but it made writing the narrative much easier for him.

Does this mean free cities were thought or at least fleshed out later? Because he made the right choice with the existence of several bastard Valyrian dialects instead of one but this also makes the situation in Westeros look more an oversight. At the very least First Men north of the Neck should have preserved their language until after the conquest.

Edit: Orphans of Greenblood too, now that  I think of it. They literally live right next to a big Andal settlement and under Andal rule yet they speak Rhoynish while First Men who were the most successful at repelling the Andal Invasions speak Andal.

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6 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Do you mean dance of the dragons bastards? I'm not sure, but as can be seen they knew how to fight and knew how to lead armies so they were obviously raised in a castle with a master at arms training them and a maester teaching them. Even if this castle wasn't their father's own castle, they weren't treated like Ramsay was, which Catelyn expects. Now, Ramsay's treatment may yet be the more common form that a bastard gets, but there are enough cases that bastards get the Jon treatment from their father that his case shouldn't be shown as so unusual. Ser Rolland Storm and Brandon Snow, brother of Torrhen the king who knelt are two more examples that live with their brothers. Where they grew? We aren't told, but as adults they live with their brothers so they must've had some sort of relationship before growing up. Fire and Blood gives us plenty of bastards like these but I especially mentioned the Dance of the Dragons ones because they even lead armies of their house, which is an important thing.

Catelyn didn't expect the Ramsay treatment.  She didn't expect Jon to be raised like a lordling in her own home. If Ned fostered Jon some where else she wouldn't have minded. 

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1 hour ago, Minsc said:

Catelyn didn't expect the Ramsay treatment.  She didn't expect Jon to be raised like a lordling in her own home. If Ned fostered Jon some where else she wouldn't have minded. 

No.

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Many men fathered bastards. Catelyn had grown up with that knowledge. It came as no surprise to her, in the first year of her marriage, to learn that Ned had fathered a child on some girl chance met on campaign. He had a man's needs, after all, and they had spent that year apart, Ned off at war in the south while she remained safe in her father's castle at Riverrun. Her thoughts were more of Robb, the infant at her breast, than of the husband she scarcely knew. He was welcome to whatever solace he might find between battles. And if his seed quickened, she expected he would see to the child's needs.

He did more than that. The Starks were not like other men. Ned brought his bastard home with him, and called him "son" for all the north to see. When the wars were over at last, and Catelyn rode to Winterfell, Jon and his wet nurse had already taken up residence.

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"A year later this same wench had the impudence to turn up at the Dreadfort with a squalling, red-faced monster that she claimed was my own get. I should've had the mother whipped and thrown her child down a well … but the babe did have my eyes. She told me that when her dead husband's brother saw those eyes, he beat her bloody and drove her from the mill. That annoyed me, so I gave her the mill and had the brother's tongue cut out, to make certain he did not go running to Winterfell with tales that might disturb Lord Rickard. Each year I sent the woman some piglets and chickens and a bag of stars, on the understanding that she was never to tell the boy who had fathered him. A peaceful land, a quiet people, that has always been my rule."

"A fine rule, m'lord."

"The woman disobeyed me, though. You see what Ramsay is. She made him, her and Reek, always whispering in his ear about his rights. He should have been content to grind corn. Does he truly think that he can ever rule the north?"

 

She expected Ramsay Treatment.

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7 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

It's not quite as extreme but people from Glasgow and Edinburgh have different accents as well. So if they speak differently people in Westeros should definitely have different accents to one another. Not to mention people from the North of Scotland compared to people from the South of Scotland. 

I am not talking about accents here. I am talking about dialects: that is, different vocabulary - different words, phrases, even grammar to an extent. For example, Bosnian language is more similar to Štokavian dialect of Croatian than three dialects of Croatian language are to each other (not surprising, since Bosnian language developed from Croatian).

6 hours ago, Ran said:

George is the first to admit that he's not a linguist, and has minimized the existence.of other languages as much as is possible in the main setting of the story. So the critique is one that I think he's happy to agree with, but it made writing the narrative much easier for him.

He could have literally copied real world: have North speak Gaelic, Westerlands English, Reach French, Dorne Spanish, and then everybody used Latin as a common tongue. You know, like medieval Europeans actually did.

And then render Latin into English, so he wouldn't have to do anything other than names of places. And even these could be translated into English, or taken from history.

