Holding the Seven Kingdoms

[danm_999]

I wasn't aware anyone had tried to break the realm up since the death of the dragons.

The rebellions are focused on control of the Iron Throne.

What's interesting is that the years of Targaryen rule have created a political culture that values the Iron Throne and sees it as the natural centre of politics in the seven kingdoms.

If the north had really wanted to separate before Robb Stark they could probably have done so. We don't even know how necessary it was for Torrhen to kneel actually, given the whole skinchanger issue.

Raymund Redbeard and Dagon Greyjoy are two examples.

[finishingmove]

Dany's gonna unite the Kingdoms again. Because she will be loved. Dragons are just for the touch.

[Chaircat Meow]

Raymund Redbeard and Dagon Greyjoy are two examples.

The Greyjoys hardly count as I see it because they are more of a nuisance than a serious problem, or at least they are most of the time.

Can't remember who Redbeard is off hand.

The point is, in the absence of dragons, the great lords of Westeros show an acute reluctance to entertain any thoughts of independence. The Greatjon's comments about the dragons being all dead shows that there was a fair amount of inherited respect for the Targ dynasty in all the kingdoms.

[danm_999]

Well, England for instance suffered about 500 years of disunity since the fall of the Roman Empire and then never faced serious disunity again. Things can just change like that, in RL.

Err, I'm not sure how to break this to you.

Or how about Greece. Never united until the days of Alexander and then rarely ever broken up into separate units again (granted, it tended to be occupied by one power or another).

Often broken up actually. Examples include between the Byzantines and the Arabs, the Ottomans and the Venetians, during the Greek War of Independence, during WW1 when Greece had two governments, during Italian occupation in WW2, during the Greek Civil War post WW2, that Cyprus is still half Greek, half Turkish.

Hell there's been media coverage this week that the Greek island of Icaria wanted to secede from Greece and join another European country.

[danm_999]

The Greyjoys hardly count as I see it because they are more of a nuisance than a serious problem, or at least they are most of the time.

Dagon Greyjoy was a bit more than a nuisance. He beat the Lannisters, the Starks and raided the Reach.

[Chaircat Meow]

Err, I'm not sure how to break this to you.

Often broken up actually. Examples include between the Byzantines and the Arabs, the Ottomans and the Venetians, during the Greek War of Independence, during WW1 when Greece had two governments, during Italian occupation in WW2, during the Greek Civil War post WW2, that Cyprus is still half Greek, half Turkish.

Hell there's been media coverage this week that the Greek island of Icaria wanted to secede from Greece and join another European country.

Yeah you're going to have to break it to me because England never reverted to anything like the tiny Saxon statelets of the Dark Ages in the next millenia. If you are trying to play on the fact there were civil wars this shows you're badly missing the point because these were not separatist movements. I think this is pretty obvious.

The same goes for Greece. You have lots of tiny city states and at best you get the whole country split between two large empires. That's a colossal change in the size of political units in that area.

Both England and Greece are places where you had lots of smaller kingdoms and cities, that then underwent a unification and never fragmented again to anything even remotely resembling the prior position.

[Chaircat Meow]

Err, I'm not sure how to break this to you.

Often broken up actually. Examples include between the Byzantines and the Arabs, the Ottomans and the Venetians, during the Greek War of Independence, during WW1 when Greece had two governments, during Italian occupation in WW2, during the Greek Civil War post WW2, that Cyprus is still half Greek, half Turkish.

Hell there's been media coverage this week that the Greek island of Icaria wanted to secede from Greece and join another European country.

And I acknowledged the point about Greece in my previous post. So I don't know what the fuss about it is.

'Never united until the days of Alexander and then rarely ever broken up into separate units again (granted, it tended to be occupied by one power or another).'

[danm_999]

Yeah you're going to have to break it to me because England never reverted to anything like the tiny Saxon statelets of the Dark Ages in the next millenia. If you are trying to play on the fact there were civil wars this shows you're badly missing the point because these were not separatist movements. I think this is pretty obvious.

England is about a 100th of the size of Westeros, and it has regular seasons.

And it still breakes into distinct political entities every few generations for almost a thousand years!

The series is based on the War of the Roses for goodness sakes.

The same goes for Greece. You have lots of tiny city states and at best you get the whole country split between two large empires. That's a colossal change in the size of political units in that area.

Both England and Greece are places where you had lots of smaller kingdoms and cities, that then underwent a unification and never fragmented again to anything even remotely resembling the prior position.

I'm feeling lazy on this one, so I'll just link this to demonstrate how your ideas Greece stayed together as one or two political entities from the time of Alexander onwards isn't correct.

I'll also mention that even today, Greece is still not unified like it was under Alexander. Under Alexander, Greece was the mainland, Macedon, parts of Illyria, and most islands. That's about 5 or 6 different countries today.

