If we’re talking about just the Houses, not the Boltons and the Freys and Roose’s uncertain allies…House Manderly is significantly stronger than House Bolton in the Year 298 AC.
And as I’ll argue in my upcoming bonus essays, this is deliberate on the part of House Stark, which has pursued a policy of containment vs. the Boltons for thousands of years. Hence the close relationship with the Umbers, hence the creation of the Karstarks and the Greystarks, hence the Wolf’s Den, hence the Manderlys and White Harbor.
Controlling the mouth of the North is an endless bonanza, and judging from Bran II ACOK and Davos II ADWD, Wyman Manderly knows how to use it.
I’m going to talk about this more in my Davos III ADWD essay when I finally finish the damn thing (like with Tyrion V ADWD, it’s genuinely intimidating to write about), but: the Manderlys’ self-conception as the guardians of the North and the Starks, as rooted in both geography and history, represents a triumph of assimilation meant to dovetail with Davos’ rise, allowing for the political empathy he and Wylla express in the Merman’s Court. Wyman’s list of titles is basically a microcosm of this, especially “defender of the dispossessed.”
Can’t wait to read it!
And I love that title of Wyman’s, because it so encapsulates the Manderly identity and M.O: taking a stand on behalf of what’s right, but very much from a position of enlightened self-interest.
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