Bad Worldbuilding in ASoIaF

[SeanF]

17 minutes ago, SaffronLady said:

Let's try to keep the lords of the Roman Empire out of these discussions because they operate on different frameworks.

I think that in any society where immense authority is vested in one man (or occasionally woman), then one's actual power will often depend upon one's proximity to that person.  A gentleman of the bedchamber, or a secretary, may have more effective influence than the head of a Great House.

Edited November 18, 2023 by SeanF

[SaffronLady]

7 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think that in any society where immense authority is vested in one man (or occasionally woman), then one's actual power will often depend upon one's proximity to that person.  A gentleman of the bedchamber, or a secretary, may have more effective influence than the head of a Great House.

Yes, finally, which is why I went on the whole bureaucracy rant. Still the Roman Empire is quite a different thing if not in terms of governmental machinery, then ideologically compared to early modern states in Western Europe, with all the underlying differences in how authority is understood and exercised.

[the trees have eyes]

4 hours ago, SaffronLady said:

You have essentially defeated the entire purpose of your post by your own hand, so I will not insult you by extrapolating my point.

Well you may have misunderstood my point so there's that for you to mull over or give another snarky response to as you see fit.

[SaffronLady]

7 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

Well you may have misunderstood my point so there's that for you to mull over or give another snarky response to as you see fit.

Well if you put it like that I do may as well extrapolate my point then.

Westeros ... is so decentralized, the highborn in the provinces have so much power, they dare to stop the execution of royal edicts. Like I said, case in point: Edwell Celtigar. More specifically, the fundraising policy he designed for Jaehaerys I. The lords of Lannisport and Oldtown basically went "nope, we're not following that". We don't even need to bring in early modern England, this won't happen even in 13th-century England. I am aware of the Magna Carta, but if you want to do that conversation we could discuss circumstances later. But nobody called Jaehaerys I "Lackland", for starters.

If Westeros was centralized enough to plausibly support Littlefinger's rise, we won't be even having this conversation in the first place. The basic premise behind "LF mismanaging the realm's finances" is, well, the realm is centralized enough for the royal court to mismanage the realm, which doesn't look true even for Robert-era Westeros. Least among them Robert maintaining his authority primarily through personal charisma.

I could come up with further explanations to patch up GRRM's worldbuilding but TBH I just ... don't want to do that. With The World of Ice and Fire and Fire and Blood out, the primary timeline just becomes riddled with more and more headaches due to how detailed it is. ASOIAF might work better if GRRM wrote it as a series of novellas and short stories and leave the gaps in worldbuilding to readers, instead of turning it into a series of door-stoppers where the gaps in one become fault lines in the next book.

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

10 hours ago, Jaenara Belarys said:

Neither of them are fully realistic, but at the very least Tolkien's armies don't move around by teleportation or fast travel. Supply lines are important and the fights have to be planned around it. 

Gondor does not necessarily need to have exposition for a clever reader to discern the social, governmental and military structure used. Does Tolkien sound a bit dry? Yes, he does and I see that every time (and compare it to ASOAF), but I feel like there's less suspension of disbelief to understand the systems. 

Isn't Rick and Morty the one with the mad scientist with a bunch of clones of himself? That's more realistic? 

These are very specific examples of realism. In fact, I believe everyone defending Tolkein's realism here has talked about supply lines. Can I tell you something? I don't care about supply lines, lol. One of the major fights in Lord of the Rings is solved by a bunch of ghosts just winning it, lol. The characters in his book remind me of robots that exist only for a plot to happen with them (and yes, I find that unrealistic, that...isn't how real humans act). Other (bad guys) characters...act like ...animals in human flesh that just do things to be evil with no other motivation whatsoever. Part of worldbuilding is sociological conditions in which your world is built...and I don't get the feeling that Tolkein had a huge grasp on sociology. I feel like Tolkein had some really great strengths, some strong ways in how he wrote, and people really like those aspects of writing. But rather than realize that they...like that aspect of his writing, they are acting like he is some perfect god of writing and ignoring his weaknesses. A great example would be his grasp of languages. I agree that Tolkein is essentially a genius when it comes to creating fantasy languages...however, that is not everything that it means to world build. 

Again, I don't think GRRM is some perfect writer. Like at all. You know one reason though his worldbuilding seems more flawed, because...his world is bigger than Tolkein's world. There are more characters, there are more places, there is more happening. The Lord of the Rings was honestly. Pretty short comparatively. The character roster is relatively small. It's easy to not have less glaring flaws in your worldbuilding when you only see so much of the world. If you write a book that exists exclusively in a convenience store, you only need to make the workings of that convenience store visible (and therefore your worldbuilding is relatively simple). If I write a story with 4 characters that actually develop in any way and every other character is essentially static...it's a lot easier to make my world work than if all the characters in the background are also doing things. And of course when people are written to be very directly "wrong" and "evil", and others to be "right" and "good"...and you write in a way in which that is never challenged...again, it makes world building a lot easier. That's why religious texts always seem to have the answers, because they often expressly have decided who is good and bad before they even started. And yes, I think Tolkein writes his work kind of like a religious text, where he decides who is morally good and morally bad, and he hammers it into the readers head, just like a religious text. 

 

Okay, really, I promise. I am done. I find this tedious and boring. I don't like Lord of the Rings, you guys do. Great. We disagree. Can we just agree to disagree and move on. I feel done talking about a set of book I read once ....10 years ago? 15 years ago? (I don't even remember when I read it), and didn't even like. Yeah, it is the one case even where I liked the movies better than the books, because the movies cut out the worst part of the books - The walking. The constant walking everywhere with nothing else happening. 

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

On 11/18/2023 at 6:49 AM, SeanF said:

I’d put the death toll for TWOT5K over a million (based on my population estimates on the other thread).  I’m including deaths by famine, disease, and exposure in the total.

The death toll in the Hundred's Year War was 2.3-3.5 million. In a war that lasted an extremely long time. I think you are majorly overestimating the death toll. My guess is the death toll would be more like 150,000-200,000 (including those that died of famine an disease). Even in horrific wars of conquest in which cities were sacked horribly (like in our book)...a lot more people survive than you expect. 

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

On 11/18/2023 at 7:50 AM, Aldarion said:

Second, what you describe is not even "conservative" version of the world, it is neocon version of the world - and neocons are essentially a mix of conservatives and progressives, or rather, progressives who have accepted some tenets of conservatism. Fact is, rich people are still people - some are good, some are evil, and all look out for their own interests. And due to globalization, interests of the rich people have diverged from population at large. Only the old-school neocons still believe that rich people are somehow "super nice and good and deserve to be in power".

In Middle Ages, however, the nobility did protect the peasants as much as they could. Not because they were nice - but because their power came from the peasants. When your wealth is in land, you need people to work that land. So protecting peasants is basically protecting investment. And that is the reason why yes, historical nobles were in fact on average far nicer than ASoIaF ones.

Okay, first off. You write too much. You should really break up your messages. It's difficult to respond to you. 

Second of all, no, the rich have an unusually high number of people who are selfish/dismissive of common people's wants/rights. In order to make decisions where you impoverish a group of people, you kind of have to divorce yourself from caring about them. Also, classism. Classism exists. Basically in every culture ever since the first large civilization allowed for some people to be haves, and some people to be have nots. There are many justifications for this classism, but it ultimately boils down to some people thinking they deserve more than others, and that makes their lives/rights more important than those others. You are right that rich people are just people....but to be blunt, people who were actually good people and actually had empathy for the working class ...will just end up less rich than people who don't.

