According to the World Book everyone’s beloved Egg sent massive shipments of grain to the North during the great winter which lasted for three years. Egg being the Good Samaritan that he is couldn’t let his Northern subjects continue to starve and sent them the much needed relief which they desperately needed to survive.
Yet strangely enough it seems “there were some who felt he did too much in this regard”. This begs the question. In a land like Westeros where there have been cruel kings and selfish kings, king that are completely indifferent to the suffering of their people, since when can a king do “too much” for the good of his people in a time of crisis?
What irks me about this is the fact that Egg genuinely did this out of concern for his people and because of this he got scorned by some. He had no hidden agenda, nor was he stepping on anyone’s toes for acting out of empathy. He didn’t even go to the extremes of wasting vast amounts of resources just for the sake of acting charitable the way Baelor did. And even if he was, people were suffering and dying on mass up North, given the circumstances I’m sure out of solidarity the rest of the kingdoms would understand.
For me personally I am reminded of Hurricane Katrina and how I wish the Federal Government had done more in the wake of that disaster. They were rightly criticized for their mishandling and lack of leadership in responding and providing relief in the aftermath of Katrina. But could you imagine if George W Bush and his executive office did an excellent job in handling Katrina and then got criticized for doing “too much”.
I’m not surprised. In any federal system, you’re going to get resource conflicts. Given the relative recent nature of the Westerosi kingdom and historical and cultural differences between the regions, that’s going to get intensified, because there’s less feelings of commonality between the regions.
So yeah, there’s probably some folks down in the Reach who don’t appreciate the King taking valuable grain that they could have sold for a higher price and giving it to the heathen Northmen, who might also remember that Aerys I didn’t do anything to help them out during the drought. Likewise, I can’t imagine that helping out the North was popular in the Vale, especially on the Sisters, given the historical wars between their regions.
If we’re talking real-world comparisons, what springs to mind is how many Republicans voted against Hurricane Sandy relief when New York and New Jersey needed help, and then started yelping for Federal assistance when their state got hit with a natural disaster.
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