Again, Greece is tiny compared to Westeros. Not to mention Greece never, ever regains the unity it had under Alexander, when Macedon and parts of Illyria were considered part of Greece.

[Chaircat Meow]

The other point about Greece is that the divisions all come from external invasion, slavs, avars, Turks (actually no idea where you get Arabs from) Italians, Germans not spontaneous combustion on the part of the actual inhabitants which is the correct parallel for the situation we are considering in Westeros.

Also the Greek civil war between communists and their foes isn't a separatist movement either! Its another war about who will control a state, or country everyone takes as a political given.

So all your counter points are poor ones.

[Chaircat Meow]

The series is based on the War of the Roses for goodness sakes.

Look, you're confused.

The War of the Roses are nothing to do with splitting up the country. They are about control of the king of the whole country. BASIC difference. The whole thing is premised on the very notion of a united England other wise there would be no fucking point.

[danm_999]

'Never united until the days of Alexander and then rarely ever broken up into separate units again (granted, it tended to be occupied by one power or another).'

It's broken up now. Alexander's Greece is now; Greece, Macedonia, Cyprus (which is technically two countries!), bits of Bulgaria, bits of Albania and bits of Turkey.

[danm_999]

The other point about Greece is that the divisions all come from external invasion, slavs, avars, Turks (actually no idea where you get Arabs from) Italians, Germans not spontaneous combustion on the part of the actual inhabitants which is the correct parallel for the situation we are considering in Westeros.

Also the Greek civil war between communists and their foes isn't a separatist movement either! Its another war about who will control an state, or country everyone takes as a political given.

So all your counter points are poor ones.

Look, you're confused.

The War of the Roses are nothing to do with splitting up the country. They are about control of the king of the whole country. BASIC difference. The whole thing is premised on the very notion of a united England other wise there would be no fucking point.

You're making an arbitrary distinction between ancient and modern political fragmentation.

Your point is that Westeros won't become politically fragmented again because it didn't happen in England and Greece.

It's a bad comparison, because neither of these countries are a tenth of the size of Westeros (which is roughly South America's size), and because both these countries actually did revert many, many times to decentralized and disunified control. In Greece's case, it has not since achieved the unity it had under Alexander, and has many times been held between two or more major powers.

[Stanmore]

While possible, the fact that 11,870 years out of 12,000 Westeros is decentralised suggests you do need dragons.

That or some kind of industrial or technological revolution that's centuries away. Hell, Europe was never unified under a single authority, and Europe is smaller than Westeros.

The same is true for almost any empire though. Roman, Mongol, Spanish, British. All made up of lands with 1000s of years of seperate history united under one banner only to fall apart afterwards. That doesn't mean that only these powers had the ability to form such empires or that other empires can't arise over the same land masses. Dragons are just the tools the targs happened to use, maybe the next empire will use guns or manpower or magic or lord knows what else.

The Americas haven't ever been united under a single authority, Spanish or otherwise.

Hell, neither North nor South America have ever been united under a single authority.

What does that matter? The spanish empire was still bigger than westeros. If you want to get pedantic the Targs never ruled all of Westeros either as they never controlled the land beyond the wall.

It's about context, and in context, 130 years of unity is nothing compared to almost 12,000 years of disunity.

The united states has been unified for less than 200 years, Before that mankind existed in the americas for 15,000 years. Are you saying that if the united states collapses no nation will ever be able to regain all that teritory?

[Chaircat Meow]

England is about a 100th of the size of Westeros, and it has regular seasons.

And it still breakes into distinct political entities every few generations for almost a thousand years!

The series is based on the War of the Roses for goodness sakes.

I'm feeling lazy on this one, so I'll just link thisto demonstrate how your ideas Greece stayed together as one or two political entities from the time of Alexander onwards isn't correct.

I'll also mention that even today, Greece is still not unified like it was under Alexander. Under Alexander, Greece was the mainland, Macedon, parts of Illyria, and most islands. That's about 5 or 6 different countries today.

Again, Greece is tiny compared to Westeros. Not to mention Greece never, ever regains the unity it had under Alexander, when Macedon and parts of Illyria were considered part of Greece.

Dude, I was talking about classical Greece given I referred to the fact the place never reverted to city states and bloody Macedonia wasn't really part of that anyway. Bits of Illyria, fine, little nibbles, like the Islands.

As I said, I was interested in splits in a nation that occurred internally, as you say will happen with Westeros. So splits between Ottomans and Venetians, or Byzantines and Latins don't address the point. But I guess I ought to have made that a bit clearer.

I'll just state again, the idea is that you can have a country with a longstanding divison into a stable number of power blocs, i.e. Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, which suffers a process of unification (Alex, Romans) and then never goes back to a similar division at all. The parallel in westeros would be the idea that just because Aegon united seven or so kingdoms people won't necessarily revert to them again, like the Greeks never went back to their city states.

