That soon after the Dance, where House Lannister fought for the other side?
He’d probably see as giving the Lannisters too much power and influence compared to the Crown.
Would the Lannisters have needed his permission?
No snark, I seriously wonder. Tytos Lannister had extraordinary lending operations going on all the time; indeed, lending money at generous terms and then forgiving that debt was one of his big problems and one of Tywin’s first big political acts after the War of the Ninepenny Kings, with Tywin deciding “fuck this” and operating as a debt collector. The king didn’t need to be involved in any way.
This all involved mostly noblemen, of course, but I don’t see any reason these lending operations couldn’t be further extended. You’d just formalize it; establish the appropriate bureaucracy and infrastructure in Lannisport and let those classes and people that are capable of participating in borrowing, lending, and depositing know that the Golden Bank, backed by all the wealth of the Rock, is open for business.
Indeed, I would be surprised if there aren’t pseudo-banks already operating in Westeros. My understanding is that great merchant families and companies often operated as de facto banks; they’d issue debt, they’d bond and insure cargo, they’d take deposits, even sometimes have what were basically their own currencies. I imagine the Gulltown Arryns and the Lannisters of Lannisport have their fingers in such things.
I mean. You would, of course, want royal patronage and blessings, because that’s gonna make your life a lot easier and you can get the king to make laws to facilitate your business. But I’m unsure you’d have to go asking for that even to begin; Westerosi contract and finance law is pretty primitive but it seems to exist well enough to allow someone to just start a bank if they can convince people they’re trustworthy enough to operate as a banking .
For a formal bank, whose contracts and bills would be honored outside of the Westerlands, hell yes you need a royal charter.
And if you went ahead and did it without royal assent, that’s a quick way to find yourself accused of treason.
Your own linked post seems like it is closer to agreeing with me than not, I think? it notes the various problems you’d have trying to operate a bank with cross-kingdom connections but it is highly qualified with respect to how difficult it might be to overcome them.
I mean, take cross-kingdom contract disputes. Those must crop up anyway, like all the time. I’m sure the Iron Throne has ruled on them repeatedly. Any sort of cross-kingdom or charter agreement would… probably simply re-affirm the right of the Iron Throne to render those judgements, which brings you right back where you’ve started, where you want the king to like you and rule in your favor or at least apply the law even-handedly instead of just laughing the second he sees someone with your livery enter court and rules against them without even pretending to hear the case.
(I’m assuming that Aegon IV and Aerys did shit like that on the regular. See also Joffrey.)
So you’re going to want royal patronage no matter what, but strictly speaking you might not need it. If the other Lord Paramounts start nullifying your debts within their borders and the Iron Throne backs them up, that’s going to be a huge problem regardless of whether you hold a charter or not, isn’t it?
Ok, so let’s say that we have a cross-kingdom dispute: Golden Bank v. Oakheart. The Golden Bank of Lannisport is trying to collect on a loan that the Oakhearts took out from them a while back but then refused to pay back. What happens when the Oakhearts point to the fact that the Golden Bank has no royal charter, and thus doesn’t legally exist, so can’t bring a suit?
Royal chartering is inextricably linked to royal authority, as we saw with the Defiance of Duskendale. Unless the king wants to degrade his own authority and allow the nobility of Westeros total free reign in their own dominion, they’re not going to uphold the legality of any institution created without royal charter, an institution which by its very nature is a challenge to the supremacy of royal law.
This is why you need a royal charter, because that flips the script. If the bank is chartered by the King, then if the Lords Paramount try to nullify their debts, they’re the ones challenging the king’s authority.
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