Is it just to wage a war to unseat a King who is an usurper, but a good king nonetheless ? If in an AU, Joffrey, Cersei & Tywin had been benevolent people (minus trying to pass off incest spawn as true heirs) would Stannis still have been correct in starting a war to claim his birthright ? Sure he is being cheated, but is he right in triggering a war that would claim lives of thousands who could have lived happily under the false-but-benevolent King Jofferey for the sake of his inheritance?

Well, it depends on whether you’re a consequentialist or a Kantian, I guess.

How is it some lines of noble families end up as poor as the Tolletts, or end up becoming merchants like the Gulltown Arryns?

Good question!

There are many ways a noble family can either fall into genteel poverty or experience downward social mobility into the merchant class or even below (just look at the Heddles), but most of them come down to the relationship between rent, income, and debt:

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.” (Dickens)

Almost by definition, the major source of income of a noble family is rent income from their lands, and rents were overwhelmingly set by custom and tradition. This meant that most nobles were living on something like a fixed income, which meant they were very vulnerable to changes in prices. Crop failures, rebellious peasants demanding wage increases, competition from foreign countries, all of these things could seriously negatively affect the bottom line.

This could be especially problematic, because nobles were supposed to A. live an ostentatious lifestyle (hunting, hawking, entertainment, and fancy clothes cost a lot), and B. not care about money like some grubby bourgeoisie. A combination of these two social expectations means that a lot of nobles went into debt to keep up with their social peers, and since land was the only collateral they had…you can see where this goes.

So you get a gradual process by which trying to keep up with one’s station and the Joneses lands you in debt, the debt eventually gets larger than your ability to pay, you end up losing bits of your land to satisfy your creditors, that reduces your income and exacerbates the problem, and so on…

You’ve suggested the Kings road be extended in the Eastern riverlands, as the eastern lords are only linked to Kings landing but not to Riverrun. So what are some other extensions that should be made? Both in the perspective of the ruler of the whole kingdom and in the perspective of local lord paramounts and lesser lords.

Covered here.

(Not the same anon) I kind of chalked Ice Spiders as a literary trick rather than being actual giant spiders. I mean I remember that in one of Jon’s chapters in ADWD that he had a dream while defending the Wall, and he was fighting wights climbing the Wall “like Ice spiders”. I thought it was potential foreshadowing where GRRM revealed something out of the horror genre with the undead twisting and clawing up the ice, serving as impromptu mounts for the others.

If ASOIAF has taught us anything, it’s that Old Nan speaks the truth:

“Now these were the days before the Andals came, and long before the women fled across the narrow sea from the cities of the Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those times were the kingdoms of the First Men, who had taken these lands from the children of the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of the woods the children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow hills, and the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him, and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders big as hounds—”

The pale spiders are not metaphors.

While “breastplate stretcher” was clearly a cruel joke, were there ways armour could be modified to fit a person’s changing body size? Most people don’t stay the same size their whole life and steel doesn’t stretch.

You deal with changing body size by buying new armor.

Hence why we can actually chart Henry VIII’s growth and physical decline from his various suits of armor.

Wouldn’t The Vale make the most sense, from a strategic standpoint, as the last stand/stronghold to fight the white walkers?

Not really. Wights don’t feel pain and don’’t need to breathe, so sending them up mountains isn’t a problem. As for the white walkers, they’ve got their pale spiders.

They’re real good at climbing.

Wouldn’t the rewards for a Roose Bolton who decisively defeated Tywin at the Greenfork, knocking the Lannisters out of the war and facilitating huge material concessions in exchange for peace, have been greater than the benefits of throwing the battle and merely weakening some rival Northern Houses? Obviously, this is before the Red Wedding and the subsequent Wardenship are possibilites he can reasonably anticipate.

I doubt it. Firstly it’s highly unlikely that Roose could have decisively defeated Tywin on his own while outnumbered and leading an army largely composed of infantry. Most likely, Roose could have managed a defensive victory that would have contributed to Robb’s larger plan – which gets you something, but not anything above the curve, as it were.

Moreover, one of the major limits on a liege lord’s ability to reward his vassals (and thus, his ability to gain their extended service) is that pretty much all the land belongs to someone. So maybe Robb can give him some lands in the Riverlands or something, but nothing major.

Whereas if he can massively weaken his regional rivals, Roose can potentially retake much of the traditional lands of the Red Kings.

