In regards to the ask about Harrenhal how legal is Cersei seizing Rosby on the death of its childless lord and planning to give it to one of her vassals? Isn’t that similar to what happened to Harrenhal? What is the difference between the situations exactly?

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

Of all the things Cersei does in AFFC, this one is actually kosher. As both King and overlord of the Crownlands, Tommen has pretty broad powers here, because without an heir, Rosby is technically in escheat, and has reverted to the crown.

What makes Harrenhal unusual is that, as a part of the Riverlands, normally it would be the direct overlord of the Riverlands (the Lord Paramount) who would exercise those rights, but because of the unique way that Aegon the Conqueror dealt with Harrenhal, the Crown exercises direct authority despite the subinfeudation that makes the Lord of Harrenhal a vassal of the Lord Paramount of the Riverlands first, and a vassal of the King second.

Cersei’s actions with regard to Rosby are most similar to happened with regard to the Hornwood lands, are they not?

I mean, there’s not an exact parallel because of the presence of Lady Hornwood, but its the same basic thing; there’s no lord and no heir, which means that the fief reverts to the liege lord to be re-assigned. With the Hornwood lands it is Robb Stark, with Rosby it is Tommen, which means his regent, Cersei.

The biggest difference narratively is that Maester Luwin and Robb Stark are concerned with things like empathy for Lady Hornwood, the good governance of the Hornwood lands, the upholding of the social order by giving due consideration to people with blood claims on the land, and other such things.

Whereas Cersei doesn’t give a shit; to her Rosby is just a bauble to be disposed of as she sees fit. So it seems more egregious despite operating on the same principle.

Yeah, it’s pretty similar. I mean, in the case of House Hornwood, you have Larence Snow and whatnot, but it’s still a case of the lord having to decide between relatively distant or weak claims.

But yes, even though she’s not breaking the law, Cersei’s not doing a good job.

I think in a couples of recent asks you mentioned some points of Kings falling out of love with feudalism because it always de-centralized their power. Is it possible that you could provide some examples of nations and their methods (summaries that sort of thing) for such kingdoms as France and England? Furthermore if its not too much to ask, how does the re-fuedalization of Poland play into this?

In the context of England, I’ve written a lot about Henry II in the context of judicial reforms, Henry VII in terms of financial reforms, and Edward IV and Henry VII in terms of trying to eliminate affinities. (I’ve also talked more generally about scutage, which was created by Henry I, used more extensively by Richard I, abused by John, and eventually superseded by Edward I, II, and III’s use of direct taxation through Parliament.)

In the context of France, I’ve not written as much, but you can definitely look at centralizing monarchs like Phillip IV or Phillip V of the “rois maudits,” or Charles V, or Louis XI the “universal spider.”

The refeudalization of Poland is something of a confusing term, because what it’s actually referring to is the reintroduction of serfdom: cash rents which had gradually replaced forced labor were refused in favor of forced labor, freedom of movement was abolished, and family farms were supplanted by folwarks, vast serf-run latifundia aimed at exporting huge quantities of grain to Western Europe. The relation of this phenomena to feudalism is more complicated – the rise of the commercial and middle classes was slowed down, the nobility was enriched, and the money raised by exporting Poland’s material standard of living to the west was used to fund wars with Sweden, the Ottomans, the Russians, and many Cossack rebellions, wars that were generalled by the nobility – but at the same time, the government of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth couldn’t really be described as feudal in nature.

In regards to the ask about Harrenhal how legal is Cersei seizing Rosby on the death of its childless lord and planning to give it to one of her vassals? Isn’t that similar to what happened to Harrenhal? What is the difference between the situations exactly?

Of all the things Cersei does in AFFC, this one is actually kosher. As both King and overlord of the Crownlands, Tommen has pretty broad powers here, because without an heir, Rosby is technically in escheat, and has reverted to the crown.

What makes Harrenhal unusual is that, as a part of the Riverlands, normally it would be the direct overlord of the Riverlands (the Lord Paramount) who would exercise those rights, but because of the unique way that Aegon the Conqueror dealt with Harrenhal, the Crown exercises direct authority despite the subinfeudation that makes the Lord of Harrenhal a vassal of the Lord Paramount of the Riverlands first, and a vassal of the King second.

