Author: stevenattewell

Is Daeron II’s claim to the throne purely de facto? Once Daemon is legitimate, his claim through his mother should precede Daeron’s being the elder son of their father, right? How would such a claim compare to that of the Mortimers vs. the House of Lancaster? If Daemon’s original bastard status still counts, what is the point of legitimization? Why were the Beauforts legitimized if they were excepted from the royal succession?

Let’s say for the sake of argument that, for some reason, a Great Council had been called in 184 to settle the succession. How would the various claims stack out?

  • Primogeniture: clearly favors Daeron, who was born in 153 AC, whereas Daemon was born in 170 AC. (Among the other Great Bastards, Aegor was born in 172, and Bloodraven in 175). This is one of the reasons why the Blackfyres had to allege that Daeron “Falseborn” was not Aegon IV’s son – if they’re both legitimate, Daeron clearly comes first.
  • Proximity: now this might favor Daemon. Both men are sons of Aegon IV, but Daeron is the son of Naerys (daughter of Viserys II), and Daemon is the son of Daena (daughter of Aegon III). Since Aegon III came first, that would indicate that Daemon’s claim might be superior. (On the other hand, just as when the Lancastrians pointed to the recency of Henry V and Henry IV as opposed to the Yorkists going back to the sons of Edward III, this could be a contested issue). However, since the Great Council of 101 declared the female line irrelevant for succession purposes, this would probably be a wash.

As to the Wars of the Roses: I would say that Daemon’s claim would be a good bit more proximate than the Mortimer claim, since Edmund Mortimer was the great-grandson of Edward III’s second son Lionel of Antwerp (through the female line) and was only heir presumptive when Richard II was deposed, and by the time you get to Henry VI vs. Richard Duke of York you’ve got a lot of interposing kings. At the same time, the Yorkists also pointed to the direct male claim through Edward III’s fourth son Edmund of Langley. 

As for the Beaufort claim, I talked about it here and here. 

What was wage labor like in feudalism? I know it wasn’t hourly before clocks were around and stuff like that, but how was it thought of? Did they have the concept of employer and employee of a company (or the concept of a company outside of whatever the mercenaries count as). Did taking wages for work affect your class, maybe making you more than a serf but less than a skilled craftsman?

In terms of when you got paid, it depended. Most wage laborers were paid daily, but in some cases you could be paid weekly, monthly, or even yearly. 

Companies were very rare, and required special licenses and legislation to set up (think things like the East India Trading Company or the Muscovy Company) because they were monopolies. So in most cases, wage labor took place between an owner-operator and their worker.

In terms of how it was thought of in class terms, it’s a bit complicated. 

On the one hand, you had a significant body of journeymen who were paid wages, and they were significantly above serfs although below master craftsmen. Journeymen were legally free and no longer bound as apprentices were, they had property in their tools, they had certain rights (and responsibilities) as guild members, etc. And below the journeymen, you had a population of (unskilled) free laborers who worked for wages as well. 

On the other hand, a significant percent of the population (about 4-5% in rural areas and 11-17% in urban areas) were servants. And servants had a different status than other wage workers. To quote Steinfeld:

“Servants were different from other wage workers – laborers and artificers – who occupied separate social and legal niches. Servants ordinarily were single and had not yet established households of their own. Hence, they lived with their masters and served them full time for a term. Laborers generally were married and maintained their own households. In most instances, they did not serve for a term, but worked on a casual basis by the day, week, or task…

Servants were “in the service of another.” But laborers and artificers [i.e, artisans], who did not live with their employers, might be employed by one person today and someone else tomorrow or next week, or they might…simultaneously undertake a number of different tasks for different persons.”

This distinction had important legal consequences: because they were part of someone’s household, servants were under the legal control of the master of the household; servants weren’t free to leave their employer until their term of service was up; etc.  

