When a lord or king decides to build a new seat or give lands to a knight as a reward, where does that land come from? I know that in war it can just be taken from a defeated enemy and given to a loyal supporter, but what about in peace time? Where did Daemon Blackfyre’s land come from? Or the land Daeron II built Summerhall on? I assume most, if not all, land within the borders of the realm is spoken for to one degree or another. How can you do this in peacetime without creating bad blood?

Great question, which builds nicely off of this one. 

The answer is, it depends and is complicated. Surprise, surprise.  

For one thing, liege lords don’t give away all of their land to their vassals – indeed, historically, they kept a plurality of it and usually the choicest lands for themselves while handing out the rest. So in the case of Daemon Blackfyre, who was given “a tract of land near the Blackwater” (no indication of how huge it was), chances are that was royal land in the Crownlands, as opposed to the fiefdom of any lord. 

In the case of Summerhall, however, we have a more complicated story. Summerhall is located “where the boundaries of the Reach, the stormlands, and Dorne met.” This leaves a couple possibilities: first, Summerhall could be on formerly Dornish land that was given to the King as part of the peace treaty. (In which case, the political bramble is the Martells to grasp.) Second, it could be formerly part of the Reach or the Stormlands, in which case the King has to get the local lord and/or the Lord Paramount to hand it over. 

This is where the politics get delicate. Yes, the king could potentially just take the land, like Aegon IV did with the Teats, but that causes bad blood. It becomes somewhat easier if the ownership of the land is in question – the last owner died intestate or the new owner can’t pay the customary tax that a new vassal owes their liege lord when they inherit, the owner is a minor who happens to be a ward of the crown, two or more claimants are in dispute about who owns it and are appealing to the king, etc. –  because the king gets to rule on that. 

But potentially, the king can offer the owner to take the land off their hands. This isn’t exactly the same thing as buying and selling the land outright – what’s actually going on is the crown getting the owner to agree to surrender their customary rights to various incomes and usages of that land – and it’s got more in common with barter. Most likely, the king would be offering title on some other land, or some royal charter or privilege (think water rights, hunting rights, etc.), or possibly a royal pension or a royal office, as an exchange for their current rights, instead of a sum of money. 

It can be done, and it was done all the time, but it requires extreme delicacy because if the owner decides to dig in their heels the king either faces a lot of bad press and probably a protracted legal battle.