No, I don’t think so. If we look back to Catelyn II, we see a Brienne who is ride-or-die (or more accurately, ride-and-die) for Renly. So he’s not going to stop her from leaving. 

But a hundred picked men is going to be noticeable – they’re going to be wearing his livery and fight under his banner, so it visibly commits him to Renly’s cause no matter what. 

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what he did. 

We learn in the Prologue to ACOK that only half the Stormlords actually sent men to Renly, while the other half “sit behind their walls waiting to see how the wind rises and who is likely triumph.” And Selwyn Tarth is explicitly listed as belonging to that faction, as Davos reports:

“I broke bread with Gulian Swann and old Penrose, and the Tarths consented to a midnight meeting in a grove.”

So yeah, I think Selwyn held back his levies but let his idealistic daughter pursue her dreams. 

I had forgotten that!

Man, this makes me revise my opinion of Renly downward yet again. The other four Lords Paramount who are willing to make war against the Iron Throne, Mace Tyrell, Hoster Tully, Robb Stark, and Balon Greyjoy, manage to get the vast majority of their bannermen on-side for a little light usurpation, treason, revenge, and empire-building. If Doran Martell had decided to do so his bannermen would almost certainly have done so as well.

But Renly only gets half the Stormlords? Did he spend literally his entire Lord Paramountcy at court or at Highgarden and entirely neglect Storm’s End? Renly is charismatic and young and looks to all the world like Robert come again, you would think if he’d invested the time into working over the lords of his own fief they’d have been way more willing to follow him, especially since they’d been willing to rise for Robert and Renly could play the “you all loved Robert and the Lannisters murdered him” card.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Renly as a person but I did think he had a basic level of competency in that the Stormlands didn’t seem to be terribly misruled. I still kinda think that but I’m having to revise it down again.

Sidebar: I’d like to see and know more about Selwyn. He seems like a good dad. There’s an argument he’s playing fast and loose with the stability of his house and the succession thereof (maybe Brienne has cousins?) but that’s a political question, not a personal one. He raised a hell of a daughter.

Yeah, it’s kind of hard to tell, because Renly is presenting the opposite image, but you can pull it out from a few things: first, which banners does Catelyn see and not see when she visits his camp; second, whose support does Renly claim when he meets Stannis at Storm’s End; third, pure numbers – if Renly had the whole of the Stormlands behind him, he ought to have had 125,000 men rather than 100,000 behind him.

Now it’s true that A. Renly was relying very heavily on the Reach to put him on the Iron Throne, and B. not all of the Reach was present either, but it’s not looking great as far as support from the Stormlands goes.

This makes Tywin’s line in ASOS re: Stannis (”If he tries to rouse the Storm Lords he’s finished”) make more sense, if there’s another potential host there to be raised. I’m learning things today!

This also has some rather interesting implications for the numbers that Aegon might be able to rally to his cause, if the Stormlands, hitherto untouched by war, were holding back men. They may not look kindly on this Targaryen (or, as I imagine some are already muttering, this Blackfyre) and his foreign army who is treating with the Dornish… but Aegon, like Renly, cuts a fine figure and seizing Storm’s End is a pretty big feather in his cap. With the Lannister host melting away into the Westerlands and the Riverlands, and the Reach beset by both political and military strife, if Aegon can get even ten to fifteen thousand men out of the Storm Lords that would give him a host in the vicinity of twenty-five thousand, which probably punches well above its weight because Golden Company.

I think that’s a strong possibility – and I think capturing Storm’s End, which GRRM has spent a good deal of time setting up, will be a big part of that. 

Moreover, I don’t think the Targ thing would actually be a hindrance – remember, Robert had to defeat his own bannermen at Summerhall before he got them on board, so Connington wasn’t the only Targaryen loyalist in the Stormlands. 

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what he did. 

We learn in the Prologue to ACOK that only half the Stormlords actually sent men to Renly, while the other half “sit behind their walls waiting to see how the wind rises and who is likely triumph.” And Selwyn Tarth is explicitly listed as belonging to that faction, as Davos reports:

“I broke bread with Gulian Swann and old Penrose, and the Tarths consented to a midnight meeting in a grove.”

So yeah, I think Selwyn held back his levies but let his idealistic daughter pursue her dreams. 

I had forgotten that!

Man, this makes me revise my opinion of Renly downward yet again. The other four Lords Paramount who are willing to make war against the Iron Throne, Mace Tyrell, Hoster Tully, Robb Stark, and Balon Greyjoy, manage to get the vast majority of their bannermen on-side for a little light usurpation, treason, revenge, and empire-building. If Doran Martell had decided to do so his bannermen would almost certainly have done so as well.

