Author: stevenattewell

Why did Yoren not just turn over Gendry when faced with Amory Lorch’s preponderance of force? I get that it violates the legal norm that the Night’s Watch is immune to other jurisdictions, but isn’t the #1 priority of a wandering crow to maximize the number of bodies he gets back to the Wall? Surely picking fights with the bannermen of major lords is a suboptimal choice from a utilitarian perspective.

Yoren’s not a utilitarian; he’s an idealist. As far as he’s concerned, the norm that the Night’s Watch is independent and neutral has lasted eight thousand years and he’s ready to go down swinging 

In regards to the question about Renly, my question would be, is there a better way forward for his general political direction? Like a permanent great council and elective monarchy in the future seems like a possibility to me.

That is absolutely not Renly’s “general political direction” and it points to how Renly is profoundly misunderstood by the fandom. Despite his pretentions to meritocracy and popularity, Renly does not believe in the concept of an elective monarchy or Great Councils at all. He says this directly:

“Robb will set aside his crown if you and your brother will do the same,” she said, hoping it was true. She would make it true if she must; Robb would listen to her, even if his lords would not. “Let the three of you call for a Great Council, such as the realm has not seen for a hundred years. We will send to Winterfell, so Bran may tell his tale and all men may know the Lannisters for the true usurpers. Let the assembled lords of the Seven Kingdoms choose who shall rule them.”

Renly laughed. “Tell me, my lady, do direwolves vote on who should lead the pack?” Brienne brought the king’s gauntlets and greathelm, crowned with golden antlers that would add a foot and a half to his height. “The time for talk is done. Now we see who is stronger.” Renly pulled a lobstered green-and-gold gauntlet over his left hand, while Brienne knelt to buckle on his belt, heavy with the weight of longsword and dagger.”

When you take away the witty repartee, Renly’s political theory is naked tyranny – his personal excellence or popularity only matter to the extent that they attract soldiers to install him as king by force of arms, and you can see how paper-thin those rationalizations are when Catelyn tells him to put his money where his mouth is and stand for election in front of the political community and Renly says no. 

I’m honestly perplexed how people keep missing the fact that Renly is a hollow man: the thematics are everywhere, from Donal Noye comparing him to copper to Maester Cressen remembering him as a pageantry-obsessed attention-seeking child. The tragedy of Brienne in ACOK is that Renly doesn’t give a damn about her (as Loras says later, “Renly thought she was absurd. A woman dressed in man’s mail, pretending to be a knight”), he only gives her the cloak because Barristan didn’t show up and he knows he can make use of her (“He said that all his other knights wanted things of him, castles or honors or riches, but all that Brienne wanted was to die for him”), he knows she’s in love with him and treats her like a dog he can summon and dismiss whenever he wants (”His words seemed to strike the girl harder than any blow she had taken that afternoon. “As you will, Your Grace.” Brienne sat, eyes downcast.”). 

And as I’ve explained in my recaps of AGOT and ACOK, Renly does all of this knowing that Joffrey is not Robert’s heir, that Stannis is telling the truth, that he himself has no right to be king. HE IS A BAD MAN WITH GOOD PR.

Could you please explain to me what exactly are unions and why they are so important in today’s politics?

Ok, this might take a sec. You might also want to look at some resources…

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Unions (also known as trade unions) are groups of workers who have organized to achieve a common goal, whether that’s to improve their working conditions or to have a voice in their workplace or defend their rights as individual workers or members of a group, or to engage in political action. 

That last part is why unions are important to contemporary politics. 

To begin with, unions are mass organizations of workers – even at a historically low level of “union density” in the U.S, there are 14.5 million union members in the United States – which means that they can try to leverage the votes and activism of their members in shaping the political system. Unions are very very good at doing outreach to large numbers of people, because at the end of the day, doing voter outreach (whether that’s voter registration, issue advocacy, phone-banking, precinct-walking, or GOTV) uses a lot of the same skills and technologies and organizational methods that are involved in organizing workers into unions. 

Second, unions are one of the only organized groups in politics that are “of, by, and for” the working class. Historically, unions have been a major “counter-vailing force” that balanced out the influence of the wealthy and big businesses, and the decline of unions is one of the big reasons why our political system has become responsive to the preferences of only the affluent. Moreover, unions historically have not just advocated for the interests of their own membership, but have supported broader social and economic legislation – the minimum wage, overtime laws, health and safety regulations, civil rights legislation, immigration reform, universal health care, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, you can go down the list of progressive causes and unions have historically been one of the largest and loudest backers of all of these causes. (Huge caveat here: this hasn’t always been the case on a number of issues, and there’s a very complicated history of how the labor movement shifted from being an organization of white men only in the 19th century and well into the 20th century to one of the most diverse organizations in America today.)

Third, and this has to do with the previous two: unions have historically been a major bloc within the Democratic Party since the 1930s (arguably, you could go back as far as the 1910s and the AFL-CIO allying with Wilson over the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, but at that time you had major union federations like the IWW who either didn’t support party politics at all or supported the Socialist Party). As a result, the Republican Party has been actively trying to kill the labor movement since at least 1947, when they passed the Taft-Hartley Act, through to Reagan breaking the PATCO strike in 1981 through to present attempts to pass national “right-to-work” laws. For their part, the Democratic Party historically was the party that passed the Wagner Act that legalized unions and established the National Labor Relations Board to oversee collective bargaining, but has since the 70s been rather tepid over attempts to reform labor law to help unions pull out of their decline, although Democrats have (with mixed results) tended to fight Republican anti-union pushes. 

TLDR:

this is an entirely sincere question: renly’s model of government, aka “the strongest son takes what he wants regardless of right”, has been explained by asoiaf writers to be a model that would introduce chaos. but aren’t there models of that kind of inheritance in real life? like the ottoman sultans didn’t come to the throne in the same clear pattern of inheritance as in england, and murdered other claimants. so really, what makes that kind of model different from what renly was trying to do?

poorquentyn:

@warsofasoiaf, you know your way around the Ottomans. Any thoughts here?

I’m not @warsofasoiaf, but…when the model you’re suggesting mandates systematic kinslaying to avoid civil war (although it’s not like the Ottomans didn’t experience their share of those), I’m thinking it might not be suited to Westerosi political culture. 

Just saying…

Sorry, my Robert-Ned foster question was a bit vague. What I meant was, had lord Jon Arryn died after the 2 boys arrived at the Eyrie, would they be sent home or would they stay (be fostered) under Elbert Arryn or his Regent (should he still be in his minority)? Hope this clarifies TY :)

Oh, overwhelmingly likely the latter, for two reasons. 

First, as Jon Arryn’s heir, Elbert would be under strong pressure to uphold actions and decisions taken before his accession – if for no other reason that Jon Arryn’s decision to name him as heir would be called into question if Elbert started cancelling his decrees willy-nilly.

Second, there’s no reason for Elbert to send them back home. Having Robert and Ned as his foster kids is a huge honor that gives the Vale strong tires to the North and the Stormlands. Sending them back would be something of an insult to House Stark and House Baratheon, while gaining the Vale absolutely nothing.