In the first Sack of Rome in 410, Alaric of the Visigoths extracted 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, 4,000 silk tunics, 5,000 dyed leather hides, and 3,000 pounds of pepper. While technically that was more of a ransom than the city itself being ransacked, it does indicate how much one could theoretically extract from a city.
For the same reason that noblemen in the Middle Ages didn’t expropriate every monastery or benefice: professional warriors fear damnation more than most.
The Quiet Isle is not on the west coast, so it doesn’t have to deal with Ironborn Lindisfarne re-enactors.
The Quiet Isle is pretty far up the Trident, so it’s a long way for Narrow Sea pirates to sail, compared to preying on the major trade routes.
The Quiet Isle is on incredibly shallow waters (which is a bit odd, you would think that the confluence of the Trident would result in a fairly deep channel, but it must be a very wide and shallow bay), so that it’s actually landlocked when the tide goes out. Thus, there’s daily periods when pirate ships would find themselves beached on the way out or running aground on the way in.
It’s ok, the Wolverine defending the mansion sequence is basically responsible for Logan, but it’s got really creaky dialogue and plotting and some glaring thematic issues.
First Class is definitely better (although not without flaws), DOFP is better on thematics and plotting, but has its own flaws and isn’t as good as First Class.
I primarily read Marvel’s back cataogue through Marvel Unlimited or through old DVDs of Captain America and X-Men comics, so I don’t know. But I doubt it’s a bad way.
I think it’s a risk thing: in the last 300 years, there have been four episodes where the Ironborn have been actively attacking Westerosi ships/mainland:
Dalton Greyjoy’s reaving during and after the Dance: ~3 years.
Dagon Greyjoy’s reaving after the Great Spring Sickness: at least 3 years.
Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion: 1 year.
Ironborn invasions during War of Five Kings: 3 years so far.
So that’s 10 years (although could be more, because we don’t know when Dagon was brought down) out of 300, or 3.3% of the time.
The question is: is a 3.3% risk of piracy worth it?
Yes. There is the Diolkos in Ancient Greece which connected the Gulf of Corinth and the Saronic Gulf, the Vikings in Russia established portage routes connecting the Volga, the Western Divina, the Dnieper, and the Don, and then of course there’s the portage routes in French North America that fur traders and trappers used to get their products to market, given the frequency of rapids and waterfalls that made straightforward riverrine transport difficult.
We don’t have much in the way of hard textual evidence, and the Riverlands in general are really tricky because they underperform in power given their population and relative prosperity. What we know is that A. the Mallisters have a fleet of six longships and two war galleys (which is not a large fleet, but not a small one either), and B. were able to hold off the main force of the Ironborn during Greyjoy’s Rebellion.
I did an estimate in the past and said that I thought 4,000-5,000 was a reasonable figure. It’s not the most solid estimate I’ve ever done, for the reasons stated above, but I don’t think they’re particularly weaker than the Freys, given their geostrategic location, its economic advantages in trade (to the extent that the Freys are wealthy, most of their trade has to pass through Seagard), and the historical evidence.
As to Seagard itself. It definitely is a port – Theon sails to Pyke from Seagard on a merchant ship from Oldtown – although it’s definitely a port town at most. As for why it has trade despite the Ironborn presence, keep in mind Ironborn piracy has lapsed for long periods of time (several thousand years), and that the presence of pirates tends to presuppose trade since pirates don’t bother to sail where there’s no one to rob, because often geography means that ships have to sail through a given region no matter what. (Think about the real world example of huge amounts of shipping going through certain pirate-infamous locations like the Caribbean or the South China Sea or the Horn of Africa….)
In this case, if you’re going to trade from the North, the Vale, or the Riverlands to the Westerlands or from the Westerlands and even parts of the Reach to the same, it’s faster to go through Seagard and trans-ship down the Blue Fork or portage over to the Kingsroad and then over to White Harbor than to sail all the way around the continent or to take it overland. Not safer, but faster, and since time literally is money when you’re talking about transportation costs and their relationship to profit margins, a lot of folks will go with the faster option.
Here are some things I think Renaissance fantasy should emphasize to set itself apart from High Fantasy or medieval fantasy:
Different geographies: High Fantasy/Medieval fantasy tend to be set either in rural countrysides (following the pastoral tradition) or vast, untamed wilderness (following the Romantic), largely due to Tolkein’s anti-modern. The Renaissance very much was an era in which cities and commerce and finance were starting to become important, rather than just subsistence agriculture.
Different societies:
High Fantasy/Medieval fantasy hasn’t traditionally interrogated class particularly well, and so you tend to get idealized images of happy peasants, rightful kings, and brave knights. (It’s only in recent years with the rise of deconstructionist fantasy that we’ve started to question this stuff.) But in the Renaissance, you start to see merchant families and guilds not just exerting political influence, but outright running city-states.
Different politics: rather than just kings and lords, “you’ve got various forms of Republics, mercantile city-states, and petty princedoms, all of which gives much more scope for ordinary people to do important things.”
Different cultures: rather than an emphasis on the ancient and the eternal, there should be an emphasis on cultural change. “an explosion of knowledge, with a bubbling ferment of science, arts, literature, philosophy, history, political science, and a roster of geniuses whose human brilliance is much more appealing than the aloof [I think I was leaning towards alien or inhuman, without really putting my finger on it] other-ness of a Merlin.”
Cosmopolitanism: in part because of urbanism and in part because of increased trade, you have a lot more cultural diversity, so in my mind Renaissance Fantasy ought to involve a melange between many different cultures beyond Expies of white Europeans, with cities full of immigrant workers, foreign merchants and diplomats, imported goods and ideas, a sense that the city is part of a global network.
Hopefully, Renaissance fantasy should help us move beyond repetitions of the Return of theTrue King by way of the Hero’s Journey, and allow us to tell other kinds of stories.
Huh. This means that the Discworld books – at least, the ones set in Ankh-Morpork – can be called
Renaissance fantasy. They include all of these points:
A city-based fantasy series
Different classes of society, with various guilds playing major roles throughout the books
A mercantile city-state ruled by a not-very-tyrannical Tyrant (and one in which the One True King has absolutely no interest in claiming the throne)
A city that’s constantly changing and evolving throughout the series, with a strong emphasis on technological and social change, and how the two drive each other
A city that’s a melting pot for all sorts of cultures and species from all over the Disc – and not to mention, the a huge centre for new goods and ideas.
Yeah, Ankh-Morpork was a huge inspiration for my thinking about this.
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