Huh, I went over the asoiaf wiki, and to aggravate you even further about the Ironborne timeline House Mallistar apparently only conquered the Cape of Eagles during Torgen the latecomers reign, that suggests the Ironborne still had colonies in the Riverlands throughout House Justmans reign and could be the perfect source for conflict you wondered about. I’m getting the weird sense of deja vu of the back and forth between the Ironborn and the North now…

On the Justman-Hoare conundrum: Is one possible solution simply Qhored the Cruel being a brief resurgence of Ironborn supremacy such that that after his death no Ironborn leader had the capabilities to arrest their decline as he had?

Regarding the ironborn timeline issues, I remember a couple people on Reddit put forward a theory a few months ago that the Andal Conquest happened over the course of around two thousand years (noting the 1-200 years between the (final) conquest of the Vale and the reign of Tristifer IV), and thus didn’t come to the Iron Islands until well over a thousand years after they came to the riverlands. Does this theory hold water for you?

Going to consolidate a couple questions from different people on the whole Ironborn timeline thing:

W/R/T the Mallisters, since Torgon Latecomer was one of the earliest of the Greyirons, since he was elected at a kingsmoot, and Torgon’s son Urragon came before Urron Redhand, who A. lived five thousand years before the War of Five Kings and B. whose line ruled for a thousand years before the Andals arrived in the Iron Islands, I don’t think Mallister’s conquest of the Cape happened during the reign of the Justmans but significantly before. (For one thing, if Qhored the Cruel was a Hoare, that conflicts with the Greyirons ruling for a thousand years.)

That Qhored solution wouldn’t work, because Qhored is listed as a driftwood king and the height of Ironborn power BEFORE the Greyirons abolished the kingsmoot and the Hoares replaced them and ruled as Iron Kings. I think the better fix is to say that either Aeron and WOIAF were wrong about Harrag and Qhored Hoare being driftwood kings – rather, if Harrag is a contemporary of Theon Stark, and Qhored of House Justman, they were in fact Hoare kings of the “black line” who came about after the Andal invasion (although that creates other problems relating to thematic arcs) – or that the bit about Qhored extinguishing the Justmans is simply not accurate.

As to the delayed timeline, that solves some problems but not others. Honestly, I think the Ironborn chapter needs to be rewritten from the ground-up with an eye to consistency and an eye to a much simpler succession of dynasties.

Think young Royce might be a bit hard-done-by by the fandom? He did have a point that they hadn’t found the wildlings yet, and that it Was too warm for them to freeze and that something fishy Was going on (how Wil somehow stood watch on the wall for a week while being two week’s journey north of the wall is neither here nor there). Bit arrogant to ignore the (occasional) bits of good advice he got (big horse, no fire) but still. Not an idiot by any means surely?

Read this.

How do you think the history of Westeros would have changed if the Gardener line had survived the Field of Fire?

Good question!

Well, the Gardeners bend the knee like the Lannisters, which means the Tyrells remain the savvy stewards they were before. This in turn means that the Reach is going to be a lot more politically unified in future conflicts – the Revolt of the Faithful, the Dance of the Dragons, the Blackfyre Rebellions, etc.

I did some Wikipedia hopping, following the Sacred King link in your RL essay, which lead me to Lawspeakers. They were a traditional secular office in Scandinavia involved in administering justice. It evolved from the germanic system in which the laws of a region were orally passed down from one wise man to the next.(1) Do you think such a system existed in Westeros pre Andal invasion (writing)? (2) Did the maesters replace such a system? (3) Is their something akin to this north of the Wall? TY

Maaaaybe?

The major problem with the Maesters in world-building terms is that they significantly pre-dated the coming of the Andals: the order was founded thanks to Peremore Hightower, who was the son of Uthor the founder of the High Tower, who married Maris the Maid, daughter of Garth Greenhand, which is all the way back in the Dawn Age.

But according to the modern maesters, the First Men didn’t write in books, so what the hell were the Maesters of the Citadel doing for thousands of years?

How feasible would a large scale, state sponsored glass industry be for the North (panes of glass for greenhouses) and do you think that most large castles and towns in the North have glass gardens?

No, Winterfell seems pretty damn unique when it comes to the glass gardens.

