Tywin kept Castamere and its lands for himself – hence being able to give it to House Spicer in ASOS – but left the castle flooded as a terrible warning.
While we don’t know for sure, it’s probably the same thing with the Tarbeck lands, and we definitely know that he left the burned-out ruins of Tarbeck Hall vacant.
As I discussed before, the crowning of a Queen of Love and Beauty is a very circumstance-specific scenario. As such, it would depend on the knight, his lord, and his lady over whether such a choice would be seen as scandalous.
On the one hand, I could see it being perfectly acceptable in some scenarios. Again, think about the first two people Barristan considers when he remembers how he wanted to give the crown of winter roses to Ashara – the queen “who was not present” and “Elia of Dorne”. Those two were (obviously) married, but their marriages made them Queen and Crown Princess, respectively, of Westeros, the two highest-ranking women in the country. Because the moment of naming a Queen of Love and Beauty is a singular chance for a knight to have the attention of all assembled nobles, a clever and ambitious man might use that opportunity to praise the beauty of the highest-ranking woman present, especially as there was a good likelihood she would be the host’s wife. Such honor bestowed on the lady might help the knight get in good with the host, and because personal relationships are crucial to favor in feudal Westeros, any chance to have a high (or higher) ranking lord think well of a lower-ranking individual is a chance to take.
Now, in other scenarios, I could see where offering the crown to a married woman would be scandalous. The crown of the Queen of Love and Beauty can carry an implicit romantic/sexual tone; certainly, of the four we know, Naerys and Aemon were rumored (even if untruly) to be lovers, Bonifer Hasty seemed to entertain some crush on then-Princess Rhaella, Jorah Mormont explicitly fell in love with Lynesse Hightower at the tourney he won for her, and Rhaegar and Lyanna need little further commentary. It would do rather poorly for a knight to give the favor to a married lady if gossiping tongues already had reason to pair them together; the act might be seen as yet more proof that they were lovers. Imagine if, say, Harwin Strong gave Princess Rhaenyra the laurel in a tourney, after the birth of one or more of her “Velaryon” sons; pro-green courtiers would not fail to see it – and advertise it amongst themselves – as a scandal, an affirmation that Rhaenyra was cuckolding Ser Laenor with the heir to Harrenhal.
The Queen Regent (NFriel)
I think it depends also on how closely the knight and the lady in question are adhering to the forms of courtly love/chivalric romance and their carefully-constructed maxims of **love from afar** that made them safe for consumption.
“when their lord husbands died…they were sent here, to reign over the vast Dothraki nation. Even the mightiest of khals bowed to the wisdom and authority of the dosh khaleen.” (emphasis mine)
The Dosh Khaleen have more than just ceremonial control, they are essentially the national government of the Dothraki and can overrule the khals, as well as being the Dothraki’s main religious authorities.
This aspect of Dothraki culture GRRM is probably borrowing from the Iroquois Confederacy, where descent was matrineal, and the clan mothers of the tribe were responsible for nominating, electing, and removing chiefs, and women played a highly important role in the formation of and operation of the Confederacy itself.
I was not a fan of Season 6, and Dany’s arc among the Dothraki was a particular lowlight. The misinterpretation of the Dosh Khaleen and their role in society, the constant gendered insults, and the rather lame way that all of it was resolved (GRRM has very carefully established that the Dothraki have a quasi-religious fear and awe of dragons and that Dany was discovered standing next to her dragon, for crying out loud!), did not like.
“There’s a tipping point in every tragedy where inevitability locks the exit doors on free will and you know that after this, there is no turning back.”
Hello everyone. My name is Emmett, and I could have been imagined, designed, constructed, and sold as a consumer for the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. I had just turned twelve when the first one came out at the end of 2001, I’d read the books that summer, and the infusion of swelling Hollywood orchestras and Peter Jackson’s beloved action schlock was perfectly calibrated to take my love for the material and shoot it into the stratosphere. I still look back on those movies with love…mostly. There are moments, especially in Return of the King, where the tone tips overboard:
On one level, that’s what we want our heroes to say, right? We’re up against the odds, we might not be rewarded for our efforts, but let’s do it anyway; that’s the lesson a lot of great genre fiction is meant to leave us with, in one form or another. The problem with that clip is the knowing wink, the sly acknowledgement that after they’ve escaped so many other hair-raising disasters, this is just another day at work. I get the joke, but it would make more sense for (say) a Bond or Indy movie, where it really is just another day at work and part of the enjoyment comes from how what’s over-the-top for us is normal for them. In the context of LOTR, it’s tonally off, because this is not supposed to feel episodic. It’s supposed to feel climactic, like our heroes are genuinely in dangeras everything comes to a head, and that’s marred when you expose the plot armor so blatantly. If this is just another day, why are we supposed to be invested in their risk?
