I don’t think that’s the reason – Casterly Rock clearly has the financial capacity to build enormous fleets, given the money it’s loaned the Crown over the last 40 years.
If I had to pick a cause, I’d say that there was a political split within the elite between those favoring a naval strategy and attendant investments and those favoring a land-based strategy and attendant investments, similar to that which happened in Classical Athens and other places. And these splits tend to be regional and class in nature – naval strategies empower coastal regions, port cities, merchants, whereas the cavalry-intensive armies empower the nobility and rural areas.
@racefortheironthrone, could you please explain that last paragraph more, and how it specifically applies to House Lannister? The Lannisters are in a coastal region and control a port city, which you say would favor naval strength, but the Lannisters are also clearly nobles, which you say would favor cavalry, but … how does that work in a feudal society where the lord paramount gets to decide? I don’t understand what you mean by a political split here.
There are several historical cases where there were political conflicts over whether to invest in the navy or the army, and these conflicts had class dimensions.
For example, during the Persian wars, there was a split over whether Athens should invest its resources (in the form of a rich vein of silver found in its state-owned mines) in land defenses or its navy (the famous “wooden walls” of Athens). Themistocles favored the navy, and Cimon the army. In order to be in the army, you had to have enough money to afford the armor of a hoplite, so its ranks were middle-class and up and the elite of the army was the hippeis, the aristocratic cavalrymen. But anyone of any social rank could join the navy and pull an oar. Themistocles won that political conflict, invested Athens’ money in the navy, and Plutarch writes of a famous moment before the Persian invasion where Cimon publicly sacrificed a bridle at the Acropolis as a symbol that it would be Athens’ working class and not its aristocracy who would lead the war effort.
Likewise, there were recurring conflicts in English/British history of whether to invest state resources in (or design military strategy around) the Army, which was dominated by the nobility with their training in horsemanship and swordplay, or the Navy, which was dominated by merchants’ sons, the middle class, and professionals. And this strategy tended to be played out in partisan politics, with the Whigs favoring the Navy and the Tories the Army.
So how would this play out in the Westerlands? Well, emphasizing the navy would be to the advantage of Lannisport and Kayce and Fair Isle and other coastal regions, since the fleets would be located in their territories, improving their economies, protecting their shores, and hiring their sons as ships officers, whereas emphasizing the army would be more to the advantage of land-locked houses like the Swyfts, Serretts, Lyddens, Leffords, Braxes, etc.
Depending on which side the Lannisters of Casterly Rock favored at any given time, and depending on the individual presence and authority of the given King/Lord of the Rock, you’re going to get different policies. So it may be that, for example, after the loss of Tommen II’s fleet and Brightroar that his successors had a Brandon the Burner-like attitude to the navy and that’s why the Lannisport fleet is small. It could be that Gerion, with his love of travel and his own ship, would have emphasized the navy if he’d been firstborn, as opposed to Tywin who gained his glory through the army. It’s all speculation, tho.
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