As for size, Westeros demonstrates an astonishing degree of political unity within its kingdoms, regardless of size, so I kind of discount this although I take it as a fair point.

[Chaircat Meow]

You're making an arbitrary distinction between ancient and modern political fragmentation.

No, with Greece that was the whole damn point, which you've decided to ignore.

And the modern fragmentation is largely to do with imperialism and the geopolitics of the great empires of the region, which isn't relevant.

Also, how the hell do the Wars of the Roses relate to political fragmentation in the sense we are talking about?

You know, Yugoslavia style????

Edit: Moreover, there is no difference between ancient and modern fragmentation, unless you just mean the move away from divisions based on city states happened longer ago. The point is that its an example of where a pre-existing type of political division is destroyed by external force and then never re-asserts itself. That's it. Its clearly relevant to Westeros. How the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Austrian Empire was handled is all beside the point.

[danm_999]

Also, how the hell do the Wars of the Roses relate to political fragmentation in the sense we are talking about?

You claimed there was no political disunity in England from 1000 onwards.

You know, Yugoslavia style????

If you're point is that once unification is achieved, the process is irreversible, Yugoslavia mightn't be the best example.

[Sailing the sunset sea]

Even without dragons the seven kingdoms can be held if you have large ressources and are very smart about political alliances. But neither Joffrey nor Cersei were fit for the job. I imagine few people are.

It will be much easier to "hold" the Seven Kingdoms if the political structure is changed. Maybe a council of seven representatives would work. That way there would be much less need for any rebellions, since every kingdom would be represented and have a say in what's going on.

[danm_999]

I'll just state again, the idea is that you can have a country with a longstanding divison into a stable number of power blocs, i.e. Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, which suffers a process of unification (Alex, Romans) and then never goes back to a similar division at all. The parallel in westeros would be the idea that just because Aegon united seven or so kingdoms people won't necessarily revert to them again, like the Greeks never went back to their city states.

As for size, Westeros demonstrates an astonishing degree of political unity within its kingdoms, regardless of size, so I kind of discount this although I take it as a fair point.

Ok, so that's a fair bit clearer, but what I'd say to that is, whilst conquerors in Greece attempted to stamp out traditional political entities like Athens and Sparta, and bind the peoples to a nation state, the Targaryen process of controlling Westeros has been to rely on those traditional and regional political entities for power.

They let the Starks keep the North, the Dornish keep Dorne, the Lannisters keep the Westerlands, the Arryns keep the Vale, they've effectively allowed the Seven Kingdoms to continue to exist (even in vernacular) in a way that's going to make it impossible to indefinitely control them.

The Targaryens are effectively a parasite, and Westeros the host (though I don't necessarily mean that to be derogatory), in that without dragons they don't control the continents wealth, infrastructure, navy, or the vast bulk of its military forces. To sustain control over so large a place with so little leverage with such basic technological tools, it's just going to be near impossible in the long run. The Roman Empire (the truly analogous political entity to Westeros in scope we SHOULD have been discussing) was the best, most competant attempt in our history, and even it failed after a few hundred years.

[HouseHarrison]

No 1 single House can take over all of Westeros on its own, no. It can only be done if an abnormal circumstance (The other Great Houses all experienced catastrophes) or through alliances. Lannister-Tyrell and Baratheon-Tyrell would probably be the most likely to do it.

[Chaircat Meow]

You claimed there was no political disunity in England from 1000 onwards.

If you're point is that once unification is achieved, the process is irreversible, Yugoslavia mightn't be the best example.

Ok, so that's a fair bit clearer, but what I'd say to that is, whilst conquerors in Greece attempted to stamp out traditional political entities like Athens and Sparta, and bind the peoples to a nation state, the Targaryen process of controlling Westeros has been to rely on those traditional and regional political entities for power.

They let the Starks keep the North, the Dornish keep Dorne, the Lannisters keep the Westerlands, the Arryns keep the Vale, they've effectively allowed the Seven Kingdoms to continue to exist (even in vernacular) in a way that's going to make it impossible to indefinitely control them.

Ah, well, at least we understand each other.

But as far as Greece goes I'm not sure they did as the Romans tried to encourage the foundation of city states in the manner of Greece in other parts of the Empire, although admittedly stripped of military power. But regardless, there might be differences, but the point I was making was that just because you have a certain political landscape for a period, it doesn't mean there is a kind of natural tendency to always revert to it, no matter how long it has lasted, as people come to conceive of politics in different ways. And it looks like Westerosi nobles do, by and large, or did for a long time. And the great nobles can always break up feudal kingdoms if they want, or have a good chance of doing so, but these prove quite enduring.

Edit: I meant Yugoslavia was the textbook example of fragmentation. Jeez, you really have gone all out to misunderstand me. sigh. I meant Yugoslavia is all about a nation flying apart and all the sides wanting to be separate where the Wars of the Roses were nothing of the kind.