I know personal examples have no relation to statistics, but it this story always reminds me of how it works on an individual basis. I had a boss who was super kind, always supported the workers at his school, and genuinely cared about the workers and students at the school. The school was in fact making a lot of money while he was in charge. Eventually however, he was replaced for a boss that treated the workers like crap, only cared about students as a process for making more money, and was very talented at convincing people to give us money despite the product being noticeably worse after he took over the school. In the end...he made the school SLIGHTLY more money. Not a ton more money. Slightly more money. Instead of having classes which occasionally had 11 students instead of 12, our classes were always full (max class size is 12 at most academies in Korea). He fired workers who had worked there a long time so they could hire new teachers and pay them the bare minimum instead of hiring qualified teachers who required a higher starting pay. He also cut costs in other little ways that made teacher's jobs harder, and lowered the quality of the education. Are you seeing my point? If the owners of my school cared about people, had empathy for both students and teachers, they would be less rich (slightly but still), and then eventually competition would also possibly run them out of business. I have seen countless GOOD coffee shops with excellent customer service and who treat their employees well be run out of business by shitty coffee shops with bad service and who treat their employees horribly..simply by cutting costs and then lowering the cost of a coffee until the other business is forced to closed...then they crank that price right back up. I could blame consumers for this process, but why should I? I blame rich people being shitty people. And yes, I think that being rich requires you to be a bit of an asshole. As I said, if they weren't assholes...they'd be less rich. 

As to your concept about the nobles protecting the peasants...bro, I don't know what to tell you...I took history classes, your concept isn't represented by what I learned. You are just living in a fantasy/idealized version of the world (something "reactionaries" often accuse progressives of wanting). I agree that the nobles did need the peasants to work the land, and in modern times they need the poor to work at factories, collect grapes in the fields, or work at minimum wage jobs (like wait staff, cashiers, etc), that doesn't stop them from treating those people as horribly as they can without going too far. Basically, be better than the next noble (or th enext boss in modern times). Do the bare minimum. And the lives of the poor were often dispensable during times of war, certainly more dispensable than the lives of nobles. 

Again though, you can continue to have your idea of history (which I think is a fantasy). Feel free, I don't think it represents reality though at all. And again, I am not claiming GRRM is super accurate. He isn't. Just...no one is. And that's okay. They are literally authors. I do not require my authors to be like...PhDs in history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc in order to write a novel, lol. You have mentioned GRRM's strengths here I believe, and I agree with you. I think he is a spectacular character writer, particularly at understanding people's inner thoughts and conflicts. He really seems to get people and their drives. I think his world building is...good enough. He created an interesting and complex world, that yes, is far from perfect...but I'm okay with that. 

You know what, I'll even admit it, maybe I am so distracted by how bad the character development is, or how bored I am from endless walking ...that I underrate Tolkein's world building. Or maybe I just don't like mythical storytelling all that much. I don't know, but...what I do know is that Tolkein's world isn't realistic. It can only work as a mythical story, because humans don't....act like humans in his world. They act like video game NPCs. And no matter how good other systems work in his world, when I have to follow a bunch of boring, cookie-cutter NPCs around, I just cannot get into that kind of story. Again though, I liked Frodo and Sam, just want to say that. They had more depth, and I felt like the one case where I felt like the characters were alive were scenes with them. I looked forward to whenever we followed Frodo and Sam (and they weren't just walking through a forest, lol). 

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

The death toll in the Hundred's Year War was 2.3-3.5 million. In a war that lasted an extremely long time. I think you are majorly overestimating the death toll. My guess is the death toll would be more like 150,000-200,000 (including those that died of famine an disease). Even in horrific wars of conquest in which cities were sacked horribly (like in our book)...a lot more people survive than you expect. 

I’m estimating 10m people living in the Riverlands, at the start of the war.  I could easily envisage a fall of 10% in population. Spain and Portugal suffered similar falls in the Peninsular War.

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

Just now, SeanF said:

I’m estimating 10m people living in the Riverlands, at the start of the war.  I could easily envisage a fall of 10% in population. Spain and Portugal suffered similar falls in the Peninsular War.

Modern weapons' have greatly increased the death toll numbers as compared to the past. Bombs, guns, etc. As well the Peninsular War lasted 7 years. Westeros has no guns, no cannons, etc, and it's only been 2 years right? I also would put the Riverlands more around 4 mill than 10 mill (if I was estimating). And I would guess closer to a 2-3% (and only in the Riverlands) (so that would be 80,000-120,000). Keep in mind we see that many people survived. So many places weren't sacked. Many people ran away. Now, if the war went on for say 10 years, then okay, I could accept 10%. If it went on 20-30 years, I could even accept much higher numbers like 25% or something. But our war is relatively short. Again the brutality we see...is not all that different than brutality I read about in history classes specifically during the Hundred Years' War. 

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Modern weapons' have greatly increased the death toll numbers as compared to the past. Bombs, guns, etc. As well the Peninsular War lasted 7 years. Westeros has no guns, no cannons, etc, and it's only been 2 years right? I also would put the Riverlands more around 4 mill than 10 mill (if I was estimating). And I would guess closer to a 2-3% (and only in the Riverlands) (so that would be 80,000-120,000). Keep in mind we see that many people survived. So many places weren't sacked. Many people ran away. Now, if the war went on for say 10 years, then okay, I could accept 10%. If it went on 20-30 years, I could even accept much higher numbers like 25% or something. But our war is relatively short. Again the brutality we see...is not all that different than brutality I read about in history classes specifically during the Hundred Years' War. 

There’s starvation in Kings Landing, too.  The way I view it, in normal times, a fair size minority of the population lives just above subsistence.  It does not take much of a reduction in the food supply to send prices soaring, and to push that minority into slow starvation.

The Riverlands had to endure perhaps 100,000 soldiers marching back and forth, foraging for food and firewood, and in the case of the Lannisters, practising a deliberate scorched earth policy.

Starvation and disease will kill far more than deaths in battle or deliberate murder.  The food supply is cut by (a) crop and livestock confiscation (b) deliberate destruction of the same (c) reduced harvests, due to the reduction in the number of young men (d) blockades and interruption of roads and rivers.

WRT The Hundred Years War, there were lengthy truces, and periods of minor skirmishing.  I expect most deaths were packed into relatively short time periods.

Edited November 19, 2023 by SeanF

[SeanF]

WRT the nobles, I think people like the Boltons, or Gargon the Gross, or Aegon II, or Maegor, are outliers, in this world, and in real life.

But, I don’t think the present generation of Lannisters, or the Tyrells, or pre-mad Aerys II,  or most of the Blacks and Greens, are in any way outliers.  In fact, I’d say they are typically selfish nobles/royals.  They are not people who get off on torture and rape (not even Cersei), but they are mainly indifferent to the sufferings of the small folk. Family honour and ambition matter far more than the lives of peasants.

The best that can be said for them is that they do lead from the front, rather than driving others to fight for them, whilst reclining in luxury.

And, I’d say that mirrors real life.  

Edited November 19, 2023 by SeanF

[Jaenara Belarys]

7 hours ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Okay, really, I promise. I am done. I find this tedious and boring. I don't like Lord of the Rings, you guys do. Great. We disagree. Can we just agree to disagree and move on. I feel done talking about a set of book I read once ....10 years ago? 15 years ago? (I don't even remember when I read it), and didn't even like. Yeah, it is the one case even where I liked the movies better than the books, because the movies cut out the worst part of the books - The walking. The constant walking everywhere with nothing else happening. 

