Author: stevenattewell

The incompetence of the Yunkai lords and the ineffective nature of their slave soldiers is on full display to readers and the in world characters alike. Its just so over the top though that I think GRRM is trying to get his readers to underestimate the slaver coalition. Tyrion takes stock of their forces near the end of ADWD (the slingers and New Ghis armies) and notes that they aren’t up to par with their enemies soldiers, but I think there is a good implication that there is iron there as well

Given the Barristan and Tyrion TWOW chapters that have been previewed, I think this is one case where, beneath the surface appearance of complete incompetence, there are layers and layers of…complete incompetence. 

Would Viserys II have approved and allowed for a Lannister Golden Bank? He was raised by the Rogare banking family. What would he do if the idea was suggested to him? He got a good amount of projects done during his 1 year reign as King.

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

That soon after the Dance, where House Lannister fought for the other side? 

He’d probably see as giving the Lannisters too much power and influence compared to the Crown. 

Would the Lannisters have needed his permission?

No snark, I seriously wonder. Tytos Lannister had extraordinary lending operations going on all the time; indeed, lending money at generous terms and then forgiving that debt was one of his big problems and one of Tywin’s first big political acts after the War of the Ninepenny Kings, with Tywin deciding “fuck this” and operating as a debt collector. The king didn’t need to be involved in any way.

This all involved mostly noblemen, of course, but I don’t see any reason these lending operations couldn’t be further extended. You’d just formalize it; establish the appropriate bureaucracy and infrastructure in Lannisport and let those classes and people that are capable of participating in borrowing, lending, and depositing know that the Golden Bank, backed by all the wealth of the Rock, is open for business.

Indeed, I would be surprised if there aren’t pseudo-banks already operating in Westeros. My understanding is that great merchant families and companies often operated as de facto banks; they’d issue debt, they’d bond and insure cargo, they’d take deposits, even sometimes have what were basically their own currencies. I imagine the Gulltown Arryns and the Lannisters of Lannisport have their fingers in such things.

I mean. You would, of course, want royal patronage and blessings, because that’s gonna make your life a lot easier and you can get the king to make laws to facilitate your business. But I’m unsure you’d have to go asking for that even to begin; Westerosi contract and finance law is pretty primitive but it seems to exist well enough to allow someone to just start a bank if they can convince people they’re trustworthy enough to operate as a banking .

For a formal bank, whose contracts and bills would be honored outside of the Westerlands, hell yes you need a royal charter. 

And if you went ahead and did it without royal assent, that’s a quick way to find yourself accused of treason. 

Your own linked post seems like it is closer to agreeing with me than not, I think? it notes the various problems you’d have trying to operate a bank with cross-kingdom connections but it is highly qualified with respect to how difficult it might be to overcome them.

I mean, take cross-kingdom contract disputes. Those must crop up anyway, like all the time. I’m sure the Iron Throne has ruled on them repeatedly. Any sort of cross-kingdom or charter agreement would… probably simply re-affirm the right of the Iron Throne to render those judgements, which brings you right back where you’ve started, where you want the king to like you and rule in your favor or at least apply the law even-handedly instead of just laughing the second he sees someone with your livery enter court and rules against them without even pretending to hear the case.

(I’m assuming that Aegon IV and Aerys did shit like that on the regular. See also Joffrey.)

So you’re going to want royal patronage no matter what, but strictly speaking you might not need it. If the other Lord Paramounts start nullifying your debts within their borders and the Iron Throne backs them up, that’s going to be a huge problem regardless of whether you hold a charter or not, isn’t it?

Ok, so let’s say that we have a cross-kingdom dispute: Golden Bank v. Oakheart. The Golden Bank of Lannisport is trying to collect on a loan that the Oakhearts took out from them a while back but then refused to pay back. What happens when the Oakhearts point to the fact that the Golden Bank has no royal charter, and thus doesn’t legally exist, so can’t bring a suit? 

Royal chartering is inextricably linked to royal authority, as we saw with the Defiance of Duskendale. Unless the king wants to degrade his own authority and allow the nobility of Westeros total free reign in their own dominion, they’re not going to uphold the legality of any institution created without royal charter, an institution which by its very nature is a challenge to the supremacy of royal law. 

This is why you need a royal charter, because that flips the script. If the bank is chartered by the King, then if the Lords Paramount try to nullify their debts, they’re the ones challenging the king’s authority.  

Would Viserys II have approved and allowed for a Lannister Golden Bank? He was raised by the Rogare banking family. What would he do if the idea was suggested to him? He got a good amount of projects done during his 1 year reign as King.

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

That soon after the Dance, where House Lannister fought for the other side? 

He’d probably see as giving the Lannisters too much power and influence compared to the Crown. 

Would the Lannisters have needed his permission?

No snark, I seriously wonder. Tytos Lannister had extraordinary lending operations going on all the time; indeed, lending money at generous terms and then forgiving that debt was one of his big problems and one of Tywin’s first big political acts after the War of the Ninepenny Kings, with Tywin deciding “fuck this” and operating as a debt collector. The king didn’t need to be involved in any way.

