This is a tricky one, so bear with me: the answer is, we’re not entirely sure.
We know that the Sealords of Braavos are elected (for life) and we know a little about who elects them:
Neither prince nor king commands in Braavos, where the rule belongs to the Sealord, chosen by the city’s magisters and keyholders from amongst the citizenry by a process as convoluted as it is arcane. From his vast waterside palace, the Sealord commands a fleet of warships second to none and a mercantile fleet whose purple hulls and purple sails have become a common sight throughout the known world.
Part of what makes this complicated is that the electorate is composed both of magisters and keyholders, and it’s not clear whether all keyholders are magisters but not all magisters are keyholders or whether the two classes are completely separate. We do know that both magisters and keyholders form quasi-nobilities, with the Antaryons and Prestayns as two well-known houses of the former (the current sealord is an Antaryon, for example), and the Reyaans as one well-known family of the latter. Another complication is that the keyholders are officials of the Iron Bank of Braavos, which suggests something of the interconnection of state and corporation as was the case with the Dutch Republic and the Dutch East India Company.
There’s also a suggestion, and this is more speculative, that there’s also a legislative body in addition to the Sealord’s executive. The books refer to a Hall of Truth (and sometimes a Palace of Truth, although it’s possible they could be two separate buildings) which is distinct from the Sealord’s Palace, where keyholders are “summoned to the Hall of Truth to vote.” While this could just be where the elections for the Sealord are held, the phrasing suggests otherwise (given that the choosing of the Sealord is a much more drawn out process than a sudden summons would suggest). Also, given how much Braavos loves its liberty, it would be surprising if they were less democratic than Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh.
I took a look at Arya III ASOS, in which Harwin describes the battle in question, and no, it doesn’t look like Tywin was personally present–Gregor was in command. If someone has evidence to the contrary, though, feel free to correct me!
Were the Union vs Confederate sympathies in the South more of a divide along class lines with small farmers vs planters?
It’s a bit tricky, because it was both class and slavery.
If you look at the political sympathies/activities of the lower classes (i.e, small farmers, tenant farmers, laborers, and other non-slave owners). who lived in counties where there was a lot of slavery – i.e, the so-called “black belt” – they tended to be a lot more pro-slavery, pro-secession, and pro-Confederate compared to their class peers in the “Upper South” and the hill country (Appalachia, the Ozarks, certain parts of Texas, etc.) where there were few slaves.
And this was the case both before, during, and after the Civil War.
Historians have tried to explain this divergence in political behavior in different ways: some historians have emphasized that poorer whites in the “black belt” were economically dependent on slavery in ways that their peers in the mountains weren’t – that if they didn’t own slaves, they often rented them from their wealthier neighbors; that they often worked as overseers or slave patrol members or worked for slave traders or other occupations dependent on slavery; and that their vision of upward mobility was getting their hands on cheap land out west and buying slaves and becoming planters.
Other scholars more focused on questions of culture and identity, arguing that poorer whites in the plantation regions were more likely to fear slave uprisings and thus more likely to buy into the cross-class racial arguments of slave masters that all whites shared a common interest in slavery (i.e, the so-called mudsill theory), and that by being in close proximity to the planter elite, they were exposed to the cultural, social, and political dominance of that class and thus more likely to buy into paternalistic, patronage-based politics.
To be clear though, this isn’t to say that whites in the Upper South or Appalachia were all racial egalitarians; plenty of them were hostile both to slavery and to the slaves themselves. But it did mean that they tended to be more likely to vote against secession, to fight for the Union, and to vote Republican during Reconstruction.
Hmmm. Would you say that the nub of the issue is that the planter-dominated lowlands were a slave society, whereas the Appalachian uplands and the Upper South were a society that had slavery?
Those are both different things, as I believe you’ve argued eloquently in the past. (I think that was you.)
There’s a book by a noted Civil War historian called The South vs The South by William Freehling that discusses the conflict between the southern states gat remained in the Union and the Confederate states, along with reasons why this happened and how this aided in the Confederacy losing the war. Also Border Wars by Stanley Harrold discusses the border conflict that precipitated the Civil War.
