Does Walder Frey’s tendency to have lot of children – also inspiring his offsprings to do the same – give him an advantage in the feudal game? Is there any rational benefit in having so many spares? Or is it simply a symptom of his uncontrolled lustfulness and poor planning?

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

It gives him an advantage in the sense that he’s able to make a lot of feudal ties: Royces, Swanns, Crakehalls, Blackwoods, Rosbys, Farrings, Lyddens, Waynwoods, Vances, Hunters, Carons, Hardyngs, Lannisters, Darrys, Beesburys, Wyldes, Haighs, Blanetrees, Goodbrooks, Hawicks, Vyprens, Whents, Boltons, Leffords, Paeges, Braxes, Tullys – it’s a long damn list. So pretty much everywhere you go in Westeros, there’s going to be some family with links to the Freys.

On the other hand, that’s a LOT of money spent on doweries and dowers. And the Freys are only rarely marrying heirs or heiresses, so while Frey women would usually go to live with their husband’s families, there’s a lot of weasel boys who have no prospects of inheriting land who are living at home with wives and children who need to be supported. 

Do they actually need to be supported, in the sense that there’s a downside to not supporting them?

Like… Merrett isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but if he’s to be believed, then for all his grotesque domestic abuse, Walder Frey feels he at least owes his kin and their spouses a roof over their heads and food on their plates. And apparently he brought up Stevron the same way.

But Ryman, Edwyn, and Black Walder are apparently Freys of a different color and would have no trouble at all booting a lot of their supernumerary kinfolk, second and third cousins at various removes who aren’t doing anything productive, right out the door.

This says to me that, socially speaking, there isn’t a huge downside to kicking your kin out once they’re sufficiently distant kin. A lord might face some censure for not supporting his children and maybe even his grand-children, but once you’re dealing with great-grandchildren or cousins and whatnot, giving them a horse and a sword and a bag of coin and saying “go and make your own way in the world” is absolutely something you can get away with.

I think there is a downside in that it brings the family name into dishonor – people start to associate the name Frey with poverty, with being in trade, with not being nobles any more.