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27 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

and then everybody used Latin as a common tongue. You know, like medieval Europeans actually did.

"Everybody" is very unrealistic. The number of people fluent in Latin in the Middle Ages was tiny, and being a member of the noble class was not a predictor of whether you could converse in Latin or not. The vast majority of the nobility could not.

The same in Westeros. George has  already taken the unrealistic step of having the common tongue be universally understood and universally spoken. No need to have someone translate for Pyp and Grenn or for Lem Lemoncloak, no need to see Davos stumbling through basic conversations.

So, as I said, it was a choice I think George is happy to have made for the main setting of the story (Westeros) because it simpifies the work of writing it. For Essos, where much less of the action takes place, he could play around with a somewhat more realistic approach to language diversity.

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59 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

I am not talking about accents here. I am talking about dialects: that is, different vocabulary - different words, phrases, even grammar to an extent. For example, Bosnian language is more similar to Štokavian dialect of Croatian than three dialects of Croatian language are to each other (not surprising, since Bosnian language developed from Croatian).

I know, that's why I said 'it's not quite as extreme'.

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

"Everybody" is very unrealistic. The number of people fluent in Latin in the Middle Ages was tiny, and being a member of the noble class was not a predictor of whether you could converse in Latin or not. The vast majority of the nobility could not.

 

Eh, I know peasants didn't know Latin. But Latin was official language of Croatia until 1847., and most documents in Kingdom of Hungary were written in Latin (Matthias Corvinus actually never wrote a single word in Hungarian...).

1 hour ago, Ran said:

The same in Westeros. George has  already taken the unrealistic step of having the common tongue be universally understood and universally spoken. No need to have someone translate for Pyp and Grenn or for Lem Lemoncloak, no need to see Davos stumbling through basic conversations.

So, as I said, it was a choice I think George is happy to have made for the main setting of the story (Westeros) because it simpifies the work of writing it. For Essos, where much less of the action takes place, he could play around with a somewhat more realistic approach to language diversity.

Yeah. And I wouldn't have had an issue with this if Martin had simply set out to write fantasy. Except he said this:

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I was also reading a lot of historical fiction. And the contrast between that and a lot of the fantasy at the time was dramatic because a lot of the fantasy of Tolkien imitators has a quasi-medieval setting, but it’s like the Disneyland Middle Ages. You know, they’ve got tassels and they’ve got lords and stuff like that, but they don’t really seem to grasp what it was like in the Middle Ages. And then you’d read the historical fiction which was much grittier and more realistic and really give you a sense of what it was like to live in castles or to be in a battle with swords and things like that. And I said what I want to do is combine some of the realism of historical fiction with some of the appeal of fantasy, the magic and the wonder that the best fantasy has.

As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what’s going to happen. You know, if you’re reading about the War of the Roses, say, you know that the little princes are not going to come out of that tower. Fantasy, of course, doesn’t have that constraint. You can still have that driving force, which I think is one of the things that people read books for, what’s gonna happen next? I love this character, but god, is he gonna live, is he gonna die? I wanted that kind of suspense.

Thing is, I understand that what he meant is to be realistic about human morality... but morality existis within the framework of the society, meaning that if you screw up setting up your society (as Martin did), your attempts to write morally complex characters and making them realistic are doomed to failure.

That is why I say that George Martin isn't writing Middle Ages, but modernity with medieval veneer. Tolkien was far more realistic in his own worldbuilding, and I don't mean just things such as army structure and logistics, but also in terms of how people act and react and the entire social framework.

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33 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Eh, I know peasants didn't know Latin. But Latin was official language of Croatia until 1847., and most documents in Kingdom of Hungary were written in Latin (Matthias Corvinus actually never wrote a single word in Hungarian...).

Yeah. And I wouldn't have had an issue with this if Martin had simply set out to write fantasy. Except he said this:

Thing is, I understand that what he meant is to be realistic about human morality... but morality existis within the framework of the society, meaning that if you screw up setting up your society (as Martin did), your attempts to write morally complex characters and making them realistic are doomed to failure.

That is why I say that George Martin isn't writing Middle Ages, but modernity with medieval veneer. Tolkien was far more realistic in his own worldbuilding, and I don't mean just things such as army structure and logistics, but also in terms of how people act and react and the entire social framework.

