I think the master class of Meereen is going to be put to the sword by the Shavepate, which will resolve the crisis in Meereen but in a somewhat morally ambiguous fashion. 

I think some sort of revelation about Ashara Dayne, Ned Stark, Jon Snow, and Lyanna Stark during Gerold “Darkwing Duck” Dayne’s last stand at Starfall. 

Becoming a wizard maester, ‘arry.

Because Robert’s (and Jon Arryn’s) policy was not to dispossess loyalists who had shown sense and bent the knee – as the Rykkers did, in the end – so that he could take their land and redistribute it. In the main, the policy was to secure the peace by guaranteeing the status quo ante bellum in return for loyalty. 

That assumes that the narrative point of the pink letter is to create uncertainty. I would disagree with that – the narrative point of the pink letter is to be the catalyst for Jon’s death, the uncertainty is all meta-narrative. 

Moreover, the importance of said uncertainty is highly contingent on the letter coming at the end of the book – thus setting up a cliffhanger mystery – which wouldn’t be the case if the book ended with the Battles of Ice and Fire. Instead, the letter would function at a meta-narrative level as setup for the payoff of the battle. 

Yes. 

hiddenhistoryofwesteros:

Now that Hidden History of the Stormlands is up I’d like to take this moment to ask everyone a few questions, being new to all of this and what have you:

One, based off what you’ve seen would you like me to try to make Hidden Histories for the rest of the 7K?
Two, if yes, in what order?
Three, in what format? A letter each week? A bunch of letters all-at-once every month or so?
Three, what else would you like me to do using this blog?

Thanks to all of you who are following me and gave compliments! I really appreciate it!

I would love to see some hidden histories for the rest of the Seven Kingdoms!

In terms of order, I would go with which chapters need the most added, i.e which have the biggest gaps in the historical record. The Iron Islands chapter is pretty messed-up in terms of comparative chronology, but it’s actually pretty comprehensive in the story it tells. By contrast, there are some really big gaps in the history of the Riverlands, the Vale, and the North, and somewhat smaller gaps with the Westerlands and the Reach.

In terms of format, I’m pretty agnostic. You could go one chapter at a time or one section within a chapter at a time. Don’t be afraid to experiment and see what works; I’ve certainly learned a lot through trial and error.

In terms of other stuff, again, I think this is a good place for trial and error. I started off just doing the chapter-by-chapter essays but then realized that I wanted to write essays that were more about topics or historical periods that stitched together info from many chapters, and then realized I liked answering random questions too, etc. 

Great question!

In a rough-and-ready sense, maybe. Certainly, the lords of Westeros would be familiar with the phenomenon of prices rising, especially in winter or in times of crisis (see “Sworn Sword’). And they’d be familiar with the idea that clipping coins and other forms of forgery are bad because they lower the value of the currency, and they’d probably extend that to the idea that adulterating the coinage by overly engaging in seignorage is bad for the economy.

However, I don’t think they would have a deep theoretical understanding of how inflation works, the relationship between the money supply and demand and economic production, the role that velocity plays in the expression of inflation, etc.

Here you go.