Author: stevenattewell

Is Tyrion’s contempt for democracy historically accurate?

Yes. Hell, the word “democracy” was pretty much a pejorative until well into the 19th century – per

Thucydides and other classical political theorists (thinking primarilyabout the concept of kyklos here), democracies could only function in small, homogenous city-states and were prone to collapse. 

There was the revival of Renaissance Republicanism, although these republics were quite oligarchical and wouldn’t probably pass muster with any standard of modern democracy, but the collapse of most of the Italian republics in the face of internal conflicts and the seemingly superior power of the princely powers was again held up as evidence that democracies couldn’t work. 

Indeed, a lot of the Enlightenment’s intellectual work, from Montesquieu to Rousseau to the Federalist Papers to Tom Paine, was about trying to construct a working theory of democracy in the face of pretty loud arguments that the whole thing could never work. 

Quick question. If a peasant managed to capture a knight or a lord in a battle, does he get the ransom or at least a share of it?

warsofasoiaf:

I’m having difficulty finding sources to answer your question, but I’d imagine it’d be difficult to tell which lucky peasant was the one who captured the noble in battle, since they’d probably be in formation. My guess is that it would depend upon the general of the capturing side. A peasant rebellion against the nobility probably is killing any nobles they capture, and a feudal levy might be so tightly overseen that the captain in charge takes control of the POW fairly quickly.

My instinct tells me that the captain would reward the peasants that captured the knight, perhaps with coin, and the general would collect the ransom, but again, my typical sources aren’t helping me here. @racefortheironthrone might know, though.

Thanks for the question, Overlord.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Good question.

Part of the tricky thing here is the term “peasant,” which I guess means peasant levy? Because there were a lot of soldiers who were non-nobles but professionals and therefore of higher status – your men-at-arms, your mercenaries, your household guard, etc. – who might technically be “peasants” in the sense of not being nobles or clergy, but who had all or most of the equipment and training of a knight. 

But for more specifics, let’s jump on the research train!

image

Turns out…yes, sort of. Culturally/ideologically it was a bit of a problem: Michael S. Drake in Problematics of Military Power points out how the common soldiers was a bit of a problem conceptually for the medieval mindset in general because they were commoners who did knightly stuff yet were too necessary to ban; likewise, common soldiers were not necessarily ransomable (there were some pretty ugly mass killings of captured peasant levies in the Hundred Years War, for example) and one couldn’t necessarily trust them to ransom a noble as opposed to rob his corpse. 

But, while I’ve seen a few legal scholars say the law of war forbade peasants/common soldiers from ransoming prisoners, they seem pretty well out-argued by the folks who can point to historical accounts of just that thing happening, so I’m going to say that whatever the laws of war might have said, once you have thousands of professional killers roaming the battlefield with misericords with profit in mind, those laws are promptly ignored so that nobles could be safely ransomed rather than being brutally murdered for their rings…

So yes, common soldiers could ransom, and odds are non-levies would be ransomed (because soldiers learned to keep enough liquid capital to pay a ransom pretty quick) albeit on the cheap. What seems to have become the practice vis-a-vis the common soldier capturing a knight is that the ransom would be bought by a higher up for a percentage of its value. For example, at one point Henry I of England bought the King of France’s banner (which had been taken on the field by a common soldier) for 20 marks, so that he could have the gloating privileges. 

Speaking of seafaring peoples, where do you rank the Ibbenese on the world stage? We don’t see a lot of them in the books, but the WOIAF presents them as quite advanced and formidable. I’m not sure if they could win a war, but I always thought they could give the Braavosi a run for their money in a maritime conflict. While the Summer Islanders tend to get the publicity, Ibben’s unified polity, similarly extensive sailing range, and extensive colonies always seemed to be underrated IMO.

I think they’re pretty good at the extremely specialized arts of seafaring in artic/sub-artic conditions. But their hand-to-hand skills don’t seem to be particularly good, so I think they’d have trouble in naval conflicts that involved a lot of boarding. 

So perhaps I’d recommend a Fabian strategy?

