Author: stevenattewell

Is the Wildlings being so under developed significantly due to culture, ie refusing to organize into larger polities and shunning wargs who could be useful in many ways such as hunting better? After all the Thenns have managed to have a sophisticated civilization despite living in the same environment and there was even hardhome. If say hardhome was never destroyed and both it and the thenns managed to expand to a greater degree and open up trade with northerners could they have managed to create a society capable of matching other planetos ones politically and technologically?

Man, people are really, really interested in economic development of a region that’s really not suited to economic development. 

No, wildling underdevelopment is mostly not due to culture, but the fact that A. most wildlings lack very important technologies like agriculture and metal-working, and B. Beyond-the-Wall is an incredibly harsh natural environment that doesn’t allow for much in the way of surplus food – this forces most people to spend their time on acquiring the necessities of survival, makes specialization difficult if not impossible, etc. 

Of the wildlings, really only the Thenns have managed to maintain the level of technology (bronze-working, subsistence agriculture) that the First Men had back in the Dawn Age, and I’m pretty sure that’s only because the Valley of the Thenns provides enough of a protection from winter storms to allow for crops to be planted and harvested. 

Anon Asks:

Timeline question: How old was Aegon when Volantis was defeated during the bleeding years? It seems confusing since Argilic was said to have slain the king of the reach twenty years after it, Aegon would seem to have been only a boy at the time, since he was born less than three decades before he began his conquest of westeros, how do you make sense of this, could he really have participated at such an age or is this a case of the dates being wrong?

Good question! As one might expect, Volantis’ rise and fall in the Century of Blood was a somewhat drawn-out process. So here’s my best guess of how the timeline works out:

  • We know that the Doom of Valyria provoked “immediate political upheaval,” with revolutions in Tyosh, Lys (and presumably Myr) against the dragonlords. (This is a bit confusing since WOIAF tells us the Free Cities had bought their right to self-government from Valyria, but it’s possible that this right was somewhat honored in the breach, especially in a crisis, or that the Free Cities acted out of fear that their rights would be taken by the dragonlords in said crisis.) 
  • We also know that the Volantenes “quickly laid claim to Valyria’s mantle,” which suggests that the war began pretty quickly after the Doom, so probably within a year or two of 114 BC.
  • We also know how long the ascendancy of Volantis lasted: “a Volantene fleet took Lys and a Volantene army captured Myr, and for two generations all three cities were ruled from within the Black Walls.” (ADWD) Given that a generation is roughly 30-35 years, that suggests that the Volantenes were successful in their expansionist offensive from around 114 to around 53-44 BC. 
  • Then we learn of a whole bunch of stuff happening in quick succession: Volantis tries to conquer Tyrosh, Pentos joins the war on Tyrosh’s side, Lys and Myr rebel, Braavos finances Lysene resistance, and the Storm King defeats Volantene attempt to retake Myr. This lets us know roughly when Argilac was warring in the Disputed Lands – given his age (Argilac was born roughly 60 BC), and the fact that this campaign is the first campaign after his boyhood that’s mentioned in the text), but also comes after all of the previous events, it probably happened closer to 44 BC. This would place the Battle of Summerfield around 22 BC. 
  • We then get a bunch of details that give us some hints as to when Aegon was involved. We learn for example that Aegon was “still-young,” that his intervention came “near the end” of the Century of the Blood, and that he joined the war at the behest of Pentos and Tyrosh (which places it definitely after their alliance). Now Aegon was definitely born in 27 BC, which means that he really couldn’t have partaken much before 13 BC – but this is only problematic if we get overly finicky about the “Century” part of the “Century of Blood.” 
  • So Aegon gets involved very late in the war, burns “a Volantene fleet that was preparing to invade” Lys in what must have been a very last-ditch counter-offensive, and then Dagger Lake and the Dothraki show up and the elephants overthrow the tigers – which we know happened right around 0 AC, since Aegon VI describes the elephants as having “ruled the city for three hundred years” in the year 300 AC. This suggests that Aegon’s intervention must have happened only a few years before the Conquest, at most around 4 BC, when he was in his early 20s. (Which counts as still-young, I suppose.)
  • Moreover, we also learn that “shortly after his role in defeating Volantis it is written he lost all interest in the affairs of the east…’[and] turned his gaze west,” which are the last words in WOIAF before the account of the Conquest begins. This is further evidence that Aegon’s involvement must have happened only a few years before the Conquest.

As long as we’re willing to accept that the Century is more of a handy moniker than a precise chronological metric, the problem resolves itself nicely. 

In our world, was a Queen’s adultery considered to be a capital offense by itself? My knowledge about these issues is rather sketchy, but it seems most of the times charges of “imagining the King’s death” or “planning the King’s death” were tacked on in such cases to facilitate capital punishment.

Thanks to @goodqueenaly jogging my memory and giving me the statute on this one!

As with everything medieval, it depends on the time and place, but to take England as our example (because Wars of the Roses), the Treason Act of 1351 codified and clarified the laws on treason (indeed, the long version of the Act’s title is “Declaration what Offences shall be adjudged Treason”), separating out high treason and low treason – the difference being that high treason was death by hanging, drawing, and quartering whereas petty treason was drawing and hanging without the quartering (for men, women got either drawing and burning or just burning). 

Among the various crimes considered high treason was “if a man do violate the King’s companion, or the King’s eldest daughter unmarried, or the wife of the King’s eldest son and heir.” And if the King’s “companion” consented to the violation, she was on the hook (essentially as an accomplice, which is really weird when you think about it for a minute). 

The specific case of Anne Boleyn, which you seem to be referring to, was somewhat complicated by the question of evidence – the Act of 1351 required an “overt act” and Thomas Cromwell didn’t quite have the goods to prove that. So he threw in a bunch of additional charges where the burden of proof was lower, and that’s basically how he got a guilty verdict. And that, plus some of Henry VII”s very personal hangups, is why Anne Boleyn’s bill of indictment was so very long. 

Maester Steven, I can’t find anything on the borders of the Valyrian Freehold. They don’t seem to have ever spread east of the Bone Mountains, but there’s also nothing stating the Sarnorians or Qartheen were under their control. So, what are your thoughts on the extent of their territory?

Good question!

The Valyrian empire did not extend into the lands of the Sarnori: “the confederation of cities later called the Kingdom of Sarnor survived the Valyrian expansion thanks to the great plain that separated one from the other.” Indeed, the Valyrians tended to look west rather than east (”once the Ghiscari wars had ended, the dragonlords of Valyria turned their gaze to the west…With the destruction of the Rhoynar, Valyria soon achieved complete domination of the western half of Essos, from the narrow sea to Slaver’s Bay, and from the Summer Sea to the Shivering Sea.”) for conquest.

The Lands of Ice and Fire are also helpful here: 

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Essaria (now known as Vaes Khadokh) was a Valyrian colony due east of Qohor, connected to the Free Cities by the Valyrian roads that connected the Freehold to its trading partners – to the port city of Saath in the north and Sarnath of the Tall Towers in the east. So we can conclude with a high degree of confidence that Valyria’s eastern border was somewhere around Essaria (perhaps at the banks of that enormous river?) and that at some point Valyria managed to work out a treaty allowing them to extend their roads into the Kingdom of Sarnor for the purposes of trade. 

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Further to the south, we can look to the extent of Ghiscari territory to guess at how far east Valyria extended once old Ghis was conquered. Krazaaj Has, Vaes Mejhah, Vaes Efe, were all Ghiscari colonies, but Yinishar and Adakhakileki were not. So I’d say the furthest east Valyria got through its conquest of Old Ghis is Vaes Efe.