But Renly only gets half the Stormlords? Did he spend literally his entire Lord Paramountcy at court or at Highgarden and entirely neglect Storm’s End? Renly is charismatic and young and looks to all the world like Robert come again, you would think if he’d invested the time into working over the lords of his own fief they’d have been way more willing to follow him, especially since they’d been willing to rise for Robert and Renly could play the “you all loved Robert and the Lannisters murdered him” card.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Renly as a person but I did think he had a basic level of competency in that the Stormlands didn’t seem to be terribly misruled. I still kinda think that but I’m having to revise it down again.

Sidebar: I’d like to see and know more about Selwyn. He seems like a good dad. There’s an argument he’s playing fast and loose with the stability of his house and the succession thereof (maybe Brienne has cousins?) but that’s a political question, not a personal one. He raised a hell of a daughter.

Yeah, it’s kind of hard to tell, because Renly is presenting the opposite image, but you can pull it out from a few things: first, which banners does Catelyn see and not see when she visits his camp; second, whose support does Renly claim when he meets Stannis at Storm’s End; third, pure numbers – if Renly had the whole of the Stormlands behind him, he ought to have had 125,000 men rather than 100,000 behind him.

Now it’s true that A. Renly was relying very heavily on the Reach to put him on the Iron Throne, and B. not all of the Reach was present either, but it’s not looking great as far as support from the Stormlands goes.

I still think Ned would have had some reservations – why didn’t Jaime do anything when it was his family, was it Jaime’s place to kill the King vs. arrest him, and so forth. 

But as to “why did Jaime feel Ned would not listen?” Jaime didn’t know Ned. Unless they met very briefly at Harrenhal, I doubt they’d ever met before. 

But yeah, for the most part it’s Jaime being a teenager. 

RFTIT Tumblr Weekly Roundup!

Hey folks! Work has begun on Politics of the Reach, Part III – although it’s still early days yet. In the meantime, there’s a HUGE amount of stuff on the Tumblrs to get to. ASOIAF: Why is the Gold Tooth important? On seasonal warfare. How do elections work in Braavos? Tywin’s strategy before the Battle of Green Fork. Dangers of getting flanked in a reverse-Battle of the Fords. On the nation-state…

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doublehex:

racefortheironthrone:

doublehex:

racefortheironthrone:

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

Ive seen it written that kingdoms of antiquity werent feudal societies, but is this just wrong or what? didn’t they also have nobles and peasants and warrior castes?

Well, it depends what kingdoms you’re talking about, but in general you should avoid drawing a straight line from say, Classical Greece to Medieval Europe and saying it’s all the same thing and ignoring this massive thing in the middle called the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. 

The classical world didn’t really have feudal contracts between the nobility and the monarchy – armies were much more likely to be either recruited from the citizenry or professional mercenaries than a warrior caste who provide timed military service in return for land – or serfdom for that matter (instead, slavery dominated).

It has been my experience, and I speak purely as a layman, that folks tend to forget about the whole “timed” part of the military service in the classically European model of feudalism. That’s really a very important, I would say essential, element of it.

Because that was a huge deal. It gets elided or ignored a lot in popular culture and even in basic histories. Your feudal overlord couldn’t just call on you to gather up all your guys and go a’warring within him and you had to do that for an indefinite period. You might choose to, but your actual obligation was usually very short; ninety days was a good standard but it could be as short as thirty, if I recall correctly. And there could be all kinds of weird clauses and exceptions in your tenancy agreement, which your overlord would have to honor.

They hated doing that. Hated it. It made imperialist ambitions difficult and diluted power. It is no great surprise that eventually monarchs started saying “fuck it. Guys, give me gold instead, and I’ll just HIRE people to go to war for me.”

(Steven of course knows all this better than I do.)

But people don’t know this. Indeed, even ASOIAF, which of course this post is in context with, tends to just straight up not want to deal with it. There are never any discussions amongst any of the high-rollers in the books about how they’d better prosecute their various wars to a conclusion soon, because in six weeks three-quarters of their host will be allowed to tell them to go fuck off and return to their own lands if they desire. Historically, telling your monarch that the end of your obligations was approaching and if they wanted more service they’d better sweeten the deal was astoundingly common, but it doesn’t seem to really be a thing in Westeros at all; your military obligations appear to be rather open-ended.

The closest we get, I think, is when Robb is calling the banners up north and there’s a statement along the lines of “when he called, they would come… but not forever.” But that’s about it.

We get a bit more, and pretty much all from the Stark side – Catelyn talking about losing men to the harvest in ACOK, for example.

If I was going to No Prize it, maybe this is why GRRM has all of his wars last no longer than 1-2 years? 

Can you guys expand on this? How the hell did any of the lords ever allow this to come to pass? Why would a lord ever allow a commoner to dictate the terms of war? How could not just FORCE his soldiers to stay? This boggles my mind.

