Author: stevenattewell

By Popular Demand: “Who Stole Westeros?”

By Popular Demand: “Who Stole Westeros?”

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Who Stole Westeros? One of the most persistent controversies of fact among fans of A Song of Ice and Fire is the question of whether Robert Baratheon or Petyr Baelish is responsible for the Iron Throne’s bankruptcy. Many leading scholars of our community have tackled the question (including one of the contributors to this volume); it’s a common topic of debate on r/asoiaf and Westeros.org, as…

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Hello! You’ve mentioned in a few places that Essos is more advanced and more urbanized than Westeros. But – though I understand it’s about relevance – 1) there are only so many cities mentioned, practically all of them save Norvos, Qohor & Vaes Dothrak are coastal. Doesn’t that leave most of the HUGE territory of Essos as just rural hinterland or waste (or ruin)? Do we know anything of it other than the disputed lands ? 2) What do we know of its scientific advancement compared w/the Citadel?

Hello!

  1. There’s also the unmentioned cities: “We speak of Nine Free Cities, though across the width of Essos one may find many other Valyrian
    towns, settlements, and outposts, some larger and more populous than Gulltown, White Harbor, or even Lannisport. The distinction that sets the Nine apart is not their size but their origins.”     Essos is so urbanized that cities the size of Lannisport go unnmentioned as unimportant. (Must remember to double-check my Essos population estimates against this.)
  2. Well, Tyrion’s journey down the Rhoyne gave us a sense of the Volantene hinterland, and I’d imagine you’d see similar wrt to the other city-states where room applies.
  3. Here’s what we know: Myr has advanced optics, advanced crossbows (which means a good handle on levers, gears, pullys), “fine woolens, lace, glassworks and tapestries….But Qohor has metalworking on lockdown, Tyrosh has dyemaking and distillation (which suggests chemistry) and competes with Myr on armaments, Lys is a competitor in the tapestries business and has a better chemicals industry than Tyrosh, Norvos is a competitor in the tapestries business, Braavos dominates in finance and is the only place that’s figured out the assembly line and interchangeable parts.” Pretty much all high-valued added manufacturing happens in Essos, as well as a huge amount of commerce in luxury goods (spices, silks, gemstones, exotic animals/skins). Whereas Westeros exports mostly natural resources (food, timber, wool, wine, furs, stone and metal), with a smattering of finished goods (Dornish silks and satins, linen from the Reach, gold and silverware from the Westerlands). So while we don’t know about Essosi higher education (and there’s signs that it must exist), their economies and level of technology are more advanced. So maybe the Essosi go in for applied vs. academic sciences?

How is it that Dunk didn’t recognise the Peake sigil in TMK when he recalled so many in THK, likes of the Tarlys included? Arlan barely talking about the Redgrass Field and greater rebellion? Gormy and his kin staying away from more tourneys than just such pro-Targaryen ones like Ashford?

Well, in THK, Dunk knows his heraldry: “Though he had never learned the magic of reading or writing, the old man had been relentless when it came to teaching him heraldry, often drilling him as they rode.” Now Egg knows it better, hence “He was not japing me when he said he knew every good knight in the Seven Kingdoms, Dunk thought ruefully.”

But I think Arlan might have skipped the Peakes out of the whole Redgrass thing. Also, things you learn by rote are really quick to fade, and by TMK it’s been a couple years. 

Concerning House Manderly: (1)Among the “dozen petty lords and a hundred landed knights” they count as vassals, what percentage of them do you imagine fled alongside the Manderlys and how were the rest acquired (Carrot vs Stick)? (2)How did the northern lords react to the meteoric rise of these foreigners, especially after the discovery of silver in their demesne? (3)Given how they got their lands, would the Starks have a disproportionate finger in the Manderly’s silver pie? Thank You, RSAfan.

  1. Most of the knights I think probably started as Manderly household knights and got a promotion as thanks for their continued loyalty during the long trek to the North, as well as folks like Ser Bartimus. The lords I think are mostly Northern houses who washed out as lords of the Wolf’s Den (the Lockes, the Flints, the Slates, the Longs, the Holts, the Ashwoods, etc.) and non-Wolf’s Den locals like the Woolfields (between Ramsgate and the Sheepshead Hills, they seem rather substantial), with a salting of Reach vassals who kept the faith. 
  2. There was definitely some grumbling, but with the direct patronage of the Starks – the Boltons are definitely going to complain but no one wants a Bolton for a neighbor, the Lockes and Woolfields and Flints might bristle (depending on when they were vassalized) but the Lockes and the Flints don’t have much pull at Winterfell after their failures in the Worthless War, the Karstarks and Umbers might complain on general principle but they’re too far from the action, the Dustins would worry about the economic threat, but at the end of the day no one is willing or able to pony up enough cash to replace the Manderlys, which is what the Starks would probably say to anyone who complained directly.
  3. Well, there’s definitely a quid-pro-quo of “build me a castle and a fortified city that no Valeman will ever capture again” and there’s definitely a good chunk of silver flowing upriver, b/c the Manderlys know the Starks’ benevolence was the only thing that kept them alive. As I talked about in my essay, I think Stark-Manderly relations were a mixture of the Manderlys being the mostest loyalest vassals ever while at the same time grabbing for power with both hands as if it might vanish if they looked away, and the Starks keeping the Manderly ambitions in check while still rewarding good service.