Author: stevenattewell

Besides carrying the standard, would a standard bearer typically have any other duties?

The standard bearer’s primary role is to motivate and help direct the troops by showing them which direction they were to go and where they should rally to in the confusion of battle – thus why standard-bearers were chosen from among the strongest and bravest, to make sure that they would be right at the front of every charge and would never abandon their position even in the most dire situation, which in turn would ensure that the soldiers looking to them for guidance would not go astray. 

image

In the Middle Ages, it was also common for standard-bearers to act as bodyguards for the lords and kings whose banners they held. For example, at the Battle of Bosworth Field, when Richard III made his suicidal cavalry charge intending to kill Henry Tudor, Sir William Brandon (Henry’s standard-bearer) placed himself in between Richard and his prey and was slain by the king, saving Henry’s life. Equally impressively, Richard III’s standard-bearer, Sir Percival Thirlwall, kept the Yorkist banner flying even after losing both of his legs.

What are the roads in Westeros like? Do they have regular matinence and upkeep? If so who does the upkeep? Are the Gold Road, Roseroad, Kingsroad, etc the Westeros equivalent of highways? Because somewhere it’s said Ellyn Reyne built roads. So I’m curious, what were medieval roads like and what would you expect Westeros roads to be like?

(First off: there’s a big caveat here that GRRM hasn’t put every road on the map, so there may well be roads we can’t see that change our perception. But based on what we know…)

They’re not great. 

Network:

There’s some pretty obvious missing connections when it comes to the system of royal roads created by Jaehaerys:

  • The River Road should absolutely extend to Maidenpool, and there should probably be a Trident Road connecting Riverun Fairmarket and Seagard. 
  • The Kingsroad should connect to White Harbor and Barrowton, with feeder roads linking White Harbor to Ramsgate, Barrowton to Torrhen’s Square to Winterfell, Kingsroad to Last Hearth to Karhold, and maybe Winterfell to Deepwood Motte to a ferry to Bear Island?
  • The High Road should continue past the Eyrie to Gulltown, with a spur connecting the Eyrie to Ironoaks, Old Anchor, and Longbow Hall.
  • We’re missing a north/south connection from Riverrun down to the Gold Road via Stoney Sept (which also connects you to the Blackwater Rush), and then down to the Roseroad via Bitterbridge.
  • The Ocean Road should extend west to Kayce and north up the coast to the Banefort.
  • The Reach needs an orbital road connecting Old Oak, Red Lake, Goldengrove, Bitterbridge, Ashford, and Horn Hill, connecting back to the Roseroad south of Highgardern. 
  • The Stormlands should have a direct route from Bronzegate to the Roseroad that doesn’t require going more than a hundred miles north out of your way through a congested King’s Landing. It also needs the Kingsroad to extend further south than Storm’s End, linking up with the Weeping Town and Stonehelm where it can connect to the Boneway. 
  • Dorne could use an eastern road continuing the Boneway from Wyl to Yronwood and Yronwood to Godgrace, and a western road linking Skyreach to Sandstone to Hellholt to Vaith. 

Bridges:   

There are not enough bridges in Westeros, and a lot of the bridges that do exist are wooden structures that don’t fare well under heavy flooding. So I would definitely add the following:

  • Bridge over the Trident at the Ruby Ford, so that the main north/south highway in the whole kingdom doesn’t have to rely on a ford and some ferry boats. 
  • Bridge over the Rush at King’s Landing, so that southbound traffic from the capitol to the Reach and the Stormlands doesn’t have to rely on ferries.
  • Bridge over the Mander at Cider Hall or Longtable, over the Blueburn at Grassy Vale, and over the Cockleswent at Ashford, and over the unnamed Silverhall River at Goldengrove. In general, the Reach is bizarrely under-bridged and seriously impedes land traffic in favor of river-traffic. 
  • Bridge over the Red Fork south of Riverrun, and a more secure bridge over the Blue Fork at Fairmarket. 

And yes, I know in some of these cases bridges might not exist due to defensive reasons (although that’s a double-edged sword; bridges work really well to stop Ironborn sailing their longboats up your rivers), but that’s why swing/draw bridges were invented. 

What do you think would have happened if one of the Gardener’s sons or grandsons stayed at Highgarden during the Field of Fire? Would they have been turned over to Aegon by Tyrell and possibly executed? Would they have surrendered to Aegon themselves? Other possibilities?