Quick correction: commoners are not dictating the terms of war, it’s knights and lords negotiating with their liege lords and kings. 

As to why, the alternative is having to pay for a standing army – your soldiers are going to want wages, they’re going to need to be fed, they’re going to need supplies, etc., and all of that takes money, which means you need a bureaucracy who can extract the necessary tax revenue from the population, work out the logistics of how to get the money and supplies to the army on time, keep records of everything, and so on. 

Whereas the upside of time-limited service and feudal land contracts is that you don’t have to worry about any of that: you don’t pay your army, instead you just give out land grants and leave it to your lords and knights to support themselves. 

Okay, so that makes a little bit more sense. But what sort of deals would go down between a lord and a…higher lord? I assumed there would already be a case of “I do x and y for you and in return you march to war when I call”. What ends up happening when you need more than 90 days?

Well, the deals were all phrased in “you will provide military service for X days” Anything beyond X required sweeteners, which could take the form of cash, a better share of the loot or ransoms, various feudal privileges, or in extreme cases, giving them additional manors and fiefdoms. 

doublehex:

racefortheironthrone:

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

Ive seen it written that kingdoms of antiquity werent feudal societies, but is this just wrong or what? didn’t they also have nobles and peasants and warrior castes?

Well, it depends what kingdoms you’re talking about, but in general you should avoid drawing a straight line from say, Classical Greece to Medieval Europe and saying it’s all the same thing and ignoring this massive thing in the middle called the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. 

The classical world didn’t really have feudal contracts between the nobility and the monarchy – armies were much more likely to be either recruited from the citizenry or professional mercenaries than a warrior caste who provide timed military service in return for land – or serfdom for that matter (instead, slavery dominated).

It has been my experience, and I speak purely as a layman, that folks tend to forget about the whole “timed” part of the military service in the classically European model of feudalism. That’s really a very important, I would say essential, element of it.

Because that was a huge deal. It gets elided or ignored a lot in popular culture and even in basic histories. Your feudal overlord couldn’t just call on you to gather up all your guys and go a’warring within him and you had to do that for an indefinite period. You might choose to, but your actual obligation was usually very short; ninety days was a good standard but it could be as short as thirty, if I recall correctly. And there could be all kinds of weird clauses and exceptions in your tenancy agreement, which your overlord would have to honor.

They hated doing that. Hated it. It made imperialist ambitions difficult and diluted power. It is no great surprise that eventually monarchs started saying “fuck it. Guys, give me gold instead, and I’ll just HIRE people to go to war for me.”

(Steven of course knows all this better than I do.)

But people don’t know this. Indeed, even ASOIAF, which of course this post is in context with, tends to just straight up not want to deal with it. There are never any discussions amongst any of the high-rollers in the books about how they’d better prosecute their various wars to a conclusion soon, because in six weeks three-quarters of their host will be allowed to tell them to go fuck off and return to their own lands if they desire. Historically, telling your monarch that the end of your obligations was approaching and if they wanted more service they’d better sweeten the deal was astoundingly common, but it doesn’t seem to really be a thing in Westeros at all; your military obligations appear to be rather open-ended.

The closest we get, I think, is when Robb is calling the banners up north and there’s a statement along the lines of “when he called, they would come… but not forever.” But that’s about it.

We get a bit more, and pretty much all from the Stark side – Catelyn talking about losing men to the harvest in ACOK, for example.

If I was going to No Prize it, maybe this is why GRRM has all of his wars last no longer than 1-2 years? 

Can you guys expand on this? How the hell did any of the lords ever allow this to come to pass? Why would a lord ever allow a commoner to dictate the terms of war? How could not just FORCE his soldiers to stay? This boggles my mind.

Quick correction: commoners are not dictating the terms of war, it’s knights and lords negotiating with their liege lords and kings. 

As to why, the alternative is having to pay for a standing army – your soldiers are going to want wages, they’re going to need to be fed, they’re going to need supplies, etc., and all of that takes money, which means you need a bureaucracy who can extract the necessary tax revenue from the population, work out the logistics of how to get the money and supplies to the army on time, keep records of everything, and so on. 

Whereas the upside of time-limited service and feudal land contracts is that you don’t have to worry about any of that: you don’t pay your army, instead you just give out land grants and leave it to your lords and knights to support themselves. 

The Boltons are definitely Dark Eldar, if for no other reason than their obsession with flaying. 

Lannisters…I could see a Great Crusade-era Emperor’s Children working (since Fulgrim is awfully close to Jaime), although some folks have suggested the Dark Angels because of their feud with the Space Wolves (closest stand-in for the Starks, natch). 

Freys…Genestealer Cult, definitely.