Interesting question!

Medieval hospitals were actually not primarily medical establishments (this didn’t happen until the rise of the Enlightenment in the 18th century and the professionalization of medicine in the mid-19th century)  – hospitals were religious institutions staffed by monks and nuns and were as much about providing housing, sustenance, and religious services for the elderly, the disabled, pilgrims, lepers, etc. – although the Rule of Saint Benedict did require monks to care for the sick. 

Needless to say, Westeros has something of a leg up with a dedicated order of Maesters who have crude anti-biotics in the form of poultices that use bread mold, crude anti-septics in the form of vinegar, and crude anesthetics in the form of milk of the poppy. So maesters would probably provide medical services to a King’s Landing hospital, if only to maintain their monopoly on the healing arts. 

However, given their other duties, I don’t think the Citadel would operate hospitals directly. More likely, you’d see the Faith operating the hospitals similar to RL medieval hospitals, and a division of labor whereby septons and septas would provide room, board, nursing, religious, and funeral services, with maesters and acolytes contracted to provide medical services in return for using the facility as a kind of teaching hospital. 

And I would imagine the doctor-to-patient ratio would be abysmal…

Sure. Ned’s older brother Brandon was fostered at Barrowton with the Dustins, and he was the heir to Winterfell at the time. 

And yes, Jon Arryn wanted to foster Robin at Dragonstone to make sure that Cersei couldn’t knock the Vale out of the coming conflict just by taking out Jon Arryn, whereas Cersei wanted Robin to be fostered at Casterly Rock so he could be used as a hostage to do just that. 

As for how long it might have continued, Robert Baratheon himself was both Lord Paramount of the Stormlands and Jon Arryn’s foster son between 278 AC and 282 AC, although he probably would have been finishing up his time at the Vale given that he was about to turn 21. 

Stannis was considering an alliance in OTL even though Robb had been named King in the North, so yeah, he’d be trying to recruit them onto his side right off the bat. 

And given Robb’s sentiments, had the decision still been open when Stannis’ letter arrived, I think he would have gone for Stannis, especially with Catelyn there to link Stannis’ letter to Ned’s investigations.  

I mean, the Summer Islanders do have the best maps on Planetos, so they probably know more about Sothoryos and Ulthos than others, but I don’t think they’ve found Americos necessarily. 

Moreover, the Summer Islanders seem very much not in the colonial mindset, given their history, and seem content to live on the islands that support them comfortably, while freely trading with the outside world. 

Would that more nations would follow their lead…

goodqueenaly:

But again, given the historical example of polygamy in pre-Andal Westeros (the one cited by Yandel, anyway) is ALSO from the Reach, I don’t think it’s stretching to say that integrating the idea of multiple spouses for a single partner into the mythology of the region came from real practices in that same region. As for how, I sense it probably varied from storyteller to storyteller, with all focusing on some clever trick of Florys to keep her husbands in the dark.

– NFriel

Also, the polyandry of the ancestors of House Tarly was quite open. 

I had a phase in high school where I wanted to write the next Great American Novel. Thankfully in my freshman and sophomore years of undergrad, I took a bunch of history courses and realized I was more interested in and better at history than I ever had been in creative writing. 

skipinouterspace:

racefortheironthrone:

I like a lot of his work – his creator-owned stuff is great, I love his run on Ultimate Spiderman, and even some of his newer Marvel stuff like All-New X-Men – but I think he’s got some flaws as a writer that become much more visible when he writes a team book or an event. 

The first flaw that bothers me is that Bendis has a tendency to escalate the stakes way too fast and too high, rather than giving the status quo a chance to breathe and have its potentials explored. One of these days, I want to write some essays about Comics in Parallel, where I explore two series on the same topic or theme – which was inspired by reading Powers and Gotham Central at the same time. And the thing I really noticed is that Bendis went to Roland Emmerich-levels of city, world, and status quo destruction so quickly that there was nowhere to go from there.

The second flaw that bothers me – and it’s related to the first – is that Bendis is much better at innovative setups than carefully-constructed payoffs. Take All-New X-Men for example: bringing the Original Five from the 60s into the present to confront their adult selves is a great idea, but as the series went on, it became very clear that Bendis hadn’t thought of some big questions when he started. Like, what was the bad thing the X-Men were brought from the past to prevent? Did they actually prevent it? Could they go back, and if not, why? 

And you see much the same phenomenon with a lot of Bendis’ events – Secret Wars, House of M, Secret Invasion, Siege, Age of Ultron – which all start with a high-concept idea (what if Nick Fury got us into a quasi-Iraq? What if mutants ruled the world? What if Skrulls were among us? What if super-villains ruled the world) but lose the plot rather quickly and have unintended negative consequences for the status quo of the line or various books in the line. 

So while I like much of Bendis’ work, he’s also one of the main reasons why I stopped reading Marvel for a decade. 

People bring up Bendis as editor as a boogeyman but I would like to see what would happen if he just sort of took his ideas and worked with/let other creative teams execute them.

And let me just say, part of the reason why I didn’t want to come down too hard on him is that one of the main reasons I stopped writing fiction is that I have the same problem when it comes to setup and payoff, i.e with story structure. I can come up with really great premises or story seeds, but I am terrible at working out how to get from Beginning to End. 

So I sympathize. 

That’s a good question…for @goodqueenaly, who knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. 

“Accept the Duma, you idiot.”