No, I think they would have surrendered (or been made to surrender) to Aegon themselves, just as Loren I Lannister did. Which would leave the Tyrells in the same position as before. 

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: The Reach (Part IV)

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: The Reach (Part IV)

image
credit to ser-other-in-law
In the previous section, I looked at how House Gardener responded to the Andal Invasion of the Reach through a masterful use of assimilation that resulted in a cultural and political regeneration that made the Reach one of the leading contenders in the Great Game of Westeros…
(more…)

View On WordPress

Spoilery Thoughts on Secret Empire #2

That’s it? (warning mild spoiler, see here for more extensive spoiler) That’s the big reveal that we all had to be patient and wait for over a year for? You have got to be kidding me. EVERYONE GUESSED THAT ALMOST FROM DAY ONE. 

Hell, I came up with a better version than what you went with. 

But if Marvel’s going to do RedCap/Blue Cap, EvilCap/Good Cap, I demand that they also plagiarize all of the other goofy Superman event ideas: in other words, I want 90s-Teen Cap, CyborgCap, and Laser-Sunglasses Cap.

Actually, I mostly want 90s-Teen Cap, because that would be AMAZING. 

Some people consider Dany a white imperialist, wrongly imposing her will on the Ghiscari, and you’ve written defenses of Dany critiquing that view. I’m very much behind you here, but I do find one thing a little troubling: you often emphasize how the Ghiscari slaves are not ethnically Ghiscari (to support the point that there is no such thing as ‘Ghiscari culture’). My question is: would the Ghiscari slave-owning be somehow less objectionable if the masters only/mainly enslaved ethnic Ghiscari?

The reason why I emphasize that is largely to rebut the premise that Dany is interfering with Ghiscari culture in an imperialist fashion – after all imperialism is not inconsistent with banning certain practices that might be considered immoral (hence Napier’s statement on sati, for example) – by pointing out that there is the culture of the slave (and in the case of slavery as practiced in Slaver’s Bay, there’s actually many cultures of slaves) and the culture of the slavemaster, so the situation is rather more complicated than a crude Orientalist analysis might suggest. (There’s also the fact that Dany actually shares a good bit of ethnic and cultural background with the Ghiscari…)

But to answer your question…as someone who’s argued the proper historical parallel for Dany’s narrative is the American Civil War and Reconstruction, there was a case where the slavemaster had largely (but not entirely) imposed their culture on their slaves. But in sharp contrast to “Lost Cause” narratives then and now about loyal slaves fighting for the Confederacy, despite their shared culture, African-Americans in the South didn’t share the belief that they should be slaves (and in the case of Nat Turner, we can see that shared culture being used to justify and motivate slave rebellions), and attempted to free themselves the moment that it was practical. 

So if the Ghiscari slaves didn’t want to be slaves – and in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, there were likely more than a few slaves of Ghiscari ethnicity, and they demonstrated their feelings on slavery quite clearly (if sometimes equivocally, as seen in ADWD) – then I don’t see Dany’s actions as imperialist in nature.

“A personal loan would be different from a loan from an institution of dubious legality, no? ” I don’t mean this as a ‘gotcha’ or anything, I’m asking because you’re the expert. Fundamentally, what’s the difference between house Lannister giving personal loans vs house Lannister establishing a bank and the bank giving personal loans?

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

The difference is whether we consider the bank a legal entity in its own right, one that can enter into contracts, sue and be sued, etc. Even today, with quite liberalized systems of general incorporation laws as opposed to requiring charters to incorporate, you still need to file paperwork to establish an LLC or an NGO or the like. 

So to give a modern analogy, let’s say I decide to open a bank – I rent some office space, hire some people to help me run the bank, put out a sign saying “Bank of Steve now open,” etc. If I don’t do the paperwork to establish the bank as a formal institution, I’m going to have some serious trouble if someone defaults on a mortgage, because the “Bank of Steve” can’t sue someone in court and the defaulter didn’t borrow any money from Steve Attewell personally. 

Moreover, banks do more than just give out loans. They also borrow money and invest money, they own real estate and other forms of property, they act as depository institutions, they act as financial middlemen, and so on and so forth. You need some legal framework to legalize these functions and to formalize how disputes that arise from these functions could be resolved.