Latin was the international language of scholars.  Having a common, and fairly straightforward, language that scholars could converse in must have been very useful.  But, even most nobles were not scholars. 

I'm not that bothered by the language issue.  Had he planned the different languages like Tolkien, it would have been nice to have, but I don't see it as essential to the story.

In general, I think Westeros works (yes, the absence of powerful land-owning clergy does not make sense, nor the absence of a legal system,  or most bureaucracy but in general it works).

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31 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

But Latin was official language of Croatia until 1847., and most documents in Kingdom of Hungary were written in Latin (Matthias Corvinus actually never wrote a single word in Hungarian...).

Yes, the language of government records and such, but it was not the vernacular language. (Some) scholars and (some) priests spoke it in some form, but again, the vast majority did not really speak Latin. 

Tolkien's use of Westron is also pretty unrealistic. There's no reason that the language of Gondor and the language of the Shire and Bree should be mutually intelligible after 1,000 years, nor much reason for orcs and trolls to be speaking Westron either.

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59 minutes ago, Ran said:

Yes, the language of government records and such, but it was not the vernacular language. (Some) scholars and (some) priests spoke it in some form, but again, the vast majority did not really speak Latin. 

Tolkien's use of Westron is also pretty unrealistic. There's no reason that the language of Gondor and the language of the Shire and Bree should be mutually intelligible after 1,000 years, nor much reason for orcs and trolls to be speaking Westron either.

Actually, there is a reason why orcs and trolls speak Westron: their own Black Speech was either forgotten or else had mutated into mutually unintelligible dialects, and so Westron is the only way for the various orc tribes to understand each other.

As for Gondor and Shire being mutually intelligible... that is actually not that much of a problem. Croatian language from a thousand years ago sounds funny to modern ear, but something like Bašćanska Ploča can still be understood by a speaker of modern Croatian even without translation. And languages in the last hundred years had mutated much more quickly than before. On the flip side, we see that Rohirrim actually undergo a major linguistical shift between their Rhovanion ancestors and the modern Rohirrim. Fact is, there is no hard rule as to how quickly a language will mutate, in either real world or Tolkien. Although language being written certainly slows down its mutation, as does the lack of massive migrations.

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Latin was the international language of scholars.  Having a common, and fairly straightforward, language that scholars could converse in must have been very useful.  But, even most nobles were not scholars. 

I'm not that bothered by the language issue.  Had he planned the different languages like Tolkien, it would have been nice to have, but I don't see it as essential to the story.

In general, I think Westeros works (yes, the absence of powerful land-owning clergy does not make sense, nor the absence of a legal system,  or most bureaucracy but in general it works).

It was also the language of kings and nobility. Many laws were written in Latin, and in Croatia and Hungary at least, basically the entirety of legal activity was done - or at least written down - in Latin (and keep in mind, this legal activity included the entirety of nobility, not just magnates).

I don't think Westeros works, for many reasons. But if we were to talk one fundamental reason: it is size. You cannot have a feudal monarchy of such massive size while still having a king who is anything more than a figurehead. Westeros should have fallen into constant civil wars basically the moment last dragon died as everybody forgot the king exists, rather than still being relatively peaceful. In fact, Westeros as a political unit should have fallen apart the moment the last dragon died, with some weird combination of Robert's Rebellion and the War of the Five Kings happening more or less immediately afterwards.

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58 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Actually, there is a reason why orcs and trolls speak Westron: their own Black Speech was either forgotten or else had mutated into mutually unintelligible dialects, and so Westron is the only way for the various orc tribes to understand each other.

And who is teaching them this pure and unchanging Westron? It. Makes. No. Sense. If their orcish language is so ripe for change that they can't agree to form some sort of Lingua Orca, how are they supposed to maintain Westron?

58 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

but something like Bašćanska Ploča can still be understood by a speaker of modern Croatian even without translation.

That's because liturgical language like Church Slavonic as recorded in the tablet is incredibly resistant to change and even so, a quick look at the tablet's text compared to modern Croatian shows a lot of differences.  But where is the liturgy in Middle Earth? The elvish languages having only developed into a handful of variants I understand, because Elves, but the Shire and Gondor remaining almost exactly the same in language is nonsense. The slightest possible nod to any drift at all is in Pippin's use of the familiar second person rather than the formal, as the Shire had lost the formal form entirely.