Aight, bet. 

[Aldarion]

On 11/18/2023 at 8:14 PM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Disagreed. I don't think Tolkein's world is more realistic...at all, by any stretch of the imagination, and I honestly feel like...I'm existing in an alternate reality.. in order for anyone to think that. I don't think his world is realistic in anyway basically whatsoever. The Simpsons or Rick and Morty feel like more realistic worlds to me than Middle Earth. 

 

Because you don't like a world where people think differently than modern people do, or?

On 11/19/2023 at 10:21 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Okay, first off. You write too much. You should really break up your messages. It's difficult to respond to you. 

Second of all, no, the rich have an unusually high number of people who are selfish/dismissive of common people's wants/rights. In order to make decisions where you impoverish a group of people, you kind of have to divorce yourself from caring about them. Also, classism. Classism exists. Basically in every culture ever since the first large civilization allowed for some people to be haves, and some people to be have nots. There are many justifications for this classism, but it ultimately boils down to some people thinking they deserve more than others, and that makes their lives/rights more important than those others. You are right that rich people are just people....but to be blunt, people who were actually good people and actually had empathy for the working class ...will just end up less rich than people who don't.

I know personal examples have no relation to statistics, but it this story always reminds me of how it works on an individual basis. I had a boss who was super kind, always supported the workers at his school, and genuinely cared about the workers and students at the school. The school was in fact making a lot of money while he was in charge. Eventually however, he was replaced for a boss that treated the workers like crap, only cared about students as a process for making more money, and was very talented at convincing people to give us money despite the product being noticeably worse after he took over the school. In the end...he made the school SLIGHTLY more money. Not a ton more money. Slightly more money. Instead of having classes which occasionally had 11 students instead of 12, our classes were always full (max class size is 12 at most academies in Korea). He fired workers who had worked there a long time so they could hire new teachers and pay them the bare minimum instead of hiring qualified teachers who required a higher starting pay. He also cut costs in other little ways that made teacher's jobs harder, and lowered the quality of the education. Are you seeing my point? If the owners of my school cared about people, had empathy for both students and teachers, they would be less rich (slightly but still), and then eventually competition would also possibly run them out of business. I have seen countless GOOD coffee shops with excellent customer service and who treat their employees well be run out of business by shitty coffee shops with bad service and who treat their employees horribly..simply by cutting costs and then lowering the cost of a coffee until the other business is forced to closed...then they crank that price right back up. I could blame consumers for this process, but why should I? I blame rich people being shitty people. And yes, I think that being rich requires you to be a bit of an asshole. As I said, if they weren't assholes...they'd be less rich. 

And I think you live in a fantasy where society and people have always had the same flaws because you don't want to believe it ever could be better... and therefore it isn't necessary to try.  You are simply projecting modern situation onto medieval society while failing to understand multiple ways in which medieval society was fundamentally different from modern one.

Also, do try to understand what the argument actually is before responding to it.

I never claimed that rich people are not selfish. They are. All people are selfish to an extent, no matter how rich they are. But rich people too are a part of society and shaped by it.

Today's rich people are unusually selfish and dismissive of common people's rights... because they can afford to be. Modernism has brought about the situation where wealth can be moved from one corner of the globe to another at a whim, and therefore rich people are fundamentally disconnected from the rest of the society. When modern capitalists want the poor to work in factories or at minimum wage jobs, they simply cause (or promote) another "refugee crisis" or "no-borders economic zone" and quickly gain millions of willing slaves. Or they move the factory itself to India or China. When a natural or other disaster strikes, they jump onto a plane and go to vacation into another country... or to another continent.

That was not an option in Middle Ages. And yes, lives of the poor were more disposable than the lives of the nobles... but that doesn't mean they were disposable, period.

Whether they wanted to or not, feudal nobility had to care about the peasants at least to some extent, because that is where their power came from in the first place. Unlike modern rich people, nobles of feudal world couldn't just hop onto the plane and disappear the moment a disaster struck. Even if they did, there was no bank into which they could store their wealth. Their wealth was primarily in the land, and land was worked by peasants. And peasants were a very important commodity, especially in periods after a plague. Hence my statement that Ned Stark and Edmure Tully are rather more representative of real life nobles, both in their care for small folk and in general, than majority of Westerosi nobility are.

Rich people want to protect the investment. Peasants, for nobility, were an investment. That is all there is to it.

Which means that, regardless of whether they wanted it or not, rich people in feudal times had to be decent at least to some extent, else peasants will up and leave for another noble.

Even today, this holds true to some extent. I did a project, while on university, on how much impact voters actually have on political establishment of democratic countries. Result? Basically none at all - politicians always follow interests of their rich backers, not of the people who voted for them. But most of the time you cannot really notice it, because in most (but not all) of the issues, interests of the rich people and the common men actually coincide. And this was true in the Middle Ages as well, to an even greater extent.

Also this:

Quote

Also, classism. Classism exists. Basically in every culture ever since the first large civilization allowed for some people to be haves, and some people to be have nots. There are many justifications for this classism, but it ultimately boils down to some people thinking they deserve more than others, and that makes their lives/rights more important than those others. You are right that rich people are just people....but to be blunt, people who were actually good people and actually had empathy for the working class ...will just end up less rich than people who don't.

Is 1) not entirely correct and 2) even part which is correct cannot really be backwards-projected onto feudalism for above reasons.

You are doing the exact same mistake Martin is doing: ignoring the fundamental laws of feudal society and acting as if it can be reduced to simply "modern society with medieval paint job".

On 11/19/2023 at 10:21 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Again though, you can continue to have your idea of history (which I think is a fantasy). Feel free, I don't think it represents reality though at all. And again, I am not claiming GRRM is super accurate. He isn't. Just...no one is. And that's okay. They are literally authors. I do not require my authors to be like...PhDs in history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc in order to write a novel, lol. You have mentioned GRRM's strengths here I believe, and I agree with you. I think he is a spectacular character writer, particularly at understanding people's inner thoughts and conflicts. He really seems to get people and their drives. I think his world building is...good enough. He created an interesting and complex world, that yes, is far from perfect...but I'm okay with that. 

Problem with Martin is that he has outright claimed that he wanted to write a realistic story. Thus standards for him are automatically higher.

I don't complain that much about Rowling's mistakes in worldbuilding of Harry Potter - despite the fact that they are FAR worse than any mistakes Martin had made - because she never claimed to write realistic fiction, history "how it really was".

George Martin did:

Quote

Now there are people who will say to that, ‘Well, he’s not writing history, he’s writing fantasy—he put in dragons, he should have made an egalitarian society.’ Just because you put in dragons doesn’t mean you can put in anything you want. If pigs could fly, then that’s your book. But that doesn’t mean you also want people walking on their hands instead of their feet. If you’re going to do [a fantasy element], it’s best to only do one of them, or a few. I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was like, and I was also reacting to a lot of fantasy fiction. Most stories depict what I call the ‘Disneyland Middle Ages’—there are princes and princesses and knights in shining armor, but they didn’t want to show what those societies meant and how they functioned.

And a lot of people beside him also claimed the same. And that is a problem, because as I have said - and as you repeated here - George Martin is a fantastic writer and has many strengths and good things about his writing. It is just that worldbuilding (or prose, for that matter) is not one of them, yet it is the one thing for which he is most often praised.