As to why there’s no center of Faith in Vale that tried to compete with Starry Sept, maybe the Arryns & Graftons couldn’t ( or maybe wouldn’t) match the amount of money that the Hightowers & Gardners could sink into the Starry Sept ? Add to it the fact that Oldtown is far easily accessible & the routes doesn’t involve braving barbarian raids, masses must have increasingly turned to the Starry Sept as their Mecca ?

I understand why the Starry Sept would have become the center of the Faith eventually, but there was a period of 300 years when the Vale was all the Andals had, then came the conquest of the Riverlands, and the Andals didn’t come to the Reach until “generations had passed” since the conquest of the Riverlands.

In that intervening period, you’re going to get a major center of faith in the Vale. There’s no way the Arryns aren’t going to use some of that Vale to raise up a Sept to glorify Ser Artys Arryn and his gods-ordained victory over the First Men, and by extension to emphasize their authority over the lesser Andal kings of the Riverlands. And with hundreds of years of pilgrimages and donations from guilty-conscienced knights and lords looking to buy their way into Heaven, that Sept is going to be very, very fancy and the Septon who runs it is unlikely to tug their forelock to some lackey of the Hightowers without a fight.

Where’s the Faith in the Great Game? How do they function on a Trans-Westerosi during this time when kingdoms are going at it? Do they stand neutral/No one has tried to get the High Septon on their side?

This is an excellent question!

The pre-unification Faith of the Seven is a topic that I (and others) find to be a fascinating mystery, because you would expect the Faith to be frequently involved in inter-regional conflict, either as an instigator or a mediator.

Instead, we have a very brief period where the Faith is used to inspire the Andals during their conquest of the Vale, and a little bit of the same in the Riverlands, but little thereafter.

This is strange, for a couple reasons. First, the Faith headquartered themselves in Oldtown, and far from remaining aloof from politics, almost immediately we see the first High Septon serving as the regent of Oldtown for twenty years. As I’ve said, this is going to have regional implications.

Second, the Faith established a standing military arm (the Warrior’s Sons and the Poor Fellows) and you don’t do that just to protect itinerant septons, escort pilgrims, and protect septs. You do that because you’re going to be fighting in wars.

However, we do get one example of the Faith involving themselves in the Great Game, which we can extrapolate from to work out a model of their political behavior. As we learn in the Riverlands chapter, the Faith Militant fought for King Humfrey Teague when the Blackwoods rose up against him and then when Arlan III Durrandon invaded the Riverlands to back them up.

So what can we learn from this?

The Faith of the Seven was active in the Great Game. While not a competitor in its own right because it lacked the equivalent of the Papal States, the Faith acted to promote some kings and, presumably, against others.
This activity extended to military intervention. This is something of a risk, because you can imagine a lot of monarchs who would get very nervous about allowing the Faith Militant to operate in their kingdoms if the Faith Militant was going to get involved in internal politics.
The Faith used their influence to shape religious policy specifically. Humfrey Teague didn’t get the Faith’s support just because he was a charming guy, he got it by building “many septs and motherhouses across the riverlands“ and by seeking to “repress the worship of the old gods within his realm.”

So where would we expect to see the Faith getting involved in the Great Game?

Well, I would be very surprised if the Faith wasn’t involved in persuading Andals to conquer the Iron Islands (given their bloody reputation on the mainland and their religious differences), or in calling for the punitive raid against Hagon the Heartless (both for his crimes against the Mother and the Shrike’s religious purge).
Likewise, I would expect the Faith to have been involved in prolonging the War Across the Water between the North and the Vale once the initial invasions of the North failed, as the best hope for continuing the fight against the pagans.
I could also imagine the Faith to try to use the Great Game to crack down on regional religious divides: are the septons in Sunspear getting a bit too “Rhoynish” for the High Septon’s tastes, or is the Most Devout of the Stormlands getting a bit too big for his britches? Well, a war can turn into a crusade very easily.
And I would definitely imagine that the Great Game would infiltrate into the Faith. Since the Most Devout elect the High Septon, I would imagine that the elections would become very much like the elections to the papacy during the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Early modern period, where the various nations of Europe would vie to get their candidate on the papal throne as a way to extend their influence and thwart their rivals. Naturally, the Westerlands would have the most cash, the Reach would have the home field advantage, but there’s a lot of votes to be had from the Vale and the Stormlands and the Riverlands and Dorne, so I imagine the competition would get very complicated.

Are there ever situations where neighboring vassal houses from different kingdoms go to war without bringing in their liege lords?

Yeah, the Marcher Lords vs. the stony Dornish would be a good example.