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10 minutes ago, Ran said:

And who is teaching them this pure and unchanging Westron? It. Makes. No. Sense. If their orcish language is so ripe for change that they can't agree to form some sort of Lingua Orca, how are they supposed to maintain Westron?

Orcs may or may not be immortal - we do not know, as Tolkien never solved that*. But looking at Lord of the Rings at least, there is suggestion that they indeed are - Shagrat and Gorbag mention "The Great Siege", which is most likely the siege of Barad-dur at the beginning of the Third Age, and the way they speak of it implies they actually remember it in person. Azog also lives a very long life, well beyond that of Edain. In Hobbit, "The Great Goblin" seems to personally recognize Orcrist and Glamdring, and reacts with basically murderous rage - implying he had personally seen these blades being used, thousands of years ago. And the fact that orcs are most likely (another question Tolkien never satisfactorily solved) corrupted Elves would suggest that they had inherited Elven immortality.

If they are immortal, then language drift is not much of an issue.

* He seems to reject the idea in The Morgoth's Ring, and in fact declares them there to be very short lived, but short-lived orcs would contradict actual published works.

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

That's because liturgical language like Church Slavonic as recorded in the tablet is incredibly resistant to change and even so, a quick look at the tablet's text compared to modern Croatian shows a lot of differences.  But where is the liturgy in Middle Earth? The elvish languages having only developed into a handful of variants I understand, because Elves, but the Shire and Gondor remaining almost exactly the same in language is nonsense. The slightest possible nod to any drift at all is in Pippin's use of the familiar second person rather than the formal, as the Shire had lost the formal form entirely.

Except it is not liturgical language. Language of the Bašćan tablet is old spoken Croatian Chakavian dialect, with some elements of Church Slavonic (much like modern English has elements of French). And "modern Croatian" you talk about is standardized Shtokavian dialect with elements of Kajkavian and Chakavian. Differences between three dialects are more pronounced than between British, American and Australian variants of English. Of course language of the tablet will be different from an artificial language based on completely different dialect. Actual Chakavian dialect is far more similar to the language of the tablet modern standardized Croatian is, and even from the perspective of the standardized Croatian, it is still easy to understand. Basically, those differences you mention are not really relevant to ability to understand what is written.

Both Shire and Gondor have very extensive literary activity. We know that in Shire, literacy is widespread - why have postal system otherwise? And dwarven love of written contracts certainly indicates widespread literacy.

So while having Westron being literally same in Shire and in Gondor would definitely be unrealistic, them being mutually intelligible is not. And we certainly see some linguistic drift, as Rohirrim and Gondorrim are noted to be speaking a more archaic form of Westron than what Hobbits do.

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8 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Orcs may or may not be immortal - we do not know, as Tolkien never solved that*. But looking at Lord of the Rings at least, there is suggestion that they indeed are - Shagrat and Gorbag mention "The Great Siege", which is most likely the siege of Barad-dur at the beginning of the Third Age, and the way they speak of it implies they actually remember it in person. Azog also lives a very long life, well beyond that of Edain. In Hobbit, "The Great Goblin" seems to personally recognize Orcrist and Glamdring, and reacts with basically murderous rage - implying he had personally seen these blades being used, thousands of years ago. And the fact that orcs are most likely (another question Tolkien never satisfactorily solved) corrupted Elves would suggest that they had inherited Elven immortality.

If they are immortal, then language drift is not much of an issue.

At the least Orcs are long-lived; Bolg from The Hobbit has ruled since the Battle of Anazulbizar in 2799 T.A., 142 years before (The Hobbit takes place in 2941 T.A.).

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27 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Orcs may or may not be immortal

Err, if the idea is "orcs are veritably immortal", then this still does not make sense. Why is their language shifting so rapidly that they can't communicate, while somehow the Westron they learned a thousand years ago stays frozen in time and is as intelligible to Hobbits now?

Again, it really doesn't make sense, but Tolkien clearly felt that it was more important for the orcs to be able to be understood by our heroes than it was for it to make perfect sense. Not everything he did in the linguistic space could necessarily withstand scrutiny. 

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4 hours ago, Aldarion said:

Thing is, I understand that what he meant is to be realistic about human morality... but morality existis within the framework of the society, meaning that if you screw up setting up your society (as Martin did), your attempts to write morally complex characters and making them realistic are doomed to failure.