Haven’t read the Harrold, but I can highly recommend the Freehling.
Were the Union vs Confederate sympathies in the South more of a divide along class lines with small farmers vs planters?
It’s a bit tricky, because it was both class and slavery.
If you look at the political sympathies/activities of the lower classes (i.e, small farmers, tenant farmers, laborers, and other non-slave owners). who lived in counties where there was a lot of slavery – i.e, the so-called “black belt” – they tended to be a lot more pro-slavery, pro-secession, and pro-Confederate compared to their class peers in the “Upper South” and the hill country (Appalachia, the Ozarks, certain parts of Texas, etc.) where there were few slaves.
And this was the case both before, during, and after the Civil War.
Historians have tried to explain this divergence in political behavior in different ways: some historians have emphasized that poorer whites in the “black belt” were economically dependent on slavery in ways that their peers in the mountains weren’t – that if they didn’t own slaves, they often rented them from their wealthier neighbors; that they often worked as overseers or slave patrol members or worked for slave traders or other occupations dependent on slavery; and that their vision of upward mobility was getting their hands on cheap land out west and buying slaves and becoming planters.
Other scholars more focused on questions of culture and identity, arguing that poorer whites in the plantation regions were more likely to fear slave uprisings and thus more likely to buy into the cross-class racial arguments of slave masters that all whites shared a common interest in slavery (i.e, the so-called mudsill theory), and that by being in close proximity to the planter elite, they were exposed to the cultural, social, and political dominance of that class and thus more likely to buy into paternalistic, patronage-based politics.
To be clear though, this isn’t to say that whites in the Upper South or Appalachia were all racial egalitarians; plenty of them were hostile both to slavery and to the slaves themselves. But it did mean that they tended to be more likely to vote against secession, to fight for the Union, and to vote Republican during Reconstruction.
The latter. The Lords Paramount are a necessary intermediary to run a continent-wide system of government – you can’t run all of Westeros from King’s Landing.
“Seasonal fighting” may mean something much different in a world where the growing season can last six years as opposed to six months.
(Seriously, you want to talk about significant worldbuilding issues? The goddamn inconsistent seasons not really having much effect beyond “oh, during hard cruel winters people die in the north” are Exhibit A.)
alittleonward said:Wouldn’t the length of seasons be a major reason for the brevity of wars on planetos? Campaigns only need to end for winter and many don’t stop for that (Cf Battle of Ice)
Adding this one on to talk about the topic.
So here’s how I’ve rationalized the long seasons, because beyond the question of how wars would work, there is a bigger problem of how everyone isn’t dead. I’ll quote this in full b/c it’s a complicated argument:
Yeah, this is a pretty significant worldbuilding issue. Leaving aside Westerosi travel distances, most real-world wars in the Middle Ages and before were pretty long-lasting affairs. Sieges lasted a long time, fighting was seasonal, etc.
Anonymous asked: The intended amounts of food cached for winter seem far too small relative to the populations they must support and uncertainty of winter’s duration. Does this suggest that the primary strategy is to buy food, with the winter stores as more of a backstop?
Well, that’s not exactly true, there’s a bunch more I can say:
There’s an underlying world-building problem here, which is that the multi-year seasons don’t really make sense when you consider the ecology of the life cycle of flora and fauna. If winter was just unrelenting night and cold and nothing else, you’d expect 100% die-off as seeds wither in the frost and animals run out of plants to dig up from the snow. (Either that or there are some truly baroque evolutionary adaptions that you’d think we’d have heard about by now) Likewise, it doesn’t matter how much you store and how cool your cellars are, there are hard limits to how long you can store food in a pre-modern context.
So the way that I’ve rationalized it is that the seasons are really closer to climate cycles than what we think of as seasons – summers are extended warm periods, winters are mini-ice ages. While agricultural productivity is going to be much much higher in the “summer” than in the “winter,” it’s not the case that there’s no growth at all during the winter.