Thank you for the answer to my question on strengthening the crownlands but it’s not really what I was asking. To clarify I’m wondering why the King didn’t strengthen his military might by taking lords sworn to the different Lords Paramount and have them swear fealty directly to him. For example, Harrenhal has been granted to numerous people by numerous kings. Why did he not keep their vassalage instead of transferring it to the Riverlands?

Ah, I see.

I think what you’re running up against here is that feudal politics don’t work like nation-state politics.

Sure, the King could expand the Crownlands vis-a-vis the other kingdoms (he already did with Massey’s Hook and the southern Crownlands across the Blackwater), but…unless he’s going to rule them himself (and that’s not easy to do – you need bureaucrats to manage your manors, you need bureaucrats to keep records, you need bureaucrats to pay the taxes, you need soldiers to make sure people don’t rob your tax collectors, etc.), he still has to give that land to someone in exchange for their fealty. Sure, you could get rid of one layer of subinfeudation, but that’s a huge political effort for not really that big of a change.

Moreover, and this is the real kicker, a king is supposed to be open-handed, a ring-giver. Indeed, giving stuff away is the primary way you get armed men to fight for you in a context where you don’t have the state capacity for a standing army. So a king who gets a reputation as miserly or greedy is going to find themselves lacking in armed men to fight for them no matter how much land they control.

That’s the catch-22 of feudal politics: you have to give away the thing that people want from you to get them to do stuff for you, but the more you give away, the harder it is to get them to keep doing stuff. And historically, while kings did eventually grab more and more land for themselves (hence the coalescing of nation-states from nuclei like the

Île-de-France), the main route that kings used to increase their power was to convert feudal military service into taxes paid in cash (the so-called scutage) that would allow them to hire mercenaries and other professional soldiers, gradually building up the state capacity so that they no longer had to rely on the old way.

hi maester steven, how do you think the relationship between lyanna and rickard was? was she the adored daughter he indulged up to some point (although it was probably way less so than arya), or a rebellious headache?

Good question!

We don’t really know, tbh, because there’s almost no evidence about Rickard or Lyanna for that matter. We have some evidence to say that Rickard was ambitious, worldly, and a good fighter. We have some evidence to say that Lyanna was headstrong (a touch of the wolf blood), vivacious, unconventional, a good horsewoman, and something of a romantic.

How they got along we have to deduce from some very slender reeds indeed: Rickard didn’t get in the way of Lyanna’s horsewomanship, but didn’t allow her to have a sword. He allowed her to travel to the Riverlands without much in the way of restrictions, although part of that was to help with her brother’s wedding. And he engaged her to Robert Baratheon, and she wasn’t keen on that.

As portraits go, that’s not even a miniature. Barely a sketch…

In TWoIaF we learn that Daeron II gave Daemon Blackfyre permission to set up a castle somewhere in the crownlands. Do we know what happened to that castle, or if it was even built? Is it still around today? How often would a King give permission to build a castle, and would Daemon just control the castle? Or would that make him a landed knight or minor lord?

It was probably built, but I would guess that Bloodraven had it destroyed to prevent it from becoming a shrine to the Blackfyre cause.

As for the land/castle issue, Daemon “granted Daemon a tract of land near the Blackwater, with the right to raise a castle.” A castle was an improvement to one’s land, and at various times kings encouraged castle-building among their subjects (Edward I, for example) and at other times tightly controlled the licensing of castle construction and would pull down illicit fortifications (Henry VII).

And yes, prior to raising his banners, Daemon was a landed knight.

Do you ever feel bad for England’s Richard II? I feel he was a different sort of tyrant than Edward II.

If he wanted sympathy, he should have done right by Wat Tyler.

Does it seem strange to you that the Crownlands can only muster about 15,000 men in the best of times? It makes sense in terms of Aegon I – Aegon III, but you’d think after the death of the last dragon (the Targaryan’s “Ultima Ratio Regum”) there’d be a serious move to bolster the amount of soldiers the crown can raise directly without having to rely on the Lord Paramounts.

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

It doesn’t seem strange to me. The size and population of the Crownlands hasn’t changed hugely, so the number of soldiers it can raise hasn’t changed much either.

It may or may not be worth noting again that the Westerosi don’t conceive of economic and social development in the same ways that those of us who live in powerful and robust post-Westphalian post-industrial late-stage capitalism nation-states and take for granted the fact that the government has powerful tools for spurring development at its disposal do.

