Could the maesters have used an oral tradition or runic script before the arrival of the Andals brought a new writing system and culture shift that supplanted and obscured the older customs of the First Men maesters?

The runic script seems the most likely, but the discrepancy between the way WOIAF talks about the First Men’s language and the timeline makes me think either that something has been deliberately obscured or something really bad happened that caused a massive break in historiographical continuity. .

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: The Iron Islands (Part II)

When we last left off with the political development of the Iron Islands, the Old Way had come crashing down thanks to the arrival of the Andals to Westeros and the ambitions of men with axes. What would fill the void was yet to be discovered…
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Tommen was born 2 years after the Greyjoy Rebellion & he was “sucking at the Lannister woman’s teat” the last time Ned saw him. There’s a great post on r/asoiaf titled “Jorah Mormont, the reason Ned & Robert never kept in touch?” which explains that whilst Ned & Cat were visiting in KL & waiting for Robert to return, news of Jorah’s slaving came through first & Ned rushed north, hence not seeing Robert since the Lord Hypocrite of Pyke rebelled.

This is why I said around the time of the Greyjoy Rebellion.

I forget. In Cat’s first chapter, didn’t Ned say he’s seen Tommen before when he’s musing on all the court coming to WF? When would thst have happened?

Probably around the time of the Greyjoy Rebellion.

In the series, is it referenced exactly how old the Order of Maesters is? I ask because it seems strange that in thousands of years the Citadel is the only great learning center/repository of knowledge for an entire continent.

WOIAF explains that the Order was founded very early in the Dawn Age, before the Pact. Uther of the HIgh Tower, the founder of House Hightower, had two sons: Peremore, who gathered together the scholars, and Urrigon, who bequeathed them the land which the Citadel would be built on.

Which is weird as hell, because it means the Citadel is more than 10,000 years old, making it easily the oldest institution in the world, and what’s more confusing, means it predates the arrival of writing in Westeros by 4,000 years. Or so the Citadel tells us…

Something curious arising from your essay on thralldom. Do you think there was slavery on Dragonstone and at Driftmark? If so, when was it abandoned?

There was definitely slavery on Dragonstone, and likely at Driftmark as well:

“The Targaryens were of pure Valyrian blood, dragonlords of ancient lineage. Twelve years before the Doom of Valyria (114 BC), Aenar Targaryen sold his holdings in the Freehold and the Lands of the Long Summer and moved with all his wives, wealth, slaves, dragons, siblings, kin, and children to Dragonstone, a bleak island citadel beneath a smoking mountain in the narrow sea.”

In terms of when it was abolished…it seems to have happened fairly early on, because the description of the practice of first night on Dragonstone in P&Q wouldn’t make sense.