Are Westerosi armies light on archers in the field, for the time period? It seems like they mention archers and crossbowmen hanging around camps & on walls, but not much about their contributions in battle. Or is that just a function of noble PoVs ignoring their existence & effect, because they don’t like to think about it? W/Could a lord establish a long-term military advantage by encouraging archery in his domain with prizes for village competitions & so forth? Would it be worth trying?

I would not agree with this characterization. We see archers playing a rather significant role in the Battle of the Green Fork, the Battle of the Fords, Redgrass Field, etc. 

Encouraging archery training, or indeed mandating archery training, isn’t a bad idea (it certainly worked well for Edward III), but the only way you’re going to get a long-term military advantage is if you use those archers to best effect (fighting defensive battles, equipping your archers with stakes, combined arms formation with pikemen, etc.) AND your enemy doesn’t adapt to match you. After all, Agincourt and Orleans were only 14 years apart. 

When land is forcibly transferred from one house to another, what happens to all the agreements (rents, hunting rights, etc.) that previous house had with the people living there? Could a house’s “reward” turn out to be a white elephant if their new holdings came complete with unfavourable rents?

They would almost certainly transfer over, unless otherwise specified (hence the business with the Chequey Water). 

And yeah, it could be. 

In relation to the exile land ask, if the Golden Company does have “friends in the Reach” then couldn’t you could easily have two competing claims if one of the GC’s members has claims to lands owned by a Reacher lord who turns on the Lannister-Tyrell alliance, like a Tarly bannerman?

That second if is doing a lot of work. Here are the known members who might have land claims (other than Jon Con): 

  • Franklyn Flowers (Fossoway)
  • Marq Mandrake (Mandrake)
  • Laswell, Pykewood, and Torman Peake (Peake)
  • Dick and Will Cole (Cole)
  • Jon Lothston (Lothston)
  • Lorimas, Old John, and Young John Mudd (Mudd)
  • Denys and Duncan Strong (Strong)

The Peakes are almost certain to be “friends in the Reach,” but they also have two castles’ worth of land that were taken away that the GC Peakes could split with their cousins, so that probably smooths the way. 

The Lothstons and Strongs both have a claim on Harrenhal, but given that both houses were said to have died out, A. there’s no one at home to compete with those claims, and B. those names are unlikely to be genuine.

The Coles probably lost most of their lands after the Dance, so there’s room there too. 

The Mudds are also a fake name, but Oldstones isn’t currently claimed by anyone as far as I can tell. 

We don’t know where the Mandrakes come from, so there might be a problem and there might not. 

What would happen if an exiled king returned to claim his kingdom and was aided by both an exiled lord seeking to reclaim his lost lands AND the current holder of those lands? Split them down the middle, probably angering both?

That’s probably not a situation that would happen (because normally whoever got to the exiled king first would insist on the price for their support, and the other would oppose the exiled king as a result), unless you had a situation in which the exiled king was incredibly likely to win and thus everyone was trying to get on the winning team.

If land is divided up among the nobles, and the nobles in Westeros have been around for 1000s of years before Aegon I, then how does the crown today give anyone land without taking it from someone else?

It doesn’t. Hence why the strength of the monarchy declined after the dragons died, and why there was such relish when it looked like the Tyrells and Lannisters had won the War of Five Kings, because civil wars free up lands from the losers. 

Hey! I was wondering about one thing. We know that Starks are much richer than they appear, so I was wondering where did their gold/silver go when Theon and Ramsay took Winterfell. Should there be some gold lying around, or the Starks money was not liquid

I would guess that it’s less liquid than the norm for Great Houses, given that the North is less developed as an economy, and that in-kind taxation is way more important in the winter in the North than it is in other regions less affected by the climate. 

So I would imagine that a good part of their wealth probably went up in smoke when Ramsay sacked the castle because he’s that stupid, but some remains (I would be very surprised if there aren’t hidden storehouses in the crypts) and I would imagine a lot is being held in trust by their bannermen.