So in the Westerosi context, without a royal charter that sets out the structure, rights, privileges, and limitations of the Bank, there’s no way to resolve major questions like: can the Bank own land? Who owns the lordship of that land, since “nulle terre sans seigneur”? Can the Bank be summoned to fight for the liege lord of that land, and can it be convicted of a felony if it doesn’t show up? (Likewise, can the Bank summon people to fight for it, and can it convict people of felonies for not showing up?) If someone who’s defaulted on their debt dies, does the Bank inherit their land or the eldest son of the defaulter? 

there’s no way to resolve major questions like: can the Bank own land?

… there’s not?

I mean… realistically speaking, wouldn’t those questions be resolved in the same way as any other legal question, with the Iron Throne and/or the Lords Paramount ruling on them?

The answers might not be to the liking of the hypothetical Golden Bank, of course. The answers to “can the bank own land” and “can the bank seize land” and “can the bank sue people” might be “no, no, and no. You’re out of luck, Lannisters.”

I had just assumed that in the absence of a royal charter, any business a hypothetical Golden Bank did would be, notionally, done via personal loans issued by people. The Golden Bank would not loan golden dragons to a Reacherman or Stormlander; a specific person within the Golden Bank would issue the loan as one person loaning money to another (in the same way Tytos Lannister issued loans), and because individual people have rights even though the bank does not that person would be able to sue to enforce them.

It would be very much a legal fiction… but in the same way flags of convenience and shell corporations are legal fictions. The Bank could exist in a very real way and have very legal ways of exacting its pounds of flesh despite the lack of a charter.

This is an extremely awkward way of doing things but I don’t why it isn’t workable if the Lannisters decided they wanted to get into moneylending in a big way.

Historically speaking, a charter is exactly how the crown (and not the Lords Paramount, save for the Great Councils and even then that’s not just the LPs) would rule on the matter, by creating a legal identity for the bank that delineated the bank’s rights and responsibilities. 

In the scenario you outline, there are some real difficulties you’re assuming are just workable. If a specific Lannister is originating the loan, if they take possession of a fiefdom upon default, do they pay feudal relief as the heir would, and if they don’t do they actually own it? Do they conduct the ceremony of “livery of seisen”? What happens if the liege lord of that fiefdom summons that Lannister to fight for them? If that Lannister dies unexpectedly, how is inheritance sorted out? 

And those are just the legal difficulties: imagine the political difficulties that could arise if land, wealth, and title aren’t concentrated in the head of the House but by necessity has to be distributed among all the members of the House. How do you prevent embezzlement and fraud when the subordinate has legal title and the superior doesn’t? How do you prevent the heirs of the “placeholder” from claiming the inheritance of their fathers, when all of Westerosi law says they can? 

“A personal loan would be different from a loan from an institution of dubious legality, no? ” I don’t mean this as a ‘gotcha’ or anything, I’m asking because you’re the expert. Fundamentally, what’s the difference between house Lannister giving personal loans vs house Lannister establishing a bank and the bank giving personal loans?

The difference is whether we consider the bank a legal entity in its own right, one that can enter into contracts, sue and be sued, etc. Even today, with quite liberalized systems of general incorporation laws as opposed to requiring charters to incorporate, you still need to file paperwork to establish an LLC or an NGO or the like. 

So to give a modern analogy, let’s say I decide to open a bank – I rent some office space, hire some people to help me run the bank, put out a sign saying “Bank of Steve now open,” etc. If I don’t do the paperwork to establish the bank as a formal institution, I’m going to have some serious trouble if someone defaults on a mortgage, because the “Bank of Steve” can’t sue someone in court and the defaulter didn’t borrow any money from Steve Attewell personally. 

Moreover, banks do more than just give out loans. They also borrow money and invest money, they own real estate and other forms of property, they act as depository institutions, they act as financial middlemen, and so on and so forth. You need some legal framework to legalize these functions and to formalize how disputes that arise from these functions could be resolved.

So in the Westerosi context, without a royal charter that sets out the structure, rights, privileges, and limitations of the Bank, there’s no way to resolve major questions like: can the Bank own land? Who owns the lordship of that land, since “nulle terre sans seigneur”? Can the Bank be summoned to fight for the liege lord of that land, and can it be convicted of a felony if it doesn’t show up? (Likewise, can the Bank summon people to fight for it, and can it convict people of felonies for not showing up?) If someone who’s defaulted on their debt dies, does the Bank inherit their land or the eldest son of the defaulter?