Author: stevenattewell

Okay, “financial motives” is too broad. Let’s say one social movement is about revolting against a government due to high inflation and another is about reducing the Crown’s influence on the population. Both are supported by the opposition and the bourgeoisie respectively to obtain more influence (which is another way of saying money, since they’d be able to create laws to their preference, produce and sell their goods more effectively, ect). And yet, they could try to appeal… (1/2)

… to the population by saying that if they supported said social movement, they’d be patriots helping their country. So, can those social movements be considered patriotists? (2/2)

I think I see what you mean, but your examples are a bit confusing (who are the “opposition”?) so I’ll use real-world examples, because the broad answer is that A. it’s impossible to separate any set of motivations (like economic ones) from a broader worldview, and B. it usually comes down to how people view the “nation” being appealed to.

So to use a real-world example: it is absolutely the case that the American Revolution began as a protest by certain economic interests (merchants who wanted to sell to the West Indies, farmers who wanted to acquire land out west, propertied people who resented paying increased taxes), but contra the Beards, you can’t reduce the American Revolution just to that, because A. those economic interests had political ideologies of their own that saw British policy not merely as unfavorable but also as illegitimate and tyrannical, and B. the Revolution would never have succeeded if only those interests had backed it – hence the need to fashion broad ideological appeals to try to get the majority of the population to support their movement. 

Alternatively, you can look at how the Swedish Social Democratic Party (the SAP) built its majority coalition back in the 1920s and 1930s: initially, the SAP viewed itself as a worker’s party, but also allied with Liberals over issues like voting rights, parliamentary vs. monarchical authority; likewise, the SAP’s alliance with farmers in a bid to become a ruling party outside of a coalition with the Liberals required the formulation of the idea of the nation as the “People’s Home” in which all members of the nation would be treated equally, combining an element of Swedish nationalism with social democratic priorities. 

How did things stand between Roose and Tywin before the Purple Wedding? Roose knows that Tywin has Sansa–does he expect all along that Sansa’s descendants, not his own, will rule the north? Does either man expect their deal to last?

Oh, they were both planning to betray one another: Tywin was going to use Roose to take out the Ironborn and the wildling threat and weaken him in the process so he couldn’t threaten Tyrion and Sansa’s claim to Winterfell, Roose knew that once he was in the North, he could act with a free hand no matter what King’s Landing said. 

Do you agree with the assessment that history, geography, arts, and similar social areas are more accessible to the mainstream than math, natural and physical sciences, technology?

Nope. Some people find the former more accessible than the latter, but there’s other people who are the reverse, and other people who find them equally accessible, and other people who find particular subjects rather than broad areas more accessible than others. 

What do charters for guilds consist of? If all the alchemist guild has is wildfire, how to they sustain themselves? What does the Royal charter for the faith or citadel consist of?

Well, much like city charters, guild charters gave guilds legal recognition, rights, privileges, responsibilities, and limits. 

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So what kinds of “rights, privileges, responsibilities, and limits” did these charters include? 

  • First, guild charters gave guilds a legal monopoly over a given trade or industry. If you wanted to work in a given industry in a given location, you had to be a member in good standing who had been given permission to work in that town or city. On the other side, employers and merchants who wanted to hire a smith or buy their goods also had to do so with a guild member, lest they be legally liable. 
  • Next, guild charters gave guilds control of training, licensing, and locating of workers in their field. In order to become a member of the guild, you had to go through a guild apprenticeship where you would live with a master craftsman and labor for them for anywhere between seven and fourteen years. Apprentices were not paid save for food and lodging, but their masters were required to train them in the skills and trade secrets of their industry. When you had completed your education, you would be licensed as a journeyman, be given a set of tools that were now your property,  and could now work for wages in your field. Journeymen were usually sent away from their home city for a period of at least three years (although that’s not where the name came from), for reasons that I’ll explain later. When you had completed that process and could afford to pay the application fee, you could apply to become a master craftsman, by submitting a masterpiece (that’s where the name comes from) to the guild masters for their approval – if your work was up to snuff and the guild masters let you in, you’d now be a full member of your field with the right to open your own business, hire journeymen, and train apprentices (indeed, you were required to train apprentices). 
  • Third, guild charters gave guilds wide powers of regulation and self-regulation. In addition to the right to charge membership dues, guilds also had the right to fine members or even expel them for violating the regulations of the guild, and guilds established extensive regulations on prices, wages, working conditions, product quality, even standards of personal behavior. (Guild members could be fined or even expelled for drunkenness, for example, because it threatened the guild’s reputation for quality labor). At the same time, guilds also used their control over their members to essentially bargain collectively with governments, suppliers, merchants and employers, wielding the authority to blackball them from doing any business with guild members to get their way. 

So how did the guilds use these powers? 

First, they used them to control labor supply, labor demand, prices and wages – guilds carefully manipulated the intake of apprentices, the licensing of journeymen, and the qualification of masters, and used their powers to permit working or operating a shop in a given town/city/region, to ensure that there would be enough work/consumer demand for their members at the wages/prices necessary to support the living standards of guild members. If there wasn’t enough work to go around in a given location, journeymen would be refused entry to a given town and sent on their way, and masters would be refused the right to open a shop. 

Second, they used them to control the quality of goods and services – if you sold shoddy goods or did shoddy work, the guild would fine or expel you, and if you tried to work in their industry without going through their training process, you’d be prosecuted. 

And third, they used them to create mini-welfare states – financed by the various dues and fees they charged their members, guilds operated pensions for the elderly, the disabled, widows and orphans, a system of unemployment benefits for journeymen who couldn’t find work, and funeral benefits. 

As for Westeros, the guilds we know about are the Alchemist Guild in King’s Landing, the Guild of Smiths in King’s Landing, and a series of unnamed guilds in Oldtown. The Faith isn’t a chartered institution – it’s a religious institution – but the Citadel might have a charter from King Urrigon Hightower, but we don’t have direct confirmation.

You said in your essay about Catelyn III in ACOK that Renly absolutely knew that Cersei’s children were born of incest, even when he denied it to Stannis. I think you are convincing in this point and I totally believe you. However, you also mentioned that Renly would have told so to Mace Tyrell; so, how do you think this will play out in the future? Do you think Mace will ever use this info? Who else might know this from Mace?

Mace Tyrell made his decision to ignore the truth when he agreed to Littlefinger’s proposed deal and shook Tywin’s hand at Tumbler’s Falls. With Margaery wed to Joffrey and Tommen, the Tyrells are committed to the fiction that the incest charges are false. 

So I don’t think he’ll ever tell anyone.