On 11/19/2023 at 10:21 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

You know what, I'll even admit it, maybe I am so distracted by how bad the character development is, or how bored I am from endless walking ...that I underrate Tolkein's world building. Or maybe I just don't like mythical storytelling all that much. I don't know, but...what I do know is that Tolkein's world isn't realistic. It can only work as a mythical story, because humans don't....act like humans in his world. They act like video game NPCs. And no matter how good other systems work in his world, when I have to follow a bunch of boring, cookie-cutter NPCs around, I just cannot get into that kind of story. Again though, I liked Frodo and Sam, just want to say that. They had more depth, and I felt like the one case where I felt like the characters were alive were scenes with them. I looked forward to whenever we followed Frodo and Sam (and they weren't just walking through a forest, lol). 

Tolkien can be rather verbose at times, and there are significant "pauses in action" in his writing. I personally appreciate these pauses - non-stop action actually bores me - but I can understand why you would not like it.

But I would disagree that Tolkien's people act like video game NPCs. Even one-off characters like Beregond have some depth to them. They may seem "shallow" from modern viewpoint - look at Peter Jackson and his forcing of unnecessary conflict into characters storylines, for precisely this reason - but I do not see that as a bad thing, because they are not modern people. People of the past would do, in the name of honor, things that today's people would consider frankly insane. They just thought differently, and as I said before: Ned Stark is one of few realistically written nobles of Westeros.

And, yes, Frodo and Sam are a lot deeper than most other Tolkien's characters. And most of Tolkien's characters are not as deep as Martin's characters are on average (though I would argue that Sauron has more depth than most of Martin's villains). But on the flip side, Tolkien's world felt alive to me in a way that Martin's - for all the wealth of details - rarely did (one potential exception being when Tyrion is travelling down the Rhoyne). With Tolkien, world itself is a character and tells its own story - you just need to pause to appreciate that.

If you want to understand what I am talking about, read this:

https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1225&context=mythlore

But if you want characters that are more similar to what Martin writes them like... read Silmarillion.

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

8 hours ago, Aldarion said:

Because you don't like a world where people think differently than modern people do, or?

And I think you live in a fantasy where society and people have always had the same flaws because you don't want to believe it ever could be better... and therefore it isn't necessary to try.  You are simply projecting modern situation onto medieval society while failing to understand multiple ways in which medieval society was fundamentally different from modern one.

I am a history major. I would argue based on our conversations that I have a better understanding of the pre-modern world than you do, but ...I cannot guarantee that. Let's be clear, J.R.R. Tolkien is not a medieval person any more than GRRM is. He is also not modern lol, but at his time he was writing for a modern audience (for my parent's generation I guess, lol).  If you think the Lord of the Rings is some...perfect example of the medevil time period, then you are badly deluded. I don't like the books ...because they are boring, not because of the worldview presented. I want to also make that clear, the main reason I don't like the books...is because they just walk around most of the time. The action scenes, the Hobbits character development, and ...some other stuff, I actually enjoyed. I actually LOVED the Hobbits villages. They were an EXCELLENT example of a left wing libertarian community, but I'm sure you will hate that, lol (They literally get angry about rich people taking advantage of the poor and then destroy that control at the end of the books in what I would argue is the best part of the whole books, lol. They are medieval leftists, lol, and you probably like them). 

Your second part is freaking wild, lol. Of course I think it could be better, that is the whole concept of left wing policy, that we can make a better society. You literally ADMITTED you are a reactionary. A quick definition of what it means to be a reactionary my dude :

In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante—the previous political state of society—which the person believes was better in some ways that are absent from contemporary society.

I 100% believe society can improve and be better. I would love if we took some of the Hobbit communities idea tomorrow and implemented them, especially the part where we strip large corporate powers from hoarding all the wealth. Please, let's do it. The Hobbits are honestly pretty close to being anarchists, my main, and trust me, I love it, lol. Now granted, if you are a typical reactionary, you have no idea what anarchy is, so let's stick with leftist libertarianism (that is what anarchy actually is, unlike how it is portrayed in the media). Sadly though....although on a small scale, there were probably some small communities, and as well tribal societies with some of the things present in the Hobbit community that existed in real life....for the most part since civilization has started, we have seen haves and have nots, and the poor suffering under lords and the rich. 

Again, I believe society can be better. I believe society will get better even. I believe that people can be better than we are right now. However, looking back at feudalism is not the way. Feudalism was even worse for the poor than capitalism is. I am fairly sure based on things you've said here, you could be an anarcho-capitalist...which is specifically NOT what I want, as it is indeed a return to feudalism, and it is a step backward, not forward. It would be a negative change for the worse. And by the way, specifically what the Hobbits don't have. I really hope you like the Shire, because it will be hilarious hearing you try to explain to me how they aren't anti-any one group holding power (which includes corporations/companies). 

Man, your last paragraph I quoted here is just so hilariously wrong. You want to strawman man me, or make up my positions, so you just did it. I think society can, and did change. It has been massively different in different places, different times, and had a whole spectrum of ways it functioned. Pre-agricultural revolution, we lived exclusively as hunter and gatherers, and at that time, the number of different societies that existed with different ways of interacting was basically endless. We've found evidence of all kinds of different social structures within these different pre-agriculture societies. Feudalism was also indeed different from capitalism. But you are romanticizing it. I am not suggesting it was not different, I am saying you are wrong about how it looked. I am not looking from a modern perspective and forcing that on the medieval world, I am looking the medieval world as it actually was and not through weird rose-tinted glasses (that you are wearing). You don't like modern society, however instead of blaming the rich, you want to blame....something else (actually it is not clear what you actually blame for the problems of the modern world. You did seem somewhat negative toward the rich, but....then you go onto say that somehow rich people in the past were better...so I am not really sure what you think would solve the problems of modern society). The medieval world was heavily classist (even possibly more than now) and was far more plagued by war (especially for the smallfolk) then is common most modern countries (not all, as war is far from gone in our modern world). As well, plagues/sickness were much more common as science took a hit during this time (in Europe) as religion was widespread and regressive in many cases (I also studied the history of Christianity and Islam in case you wanted to know where my knowledge comes from in this area). 

Let me be direct : I think the world can be better. I think society can be better. I believe in the goodness of human nature, and I think people are just as much naturally cooperative as we are competitive, and that our society should focus on this cooperation, rather than than competition in order for our individual lives to get better/improve. Not only do I not think people always had the "same flaws", I think that society is constantly changing, moving, and adjusting. I think there are some things now that ARE worse than medieval times (such as work hours, which were possibly shorter for the average peasant than the average poor person in modern times and the concept of "productivity" which is wearing out modern people and making them deeply unhappy, because humans are not robots and we shouldn't act like we are). Not only do I understand that medieval society was different than ours, I understand many of the ways in which it was different than ours. However, neither Tolkein or GRRM wrote believable medieval worlds. They created new worlds, that are honestly mostly modern in their creation/functioning. I dare say most people wouldn't be able to handle a book that actually used the morals of medieval times. Especially people such as yourself, who are living in a fantasy and don't actually understand what medieval times were like. If you actually read a book showing an accurate view of how nobles and the rich treated peasants in medieval times, you would be shook to your core and struggle to deal with it. You want a real example of a medieval fiction? : Robin Hood. Who very specifically stole form the rich to give to the poor. But god forbid you actually criticize the nobles and the rich of those times. They were just people like everyone else. Just taking all the resources for themselves and allowing the peasants to live on their land. How great of them^^. (I am being sarcastic). 