Of course, Peter Jackson didn’t invent that problem. It’s a storytelling problem. And that is why GRRM created Quentyn Martell. It’s why he tries to tame a dragon and why he fails: to reclaim the stakes and re-sensitize us to the risk. it’s not just that he dies, it’s how and why he dies. What does it mean to not have plot armor? What does it say about quest narratives that they can collapse so completely and yet the quester clings to tropes as if they’ll save him? How are we to live if Story fails as an organizing principle? “The Spurned Suitor” brings these questions to the forefront, right before “The Dragontamer” sets it all on fire. It’s the most reflective and dialogue-heavy of Quent’s chapters, the most thematically explicit; it’s the one that cuts through the hellish imagery dominating this storyline right to what it all means. In genre terms, where previous Quent chapters soaked the fantasy tropes in blood-red horror, this chapter has a distinctly noirish feel to it, in terms of both imagery and theme.
Levying men is expensive – you have to pay for the arms and armor, the horses, the food, everything – and it’s risky too, because unless you get plunder or rewards from the king you’re not going to get anything for your service, and if you lose you could die or have to pay a hefty ransom. Moreover, levying men meant spending a good deal of time away from your estates – a lot of time if the war was far away, as was the case during the Crusades, for example.
Well, it’s not so much my idea, as one I’m borrowing from Charles Macune of the Farmer’s Alliance (who invented the proposal in 1890) and the Populist Party (who took it up and made it a centerpiece of their Omaha Platform of 1892).
The basic idea of the Sub-Treasury Plan was that there would be government warehouses where farmers could store their crops at times of low prices in return for a low–interest loan of up to 80% of the value of those goods paid in U.S Treasury notes. When the price of those crops rose, farmers would have the right to withdraw their crops from the warehouse by redeeming their U.S Treasury notes, and they would then sell the crops and earn a profit of the difference in value between their government loan and the market price. At the same time, the Federal government could use its loan agreements and first-purchase rights to put a floor under farm incomes (by paying above-market rates for their loans) and a ceiling on food prices (by selling goods below the top market rates).
But while the term “warehouse” might make you think about barns and silos, the real purpose of the Sub-Treasuries was to act as a commodity bank, giving farmers access to credit and more stable incomes at a time of widespread deflation that had hammered farm prices and farm incomes. It was essentially an early forerunner of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of the 1930s, which supported farm incomes by paying Federal subsidies to farmers who agreed to maintain production quotas aimed at stabilizing farm prices.
The interesting difference, and one trumpeted by the Farmer’s Alliance and the People’s Party is the way the Sub-Treasury could have solved the seemingly intractable conflict between rural farmers (who benefited from high prices for agricultural products and went bankrupt if prices dropped) and urban workers (who had to pay higher prices for food if crop prices rose and lower prices if they fell). Under the Sub-Treasury, when prices were low and workers were enjoying higher real wages, farmers would be protected by government loans; when prices rose, farmers would benefit by selling their crops – which would in turn bring prices back down and protect workers from a decline in real wages.
(The Sub-Treasury was also supposed to be connected to a broader system of collective purchasing and marketing associations that would allow farmers to bargain collectively when it came to acquiring equipment, supplies, and land at the beginning of the season and then selling their goods after harvest, as well as a system of nationalized railroads to prevent farmers from being squeezed by the middlemen who transported their goods to market.)
So the idea of a Sub-Treasury for the Reach is to improve the lot of the region’s farmers by ensuring stable incomes and access to low-interest credit, while simultaneously making the Reach more efficient as the bread-basket of Westeros by acting as a countervailing force to major swings in commodity prices.
Maybe, maybe, maybe…if Mace’s army had teleported from Storm’s End to the capitol, he (or more accurately Randyll Tarly) could have won some last-minute victory. But even that would be rather risky, as the Reach’s numerical advantage would not have persisted if the Northern Alliance had been able to link up with Tywin’s army.
Squires sped up the process, but they weren’t just there to help the knights get their armor on. In the midst of battle, squires were there to pass on a fresh mount if the knight’s horse foundered or was injured, or a spare weapon if the knight’s own was broken or lost in the chaos of battle, and of course, squires were also there to fight just like any other man-at-arms.
But yes, a knight could definitely armor themselves when necessary. It was somewhat difficult on one’s own, there was a tendency to cut corners to save time (leaving one side fastened so that you sort of step into it sideways and then only have to do up the other side), which raised the possibility that they might miss some fiddly but important step and leave a vulnerability exposed.
The good people over at the Vassals of Kingsgrave podcast have a new episode out covering Tower of the Hand: A Hymn for Spring and analyzing some of the essays within. My own essay, “Machiavellianism for a Purpose” is one of the essays discussed, starting at 4:57.
Have a listen!
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