Well, the Great Game is the term I use to describe “that long epoch between the assimilation of the Andals and the coming of the dragons” when the “Kings of the Reach
warred constantly with their neighbors in a perpetual struggle for land, power,
and glory. The Kings of the Rock, the Storm Kings, the many quarrelsome kings
of Dorne, and the Kings of the Rivers and Hills could all be counted amongst
their foes (and ofttimes amongst their allies as well.)”
In terms of what the countries wanted, the prize of the Great Game was the conquest of all of southern Westeros, or at least as much of southern Westeros as possible in the hopes of becoming a continental hegemon that could overawe those parts of Westeros it couldn’t conquer outright.
No one quite succeeded in that ambition, although many tried, in no small part because one of the rules of the Great Game is that the moment anyone looked to be winning, everyone else would gang up against them. Hence when the Reach had conquered all of the Stormlands save for Storm’s End itself, “the King of the Rock swept down upon the Reach in his absence, forcing him to lift his siege and hurry home to deal with the westermen. The broader war that followed involved three Dornish kings and two from the riverlands.” Likewise, when Arlan III conquered the Riverlands, “the Dornish came swarming over the Boneway to press them in the south, and the Kings of the Reach sent their knights forth from Highgarden to reclaim all that had been lost in the west,” and eventually the Ironborn took it off them. And just before Aegon landed, it looked like Harren the Black might be the next up for the dogpile.
The somewhat annoying thing about the Great Game, as I was just discussing with @goodqueenaly, is that we don’t have enough information from the sources to chart the whole 5,000 year period: we have a good bit of info about the early Great Game (from the Andal Conquest to the time of Lancel IV, Gyles III, and Torrence Teague), and we have a good bit of info about the late Great Game (from the time of Arlan III to Aegon’s Conquest), but the middle is very vague.
I call it “The Age of the Hundred Kingdoms”, but check out what I wrote up on A Wiki of Ice and Fire for that; there’s some debate regarding whether:1 – It’s the official term for the era between the Andal Invasion of 6,000-4,000 (ending with the Iron Islands), and thus stretches across around 4,000 years of history, or…2 – It’s a general term for “anything before the Targaryen Conquest, even before the Andal Invasion”. Parts of the World book and GRRM comments imply the former, others cite references to the latter.
So I read the article. Very useful!
The “Age of A Hundred Kingdoms” part is a bit tricky, because some of the Seven Kingdoms had already begun (or even completed) the process of national unification before the arrival of the Andals: the North was a unified kingdom, the Riverlands and the Rock were partially unified, the Vale wasn’t, the Reach was, the Iron Islands were, Dorne wasn’t, the Stormlands were (mostly).
I do have a quibble about the timing of the War Across the Water/Worthless War. If the War was begun during the reign of Theon Stark, who “later in his blood-drenched reign, he himself conquered the Three Sisters and landed an army on the Fingers, but these conquests did not long endure,” it couldn’t have started ~2000 BC since Theon was a contemporary of the beginning of the Andal Invasions, unless you take the extreme short estimate.
Well, Yandel briefly touches on this once: were the ancient Andals “kings” the way “king” later meant absolute monarch? Like “Erreg”? Because the “Kings of Winter” of the pre-Andal Starks were more of a ….loose hegemony. Only later did they strengthen their grip and call themselves “King in the North”.
I mean, the real-life example I point to is ancient Ireland. With all of its numerous “Kings”, but then “High Kings” who were more of a “ringleader”.OR….you could deal with the fact that Elio & Linda flat out said that when GRRM wrote the regional histories he wasn’t paying too close attention to chronologies, and the Iron Islands in particular is a bit messy.
Ultimately, records from that era are sketchy at best.
Depends on which kingdom you’re talking about, but the Starks had conquered all of their rivals in the North before the Andals arrived, so I’d say that counts. Likewise, Garth Goldenhand is clearly a king in full command of the power and might of the Reach and he comes before the Andals. The Lannisters are a bit less well-established, but they still hold half the Westerlands.
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