Life before the Targaryens

[Don Roberto]

I know this book is mainly about the Targaryen rule and dynasty, but is there any chance we'll see what life in Westeros was before Aegon's Conquest? I don't mean the tales of Lann the Clever, Garth Greenhands and other folk figures, but the actual daily lives and society from when the Seven Kingdoms were, infact, seven kingdoms?

[Gurkhal]

I know this book is mainly about the Targaryen rule and dynasty, but is there any chance we'll see what life in Westeros was before Aegon's Conquest? I don't mean the tales of Lann the Clever, Garth Greenhands and other folk figures, but the actual daily lives and society from when the Seven Kingdoms were, infact, seven kingdoms?

To be honest I don't think that society has really changed much in those three centuries. So I don't think there was much difference at all, with the only exception that the top of the social pyramid looked a bit differently and with more people having the title of king. Otherwise miller did their work, as did smiths, as did knights. The same things were considered in the male sphere and the same things were considered in the female sphere as under the Targaryens. Not much change at all.

But on one little thing I would think that there was some difference. And that is the question of the Faith. When the Faith had its army and there was not a single king to oppose them I would think that the Faith had more practical influence on people's life, more weight to throw around and was probably more involved in politics and daily life in a different, harder, way.

[Mikkel]

To be honest I don't think that society has really changed much in those three centuries. So I don't think there was much difference at all, with the only exception that the top of the social pyramid looked a bit differently and with more people having the title of king. Otherwise miller did their work, as did smiths, as did knights. The same things were considered in the male sphere and the same things were considered in the female sphere as under the Targaryens. Not much change at all.

But on one little thing I would think that there was some difference. And that is the question of the Faith. When the Faith had its army and there was not a single king to oppose them I would think that the Faith had more practical influence on people's life, more weight to throw around and was probably more involved in politics and daily life in a different, harder, way.

Well said.

In fact, one of the critiques often leveled at the Targaryan dynasty is how (relatively) little they did with 300 years of power.

[elanmorin]

We already had a glimpse of how life was before Aegon's conquest. It's when Bran sees through the eyes of the weirwood tree in winterfell the human sacrifice that happened there.

Before the Targaryens there was no centralized authority in Westeros, so the Great Lords were actually kings over their own lands while the Ironborn prayed on almost everything near the sea and near the end even ruled openly over the riverlands. In the North things changed very little besides the Stark losing their title as kings and "just" becoming High Lords.

[BreastplateWithNipples]

I would love to hear more about the wars between the Kingdoms. Each kingdom maintained their dominant dynasty for 1000s of years and most of the time also its traditional lands. So they can't always have fought over the crowns or over huge tracts of land, can they?

Another thing I'd love to see is some more history of the Bolton-Stark conflicts. What is the Boltons' view of those conflicts? What was the reason they fought more and harder against the Starks than the other houses? Some claim, perhaps, to a kingship of their own in the eastern part of the North?

[AegonSnow]

We already had a glimpse of how life was before Aegon's conquest. It's when Bran sees through the eyes of the weirwood tree in winterfell the human sacrifice that happened there.

Before the Targaryens there was no centralized authority in Westeros, so the Great Lords were actually kings over their own lands while the Ironborn prayed on almost everything near the sea and near the end even ruled openly over the riverlands. In the North things changed very little besides the Stark losing their title as kings and "just" becoming High Lords.

We also hear some stories about the Chequy Lion in the Sworn Sword

[bertramboso]

Given that the mode of production (essentially feudal, with a narrow warrior elite confiscating the surplus from a subject peasantry) didn't change with the Targaryen dynasty, I'd imagine that very little has changed. With the exception, as a previous poster said, of the Faith. My guess would be that the Faith before the Conquest was able to serve as a mediator of sorts between the various kingdoms, given that it was a widely (if not universally-in the North) acknowledge institution capable of transcending local loyalties.

I'm guessing that the Targaryen conquest didn't change the basic power relations governing the Seven Kingdoms when they were independent-as Thucydides put it, "the strong did what they could, and the weak suffered what they must."

[Don Roberto]

The Faith would certainly be a big changing point. But also territory. Where there clashes of resources between kingdoms? Were the boundaries firmly established, or did it go back and forth? If a knight of one kingdom commited a crime in another kingdom, how was that handled between them? There was no slavery during the Targaryen rule, supposedly a continuation of westerosi practices, but was that really always the case, especially among First Men kingdoms?

We know the Storm kingdom the River kingdom, and that house Hoare pillaged and conquered the western coast for years, so there was likely a lot of conflicts going on, and maybe that reflected a lot in the daily lives of lords and peasants alike. Maybe even the relationship between the king and his lord (and those lords with smaller lords) was very different than the pasteurized ways after AL. If even nowadays in the story disconnected parts of Westeros still practice their own customs, that changes the way one region behaves from another (first night privileges of the Umbers, cannibalism in Skagos, thralls in the Iron Islands, paramours in Dorne, etc.), I imagine during a time when the kingdoms were even more separated, life differed a lot from place to place.

Or maybe it didn't. But i'd surely like to read about it.