What is the difference between a kingdom and an empire?
Good question!
An empire was historically supposed to be made up of multiple kingdoms (hence why so many emperors also had some title akin to “King of Kings”) and nations (in the sense of peoples), ruled over by a single all-powerful figure (to distinguish an empire from a federation).
A kingdom, by contrast, was seen as made up of one nation (hence why you would have titles like “King of the Franks” or “King of the Belgians”) that supposedly shared a common language, origin, ethnicity, etc. Now, obviously this was usually more of a shared fiction than strictly objective fact, but that was the idea.
So to take a historical example: Charlesmagne was King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, and was then crowned Emperor of the Romans, although arguably by holding the Kingdom of the Franks and the Kingdom of Lombardy he already ruled an empire before he was crowned.
Would it be possible for say a powerful merchant prince or pirate king to sweep away most of the pirates in the stepstones and establish a lsting kingdom there? The closest we see is Daemon Targaryen but he just got bored and gave it up, he had his dragon and the velaryon fleet but he also had to deal with the triarchy. Also why are the free cities static, like no new city rises up and replaces an existing one, its just the nine and no new ones appear? Its mentioned that the flatlands are bare of villages because of the dothraki, but there are other non-free cities like the ghiscari or Elyria and such, why don’t we see any of them rising into greater prominence?
1. Probably not. If it took the Triarchy to sweep the Stepstones clean of pirates in the first place, you’re unlikely to see a single merchant prince or pirate king manage on their own. There is one caveat: Racallio Ryndoon did build a pirate kingdom in the Stepstones, but we don’t know whether he held the whole of them, and in any case the Oakenfist put paid to him rather quickly.
2. I mean, there are other significant cities in Essos:
“We speak of Nine Free Cities, though across the width of Essos one may find many other Valyrian towns, settlements, and outposts, some larger and more populous than Gulltown, White Harbor, or even Lannisport. The distinction that sets the Nine apart is not their size but their origins. At their height before the Doom, other cities, such as Mantarys, Volon Therys, Oros, Tyria, Draconys, Elyria, Mhysa Faer, Rhyos, and Aquos Dhaen were grand and glorious and rich, yet for all their pride and power, none ever ruled itself.”
And you can add on the Ghiscari cities and Qarth and so on and so forth. The Nine Free Cities are a historically and culturally derived term that specifically counts the self-governing cities that existed before the Doom.
To use a real world analogy: the Ivy League in the U.S consists of a particular subset of particularly old elite colleges and universities that have been sportsballing one another for a long time now. Stanford or MIT are still elite universities even though they’re not Ivies.
Yeah, it’s pretty similar to how the Romans managed their overseas affairs early on – you had certain regions that were provinces ruled by a proconsul, but you also had semi-autonomous kingdoms under Rome’s protection who paid tribute but ruled themselves, etc.
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With our first chat, From the Comic Books to the Streets: Superheroines of Color Fighting Back Today comic fans and social justice organizers will answer questions and discuss the significance of the blockbuster Ms. Marvel and the newly-released Ms. America in comic books and the real world. The popularity and release of these barrier breaking superheroines by Marvel comics also comes while Marvel is fire for canceling titles by creators who are LGBTQ and/or people of color and while Disney/Marvel CEO Bob Iger sits on Trump’s Economic Advisory panel.
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Well, primarily what the lord did was to take all the rent and taxes, the free labor, the extra income from mills and bridges and the like, and all the other feudal privileges to which they felt entitled, and not work for a living and instead focus on hunting and jousting and war and politics and really stupendous levels of conspicious consumption.
In terms of how easy it would be to get rid of them, well, that was most of what the 14th century peasant revolts were all about. When you look at how the revolts start, one of the first targets of the peasantry were court records – chiefly manorial court records that were the only source of information about who was a serf and who wasn’t, who owed feudal obligations and who didn’t. Even before they got to the point of capturing capitol cities and demanding royal charters of liberty, the peasants would just burn the records that said they were serfs or villeins or owed any kind of free labor and then dare their landlords to prove that they weren’t free men.
So ultimately, I’d say the main difficulty with getting rid of the nobility is that they were perfectly willing to 1. renege on any agreement or oath made to rebellious peasants, 2. ignore a flag of truce and murder the peasants’ leadership, 3. call out the army and kill thousands of people to restore compliance with the ancien regime.
What exactly is ‘royal land’? how is it run? is it all directly ruled by the king or does it have petty lords/landed knights on it? if it does have petty lords/landed knights, how does it differ from other land in the realm that isnt ‘royal’? Like what is the difference between a great knightly house like templeton sworn to arryn or a powerful masterly house in the north and landed knights, besides size/lineage? Or would such territory be considered royal land rather than vassalized land because they aren’t lordly houses or sworn to one between them and the royal house?
>_> Feudalism is way more confusing than people like to think, though it does make things more interesting and its nice that GRRM can catch that sort of political incoherency for his setting.
Welp, shoulda known I’d opened up a can of worms.
Royal land is land that the monarch holds themselves, rather than giving out as a fiefdom to any of their vassals. So it probably wouldn’t have petty lords or landed knights on it unless the monarch had decided to give away that land to said lord/knight as a reward for some service. (There’s an exception to this that I’ll discuss in a bit.)
In terms of how it is run, it would be run quite like other land. Typically, territory would be divided into various manors – manors being an economic and judicial unit run by the manorial court. Manorial courts both were the main source of records on and made the legal decisions on just about everything: who had rights (primarily tenant’s rights) to what bit of land (but also usage rights to the commons or to the water or hunting rights or wood-gathering, etc. etc.); who owed what in rents, taxes, and feudal obligations of labor and to whom; what would be grown, where and when, and who would labor; and crucially, the court also dealt with contract law and torts in the manor, so when you loaned your best milk cow to your neighbor and it died, everyone knew where to go for adjudication.
That manor would be run by various officials:
at the top was the steward, who oversaw the manorial court and who was responsible for the overall condition of the manor.
immediately below them was the reeve (adding to the complication, this is the Saxon term; Normans called them bailiffs and then started using the word for all kinds of judicial offices and then started using reeve again) who was the chief overseer of the peasants and was usually a peasant himself (sometimes appointed, and sometimes elected, subject to veto by the lord). The reeve’s job was to make sure that the crops got planted and harvested in line with the manorial court’s decisions and to carry out the marketing of the manor’s produce; to collect rents and debts (if a given tenant was late on their rent, for example) but also to make disbursements; and to make sure that the peasants performed their feudal obligations.
And then there were assistant reeves and assistant stewards and under-bailiffs and all kinds of minor functionaries.
So the main difference, as far as the peasants were concerned, between royal land and fiefed land really was just who appointed the steward and signed off on the reeves. Now here’s where it could get tricky, because sometimes the King would lease out their lands to their friends and people who gave them money (sometimes not the same people!) without giving them away.
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