The funniest thing Aldarian is if you lived in medieval times you would be a peasant, and you might be like, "Hold up, wait a second," and change your mind real quick about how much you loved feudalism, lol. 

P.s. "So while Tolkien expressly denied claims of metaphorical messaging, he wrote often in support of anarchic principles in both his world and ours.To Tolkien, anarchy represented a natural peace, lived out in total harmony, wholly free from even the slightest need for political power." - lol a quote about Tolkein. There is plenty on google about it though, and trust me, a lot of people agree with me that the Hobbits had some anarchist/left wing libertarian-esq societal views.  Did I mention I like the Hobbits? lol. They literally live in my ideal society. Please give me the Shire. 

[Alester Florent]

I think in discussions of good lord vs bad lord and which is more realistic it's easy to ignore what actually happens in the books. Ned Stark is a "good lord" because he is honourable and kind and etc. while Tywin is a "nasty lord" because he is cruel and ruthless, etc. But we don't actually see either of them interacting with their smallfolk... almost at all. And in terms of their relationships with their own subjects, they're probably more similar than we think. In the two most recent major wars in Westeros, the Westerlands was the only kingdom (other than perhaps the Iron Islands) not to face significant internal opposition. Tywin clearly commands respect from his vassals - fear, yes, but he must also look after them to at least some extent or they'd have taken the opportunity Robb gave them to ditch him, much as Roose did Robb. And for that matter can we really believe that if the Boltons had rebelled against Ned during peacetime and killed his granddad Rodrik in an ambush, St. Ned wouldn't have come down on them like a ton of bricks? Perhaps not quite so indiscriminately as Tywin did at Castamere but one could expect the Dreadfort to be destroyed and razed with significant casualties to the inhabitants.

In terms of their behaviour towards their own smallfolk I think Ned and Edmure might actually be much more typical of Westerosi nobles than we assume. They may brutalise other people's smallfolk, but that's a completely different kettle of fish.

When people talk about how the Westerosi noblemen are unrealistic, I think what they really mean (or at least what some of the more prominent analysts have actually described) is their behaviour towards each other, and specifically the double-dealing, treachery and oathbreaking. In a society that functions principally on "social credit", as Westeros and the IRL Middle Ages do at that level, deceit and slipperiness is only going to get you so far before people stop wanting to deal with you.

In that sense, Ned, an honourable man who is known to keep his word, might be more realistic than a treacherous, double-dealing, weasel of a "game-player" who IRL would make a couple of smart plays and then find himself blackballed and very possibly murderised.

But again I think there's a question as to how normative this actually is, at least in the books (the show often introduced that kind of thing to add drama, especially after they ran out of book to adapt). Jaime is a known oathbreaker and is widely despised. Walder Frey is a known oathbreaker and is universally despised. Roose Bolton is widely believed to be an oathbreaker and is widely hated. Outside his own family, people generally seem to think Rickard Karstark got what was coming to him, and when his family try to play Stannis and Jon, they are caught out and marked for punishment, again pretty uncontroversially. Janos Slynt betrayed Ned Stark and Tyrion - Ned's enemy! - punished him for it, recognising that Slynt couldn't be trusted.

Obviously, there's also Littlefinger. But does anyone (except Sweetrobin) actually trust him? He has so far made a career on the back of being just useful enough at any given moment that it's not worth punishing him for his treacheries yet. But his slipperiness is known and those dealing with him surely take that into account: he wouldn't be facing down the Lords Declarant if they trusted him.

Some of these characters are currently sitting high on the hog, it's true, but that is surely because we are still at just past the halfway point of the story and you expect the antagonists to be in the ascendancy. I am sure that Roose and Walder, and, yeah, probably Littlefinger too, will reap the whirlwind in due course, just as they would in real life.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Alester Florent

[Lord of Raventree Hall]

2 hours ago, Alester Florent said:

Some of these characters are currently sitting high on the hog, it's true, but that is surely because we are still at just past the halfway point of the story and you expect the antagonists to be in the ascendancy. I am sure that Roose and Walder, and, yeah, probably Littlefinger too, will reap the whirlwind in due course, just as they would in real life.

Yes! This!!!!! I have thought this often. People thinking Tywin, Walder, Roose, Petyr, etc. are going to come out ahead are forgetting that...the bad guys often do quite well toward the middle of media, before the heroes come back and defeat them. I don't think GRRM is going to do it any differently. I suspect House Frey, House Bolton, House Lannister, and some others to be in ruins by the end of the story. I think the Boltons could be extinguished..the Lannisters could survive (as they have extensive family), but they will be diminished in power, and the Freys will probably have their lands removed from them (someone will take the castle and not return it to them). Petyr Baelish will almost certainly die at Sansa's hand as well. The bad guys...will loose, and thinking they won't is short sighted. 

One minor nitpick though - We do see both Eddard and Tywin interact with servants. They are part of the "small folk". Tywin is brusk an dismissive, and in fact...all of the Lannisters are. I've seen people argue that Tyrion is kind to the Mountain Clansmen and Bronn...but to Lannister house guards, he gives 0 shits, and to other servants as well. Cersei and Jaime...seem to care almost nothing about servants or guards. Meanwhile, Eddard literally makes a point of switching up who he eats with, he is constnatly caring about his guards/other people working at Winterfell. All of the Stark children feel sadness at the deaths of the servants of the castle, who they treat more like extended family then small folk. As well, Catelyn is polite to the servants under her. Arya is known to befriend...basically everyone. Bran is extremely close with Osha to the point that Osha helps save him. Even Theon, who isn't exactly a Stark feels regret, and pain when thinking about the smallfolk who didn't love him anymore once he took the castle. There is a distinct and abrupt difference between how Lannisters and Starks interact with servants, and I believe that GRRM purposely wrote those differences. 

Just a note on other noble families - Most seem to have more in common with the Lannisters than the Starks..however the Tyrells do seem to try to get the smallfolks love, and Renly was also pursuing that path. Daenerys seems...a mix. She kind of ...ignores Irri or Jhiqui a lot of the time, but other times talks to them. Missandei she treats as a friend. She was also clearly friends with Ser Jorah despite him being her ....servant kind of. On the other hand, as I've mentioned elsewhere, her dismissal of the Freedmen/Shavepates as potential allies who replace the Great Masters in positions of power is probably due to her overall classism...so it's a mixed bag with her. 

Just one last note. Eddard Stark is the ONLY lord we see crying/holding his servant (Jory Cassel) after his death. Literally, it's the only case. You might say Jory is noble born...but it is clear that the Cassels are landed knights at best, which again...the other great Lords treat as basically nothing (think how Randyl Tarly treats Ser Hyle Hunt as a comparison). I want to also mention this good treatment of the small folks seems to extend beyond the Starks to other Northern houses and it might suggest an overall cultural difference between Andalosi culture and First Men culture. 

There is a reason I can name Harwin, Hullen, Mikken, Fat Tom, Old Nan, Hodor, Jory, Rodrickk, Desmond I want to say, (I'm stretching now, most of these guys died in book one), etc; and I have no clue the name of servants of the Lannisters or other nobles we have PoVs of (except Daenerys, I certainly know Irri and Jhiquie and Ereoh and Missandei's names..so Daenerys is a mix). 

