Author: stevenattewell

Out of curiosity, would you know the name of that paper you mentioned about medieval demographics? It sounds incredibly interesting and I’d love to read it?

Unfortunately, I don’t and I don’t know how to find it. This would have been 2001-2002; I definitely got rid of the computer I had back then, my email address from when I was an undergrad is no longer functional, etc. 

However, when I was doing the research for that post, I found J.C Russell (1958 and 1985) quite useful. So start with those and then pillage the footnotes. 

Which “Early Installment Weirdness” of ASOIAF is more in contradiction with how the series has evolved and so an interesting glimpse of what might have been?

Great question!

One of the things that the Ur-Text really helped with is giving us critical context for understanding where the early installment weirdness was coming from:

  • The whole business with Jaime becoming Warden of the East was probably setup for Jaime the King.
  • The direwolves hating Tyrion was clearly foreshadowing for him burning Winterfell. 
  • Finally there’s the stuff with Sansa and Arya’s original intended fates.

There’s a few more things listed here.

In the war of the five kings, the Lannisters don’t use the authority of the crown to call upon the various kingdoms to fight for them, like the Vale and half the Stormlands etc that sit idle. While they have obvious reasons to expect they won’t answer the call, shouldn’t these people be anxious that they’re committing treason by not fighting for their lawful leader? It seems to be treated like a war between the Lannisters and the Starks/Riverlands, not the Crown at all.

They sort of do, when Cersei summons them to King’s Landing.