This all involved mostly noblemen, of course, but I don’t see any reason these lending operations couldn’t be further extended. You’d just formalize it; establish the appropriate bureaucracy and infrastructure in Lannisport and let those classes and people that are capable of participating in borrowing, lending, and depositing know that the Golden Bank, backed by all the wealth of the Rock, is open for business.

Indeed, I would be surprised if there aren’t pseudo-banks already operating in Westeros. My understanding is that great merchant families and companies often operated as de facto banks; they’d issue debt, they’d bond and insure cargo, they’d take deposits, even sometimes have what were basically their own currencies. I imagine the Gulltown Arryns and the Lannisters of Lannisport have their fingers in such things.

I mean. You would, of course, want royal patronage and blessings, because that’s gonna make your life a lot easier and you can get the king to make laws to facilitate your business. But I’m unsure you’d have to go asking for that even to begin; Westerosi contract and finance law is pretty primitive but it seems to exist well enough to allow someone to just start a bank if they can convince people they’re trustworthy enough to operate as a banking .

For a formal bank, whose contracts and bills would be honored outside of the Westerlands, hell yes you need a royal charter. 

And if you went ahead and did it without royal assent, that’s a quick way to find yourself accused of treason. 

You couldn’t build a *warehouse* without a charter? How does that even work?

Well, keep in mind we’re talking about two separate things. There’s the physical structure where you keep goods. And then there’s the legal right to require goods to be stored in a public warehouse where they would be guarded by public officials and inspected by public officials, paid for by excise taxes on those goods. 

Municipal warehouses were important pieces of civic infrastructure, because they provided an amenity that encouraged merchants to trade in that city and to bring larger quantities of goods, because those merchants knew there would be somewhere to store their goods, that they could bring goods in bulk (as opposed to just arriving with samples and then taking orders that would be shipped later), and that they could be assured of a certain standard of product quality. 

And yes, you needed a charter to make all of this legal; that’s what it means to live in a pre-capitalist society – there is no assumption of a “free market” in which the government doesn’t intrude; rather, governments create markets by extending legal privileges that lower transaction costs. For more on this, I highly recommend Karl Polayni’s Great Transformation.

Did medieval nobles value land itself, apart from the money they could make out of it or the defensive value? Did controlling a number of acres give you prestige by itself, or would people always ask how fertile it was and what you were producing from it?

Medieval nobles probably wouldn’t measure prestige in acreage or income; that’s much more of an Early Modern/19th century thing (think Jane Austen, where members of the gentry are sized up as having or “being on” “four or five thousand a-year.”). Rather land would be described in looser, more traditional terms: a “goodly” or “well-stocked” manor or fiefdom, as a barony or a county or duchy, etc. 

As to how they felt about the land itself, it’s a bit complicated in the Medieval era, because technically, nobles didn’t own the land itself but rather owned an “estate in land,” i.e various rights over that land. Then again, virtually no one owned land outright, with it being far more common for people to have various tenancies and sub-tenancies. So the land (apart from the land held by the lord directly as opposed to rented out) is less important than one’s rental income. 

This changed rather dramatically beginning in the late Middle Ages, as statues like Quia Emptores gradually allowed for the easier sale and purchase of land, and as cash rents replaced feudal obligations – leading to the period known as “bastard feudalism.” Basically, as lords increasingly began to own land outright and pay for soldiers directly as opposed to giving away land for feudal service, all of the sudden the nobility has a much higher stake in land management, because the more cash you can get out of your estate, the more men you can pay to be part of your affinity.

So if you’re a nobleman with an eye for the coming thing, you’re going to hire some people to turn any wasteland you might own into productive land by draining fenland and the like, you’re going to support the enclosure movement to get your hands on the commons, you’re going to invest in modern farming techniques, and try to raise rents whenever and however you can. 

What is the difference between a city charter and a town charter? What are the advantages each brings? Also how does a charter affect the people and how would a Lord Paramount or the King grant a charter? Does someone ask for one or does the Lord/King decide where the new city or town will be built and how?

City charters offer more extensive rights than town charters (and generally speaking, if a city had a city charter, it would include the rights of a town charter but not vice-versa). So for example, a town charter might provide borough rights (i.e, its inhabitants are burghers not peasants) and some measure of self-government but only a city charter would give you the staple or storage right (which was necessary to conduct international trade). a town charter might give you the right to hold a market but you might need a city charter to the right to establish a warehouse (which was very important for long-distance, international, and bulk trade). 

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In terms of how a charter affects the residents of a town, it provided a whole host of legal, political, and economic opportunities that could change one’s status enormously. Being a burgher meant that you not only had the right to live in the town, but that you were a free person under the law and not a serf. Living in a chartered town or city probably meant that there were guilds you could join and become a member of, and it definitely meant access to markets and trade and occupations that could not be accessed outside of that town/city. It might mean that there was a city government that you could vote for or run for office in if you got wealthy enough. 

While there are cases of charters being granted ahead of construction – often as a means of enticing people to move to a new (and therefore risky) settlement – usually, the settlement would predate the charter. The way it normally worked is that you had a settlement of people who would petition the king or overlord for a charter, the charter would be written out and sealed (as we see above), and there would be a big ceremony where the king/overlord would present the charter to the city government, after which the city would now exist as a legal corporation.