opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

Here’s the thing tho: in the case of Arrec, there weren’t a lot of Riverlanders who were eager to have him back – maybe the Blackwoods, given their blood ties, although they would have been licking their wounds from their massacre at Blackwood Hall, and maybe the Tullys (although they were far too practical to throw good money after bad) – and a lot of Riverlanders who had participated in overthrowing him (the Brackens, the Charltons, and twenty other houses) who would have been facing treason trials if he ever retook the Riverlands. 

As for Arlan V, it’s probably a case of better the devil you know – Harwyn was a hard man when it came to tribute and homage, but if you kept out of his line of march, he generally let you alone (”their ironborn overlords had largely ignored such conflicts amongst their vassals”) – than the devil you don’t. After all, the memories of Durrandon tyranny were still fresh, and the worst of Ironborn tyranny had yet to come…

Simply put, in the Riverlands, Durrandon was not a name a name to conjur with. 

Someone correct me if I’m out of line here… but based on the history outlined in WOIAF, I can’t help but think of the Riverlander nobility as shockingly ungrateful towards the Durrandons?

It’s like… Arlan didn’t have to come save their asses from the Teagues, who they all hated. And when he was done with that, he could have simply gone home rather than deal with his responsibilities towards the failed state he created. He even offered the Riverlanders one of their own to rule them, and they turned him down flat because she had lady-parts and they couldn’t be having that. So he just went “fuck it, all y’all are sworn to Storm’s End now.”

And there’s no evidence that either him or his heirs were particular repressive, tyrannical, or incompetent rulers. They merely demanded that the Riverlanders see to the common defense of their shared realm, which is literally your bare minimum of obligation to your ruler in a feudal system. And this demand was seen as so onerous by the Riverlanders that they rose in rebellion time and time again rather than fulfill it!

It isn’t even that the Riverlanders were strongly committed to not being ruled by an outsider; plenty of them were more than willing to declare for Harwyn Hoare  and then a century and a half later for Aegon Targaryen and then three hundred years after that for Robb Stark. But they seemed uniquely pissed off at the Durrandons for no better reason than that they were Durrandons. Why? What the hell was going on there?

Uh, the Teagues weren’t universally hated…that was the issue. Arlan III Durrandon didn’t come to “save their asses from the Teagues,” he intervened in a civil war in which there were partisans on both sides: the Blackwoods, the Tullys, and the Vances on one side, and the Brackens, Darrys, and Teagues on the other. As I said in my essay, the Riverlands were likely split on religious, regional, and partisan affinities. 

So the Teague loyalists who fought at the Battle of Six Kings were unlikely to forgive or forget. Thus Shiera Blackwood wasn’t just rejected because she was a woman, it also didn’t help that she was married to Arlan III’s son, or that (in the minds of these lords) her father had been a rebel and a traitor who had invited foreign invaders into the kingdom. And then Arlan III just decides to “add the riverlands to his own domains” – he didn’t get his loyalists to acclaim him King, he didn’t even claim the crown by force of arms, he just outright abolished the Riverlands as a kingdom and announced it had been annexed by a foreign kingdom, which offended the pride of all Riverlords. 

Thus, the Durrandons lacked legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the Riverlands’ political class – as we can see from the fact that “a dozen pretenders from as many houses” rose up against them, often pointedly taking on monikers of Riverlander nationalism that harkened back to the Justmans, the Mudds, the Fishers, etc. 

Good question! Well, I haven’t finished my series on the Seven Kingdoms, but I’ll give it a go from what I’ve done:

• the North: in terms of the magical-meta plot, you’d probably have to give it to Brandon the Builder, who won the Battle for the Dawn, built the Wall and the Night’s Watch, and then founded House Stark. But if we’re talking purely politics, it’s probably Theon the Hungry Wolf for completing the unification of the North, throwing back the Andal invasion, and successfully pushing the Ironborn out of the west. 
• the Vale: well, the Valemen would probably say Roland I, who ordered the Eyrie be built or maybe one of the warriors like the Old Falcon or the Talon, but I’m going to go with Osric V, whose more practical reconstruction of the Bloody Gates kept the Vale safe for thousands of years.  
• the Riverlands: Benedict I Justman hands-down. Brought the Riverlands out of the chaos of civil war, unified the Brackens and the Blackwoods, provided equal justice to all, and founded a long-lasting dynasty that brought the Riverlands to its historical apex. If Bernarr II had been more like Benedict the Just, the Riverlands might never have lost its independence. 
• the Iron Islands: well, the followers of the Old Way would probably say Qhored the Cruel, but I’d go with the three Harmunds, who somehow managed to incorporate the Iron Islands into a continental political system that had previously viewed them hostis humanis generis, or maybe Qhorwyn the Cunning, who best exemplified the New Way. 
• the Westerlands: probably Tyrion III and Gerold II, who brought the Andals into the fold and used them to reinvigorate the Westerlands and provide the raw fuel for the unification of the Kingdom of the Rock. Without them, the glories of Cerion or Tommen I or Gerold the Great would not have been possible. 
• the Reach: not even a contest. Garth VII the Goldenhand, a “giant both in war and peace,” who defeated every single one of the Reach’s enemies in detail, turned them into his allies and kinsmen, and left the Reach with seventy-five years of peace. Possible contender for Greatest Westerosi King Ever, given that he did all of this without any dragons. 
• the Stormlands: haven’t gotten to this one yet, but probably Arlan III, who built one of the largest empires in Westerosi history and came closest to actually winning the Great Game. 
• Dorne: Nymeria. Led her people across an impossible trek, founded not merely a kingdom but a nation, unified that kingdom through war and peace, held it against invasion and civil war. 

Well, it depends on the nature of their service. If they’re vassal knights and associated soldiery, then their service is bound to their tenancy of a given piece of land, so they’d stay.

If they’re household knights/sworn swords, they don’t have the security of feudal tenure – they’re wage laborers, albeit of a rarefied kind. So they might be kept on by the new lord, or they might be out of a job. However, they wouldn’t lose their weapons – those are their tools and belong to them, the same as a castle blacksmith and his tools. 

Discussed here and here.

Yes, and I think he’s a caricature of a lot of writers. 

Haven’t paid attention in the slightest, don’t really care, feels great. 

Mostly the latter (I really didn’t think any of these essays were going to be multi-part), but as I state in the essays, a lot of it has to do with how much material there is and isn’t – both in the North and in the Vale, we have long, long multi-thousand-year periods where we don’t have anything to work with. 

Hey, Night Thrasher will always be relevant as long as “nineties kid” nostalgia persists!

I mean, I guess Iron Fist’s relevance comes down to how enduring you think the 70s kung-fu craze was and is. I would argue that it’s been both multi-faceted (not just the shift in action movies for martial arts to be the new foundation, but also pretty much everything the Wu Tang Clan ever did, a good bit of the cinematography of Tarantino, the Matrix, and on and on), and surprisingly long-lasting (thanks in no small part to Hollywood being able to tap into Hong Kong/Chinese cinema every few years to find some new trend to borrow).