Edited November 23, 2023 by Lord of Raventree Hall

[Ingelheim]

The common language is another good example of bad worldbuilding. The fact that a wildling and a dornishman could communicate with each other without any kind of problem does not make sense

[SeanF]

Catelyn makes a point of paying the sailors in person, and wants to build a cairn for Tyrion’s servant.  Tyrion doesn’t care.

So, yes, I think the Starks, and Catelyn and Edmure, and Dany, do care about the people who serve them personally.  And, TBH, there’s plenty of evidence that such people existed in real life medieval societies (Edward II was notably kind to servants, for example).  These are people you interact with on a daily basis.

The Lannisters are indifferent, at best, and Cersei is naturally spiteful.  But, even Western smallfolk probably welcome having a lord who hangs outlaws, and prohibits private war among his own vassals, as opposed to a weak lord like Tytos.

But there are limits.  No one thinks that the smallfolk should not be summoned to war, nor perform other feudal obligations.  And, Robb wasn’t troubled about ravaging the West, hanging young women, or having his men burn villages en route to Duskendale.  Nothing suggests that Ned was troubled by burning Lordsport, and only Arya was bothered by the murder of Mycah. People may feel some obligation to their own villeins, but not to those of other lords.

[Aldarion]

On 11/23/2023 at 7:44 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

I am a history major. I would argue based on our conversations that I have a better understanding of the pre-modern world than you do, but ...I cannot guarantee that. Let's be clear, J.R.R. Tolkien is not a medieval person any more than GRRM is. He is also not modern lol, but at his time he was writing for a modern audience (for my parent's generation I guess, lol).  If you think the Lord of the Rings is some...perfect example of the medevil time period, then you are badly deluded.

I never said it is perfect. There are flaws - some quite big - when it comes to Tolkien's realism... though I give Tolkien a pass because most of them are intentional - he never was aiming to build a medieval world, rather, his aim was to build a mythological world akin to what we see in the Beowulf, Eddas, Illiad, Odyssey... when I speak of how Tolkien is more realistic than Martin in his worldbuilding, I am mostly focusing on three things: logistics, social organization and people's attitudes.

Logistically, a feudal kingdom the size of the Seven Kingdoms never existed in the real life - and for a good reason. A system based on interpersonal relations the way feudalism is places some hard upper limits on size of the polity, and Westeros is significantly larger than that. Basically, Martin had built Roman Empire without most of the things that made Roman Empire work. It may have worked while dragons still lived, but Seven Kingdoms should have broken up the moment dragons became too small to be a military threat. At most, assuming that personal loyalty to Targaryen dynasty kept the system coasting for some more decades, they should have broken up into individual kingsoms following Robert's Rebellion. Tolkien's societies on the other hand are inherently workable - simply because they are smaller. Seven Kingdoms are some 3 million square miles. Compared to that, Tolkien's countries are far smaller - Third Age Gondor is 87 500 square miles, and even Gondor at its height is some 439 000 square miles. And of course, Martin had not considered impact of long winter at all.

In terms of social organization, Martin's Westeros is shallow, and Essos even more so. I have pointed out already several problems with Westeros: Why are there no free royal cities? Why do we have just lords and so on? Why we don't see actual courts of law, and instead king and lords seem to handle all the legal issues?

And as for attitudes... Medieval people were ready to die for the sake of honor... at least, nobles were. But honor, in Middle Ages, mattered. A lot. Did it make a perfect world? By no means. And it could make people do stupid and even horrific things at times. But it mattered.

And then Martin goes and writes a medieval world with postmodernist attitudes, where honor and oaths are something you can wipe your backside with. Sure, there are consequences to doing that - just look at the Freys - but precisely because of these consequences, medieval people were not quick to break word or honor... even that given to their enemies. Or inferiors, for that matter. Attitude that Westerosi nobles show to peasants was... not nonexistent in Middle Ages, but rare.

And the less said about Essos the better. Dothraki are a bad carricature of Amerindians, Huns and Mongols... with all of their weaknesses but none of their strengths. They should never have become any sort of a major threat. And they, as a society, simply do not work. Real Mongols were traders, diplomats and very good at strategy and tactics - that is why they were as successful as they were. Dothraki do trade... in slaves... and do engage in diplomacy... but they simply lack the tools necessary for diplomatic and military performance. Their attitude towards settled peoples alone would hold them back a lot. Slaver's Bay itself does not work... at all.

So yes. Lord of the Rings is not some perfect example of the medieval time period, but it is far closer to that than... literally anything else I've read. Especially when it comes to people's attitudes as well as portrayal of "far-off" societies. Tolkien gives more depth to Haradrim and Easterlings than Martin does to Dothraki and Slaver's Bay, despite the fact that Martin has a significant PoV character spend her time among Dothraki and in the Slaver' Bay both while Tolkien has no PoV characters among the Haradrim or the Easterlings.

On 11/23/2023 at 7:44 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Your second part is freaking wild, lol. Of course I think it could be better, that is the whole concept of left wing policy, that we can make a better society. You literally ADMITTED you are a reactionary. A quick definition of what it means to be a reactionary my dude :

In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante—the previous political state of society—which the person believes was better in some ways that are absent from contemporary society.

And for good reasons:

https://politicalreactionary.wordpress.com/2021/07/18/austria-hungary-was-the-last-good-time-for-croatia/

Austria-Hungary was far from perfect - being an outgrowth of an absolute monarchy it had some serious flaws - but it was still leagues better than anything that followed it.

Humans fuck up. A lot. If you try to build a better society without knowing what you are doing, you will end up causing a genocide. Which is typically what happens.

Hell, even if you do know what you are doing, you may end up causing it anyway.

On 11/23/2023 at 7:44 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

I 100% believe society can improve and be better. I would love if we took some of the Hobbit communities idea tomorrow and implemented them, especially the part where we strip large corporate powers from hoarding all the wealth. Please, let's do it. The Hobbits are honestly pretty close to being anarchists, my main, and trust me, I love it, lol. Now granted, if you are a typical reactionary, you have no idea what anarchy is, so let's stick with leftist libertarianism (that is what anarchy actually is, unlike how it is portrayed in the media). Sadly though....although on a small scale, there were probably some small communities, and as well tribal societies with some of the things present in the Hobbit community that existed in real life....for the most part since civilization has started, we have seen haves and have nots, and the poor suffering under lords and the rich. 

 

Anarchy is not an inherently leftist concept, you know:

https://fantasyview.wordpress.com/2021/05/16/tolkiens-ideal-of-monarchy/

In fact, a right-wing or reactionary anarchy is far more workable than a left-wing one, because it does not reject the cultural and traditional foundations that are necessary if you want to allow society to work with as little governmental oversight as possible. If you get rid of tradition and traditional societal institutions, you need to find a replacement... and that replacement can only be government. So left-wing anarchy is something that simply cannot work - I would in fact argue that it is an inherently self-contradictory concept.

Though I guess that in modern terminology I would be better described as a minarchist. But that to me is a false distinction, because government is simply not something you can remove wholesale. If you have a society, you have a government... whether that government is royalty, nobility, elected representatives, dictator, mafia bosses or whatever... it will be there, whether you like it or not.

But that doesn't mean you should allow it power over your life.

Although:

Quote

I would love if we took some of the Hobbit communities idea tomorrow and implemented them

I guess we found at least one thing we agree on. Though I think big government is as much of an issue as big corporations are, so I really don't understand why the leftists focus on corporations so much.

