So just to be clear: The annulment (in the show) wouldn’t work for Rhaegar because he already has children with Elia? But the plot to make Margaery Robert’s queen makes sense because the twincest would be revealed before any actualy attempts at marriage between them? Margaery was only to become Robert’s mistress until such time as they revealed the twincest? (I’ve seen these situations compared, usually using the latter plot to try and explain the shows annulment idea). Thanks.

It’s always possible that Westerosi law differs from OTL Western European law, but yes, it would be unlikely that an annulment (as opposed to a divorce) would be allowed in a case where there are children, especially a male child.

In the case of Margaery, the plot only makes sense if Cersei’s children can be disinherited due to revelations of incest and adultery. As for “until such time,” I think it was planned to be very quick in succession: Robert gets infatuated, wants to get rid of Cersei, Renly steps forward with the awful truth, Robert is enraged and humiliated, hey presto here’s the lovely Margaery in his bed to console his ego and produce legitimate male heirs, what a lovely wedding/war…

is it actually confirmed that arya is falling for it and going to go against sansa, and not just stringing petyr along to kill him later?

It’s dumb either way.

Do you think Hammer was unknowingly working for HYDRA before and during the events of IM2?

Only vaguely in the sense that he was working with known HYDRA agent Senator Stern.

How tall are harrenhalls walls?

Quite tall:

“Harrenhal was deceptive from afar, because it was so huge. Its colossal curtain walls rose beside the lake, sheer and sudden as mountain cliffs, while atop their battlements the rows of wood-and-iron scorpions looked as small as the bugs for which they were named.”

They’re also very thick.

if the annulment thing actually happened and leaked out, would aerys be able to use it as pretext to remove rhaegar from the succession and eliminate him as a threat to his crown?

Maybe?

Rhaegar annuling his marriage to Elia would certainly forfeit the support of House Martell, which would be a bit of a problem since the Martells were the only Great House in Rhaegar’s camp.

But then again, Aerys had a strong tendency to view everything as a Dornish plot against him – hell, “when the news” of the Battle of the Trident “reached the Red Keep, it was said that Aerys cursed the Dornish, certain that Lewyn had betrayed Rhaegar,” despite the fact that Lewyn Martell died fighting at the Battle of the Trident.

Thoughts on Season 7 Episode 5, “Eastwatch”

Kind of a slow episode, but let’s see what we can find worth talking about…
(more…)

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Do you think show Randyll Tarly’s case against Dany makes any sense? To me it seems kind of ridiculous to be bothered by Dany not growing up in Westeros but okay with Cersei usurping the throne with no claim and destroying the Faith of the Seven.

Not really, no.

Does the “1% of the population can be armed” rule typically include mercenaries?

I guess?

Usually when we have a examples of a polity which uses mercenaries heavily – Carthage, the Italian city-states of the Renaissance, etc. – the mercenaries are substituting for their own population, which they can turn instead towards commerce, finance, manufacturing, and other worthwhile pursuits.

So that tends to cancel things out as far as the 1% rule goes.

The maps in The World of Ice and Fire have little symbols for export industries – marble in the Vale, olives in Dorn, and so on. Sometimes these aren’t mentioned in the text, so do you think they’re consistent with the original books?

Sort of?

It’s a bit selective and kind of screwy – lumber is not the North’s only export, cattle aren’t only found in the Riverlands (and honestly the only big herds we hear about are in the Westerlands so…shrug), iron and tin are not found only in the Iron Islands, the gold mines of the Westerlands aren’t only in the north (Silverhill should have some mines near it, ffs), there’s no symbol for wine on the bloody Arbor, I don’t see how the Stormlands has much of an economy on amber, and given how often Dornish red is mentioned, you’d think they’d put it on the maps…

To raise a personal bone of contention: Vale map is completely screwed up, putting the Mountains of the Moon east rather than west of the Eyrie, basically smack-dab on top of the Vale which is a huge agricultural region. And there’s a bit of weirdness with the Vale exporting marble but for some reason the Eyrie is built from Tarth marble.

But I don’t see anything that’s blatantly contradicted by the books.

“Anonymous asked: In a pre-modern society how many people need to be farmers to support a non-farmer? Like whats the percentage? More than the 99 to 1 for soldiers, would 9 farmers for 1 non-farmer make sense?

…I wasnt talking about a knight but a non-farmer, tradesmen, merchants and miners those sorts of people dont farm, so how many farmers are needed to support a family of non-farmers food wise, how much excess food do pre-modern/subsistence farmers produce to allow all these specialized/non-food producing professions to exist?

Ah, ok, I gotcha.

Generally speaking, premodern societies were ~ 90% peasants and 10% everyone else: nobility, clergy, merchants, urban workers, etc.