Without outside intervention like Aegon I, how do you think the Westerosi Great Game would have continued? Did any Kingdoms have the power to create supra-national Kingdoms like Arlan III or Harwyn Hardhand did? Was greater unification among the Andals inevitable/already in development?
Am I wrong in thinking that WOIAF seems to be overstating the declining situation of House Durrandon somewhat?
I mean, yes, it is true that their power has been on the wane for centuries at that point… but on the wane from a historical high point wherein they ruled the biggest, baddest slice of Westeros. All that the ironborn have done is push them back into their traditional borders. I’m sure that the Kings of the Reach and the Dornish had been “nibbling at” and “harassing” their domains all the while, but it isn’t apparent that they’re in any worse a position than they were during the many thousands of years where their borders looked… very much like they did in 0 AC.
I also, with respect to Steven (I don’t have my books handy right at the moment) don’t know that you can rightly say that Harren would “keep pushing south.” Because if I recall right… Harren hadn’t ever pushed south? Like, at all? Harwyn Hardhand threw the Stormlords across the Rush, but Halleck, his son and heir, was actually defeated in battle by all three of the Lannisters and the Durrandons and the Arryns, I believe, and only succeeded in adding Duskendale and Rosby his holdings.
But Harren the Black? He did… nothing, right? He spent his entire reign looting the Riverlands to build Harrenhal and then he died. I’m not aware of any successful military campaigns on his part, against the Durrandons or otherwise. Indeed, I think that WOIAF is also overstating “No king in Westeros was more feared than Black Harren, whose cruelty had become legendary all through the Seven Kingdoms.”
Like, yes, that was almost certainly true… but not because Harren was especially skilled on the field of battle or renowned as an amazing commander or because he controlled overwhelming resources, but because he was a bloody-handed tyrant who was visiting wrack and ruin on his own realm and it was probably widely thought he’d start a stupendously bloody war at some point, and his position in the center meant that many different kingdoms could worry about being the one jumped on.
Or to put it another way; you would be accurate in a narrowly technical sense to say “the Blackwoods are the Brackens most feared foes.” That makes it sound like the Blackwoods are super badass, but it actually just means that the Blackwoods are simply the most salient threat to the Brackens at any given time. I feel like WOIAF is messing with us a bit, trying to use linguistic choices to make Harren look like more of a potential hegemon than he actually was.
WOIAF strongly suggests that Harren was going to push south: “…with Harrenhal at last nearing completion, the ironborn were soon free to seek fresh conquests.” Indeed, as I’ve argued in my essay, the whole point of Harrenhal was to free up Ironborn strength from having to hold down the Riverlands to allow them to go at the Stormlands with a free hand.
Also, in terms of Harren’s own conquests, we have this conundrum:
So, when Aegon I started up, Harren Kingdom of the Isles and Rivers was clearly on the offensive:
“…but the most belligerent kings of Aegon’s time were the two whose realms lay closest to Dragonstone, Harren the Black and Argilac the Arrogant. From their great citadel Storm’s End, the Storm Kings of House Durrandon had once ruled the eastern half of Westeros from Cape Wrath to the Bay of Crabs, but their powers had been dwindling for centuries. The Kings of the Reach had nibbled at their domains from the west, the Dornishmen harassed them from the south, and Harren the Black and his ironmen had pushed them from the Trident and the lands north of the Blackwater Rush… North of the Blackwater, the riverlands were ruled by the bloody hand of Harren the Black of House Hoare, King of the Isles and the Rivers. Harren’s ironborn grandsire, Harwyn Hardhand, had taken the Trident from Argilac’s grandsire, Arrec, whose own forebears had thrown down the last of the river kings centuries earlier. Harren’s father had extended his domains east to Duskendale and Rosby. Harren himself had devoted most of his long reign, close on forty years, to building a gigantic castle beside the Gods Eye, but with Harrenhal at last nearing completion, the ironborn were soon free to seek fresh conquests. No king in Westeros was more feared than Black Harren, whose cruelty had become legendary all through the Seven Kingdoms.”
Hence why, when Aegon started, Argilac Durrandon and Sharra Arryn both approached Aegon about an anti-Harren alliance, with Argilac hoping to “establish the Targaryens along the Blackwater as a buffer between his own lands and those of Harren the Black,” and Sharra looking for “all the lands east of the Green Fork of the Trident for the Vale’s support against Black Harren.” Although if you want a good sense of how crab-bucket politics the Great Game could get, consider that Princess Meria of Dorne approached Aegon with a plan to gang up on the Stormlands…So you have two dynamics at once: a bunch of players wanting to pounce on the declining Stormlands to get what they can while they can, but also a number of players seeing the Ironborn as the new threat that needs to be jumped on with both feet lest they win the Great Game.
With no Aegon, I would imagine Harren would keep pushing south as the Durrandons ran out of steam…up until a crucial point, probably during a siege of Storm’s End. Then you’d see a couple things happen: first, the Vale would launch an invasion of the eastern Riverlands to “liberate their Andal brethren from the heathens.” Second, the Rock and the Reach will announce that “Harren the Black is a threat to all of Westeros,” and promptly invade the Riverlands from the west and the south…although maybe they’ll do something weird like launching a joint naval invasion of the Iron Islands at the same time. Third, Harren will be forced to pull back, and everything turns into a blood bath in the Riverlands.
And the Great Game would shift, likely with the Iron Islands reduced, the Riverlands divided (probably with the Westerlands grabbing Riverrun and the Trident, the Reach trying to grab everything from Stony Sept to Lord Harroway’s Town to Maidenpool and overreaching, and the Arryns fighting the Reachermen for Crackclaw Point and the Westermen for the Ruby Ford), and everything in chaos. The Durrandons might luck out with a rump state against fierce Dornish pressure – although who knows, maybe a Gardener decides to get their own back for Garth X by burning Sunspear or something, and that gives them enough breathing room to rebuild their fortunes. Oh and I’m sure that a Gardener will start talking about “saving the Stormlands from the Dornish” and the claims of Garth VII’s daughters.
So yeah, there’s plenty of ways to redraw the map to build multi-national states – the problem is the Great Game makes all of this unstable as hell, because it’s designed to prevent anyone from winning.
On the one hand, we’re told that Halleck’s wars against the Storm Kings were unsuccessful. On the other, we’re told that “Harren’s father had extended his domains east to Duskendale and Rosby.” This, in turn, is contradicted by the accounts that Harren himself is said to have conquered the same lands a generation later: “Harren the Black and his ironmen had pushed them from the Trident and the lands north of the Blackwater Rush.“
(Also, WOIAF has Aegon saying that “all the lands east of the Gods Eye from the Trident to the Blackwater Rush…had belonged to Harrenhal for more than a generation. They were not Argilac’s to give.” So who knows?)
So my way to rationalize this conflicting information is to suggest that after an initial success in which he’d taken Duskendale and Rosby, Halleck had ceded back those lands and perhaps some more of the northern Crownlands in his wars against Argilac, as we’re told that “The fall was halted briefly when a fierce warrior prince, Argilac (called the Arrogant), donned the stag’s crown, but even a man as mighty as he could only stay the tide, not turn it back. Last of the Storm Kings, last of the Durrandon, Argilac did just that for a time…” (which in addition answers the question about the decline of the Stormlander empire)
This would explain why A. Halleck has his reputation as such a loser, B. why Argilac had a reputation as a conqueror in his youth, and why out of pride he might offer Aegon the lands he had won with his own hand even if he didn’t have them anymore, and. C. why Harren would have made a reputation in retaking the lands his father had lost.
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