Since Lord Walder & his vast brood have married into nearly every noble house south of the Neck & north of the Red Mountains, do you think any of these nobles might intervene to save their blood kin if a vengeful foe was to try & dish out the Reyne treatment to House Frey? By intervene, i mean diplomatically.

Not after the Freys disgraced themselves and brought the wrath of the gods down upon them.

Are red wedding realistic ? The karstarks in stannis camp do not know about arnolf true loyality because a secret among too many people is not a secret. But the bolton soldiers were 4k and no one told to others northeners. When did roose tell his men about the incoming massacre? Thanks

See the Glencoe Massacre and the Black Dinner.

Will you ever do an Economic Development Plan for the Crownlands?

Nope. The Crownlands are boring.

On a scale from the Riverlands during the Wot5K to the Shire, what was life actually like for the typical medieval peasant in say, England?

Highly depends on the time and place. During the Anarchy or other periods of chaos, it could get rather Riverlands-in-W0t5K-esque indeed. But if the harvest was good and taxes were low and there weren’t any wars, more like the latter. And often, it was somewhere in between.

Is there an obvious historical analogue for Jalabhar Xho? How pervasive were these dispossessed royals and nobles taken in by foreign courts?

Swing a dead cat in any royal court from classical Persia on down to the 20th century, and you’re going to find plenty of historical analogues. Nobility don’t like to see their peers suffering, and overthrown royals are a good source of future cassus belli.

Having read your writings on Reconstruction, I’m curious as to your take on the issue of slavery vs state rights as the predominant issue at the outbreak of the American Civil War. A view I hear repeated a lot is that it only became a war about slavery after the Emancipation Proclamation. This does however fly directly in the face of the chief reasons stated by the various seceding states themselves as causes for secession. Thoughts?

It was about slavery, full-stop. The states’ rights thing was an obvious canard at the time – one of the major complaints of the seceding states was that the Federal government wasn’t sufficiently infringing on the rights of Northern states to not cooperate with the Fugitive Slave Act.

It is true that for many in the North, before the Emancipation Proclamation, their primary war aim was to preserve the Union and the Constitution – but that principle isn’t extricable from the issue of slavery.

Before the Civil War, abolitionists inside and outside of the Republican Party had pointed out that the “slave power”/slaveocracy (whatever you want to call the planter elite) had become fundamentally hostile to the basic principles of republicanism – i.e, majority rule – and were demanding minority rule for themselves. (A big part of Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech was about making this very case.)

Yet another argument of abolitionists had pointed out that the “slave power” had rendered the South un-republican – suppression of free speech through the banning of abolitionist literature and speeches, the use of the 3/5th clause to create malapportioned legislatures that gave a minority of whites in the plantation belt a disproportionate amount of political power, the use of pass systems and slave patrols to limit physical freedom, etc. etc. – and that this went against the precepts of the Constitution. (Hence Bingham’s argument about Article IV Section 2 of the Constitution which he then incorporated into the 14th Amendment)

Thus, there was an argument at the time that, even if your primary aim was to preserve the Union and the Constitution, the “slave power” had to be broken, because it was the major threat to both.

While we’re on it, what do you think about the Amazing Spider-Man films?

I think the one big positive is that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone’s real-world chemistry translated very well to the screen in a way that Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst didn’t really.

But other than that, the biggest flaw with the ASMs was that they took a character who is all about making moral decisions and lumbered him with a meta-structure that was all about Destiny and Being a Chosen One and “My Dead Family” (tm School of Movies). Also didn’t help that the films were rather overstuffed and overly convoluted.

What didn’t you liked about the Raimi films?

For me, the two places where the Raimi films absolutely soared was anytime Spidey was in the suit and the Daily Bugle, which are absolutely key. And I should say that I agree with a lot of what Moviebob said about the Raimi films.

However, I didn’t buy into the Peter Parker parts of the Raimi films anywhere near as much as I do with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker – Tobey Maguire was always a bit too marshmallowy for me.

Major chunks of the series took place in the North/Riverlands/Crownlands, minor chunks in the Vale/Dorne/IronIslands, and even a handful of chapters in the Stormlands. TWOW is likely to spend at least several chapters in the Reach. But no chapters in the Westerlands. Do you think that we’ll ever have a first-hand look at Casterly Rock, or is the West the one kingdom that the series will never directly visit?

I believe the Prologue of TWOW is supposed to be in the Westerlands, but don’t quote me on that.

Seen the Spider-Man trailer?

First thing I did when I woke up.

And…it looks pretty damn good. The high school stuff looks great (and actually looks way more like an NYC high school than they’ve ever managed before), the humor and the street-level crime-fighting are a good sign, the interactions with Tony Stark are great, I can see a good thematic through-line about adolescence being the time when you want to be an adult but you’re not ready yet.

The Washington D.C stuff is a bit weird, because Spiderman is such a NYC-based character, and building heights limits in DC make his webswinging difficult, but it looks to be just a portion of the movie. The Vulture looks nothing like what I thought – looks like military tech rather than an old dude in a wingsuit. Keaton will do a great job out of the suit, but we’ll see how well it works in the moment.

I don’t know whether it’ll beat Spiderman 2 for best Spidey film ever (and even then, there were parts of the Raimi films I never got into), but it looks like it’ll give it a run for its money.