Concentration of power is always a problem, no matter the appearance it takes. Wolf doesn't stop being a wolf just because he is wearing sheep's pelt, after all.

On 11/23/2023 at 7:44 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Again, I believe society can be better. I believe society will get better even. I believe that people can be better than we are right now. However, looking back at feudalism is not the way. Feudalism was even worse for the poor than capitalism is. I am fairly sure based on things you've said here, you could be an anarcho-capitalist...which is specifically NOT what I want, as it is indeed a return to feudalism, and it is a step backward, not forward. It would be a negative change for the worse. And by the way, specifically what the Hobbits don't have. I really hope you like the Shire, because it will be hilarious hearing you try to explain to me how they aren't anti-any one group holding power (which includes corporations/companies). 

 

No, feudalism is not worse for the poor than capitalism is - in part because both feudalism and capitalism are more of umbrella terms than anything, and varied widely by time and location. Feudalism is not good for the poor because you still have concentration of power, but here is the thing... feudalism was far more than just manorial economy which is what you appear to think of when you talk about feudalism. Yes, manorial economy was a part of it - but you also had free villages, hell, entire republics where you didn't have "m" of manorialism.

Feudalism, as a system, was a response to inability of the state to organize administration. As a result, many of the functions of the state had to be outsourced.

I am not saying we should go back to feudalism. But that doesn't mean feudalism didn't have some good things that would do us well if implemented.

On 11/23/2023 at 7:44 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Man, your last paragraph I quoted here is just so hilariously wrong. You want to strawman man me, or make up my positions, so you just did it. I think society can, and did change. It has been massively different in different places, different times, and had a whole spectrum of ways it functioned. Pre-agricultural revolution, we lived exclusively as hunter and gatherers, and at that time, the number of different societies that existed with different ways of interacting was basically endless. We've found evidence of all kinds of different social structures within these different pre-agriculture societies. Feudalism was also indeed different from capitalism. But you are romanticizing it. I am not suggesting it was not different, I am saying you are wrong about how it looked. I am not looking from a modern perspective and forcing that on the medieval world, I am looking the medieval world as it actually was and not through weird rose-tinted glasses (that you are wearing).

No, you are looking through the modern perspective... and from what I have seen so far it is more specifically Marxist perspective which sees everything as a result of class conflict or class warfare.

But here is the thing... such a thing actually did not really happen. Yes, there were conflicts between the classes - e.g. peasant rebellions - but most conflicts really happened within the classes. Feudal lord was more liable to try and protect his peasants from depredations of another lord than he was to join in on said depredations.

And even the "conflicts between the classes" that did happen were not really driven by class consciousness as such, or by want to "reform the system". Rather, they were a response to very specific conditions or even actions of individual lords. Matija Gubec was taken by the Yugoslav Communists as a symbol of class conflict and "proletariat uprising", a leader of nearly Marxist revolution of the helpless peasant-working class against the evil rich, a propagator of Communist "brotherhood and unity", a fighter for social justice, equality and freedom... but that is an entirely incorrect interpretation of the events.

Many things are simply wrong.

Matija Gubec never really existed. His real name was Ambroz Gubec.

Ilija Gregorić, Gubec' second in command, was not a peasant at all - he was a career soldier.

Peasants were not "entirely helpless" even within the confines of the feudal system.

It is true that peasants rebelled due to oppression - but everything else is a lie. Oppression they were under was not typical of feudalism - in fact, its atypicality was the entire reason for the uprising. Moreover, said oppression was not a result of feudal nobles' greed, but a result of the extreme expenses that kingdom had to sustain for purposes of defense against the Ottomans. And Matija Gubec and the peasants (God, sounds like a rock band name) never cared about equality - they just wanted better conditions within the existing framework.

And these factors were not ignored by Yugoslav historiography because they didn't know them - but because they didn't fit the narrative.

Quote

You don't like modern society, however instead of blaming the rich, you want to blame....something else (actually it is not clear what you actually blame for the problems of the modern world. You did seem somewhat negative toward the rich, but....then you go onto say that somehow rich people in the past were better...so I am not really sure what you think would solve the problems of modern society). The medieval world was heavily classist (even possibly more than now) and was far more plagued by war (especially for the smallfolk) then is common most modern countries (not all, as war is far from gone in our modern world). As well, plagues/sickness were much more common as science took a hit during this time (in Europe) as religion was widespread and regressive in many cases (I also studied the history of Christianity and Islam in case you wanted to know where my knowledge comes from in this area). 

Problem of modern world is in large part modernity itself. Uprooting of individual from all of the traditional support structures, focus on material to the point of complete exclusion of spiritual... rich are part of the problem, but suggesting they are the problem is incorrect.

Medieval world was more plagued by war - but on the flip side, nature of war was significantly different. Most of the "wars" in Middle Ages will have flown completely over the heads of the smallfolk. Major wars, where murder of peasants happened as part of strategy, were rare. Most of medieval conflicts were conflicts between the lords for purpose of acquiring land - and no good investor will destroy the good he is trying to acquire. As a result, "smallfolk" historically... often wouldn't even notice they were at war in the first place.

Real devastation happened in major wars between kings (e.g. 100 Years War) or in religious wars (e.g. Crusades). And worst devastation happened when war was both of these things at the same time (e.g. Ottoman wars or 30 Years War, though latter isn't medieval conflict at all and former is only so in part). But generally speaking, compared to wars of antiquity or early modernity, medieval warfare was far more humane. And the reason why we don't have so many wars today is not that human nature has improved, but rather, simply that wars themselves have grown far more destructive and are thus inherently less appealing as a solution to problems.

Also, that bit about science is just a dumb myth that really needs to die. If anything, Medieval world was more technologically advanced than Antiquity was. True, it lacked centralization that Antiquity had and so didn't have massive construction works, but things for everyday life were far ahead of antiquity. Most important innovation was horse collar, which basically ended agricultural slavery because now horses were far more productive investment than slaves were (slavery was still there, but nowhere near as widespread as in antiquity). Spinning wheel, astrolabe, compass, tidal mills, moldboard plow... all of these significantly improved overall quality of life in Middle Ages compared to Antiquity.

Medical science also wasn't significantly less advanced in Medieval times than it was in the Roman Empire:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/50869573_What's_Wrong_with_Early_Medieval_Medicine

What Muslims preserved, and Crusades introduced into Europe, was medical knowledge of Hellenistic Orient - but that was never widespread in the West to begin with, not even during the Roman Empire.

On 11/23/2023 at 7:44 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Let me be direct : I think the world can be better. I think society can be better. I believe in the goodness of human nature, and I think people are just as much naturally cooperative as we are competitive, and that our society should focus on this cooperation, rather than than competition in order for our individual lives to get better/improve. Not only do I not think people always had the "same flaws", I think that society is constantly changing, moving, and adjusting. I think there are some things now that ARE worse than medieval times (such as work hours, which were possibly shorter for the average peasant than the average poor person in modern times and the concept of "productivity" which is wearing out modern people and making them deeply unhappy, because humans are not robots and we shouldn't act like we are). Not only do I understand that medieval society was different than ours, I understand many of the ways in which it was different than ours. However, neither Tolkein or GRRM wrote believable medieval worlds. They created new worlds, that are honestly mostly modern in their creation/functioning. I dare say most people wouldn't be able to handle a book that actually used the morals of medieval times. Especially people such as yourself, who are living in a fantasy and don't actually understand what medieval times were like. If you actually read a book showing an accurate view of how nobles and the rich treated peasants in medieval times, you would be shook to your core and struggle to deal with it. You want a real example of a medieval fiction? : Robin Hood. Who very specifically stole form the rich to give to the poor. But god forbid you actually criticize the nobles and the rich of those times. They were just people like everyone else. Just taking all the resources for themselves and allowing the peasants to live on their land. How great of them^^. (I am being sarcastic). 

