Author: stevenattewell

What’s Camorr? And could you maybe give a quick suggestions about the merits of the history/politics/etc of that setting for a potential reader/player/viewer?

Camorr is the setting of The Lies of Locke Lamora, the first book in the Gentleman Bastards series about a two-man team of conmen set in a Renaissance Fantasy world. 

It is, as I wrote before, an expy of Venice at its height, but the books focus on the organization of the city’s criminal underground more than the legitimate system. Later books, however, do have more detail about the political systems of Camorr’s neighbors. 

Shouldn’t Halfmaesters like Haldon be a lot more common than the series suggests? People who study at the Citadel but don’t make it to Maester for whatever reason (sick family member, insufficient funds, etc). People who are not bound by a maester’s chains but are still literate and learned in some fields would be hugely sought after as scribes, officials or what have, right?

Well, it definitely does happen, as we see from the Prologue of AFFC:

“Perhaps he would do better to remain on this side of the narrow sea. He could buy a donkey with the coin he’d saved, and he and Rosey could take turns riding it as they wandered Westeros. Ebrose might not think him worthy of the silver, but Pate knew how to set a bone and leech a fever. The smallfolk would be grateful for his help. If he could learn to cut hair and shave beards, he might even be a barber. That would be enough, he told himself, so long as I had Rosey. Rosey was all that he wanted in the world.” 

However, I don’t think it’s that common, in part because the Citadel has a strong institutional incentive to maintain its monopolies. The Citadel does seem to have certain exceptions: acolytes who’ve gotten their link (and thus maintain the monopoly) are allowed to work as scribes for the general public:

“Just beyond stood Scribe’s Hearth, where Oldtowners came in search of acolytes to write their wills and read their letters. Half a dozen bored scribes sat in open stalls, waiting for some custom…” (AFFC)

But I think the Citadel would probably come down hard on anyone practicing more refined specialties than mere writing and reading; I would imagine medicine and ravenry would be particularly jealously guarded because they are some of the more important services that the nobility need. So Pate might be able to ply his trade as a barber-surgeon among the rural smallfolk, but he might well be hauled up before the lord of a significant holdfast or town for practicing without a license (if only because the lords don’t want to be blacklisted by the Citadel). 

How come the pre-Andal Royces never absorbed Gulltown into their kingdom? It’s the largest port town in all the Vale and only a stone’s throw away from Runestone itself, so why would they leave it alone? It’s not like they couldn’t do it, the Royces are described as one of the most powerful forces in the Vale at that time.

They did try:

Farther south, the wealthy harbor town of Gulltown on the Bay of Crabs was ruled by Osgood Shett, Third of His Name, a grizzled old warrior who claimed the ancient, vainglorious title King of the True Men, a style that supposedly went back ten thousand years to the Dawn Age. Though Gulltown itself was seemingly secure behind its thick stone walls, King Osgood and his forebears had long been waging an intermittent war against the Bronze Kings of Runestone, a more powerful neighbor from a house as old and storied as their own. Yorwyck Royce, Sixth of That Name, had claimed the Runic Crown when his sire died in battle three years previous, and had proved to be a most redoubtable foe, defeating the Shetts in several battles and driving them back inside their town walls.

Unwisely, King Osgood turned to Andalos for help in recovering all he had lost. Thinking to avoid the fate of Shell and Brightstone, he sought to bind his allies to him with blood in place of gold; he gave his daughter in marriage to the Andal knight Gerold Grafton, took Ser Gerold’s eldest daughter for his own bride, and married a younger daughter to his son and heir. All the marriages were performed by septons, according to the rites of the Seven From Across the Sea. Shett even went so far as to convert to the Faith himself, swearing to build a great sept in Gulltown should the Seven grant him victory. Then he sallied forth with his Andal allies to meet the Bronze King.

King Osgood won his victory, as it happened, but he himself did not survive the battle, and afterward it was whispered amongst the Gulltowners and other First Men that it was Ser Gerold himself who struck him down. Upon his return to the town, the Andal warlord claimed his good-father’s crown for his own, dispossessing the younger Shett and confining him to his bedchamber until such time as he had gotten Ser Gerold’s daughter with child (after which the father vanishes from the pages of history).

When Gulltown rose against him, King Gerold put down the protests brutally, and soon the gutters of the town ran red with the blood of the First Men … and women and children as well. The dead were thrown in the bay to feed the crabs. In the years that followed, the rule of House Grafton remained uncontested, for (surprisingly) Ser Gerold proved a sage and clever ruler, and the town prospered greatly under him and his successors, growing to be the first and only city of the Vale.

If the Andals had waited a few more years, the Royces might well have captured Gulltown. 

Given their close proximity to each other, have the Redwynes and Hightowers ever gotten in each others hair? Two regional powers so close to each other can’t always have been peaceful.

It would not surprise me, although I imagine there probably was some element of stalemate, with the Redwynes unable to breach the walls of Oldtown and the Hightowers unable to muster enough of a naval force to safely land their land forces on the Arbor. 

Do we have a comprehensive list of the houses descended from the Gardener Kings? I’m trying to determine if House Manderly is anywhere in that tree.

That’s a tricky question. We know that virtually all the Houses of the Reach claim descent from Garth Greenhand, hence why the authority of House Gardener was so strong. (Interestingly, though, the Manderlys are not counted among the descendants of the leading children of the Greenhand, whereas the Peakes are.)

Descent from the Gardeners we have less comprehensive information about: we know the Gardeners and the Hightowers wed in both directions from the time of Garland the Bridegroom; we know Garth Goldenhand wed his daughters to the heirs of House Lannister and House Durrandon, so the Lannisters and Baratheons have some Gardener blood through the female line. And from the conflicts between the Tyrells and their bannermen, we know that the Oakhearts, the Florents, the Rowans, the Peakes, and the Redwynes have “closer blood ties to House Gardener” than the Tyrells do. 

As far as the Manderlys go, we know that Garth X married one of his daughters to the Lord Manderly of his day (and another to the Lord Peake). But as to whether there were more connections between the Manderlys and the Gardeners, it’s not clear.