I am reminded of… about a decade ago, myself and a number of people were playing a TTRPG called Pendragon, one of the grandees of tabletop roleplaying. As the name implies, you play knights in the time of King Arthur, and one of the things that could happen is you could become a landed knight, with peasants and incomes and suchly. The game had systems supporting that.

And almost universally, everyone at the table began managing those manors with an eye towards investment and development regardless of if it was period-appropriate or character-appropriate or not. My seven foot tall, one-eyed, illiterate Irish axe-wielder became very concerned with the international wool market and how long it would take him to amortize out his investment into horse-breeding.

It just didn’t occur to any of us to act any other way, because although our characters were ostensibly from a medieval warrior/noble caste WE were all 21st century Americans and so acquiring capital and using it to generate MORE capital was so second nature to us.

But that didn’t exactly fit the setting we were operating in. To bring it back around… Westerosi don’t think like that. They’re not capitalists (yes, yes, Petyr Baelish; a clear exception) and their government, while very real and exercising very real power, is anemically weak and next-to-nonexistent in many ways by modern standards. If it even occurred to them to try and deliberately increase the population of the Crownlands somehow, the various folks who have sat the Iron Throne might not know how to go about doing that or even if they did lack the policy tools to make it happen.

Also, because I’m a giant pedant: Lords Paramount, Anon, not the other way around. 🙂 Like Attorneys General or courts-martial.

Excellent point! Hell, I’m hardly innocent of this – my first instinct when I see Westeros is to start drawing up plans for economic development.

I’ll go one step further and say that we have an unrealistic expectation of change itself. I see this all the time when people bring up Westerosi “stasis” operating under the mindset that the rates of economic change we’ve seen since the Industrial Revolution are the norm.

(Incidentally, the “hockey stick” graph of global warming maps neatly onto this one above…)

But this simply isn’t the case. For the vast majority of human existence, change was extremely gradual to the point of imperceptibility and long periods of stasis were not unknown. One generation being born, growing into adulthood, taking up the work that their parents’ generation did, and living essentially identical lives to those who came before them, over and over again, was the norm and the idea that each generation would experience a new, radically different world than the previous was unthinkable.

Does it seem strange to you that the Crownlands can only muster about 15,000 men in the best of times? It makes sense in terms of Aegon I – Aegon III, but you’d think after the death of the last dragon (the Targaryan’s “Ultima Ratio Regum”) there’d be a serious move to bolster the amount of soldiers the crown can raise directly without having to rely on the Lord Paramounts.

It doesn’t seem strange to me. The size and population of the Crownlands hasn’t changed hugely, so the number of soldiers it can raise hasn’t changed much either.

How true to reality is stannis claim that “kings have no friends, only subjects and enemies”?

I don’t think Stannis is making a factual statement as much as a philosophical statement.

The first thing he’s getting at is that, in their own realm, the king has no equals, and everyone around them is a subject connected to the king by chains of reciprocal obligation. As much as a king might want to just be pals with their old buddies, there’s both a basic power imbalance and an inescapable tinge of self-interest to their relationships with everyone around them. This is especially the case since proximity to the body of the King is the main route to power in feudal politics – everyone around the king, from the attendant who assists the king with the evacuation of his bowels and the cleaning thereof, to the person who refills the king’s drink, is looking to get something out of it, whether it’s royal favor or a chance to get bribed.

So a wise king has to look at the people around him with something of a jaundiced eye, constantly assessing them as to what they want out of him, what he’s getting out of them, and whether their political accounts are in balance, as opposed to trusting anyone. Because someone like Davos Seaworth who is so unconditionally loyal to the king that they would speak to the king’s best interest even when it goes against their own, is one in a million.

The second thing he’s getting at has to do with Stannis’ ideal of justice. Stannis believes very much that one of the highest duties of the king is to provide justice to all of his subjects:

“I shall bring justice to Westeros … Every man shall reap what he has sown, from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat. And some will lose more than the tips off their fingers, I promise you. They have made my kingdom bleed, and I do not forget that.”

Thus, the king can’t have friends who get special treatment (privilege originally meant “private law”) but must treat all equally. And in order to achieve that state of impartiality, someone with Stannis’ beliefs would hold that there needs to be something of a remove, a distancing so that the law is predictable, consistent, and transparent.