 

Goodness of human nature is a myth. Humans are not inherently evil - but they are not inherently good either. We are, however, inherently stupid.

And that is a problem.

Because even if a person (or a group) has the best intentions in the world, that does not mean they should be given power - if they are given power, chances are that their best intentions will result in an outcome just as evil as if the reins of power had been given to a genocidal tyrant. Human society is simply too complex, and reality is too complex, for any man or a group, or any sort of centralized system, to ever be able to cope with it.

Some academics may think that they may be able to do it... but that just makes them idiots.

And yes, humans have always had the same flaws. You are correct that the society is constantly changing, moving and adjusting - but that is merely a result of changing conditions: increased knowledge, increased technological capability, increased number of people within the society. But human nature has stayed the same throughout. Good and evil have not changed merely because society has.

I know how nobles treated the poor in medieval times: the bad... and the good. You however seem to be focusing only on bad.

On 11/23/2023 at 7:44 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

The funniest thing Aldarian is if you lived in medieval times you would be a peasant, and you might be like, "Hold up, wait a second," and change your mind real quick about how much you loved feudalism, lol. 

 

I am aware that life as a medieval peasant sucked ass. But 90% of that was not specifically a consequence of feudalism.

Or do you think that average Byzantine peasant lived significantly better than average French peasant just because Byzantine Empire was not feudal?

Look a bit outside the framework you are comfortable with.

On 11/23/2023 at 7:44 AM, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

P.s. "So while Tolkien expressly denied claims of metaphorical messaging, he wrote often in support of anarchic principles in both his world and ours.To Tolkien, anarchy represented a natural peace, lived out in total harmony, wholly free from even the slightest need for political power." - lol a quote about Tolkein. There is plenty on google about it though, and trust me, a lot of people agree with me that the Hobbits had some anarchist/left wing libertarian-esq societal views.  Did I mention I like the Hobbits? lol. They literally live in my ideal society. Please give me the Shire. 

Agreed.

On 11/23/2023 at 2:44 PM, Alester Florent said:

I think in discussions of good lord vs bad lord and which is more realistic it's easy to ignore what actually happens in the books. Ned Stark is a "good lord" because he is honourable and kind and etc. while Tywin is a "nasty lord" because he is cruel and ruthless, etc. But we don't actually see either of them interacting with their smallfolk... almost at all. And in terms of their relationships with their own subjects, they're probably more similar than we think. In the two most recent major wars in Westeros, the Westerlands was the only kingdom (other than perhaps the Iron Islands) not to face significant internal opposition. Tywin clearly commands respect from his vassals - fear, yes, but he must also look after them to at least some extent or they'd have taken the opportunity Robb gave them to ditch him, much as Roose did Robb. And for that matter can we really believe that if the Boltons had rebelled against Ned during peacetime and killed his granddad Rodrik in an ambush, St. Ned wouldn't have come down on them like a ton of bricks? Perhaps not quite so indiscriminately as Tywin did at Castamere but one could expect the Dreadfort to be destroyed and razed with significant casualties to the inhabitants.

 

Personally, I always saw Tywin as personally evil... but that doesn't mean he was a bad lord. In fact, if I had to choose a lord to live under, he would likely be one of better choices.

On 11/23/2023 at 7:47 PM, SeanF said:

Catelyn makes a point of paying the sailors in person, and wants to build a cairn for Tyrion’s servant.  Tyrion doesn’t care.

So, yes, I think the Starks, and Catelyn and Edmure, and Dany, do care about the people who serve them personally.  And, TBH, there’s plenty of evidence that such people existed in real life medieval societies (Edward II was notably kind to servants, for example).  These are people you interact with on a daily basis.

The Lannisters are indifferent, at best, and Cersei is naturally spiteful.  But, even Western smallfolk probably welcome having a lord who hangs outlaws, and prohibits private war among his own vassals, as opposed to a weak lord like Tytos.

But there are limits.  No one thinks that the smallfolk should not be summoned to war, nor perform other feudal obligations.  And, Robb wasn’t troubled about ravaging the West, hanging young women, or having his men burn villages en route to Duskendale.  Nothing suggests that Ned was troubled by burning Lordsport, and only Arya was bothered by the murder of Mycah. People may feel some obligation to their own villeins, but not to those of other lords.

Warfare part is not really something I have an issue with. Scorched earth strategies were a staple of premodern, especially medieval, warfare, simply because - without gunpowder - castles were notoriously difficult to take. I do have an issue with coscripting smallfolk for war - that was never really done, not because lords wouldn't want soldiers but because "conscripted peasants with few days' training" were simply militarily worthless and generally not worth the expense of feeding them on a campaign.

But my point is - Starks are, in the story and by Martin himself, treated as something unusual. Eddard Stark is widely known for his honor. But in a realistic world, Starks and their honor will have been normal. Something you simply expected from your lord. Likewise, the care that Edmure shows for his peasants was by no means unusual as is implied in the books - though seeing it as such may be an artifact of seeing it through Catelyn's eyes.

To give you an example of honor: I have mentioned Croatian-Ottoman wars before, right? Not exactly medieval, but close enough - and close to the time period Westeros is based on. "Rape, pillage and burn" was in full effect there. Some areas of Croatia lost 80% up to 96% of their population during these wars. Yet both sides showed respect to their opponents: a garrison of the fort that surrendered was nearly always left to leave unmolested, often with their weapons if they had shown valor during the siege. When Bosnian nobles betrayed their king during the Ottoman invasion of Bosnia... Sultan did exploit that, sure - in part because he saw king of Bosnia as his vassal who had rebelled, and thus a traitor himself. And then he went and executed said traitors - specifically, one who had initiated the treason to begin with - for treason. Because traitor or not, Stjepan Tomašević was still their rightful ruler.

On 11/23/2023 at 7:20 PM, Ingelheim said:

The common language is another good example of bad worldbuilding. The fact that a wildling and a dornishman could communicate with each other without any kind of problem does not make sense

Definitely. And worse - there was basically no reason to have the common language.

[SeanF]

@AldarionReading English, Scottish, or Italian, history, though, you can find plenty of examples of nobles acting in ways that were treacherous, psychotically cruel, and also stupid and self-defeating - for those very reasons.

As you say, humans have a tendency towards stupidity, and looking for the short-term victory, without thinking through the long-term consequences of their actions.

I was reading recently, a biography of Roger Mortimer, a man who had hardly put a foot wrong in his career - until he and Isabella attained supreme power.  Then, they started grabbing everything they could, until he was overthrown and executed.  Had he shown the shrewd restraint of his earlier career, and shared the wealth with other nobles, he’d have lived to be a respected elder statesman.  And, you can multiply such examples.

Martin simply takes the worst tendencies of human nature, and runs with them.  However, evil actions do have consequences in his world, as they do in real life.

That is in contrast to the show, where Cersei could be as treacherous and evil as she liked, and everyone kept trusting her, for plot reasons.