Lifestyles of the rich and famous!

[astarkchoice]

Thought  for funsies wed run a thread focused on economics of planetos (no LF speculation please)  feel free to add.

Focus 1st will be on some of the major economic hubs and wel go through them in detail.

 

Part 1 

Bravos: we know this was founded by escaping slaves so is a melting pot of skills and cultures and cuisines etc (some of whom are magic ninjas). Not wanting to be captured again they in secret built an enormous fleet and insane defences. The economy boomed for various reasons but most tie to the facelessmen! While most of essos has various banking clans and orgs none grew to the strength and reach of its ironbank and this may be due to its easy access to a cadre of unstopable assasins to ensure to always gets paid.

A powerful bank would of course mean various buisnesses can get loans to get off the ground  and use the huge harbour + shipbuilding to grow worldwide while the faceless men act as a sort of regulation body (needed for a healthy economy)  ensuring fairplay for even the poorest bravosi vs the richest! We know bravos main economic weakness is a reliance on wood but they are slap bang between the woodrich north and qohor forrests.

The fact bravos is serf+ slave free in world surrounded by them gives it an edge in innovation, niche  and service industries (paid workers) but will be a slight disadvantage in terms of industries involving  back breaking labour like farming, bravos however probably doesnt get much drag there as its no doubt got a massive fishing industry (as we see in aryas pov oysters are popular)  and can but foodstuffs from various sources.

Finaly we see planetos has a big piracy issue with one of the 7 kingdoms devoted to it and the basilisk isles etc supposedly swarming with slave capturing pirates , bravos though we are told has a military fleet 2nd to none so its vast purple sailed merchant fleets are probably often shadowed by protection (as the redwyne and quarth fleets probably do too) again helping their economy flourish.

Position wise its well placed to deal with the lesser free cities, westeros, ib (another solid economic hub) and before the dothraki ruined it the  various civilisations  on the top half of essos!

 

Lannisport/casterly rock: The lannisters ARE the westerlands economy pretty much! There will be a lot of the same medieval economy that other regions but the gold set it apart. From the golden tooth to casterly rock we know its rich in goldmines and with the failed tarbeck/reynes rebellion the only ones remotely close to the lannisters  mines output is now in lannister control!!!!  We can assume the infinite gold of casterly rock and other places is mined at a steady pace as to not down golds worth or undermine the castle.

We know kevan has pushed at tywin to maybe open their own bank backed with their gold which presumably tywin has turned his nose up at  as common trade   BUT we know tywins father and tywin are heavy money lenders to lords and the crown so arent above making their vast mineral wealth work for them. The port is dominated by lesser lannisters and despite being out of the way for most ships we can assume the  lannisters and other wealthy lords in their orbit make lannisport worth visting. 

Across the way we have the ironborn too , now we can assume these rascals DO actualy trade and the biggest ports near them are redwynes and lannisport! That means cheap treasure and rare goods raided from far east, cheap iron (as the ironbirn use slaves) and fish as we can assume the ironborn must have a huge fishing industry to support such barren isles. Given the gold flowing here we can assume many ships of rare niche  goods and finely crafted luxury put in here 1st.

Quarth: we know the people of quarth lost to the sanori and dothraki so seemingly cant fight but can def build. The economy is massive by virtue of being a huge city just before the famous jade gates, they are literalty the hub between east and west goods thus guard it intensely, making up for their non martial skills with huge triple walls and giant ornate galleys onnthe seas!

We know other than some formerly weak wizzards they have rulers called the pureborn decended from what was once their royalty, these compete with other power groups like the guild of spicers and tourmaine brotherhood (spices and precious stones hints at the sort of trade these 2 do) and the 13. All of these groups are  said to have 1000s of ships hinting at the sheer voume of trade being carried out! One of the ironborn(tristopher botley) suggests to asha greyjoy a single trip to the jade sea would make them ' as rich as gods' by westerosi standards. We know despite their incalcuable value there was never any suggestion of people stealing danys dragons , quarths position as a centre of trade is too critical for even dragons to be worth risking.

 

Yi-ti: arguably the oldest civillisation on all of planetos and one of the most populous. The huge population alone would make it arguably the biggest economy on planetos alone before we talk precious niche goods like spices, silks etc . Pretty far out of the way of our books focus even dany though.

We know they have their own horse nomad problem who have burnt thousands of farms pushing the kingdom ever inward, civil war within the kingdom itself add in the loss of the former great patrimony of  hrykjoon as as trading neighbor and leng as a colony but still are very rich

 

 

Slavers bay: wel look at this as one area! From dothraki khalassars to pirates bringing captured humans by the tens of thousands slavere bay is the hub of one lf the biggest industries in all of planetos. Slavery may be horrific but as in real life history  its unfortuately massively profitable affair. The raw slaves get sent to slavers bay where the 3 cities  have developed niches to stop stepping on each others toes but all will produce bog standard vanilla workers for fields and homes and low quality troops.

Astopor grows the famous unsullied, far too expensive and few to be a real army but unquestionably loyal so the ultimate bodyguard/security detail in a dangerous world. Yunkai specalizes in whores and mereen makes its money from famous gladiator pits where sailors spend fortunes to watch and as we see prozed gladiators can be sold as expensive bodyguards, they may not be as loyal as unsullied but will be far stronger individual fighters .

Other than that the bays economy seems flat. Bronze while plentiful  is no longer as valuable, their food + wine is an aquired taste at best. We do hear of huge estates in the hills for slaves to work and danys march on mwreen is met with fields for miles being scorched hinting at both a rich agriculture outside the city and plentiful supplies within. New ghisbacros the sea sees far more vibrant than all 3 given it ca commit 6 legions and elphants and still possibly keep a huge slave population at home in check and with a majority of its free people there too.

 

 

Note this should probably be in the world of ice and fire section

Edited January 13 by astarkchoice