It’s tricky, because you don’t want to drive the former loyalists into one another’s arms and create an anti-regime coalition. 

The long-term play is to balance carrots and sticks, to give these houses just enough reasons to stay loyal while simultaneously weakening them in the long run. So instead of sending Mathis to the Wall, I’d order him to pay for a new royal navy, while offering temporary concessions on wine excise tax. And so on. 

Torgon Latecomer plus the legitimist succession option. 

As for why anyone would support him now, well, he’s a better option than the would-be god who just set the best part of the Ironborn fleet on fire off of Oldtown. 

Well, the Farmans are First Men. 

The Kennings of Kayce are a complicated story. The founder of their House, Herrock Kenning, was known in his time as Herrock the Whoreson, and wasn’t given land in the Westerlands. Rather, he engineered an uprising against the Ironborn garrison of Kayce, with the help of the prostitutes of the town who opened the postern gate to let his men inside the walls. And then he held the town against three separate Ironborn kings who he personally killed.

To me, this suggests the following scenario. Herrock was born to one of the sex workers of Kayce, sired by a Kenning of Harlaw. However, I think his paternity was always challenged or in doubt – hence the derogatory nick-name – and that, seeing that he could never rise within Ironborn society because of his birth, he sided with his mother’s people and that the women who let him in did so because they knew him through his mother. 

And given what we know about the Ironborn-descended people of the North and other areas on the Sunset Sea, I think this goes further than assimilation. Remember, the Normans called themselves Normans, had distinctively Norman hairstyles and clothing, spoke a distinctively Norman French. But the Kennings of Kayce or the men of Cape Kraken don’t think of themselves as half-Ironborn; they hate the Ironborn with a passion and reject that identity and association completely.

Why is this? Well, part of it comes from the Ironborn tradition of taking salt wives and otherwise sexually assaulting any non-Ironborn they want – not exactly likely to engender mothers to raise their children to love their fathers. Another part of it comes from Ironborn ideology – greenlanders are essentially thralls waiting to happen, and it’s the birthright of any Ironborn to take what they like whether or not the greenlander has paid tribute. I doubt highly that half-castes on the mainland are given any exemption from that sort of treatment. 

The North of England, with a

soupçon of Scotland. 

Well, we can see from WOIAF how Robert is viewed:

Since the fall of House Targaryen, the realm has prospered greatly. Robert, the First of His Name, took charge of a fractured Westeros and swiftly healed it of the many ills inflicted by the Mad King and his son. As his first act, the unwed king took to wife the most beautiful woman in the realm, Cersei of House Lannister—thereby granting to House Lannister all the honors that Aerys had denied it. And though all know Lord Tywin might well have become Hand again, the king, in his graciousness, gave that office to his old friend and protector, Lord Jon Arryn, instead. The wise and just Lord Arryn has indeed helped the king shepherd the realm to prosperity since.

But this is not to say that Robert’s reign has been completely untroubled. Six years after he was crowned, Balon Greyjoy unlawfully rose against his king—not for any harm done to him or to his people but merely out of wanton ambition. Lord Stannis Baratheon, Robert’s middle brother, led the royal fleet against Lord Greyjoy, while King Robert himself rode at the head of a mighty host. Great feats of arms were performed by King Robert when Pyke was eventually taken and subdued. The king then made Balon Greyjoy—the pretender to the crown of the Iron Isles—bend the knee to the Iron Throne. And as assurance of his fealty, his only surviving son was taken hostage.

Now the realm is at peace, and all that Robert’s ascension to the throne once promised has come to pass. Our noble king has overseen one of the longest summers in many years, filled with prosperity and good harvests. Moreover, the king and his beloved queen have given the realm three golden heirs to ensure that House Baratheon will long reign supreme. And though a false King-beyond-the-Wall has recently declared himself, Mance Rayder is an oathbreaker fled from the Night’s Watch, and the Night’s Watch has always brought swift justice to those who have betrayed it. This king will amount to nothing, as have all the other wildling kings before him.

As for Joffrey, I think it depends on who wins the War of Five Kings. 

Because the Valyrians are the Normans. 

Yes, he did – that was the whole point of why he went to the Wall, to belt-and-braces the idea that he was in no ways eligible to King. 

As to the two oaths, they’re acctually quite sympatico: both oaths require celibacy, abjure any right to political power/landholding, both institutions are supposed to be neutral in politics, etc. 

The only situation I can see the oaths conflicting is if some foreign power were to seize the Wall – it might be the case that the maester would be bound to serve them, while the Night’s Watch oath demands loyalty to the Watch above all. But that conflict hinges on whether the maester is considered to serve at the Wall itself or serving the Night’s Watch as a collective institution; only the former would give rise to such a conflict. 

Before the modern science of epidemiology, you still had a general understanding that quarantining sick people or towns, etc. was a good idea. Such quarantines were not that effective, due to a lack of state capacity to enforce them and a lack of understanding about what the potential vectors for infection were, but they were better than nothing. 

Discussed here.

As I discussed in Eddard XI, they did so without any cause whatsoever, and if Robert hadn’t died at that exact moment, odds are that they would have been declared rebels, outlaws, and traitors.