Author: stevenattewell

What can we say about the internal state of the Westerlands at the end of ADWD? To what extend did Tywin’s death weaken Lannister rule over their vassals? Could you see a scenario, where the western Lords rebell against Cersei?

It’s certainly weakened; a large part of Lannister control over the Westerlands was about the personal legend of Tywin, the Rains of Castamere, and so on. 

I don’t know about rebellion, but it doesn’t help that the Lannisters are starting to become absentee landlords in the Westerlands, so focused on maintaining power in King’s Landing that Casterly Rock is beginning to become an undesirable posting. 

You’ve spoken before about how the nobility of Westeros sees banking as beneath them. Do they have a prejudice against lords that borrow money? Was the Crowns debt to the Iron Bank well known, or did Littlefinger keep that relatively quiet?

No, I don’t think they do look down on them for borrowing money, after all a lord has to maintain the standard of magnificence of a lord, and is supposed to be open-handed rather than copper-counting. 

Their prejudice would be against the money-lender for taking advantage of the lord borrowing money, especially if that money-lender uses repayment to exert dominion over his social better. 

And the Crown’s debts seem to have been an open secret at court. 

Assuming that Westeros breaks up into the original pre-Targaryen polities at the end of the series, what happens to all the debt that the Iron Bank owns in the Seven Kingdoms? The Bank is suddenly at a huge loss, with no single polity in which they install a ruler who will pay off the debt. They can’t pressure sovereign nations to pay off the debt of a throne that no longer exists, can they? Or do they cut through all the legal obfuscation and just go after Casterly Rock?

If Westeros breaks up, from a legal perspective, the Bank is at a loss. However, historical Bank practice would be to bankroll a would-be unifier who agrees to pay the debt. 

In your ACOK Sansa III review, you said that the Lannisters lost 10,000 men at the Battle of Oxcross. Where did you find that? I didn’t find it anywhere else.

Stafford Lannister’s forces at Oxcross consisted of 4,000 veterans of the Battle of the Camps who had managed to get to the Golden Tooth (source) plus a number of “sellswords, freeriders, and green boys from the stews of Lannisport,” and since the wiki had given 10,000 as the overall size of the force at the time, 6,000 were those latter soldiers. 

While the wiki has since changed, 10,000 still seems like a sensible number given that the latter part of Stafford’s army was referred to as a “host” and GRRM doesn’t use that term to describe small forces. (Stannis’ 5,000 men are described as a “meager host” for example.) 

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Sansa II, ASOS

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Sansa II, ASOS

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She would wear her new gown for the ceremony at the Great Sept of Baelor…that must be why Cersei is having it made for me, so I will not look shabby at the wedding. Synopsis: Sansa gets a new dress, goes hawking with Margaery, and has a conversation with Ser Dontos. SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of…

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Is “man-at-arms” just a generic term for a soldier who isn’t a knight, roughly equivalent to an enlisted man rather than an officer, or is it more specific than that?

It’s a bit more specific. A man-at-arms is a professional soldier who has been trained to the level we associate with knighthood, i.e, learning how to fight in full plate with a variety of weaponry (sword, axe/mace, polearms, lance, etc.) both on foot, but especially on horseback, and who owns the arms, armor, and horse necessary to fulfill that role. 

So by definition, all knights were men-at-arms, but most men-at-arms were not knights. Most men-at-arms came out of the gentry or esquiry, because pay for men-at-arms was quite high and the possibility of social advancement into the lower nobility was good.