That is why I say that George Martin isn't writing Middle Ages, but modernity with medieval veneer.

It seems very odd to me to emphasize the lack of diversity in languages in asserting such a "failure."  It's obviously expedient - for the author and the reader.  If linguistics is your jam, fair enough, but otherwise plodding through such in-universe difficulties does not enhance a narrative's "worldbuilding" in the slightest.  Moreover, having a "common tongue" across an entire continent isn't very realistic even in modern times.  It's more like an aspect of the fantasy you just have to accept as the rules of the game and suspend your disbelief - like the way seasons work.

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

Err, if the idea is "orcs are veritably immortal", then this still does not make sense. Why is their language shifting so rapidly that they can't communicate, while somehow the Westron they learned a thousand years ago stays frozen in time and is as intelligible to Hobbits now?

Again, it really doesn't make sense, but Tolkien clearly felt that it was more important for the orcs to be able to be understood by our heroes than it was for it to make perfect sense. Not everything he did in the linguistic space could necessarily withstand scrutiny. 

As I understand it, it is... and it isn't. My headcanon is that, basically, Orcs are extremely tribal. Original language of the Orcs - at least Sauron's orcs - is the Black Tongue of Mordor. But as the orcs scattered after Sauron's fall, language shifted. And considering orcs have basically no interest in preserving anything - they are the ultimate progressives - that would also extend to the language.

Westron however they still know because that is something everybody around them speaks. Which has rather interesting implications of its own.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense - but then again, reality often doesn't make sense either.

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

It seems very odd to me to emphasize the lack of diversity in languages in asserting such a "failure."  It's obviously expedient - for the author and the reader.  If linguistics is your jam, fair enough, but otherwise plodding through such in-universe difficulties does not enhance a narrative's "worldbuilding" in the slightest.  Moreover, having a "common tongue" across an entire continent isn't very realistic even in modern times.  It's more like an aspect of the fantasy you just have to accept as the rules of the game and suspend your disbelief - like the way seasons work.

Linguistics are just one of many issues I have with ASoIaF worldbuilding. And far from the most annoying one. Honestly, military and political issues are far worse. Especially in Essos.

English basically is the "common tongue" today. Latin was in the medieval Europe, and that I think is where most instances of the "common tongue" in fantasy come from (well, beyond sheer convenience).

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The Reach. Aegon took relatively big portions out of Stormlands and Riverlands to form his crownlands but left the Reach, the most powerful region, more or less intact. If Gardeners were still Ruling reach it'd be understandable but gardeners are dead and he gave Reach not even to one of the high lords but to the stewards so even if he had split the Reach in two and gave one half, it'd still be a huge boon. Reach isn't one big geographical area either, it is made up of four subkingdoms, 

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Oldtown and its environs, bounded by the Red Mountains to the east and the headwaters of the Honeywine in the north.

The Arbor, the golden island beyond the Redwyne Strait, famed for wine and sunshine.

The western marches, from Horn Hill to Nightsong.

The Reach proper, a vast expanse of fields and farms, lakes and rivers, hills and woods and fragrant meadows, mills and mines, dotted with small villages, thriving market towns, and ancient castles, stretching from the Shield Islands in the Sunset Sea, up the mouth of the Mander, past Highgarden, to Red Lake, Goldengrove, and Bitterbridge, as far as Tumbleton and the Mander's headwaters.

 

He could've easily given the Marches to Orys to strengthen his brother and also the region of Stormlands against both the Reach and the Dornish and weaken Reach. Hightowers by themselves(well, vassals included) are probably near as powerful, if not more powerful than the Dornish so seperating them as well, perhaps making a new LP with Arbor included, would've greatly reduced the strength of Reach and brought it down to the levels of the more powerful ones of the other LPs. Instead, he left it as it is.

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9 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

The Reach. Aegon took relatively big portions out of Stormlands and Riverlands to form his crownlands

He only "took" for the crownlands the portions of those regions which had only ever had nominal fealty to Argilac or Harren the Black. Lands that were much more firmly under the sway of their traditional overlords were left for the lords paramount. Aegon cared about continuity of rule more than he cared about making gifts to Orys or worrying about some region rebelling against him.

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