Author: stevenattewell

How did the greco-roman era galley evolve over time? From what Ive heard the late medieval galleys were rather different/improved compared to them?

So I’ve written a bit about it here and here. 

From what I’ve read, the galley transformed in a number of ways:

  • Size: galleys tended to get longer and have deeper drafts, which allowed them to hold more cargo (which was important for ensuring that galleys could offset their operating and repair costs) and lots of oarsmen (150-180 on the great galleys of the Venetian Republic). 
  • Decks: galleys shifted from half-decks to full decks, which means you can put more people on the deck to board/repel boarders/launch missiles. Also, galleys tended to add on fore and/or aft-castles, which were very useful for protecting your ranged marines from boarders and giving them the ability to drop missiles on the enemy deck from above. Also, later galleys tended to have higher sides to help deal with very low-in-the-water vessels like the ubiquitious longship. 
  • Sails: galleys tended to acquire more masts and shifted from square to lateen sails, which allowed them to move faster and more flexibly (as it’s much easier to tack against the wind with that setup).

How does a ironborn commoner rise to higher social status in the Iron Islands. It seems the Iron Islands have a less defined feudal system than the other kingdoms of Westeros. Their are very few knights of ironborn origin and ironborn themselves describe has undisciplined in their use of tactics, mainly the use of axe, swords. And also lack of cavalry and use of catapults and siege engines. So how does one gain status seemly by raiding, if they don’t use any of these things I mention above.

Chiefly, by becoming the owner of a ship. I’ll talk about this more in Part II of Vox Populi, Vox Deii, but the Ironborn have a strange social structure whereby a very restrictive warrior aristocracy and hyper-serfdom sits alongside an ideology of herrenvolk egalitarianism. 

So even though the warrior caste of the Iron Islands is a very exclusive club which looks down on social climbers like the Codds, there’s this pretence that the lowliest fisherman is equal to the highest lord at the kingsmoot, etc. 

Given that Kings Landing is located on a large bay at the mouth of a navigable river, why wasn’t there a city there before Aegon I landed?

Because the settlements there kept being destroyed in wars:

“In the days of the Hundred Kingdoms, many petty kings had claimed dominion over the river mouth, amongst them the Darklyn kings of Duskendale, the Masseys of Stonedance, and the river kings of old, be they Mudds, Fishers, Brackens, Blackwoods, or Hooks. Towers and forts had crowned the three hills at various times, only to be thrown down in one war or another. Now only broken stones and overgrown ruins remained to welcome the Targaryens.” (WOIAF)

I know Tywin was in a bit of a tough place when Robb went west but shouldn’t his first priority still have been Kings Landing? If Stannis overthrows Joffrey, Tywin knows Stannis will have Tywin’s head. Sure, staying put places a lot of stress on his men (many might desert) but going west seems like a doomed strategy (but for GRRM’s heavy thumb). Wouldn’t it have made some sense to at least send some reinforcements to KL and/or strong diplomacy with the Tyrells? We don’t really seem that yet.

So I talked about this a lot in my coverage of ACOK. In many ways, Tywin is in a no-win scenario: if he abandons the west, he might arrive in King’s Landing without an army; if he heads west, he might lose the capital, the king, and thus any sense of a political sentiment. My guess is that he was banking on King’s Landing being able to last long enough in a siege situation for him to get to the Westerlands and back.

Splitting his army would have been very dangerous indeed, because in that scenario he wouldn’t have had the numerical advantage against Edmure’s army, which raises the odds that Edmure win a much more decisive victory at the Red Fork and/or go on the offensive and catch Tywin’s army before it can get to King’s Landing. 

Diplomacy with the Tyrells worked out in OTL, but was very much a “heavy thumb” moment. Keep in mind the Tyrells have been the major threat to King’s Landing, blockading grain supplies and besieging it from a distance, and gradually moving up their army to attack directly. Up until Renly unexpectly dies, they have no reason to make a deal with Tywin rather than overthrow his regime. 

I was surprised by your answer to a previous question, that Harrenhall would’ve made a good capital location for a Targaryen dynasty (sans curses) Can you elaborate on why? Were you suggesting it’s better spot than Kings Landing? Or just a good alternative? The only negative that came to me comparing the two is lack of ocean trade at Harrenhall.

My main issue with King’s Landing has to do more with Aegon’s decision to keep the Crownlands small, only absorbing a small part of the Riverlands and Stormlands, which had massive ramifications for the strength of the monarchy once the dragons died. To be fair, this involves a heavy dose of presentism, as Aegon had no idea that the dragons would die out.

However, Harrenhal does have some benefits: 

  1. It’s an already extant castle that’s big enough to hold the entire political class of the nation, and we know that there’s enough space there to hold “the fourth largest city of the kingdom.”
  2. It still has ocean trade via the Blackwater Rush, and if you built a relatively short canal, you could have access via the Trident as well. 
  3. It’s more centrally located, which means travel and communication between the capital city and major centers of power out in the provinces would be faster for the more northwestern half of the kingdom. That should also cut down on inter-kingdom conflict more, because it would be impossible to attack another Great House without going through them first.
  4. If the Riverlands plus Crownlands was the personal fiefdom of the monarchy, you’d deal with the weak monarchy and weak Riverlands problem, since royal government could ensure that the abundant natural resources of the region were fully utilized. 

When did kings start allowing land to be bought and sold?

It’s a bit complicated. To quote myself:

In Medieval England, for example, the feudal principle of “Nulle terre sans seigneur” (no land without a lord) meant that selling land outright, known as “alienation of lands by will,” was actually legally impossible until the late 12th century. (The Magna Carta, for example, says that “No free man shall henceforth give or sell so much of his land as that out of the residue he may not sufficiently do to the lord of the fee the service which pertains to that fee.”) Selling land was legalized by the Statute of Quia Emptores in 1290, although the buyer was “required to assume all tax and feudal obligations of the original tenant,” so the land remained under the same lord as before. It wasn’t until the Tenures Abolition Act of 1660 that those feudal obligations were eliminated.

I think there are arguments you could make for either 1290 or 1660 as “when…kings start allowing land to be bought and sold,” although more accurately it was a gradual process, owing as much to decisions about enforcement and legal fights over whether feudal obligations once allowed to lapse could be invoked later on, that spans the two dates. 

Have you seen Deadpool 2?

Yes, and I liked it, albeit with some significant caveats. 

2(Spoilers below)

First, Vanessa getting fridged in the first ten minutes of the movie was a high barrier to get over. As much as I liked the rest of the movie, and I did, in the back of my head was the thought “they’d better fix this.” And they did in the credits with the time-travel device, but the result is that Monica Baccarin doesn’t get to do much in the film but be a Jean Grey-esque Dead Girlfriend Ghost, which is a shame both because the fridging trope is really pernicious and because Vanessa’s relationship with Wade was one of my favorite things of the first film. 

Second, T.J Miller is a scumbag in so many areas of his life, and I really wish that they’d managed to Christopher Plummer him out of the movie. He absolutely cannot be in Deadpool 3. 

But everything else I really liked. Julian Dennison as Russell Collins really sold the emotional heart of the film and was quite funny as well, and I had no idea he was essentially Rusty from X-Factor. Could have used a bit more of the X-Force – as much as the brutal joke was really funny, definitely wanted more Terry Crewes. Zazie Beetz stole every scene she was in, and they would be mad not to have her as a lead in the “real” X-Force movie. And Josh Brolin continues to kill it as Cable; he’s definitely the unsung “hero” of 2018 superhero movies.