I get that the Seafaring ways of the Andals kind of got lost as they started to settle throughout the south, but what would it take for the peoples of Westeros to once again take to the seas (thinking here of what happened to Renaissance Era Europe)?

opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

That’s not what happened:

The arrival of the Andals in the Seven Kingdoms only hastened the decline of the Iron Islands, for unlike the First Men who had gone before, the Andals were fearless seamen, with longships of their own as swift and seaworthy as any that the ironborn could build. As the Andals flooded into the riverlands, the westerlands, and the Reach, new villages sprang up along the coasts, walled towns and stout stone-and-timber castles rose over every cove and harbor, and great lords and petty kings alike began to build warships to defend their shores and shipping.

The World of Ice & Fire: The Iron Kings

I think what the original petitioner might have been asking here, by implication, is “The Andals crossed the narrow sea to conquer most of Westeros, what would it take for them to once again take to their ships and start a’conquering? Because they seem to have kinda stopped doing that.”

And the answer to that, I think, is there’d need to be both motive and opportunity. Westeros has largely been disunited for most of its history, and Essos has, until 400 years ago (a drop in the bucket in Planetos time, which measures things by the millenia) been ruled by client states of Valyria, and you only need to talk to some Rhoynar to get a pretty good idea about what happens when you fuck with Valyrian client states.

Additionally, Westeros itself was heavily divided until the Targaryen Conquest; abandoning your Westerosi demesnes for some opportunistic conquest across the narrow sea might be fraught. If you’re a Durrandon King or Martell Prince(ss) and you decide to slice off a hunk of Essos during the Century of Blood, the Tyrells or the Ironmen are going to be all up in your grill the second you turn your back on tham, for example. The Arryns might have tried, I suppose, but the Arryns have a persistent internal problem in the form of the Mountain Clans.

Now, after the Conquest, things are a bit different, but for 150 years or so the Targaryen focus was on either internal unrest, or on Dorne. Dorne is brought into the Realm… just in time for the Blackfyre Rebellions to kick off, as well as plagues, Ironborn uprisings, an ongoing succession crisis, etc. After that whole situation stabilizes, you’ve got Aegon V (not interested in conquest) Jaehaerys II (reined a short time, had the last Blackfyre to deal with) and Aerys II (batfuck insane, unfit to govern.) Robert Baratheon might have been interested in conquest, but his position on the throne was hardly secure and he had numerous internal problems.

If Westeros were ever wholly unified, without serious internal strife, under a competent monarch with an expansionistic mindset, that monarch might think “Hmm, Pentos and Braavos are like… right there. I have the resources of an entire continent behind me and can field a truly appalling army, something like 200,000 men. I bet my subjects would love to go win some glory, some new lands.”

But they’ve never hit that trifecta.

Ah, I see. Well, TBH, I think it had a lot to do with the post-Andal Westerosi having a lot on their plate already. Westeros is a giant continent, there’s a lot of land to split up and subdue and turn into functioning states, and then for a long time there was the Great Game of who would conquer Westeros…

If you’ve already got that to be going on with…why exactly do you also need to mess about with Essos, especially when trade and exploration are already bringing you so much of what you’d get from conquest anyway.

I get that the Seafaring ways of the Andals kind of got lost as they started to settle throughout the south, but what would it take for the peoples of Westeros to once again take to the seas (thinking here of what happened to Renaissance Era Europe)?

That’s not what happened:

The arrival of the Andals in the Seven Kingdoms only hastened the decline of the Iron Islands, for unlike the First Men who had gone before, the Andals were fearless seamen, with longships of their own as swift and seaworthy as any that the ironborn could build. As the Andals flooded into the riverlands, the westerlands, and the Reach, new villages sprang up along the coasts, walled towns and stout stone-and-timber castles rose over every cove and harbor, and great lords and petty kings alike began to build warships to defend their shores and shipping.

The World of Ice & Fire: The Iron Kings

Related to that Borrell ask, if the men really were smugglers “like [Davos]” would they really have been hanged instead of maimed/sent to the Wall? Is it possible they were actually wreckers/pirates and therefore sentenced to death?

Well, historically speaking, smuggling was seen as associated with wrecking and piracy since smugglers do a lot of business with pirates and wreckers and there’s a good deal of migration between the various jobs. Hence why death by hanging was the normal penalty – same thing as pirates. 

But in Westeros, that’s not in tension with the Wall as a legal penalty. Westerosi law generally considers the Wall as the Plan B for most serious crimes, up to and including murder.