Because even within the “winter,” you’re going to get variation in temperatures – your “false springs” and “spirit summers” – that allow for short bursts of agriculture productivity. Those little bursts are vitally necessary to stretch out your supplies, replenish fodder for whatever livestock and game is still around, repair some of the damage done by malnutrition, etc.
But I would imagine that those are very chancey – if the lull in the snows and the cold ends before you can harvest whatever crop you’ve been able to get into the ground, you’re going to lose it all.
BTW, I forgot to add GRRM’s So Spake Martin that supports my theory. One of the main occupations of the Citadel of Maesters is tracking the seasons, trying to predict how long they’re going to last and when they’re going to change, and providing advice about “when to plant and when to harvest and how much food to store” to take maximum advantage of the “false springs” and “spirit summers.”
So you still have the problem of needing your manpower on hand to sow and to reap every year, which is going to produce seasonal fighting. And we even have evidence of this happening: “we have lost men in battle, and others to the harvest.” (Catelyn II, ACOK)
Baelish has the title of Lord because he inherited it: “Lord Petyr’s father had been the smallest of small lords, his grandfather a landless hedge knight; by birth, he held no more than a few stony acres on the windswept shore of the Fingers.” Here’s the thing about lordship – lordship is a social and legal status that affords you certain privileges, like the right of pit and gallows. It is not dependent on wealth, beyond an absolute minimum of land.
Hence the phenomenon of nobles living in genteel poverty, who were far poorer than many commoners – and these nobles tended to be the most insistent on maintaining the privileges of the nobility. For example, the noblesse d’epee in the ancien regime were the most conservative of the Second Estate, resistant to both the rising bourgeoise and the noblesse de robe (who they saw as upjumped commoners and not true nobles).
As for the Templetons, we don’t really know why, any more than we know why the Tallharts or the Glovers are Masterly Houses despite the fact that the Glovers were once a royal house.
Prevent the Andal Conquest of the Vale, I’m afraid.
The major difference between the mountain clans of the Vale and the hill clans of the North is that the former were driven into the mountains by a victorious invading people and the latter weren’t. Now compound that sense of grievance – the killings, the forced conversions, the seizure of land at swordpoint – over thousands and thousands of years.
Now, you might point to Jon Snow and Stannis trying to assimilate the wildlings into the North, and fair enough. However, there’s no Gift in the Vale to be given away as reparations/a place in the feudal order, there’s certainly no urgency among the mountain clans about the need to find safety within another society in the same way that the wildings want to get south of the Wall, and…well, how well is the assimilation of the wildlings going?
Let’s ask Lord Commander Jon Snow.
What’s that you say? Attempts to assimilate a long-hated minority led to a revanchist coup? Or has Olly fallen down the well?
Do you think any of the first men valelords are a bit sympathetic to the mountain clans in the kind of “give them food/weapons if they go attack their localized enemies” or are they too ‘honorable’?
No, I think the First Men Valelords are too assimilated into Andal culture to do that. Also, I doubt the Mountain Clans view the First Men Houses of the Vale as any different or treat them any differently – indeed, if anything they might hate them more as quislings and traitors who bent the knee to the invaders while the mountain clans kept fighting and paid the price for it.
The Golden Tooth guards the main pass between the Riverlands and the Westerlands, through which passes the River Road that stretches from Lannisport and Casterly Rock to Riverrun and Lord Harroway’s Town. So it’s a big deal because it’s guarding the direct route.
My theory about what Tywin did is that he took the southern pass through Deep Den along the Gold Road, then hooked up sharply to attack the Mummer’s Ford.
After all, Robb says that “Lord Derik had no sooner crossed the Red Fork than the Lannisters fell upon him, the king’s banner be damned, and Gregor Clegane took them in the rear as they tried to pull back across the Mummer’s Ford.” In other words, Gregor Clegane was on the east side of the ford before the battle started, and Gregor is definitely with Tywin’s army at all points after this battle, so it stands to reason he was with it before.
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