Author: stevenattewell

Hey, thanks for the new Politics of the Seven Kingdoms essay. Excellent as usual. But I was a bit startled by this line: “as Tim Severin proved in 1977 when he duplicated the 4,500 mile voyage of Saint Brendan from Ireland to the Americas”. Is this just unclear wording, or do you believe St. Brendan actually made it to the Americas?

I don’t know about unclear, exactly…my point is he showed it could be done, in the same way that Thor Heyerdahl "duplicated” the voyage from South America to Polynesia. 

Maester Steven, Regarding the free cities; how do they feed their large populations? Do they have control over their marches (if so is it administered collectively by the city or controlled by several lords and administered feudally a-la westeros?) and/or do the free cities primarily import foodstuffs from the vale, north etc.? Mayhaps you’ve answered this before but I would really love your input! Keep up the interesting and entertaining work!

Well, Pentos has a large agricultural hinterland, with the Velvet Hills and the Flatlands, Braavos has the Braavosian Coastland, Norvos has its hill country, Qohor its forests, Volantis its riverrine empire.

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But speaking specifically of the Three Daughters, it’s my belief that the Disputed Lands aren’t blasted wasteland as we are told. They don’t look barren on the maps, and realistically, the populations of Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh couldn’t feed themselves with imports alone. So I think that basically each grab a chunk of the Disputed Lands and get the bulk of their foodstuffs from there, and that the fighting is over an attempt to corner the market and dictate terms to their rivals. 

As for how those hinterlands are administered, beyond the idea that the Archon of Tyrosh and the Council of Magisters for Lys and Myr assert overall political authority, I’m not sure. Given the commercial nature of the Free Cities, my guess is that the magisters divvied up the land amongst themselves and then farm it in vast latifundias.

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

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

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Credit to J.E Fullerton/Ser Other-in-Law Introduction: If there’s one thing that I hope I have done in this series, it’s to push back against the idea of essentialism – whether it’s the idea that Northmen are inherently honorable, Valemen inherently isolationist, or the Riverlanders inherently divided. Cultures, societies, polities are all too complicated for such simplistic narratives. This is…

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Still, to be fair to the video here, considering Brandon the Builder was the founder of House Stark and his reputation as a craftsman, wouldn’t that suggest he was technically of small-folk origin by birth who capitalised on his engineering prowess/feats to become the King of Winter, thus likely starting off as someone’s subject/vassal before climbing the social ladder after the Long Night?

I doubt it, for a couple reasons: 

  1. There’s at least some legends that suggest that Brandon the Builder was a grandson of Garth Greenhand, which if true would make him highborn indeed. 
  2. Bran would have had to have been highborn in order to give the Gift to the Night’s Watch. 
  3. Given the high degree of likelihood that Brandon the Builder was the Last Hero, the fact that he started out with “a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions,” suggests noble status.

In the context with debate about the recent North lore video (which I agree is rife with inaccuracies but nevertheless) it does bring up the question of how much influence and authority do you think the Barrow Kings actually wielded to make the claim of dominion over all first men, like something akin to the Fisher Kings or early Gardner Kings as potential comparisons?

Here’s how the WOIAF puts it:

“the Barrow Kings to their south, who styled themselves the Kings of the First Men and claimed supremacy over all First Men everywhere, even the Starks themselves.”

The use of the terms “styled” and “claimed” suggests their reach was larger than their grasp, that they held authority over the south-west of the North but not the whole. 

So more like the Fisher Kings or the Yronwoods. 

Was Robert really much better than Aegon IV? (Mistresses, bastards, disrespecting his wife and women, filling the court with syncophants, etc)

Absolutely. 

  • Mistresses and bastards: Robert never let his sexual desires interfere with politics. For the most part, he left the womenfolk of the nobility alone, and even with Edric Storm there was never any suggestion that he would be legitimized and added to the line of succession. He never redistributed any land or royal offices as a result of his affairs. By historical standards (all those dragonseeds had to come from somewhere…) he was pretty good on this score.
  • Disrespecting his wife: Robert was awful to his wife on a personal level, no question. But I wouldn’t say that he was as bad as Aegon IV or Aerys II or Maegor. And on a political level, Robert made good on the dynastic alliance – arguably too good. 
  • Filling the court with sycophants: Here, I think it’s easy to paint with too broad a brush. Varys, Pycelle, Littlefinger, the Lannister hangers-on, definite mistakes in hindsight. However, most of these were either the result of completely hidden outside agendas that no monarch could have seen coming and/or carryovers from the previous administration. And against that, you have to balance the able governance of Jon Arryn, Stannis’ excellent tenure as Master of Ships, Renly’s political skills, and making Ser Barristan Selmy the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. 

Add onto that that Robert completely avoided Aegon IV’s military failures, his wanton and brutal executions, his random and extra-legal seizure of his vassals’ lands, etc. He might not have done much as king, but as Terry Pratchett once said, what he mostly didn’t do was a lot of harm. 

Histories & lore of season 6’s video “” allies of house stark”” explains that house stark was a vassal of the barrow kings .only after the long night the starks rebelled and defeat the barrow kings in the 1000 years war. Is it true ?

From the WOIAF:

warsofasoiaf:

That entire snippet is poorly done from a historical perspective. I’d ignore it as completely inaccurate. It makes more sense for the Starks and Barrow Kings to have been rival petty kings rather than vassals for purely mundane reasons, not to mention all the other inaccuracies.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

“Song and story tell us that the Starks of Winterfell have ruled large portions of the lands beyond the Neck for eight thousand years, styling themselves the Kings of Winter (the more ancient usage) and (in more recent centuries) the Kings in the North. Their rule was not an uncontested one. Many were the wars in which the Starks expanded their rule or were forced to win back lands that rebels had carved away. The Kings of Winter were hard men in hard times.

…More historical proof exists for the war between the Kings of Winter and the Barrow Kings to their south, who styled themselves the Kings of the First Men and claimed supremacy over all First Men everywhere, even the Starks themselves. Runic records suggest that their struggle, dubbed the Thousand Years War by the singers, was actually a series of wars that lasted closer to two hundred years than a thousand, ending when the last Barrow King bent his knee to the King of Winter, and gave him the hand of his daughter in marriage.

Even this did not give Winterfell dominion over all the North. Many other petty kings remained, ruling over realms great and small, and it would require thousands of years and many more wars before the last of them was conquered.”

In other words, you have a context of dozens of rival petty kingdoms, you have the Starks claiming the title of King of Winter from the beginning, and you have a situation in which the Barrow Kings claimed supremacy over a rival king, not a situation in which the Starks were rebellious vassals.

So whoever put together that video baldy misinterpreted this chapter in the WOIAF. Hence the idea that the Manderlys fought back the Andal invasion, despite the fact that the Manderlys didn’t leave the Reach for many centuries after the Andals arrived in the Reach, which in turn was long after the Andals had arrived in the Vale, the Riverlands, and the Stormlands.