The main issue in glassblowing is the availability of quality materials and skilled labor. You need large quantities of sand (preferably fine sand), fuel (because you need to heat up sand quite a bit to get glass), and something to act as a flux (an ingredient to lower the melting point of sand, such as natron or other salts), and the North’s western beaches seem to be largely stone and pebble. So maybe on the east coast?

And then, as I’ve said before, you need to import skilled workers from Essos.

Hello! A few tyrell-related answers, if you could? 1)Why do you think the Tyrells don’t have a pov in the books? They are an important driving force, behind many plots and they always seem to be getting stronger and stronger. Too important for us to know or just a secondary family? 2)Aren’t they a lot underestimated in the show? What do you think the future has for Olenna in the show (being the only alive member of the House)? I read the leaks and they seemed so unreasonable. Thanks in advance.

1. Because a good deal of the fun is trying to figure out how much of what they do is genuine vs. for show, whether we’re talking about Margaery’s Disney princess act, or Olenna’s crazy old woman routine, whether Garlan killed Joffrey, etc. Having a Tyrell POV would provide too many answers.

2. Haven’t read the leaks, don’t think the show and book are going to track as closely as other people do.

The Master of Coin is said to be in charge of many officers. Among them are wool and wine factors. What do they do? The closest I’ve come to an answer is that a wool factor was a wool merchant’s agent, but I still don’t know what that agent does.

Ah yes, the factors. Factors are, indeed, agents who buy and sell goods on commission for a principal. Historically, factors were useful intermediaries who could do the buying and selling for a principal who couldn’t be at an important location, they warehoused people’s goods, they guaranteed credit, etc. The word factory actually originally meant a factor’s place of business, a trading post.

However, I think you’re getting too focused in on the idea of them being royal officers. Let’s take a look at the passage from Tyrion IV of ACOK as a whole:

“The Keepers of the Keys were his, all four. The
King’s Counter and the King’s Scales were men he named. The officers in charge
of all three mints. Harbormasters, tax farmers, custom sergeants, wool factors,
toll collectors, pursers, wine factors; nine of every ten belonged to
Littlefinger.”

These are all men who are loyal to Littlefinger, but not all of them are royal officials. The Keepers of the Keys, the King’s Counter and the King’s Scales, the harbormasters, and customs sergeants are government officials. But tax farmers are private citizens who buy the right to tax from the government; pursers are the officers on ships responsible for handling supplies and repairs, and factors are commercial intermediaries.

All of them rely on Littlefinger in different ways, as I discuss here. The royal officials and tax farmers bribed him to get their posts and now pay him kickbacks, but the wool factors are tied to him because Littlefinger “bought wool from the north…stored it, moved it, dyed it, sold it” and thus controls a good deal of the textile trade, and the wine merchants are tied to him because there’s a royal excise tax on wines. And the pursers are tied to him because Littlefinger has close ties to King’s Landing merchants who supply the merchant ships.

RFTIT Basement Tapes: Revolt From Below

A while back, my editor Marc Kleinhenz asked me to write a bonus essay in case some of the Hymn for Spring essays didn’t come in on time and we needed to bulk out the book. I decided to write an essay elaborating on some of my ideas about smallfolk agency in Westerosi history, and wrote about ¾ths of it when the late-breaking essays came in and we didn’t need it. And then I forgot I had written…

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Going through your Riverlands essay again and I have to wonder if its really so surprising Bernarr II could lose to the Ironborne, especially when he was provoked into attacking them at the end which presumes he got dragged into the Ironborne’s arena at sea and how he was later sentenced to death by drowning. The Riverlands have never had a naval tradition and your previous explanations a few weeks ago went over the difficulties of kingdoms building and maintaining a navy.

That’s a good possibility.

The more confusing thing is what started the conflict, and why the Ironborn, who according to the WOIAF chapter on the Ironborn, were at their nadir of power in this period, were able to so easily thrash the strongest of the Riverlanders.

It can’t all have been naval battles.

Why do you think Bloodraven got Dark Sister instead of Baelor Breakspear? Baelor was 5 years older and likely a martial prodigy at a young age, plus the heir to the throne to boot. Why give the only remaining Targaryen sword to another bastard? This must have happened under Daeron II as Bloodraven was only 9 when Aegon IV died and definitely hadn’t earned a VS sword by then.

It’s an interesting question; my theory has been that Bloodraven was either given the sword to keep him loyal or was given as a reward for having informed on Daemon.