Author: stevenattewell

Quick question about tourneys/ransoms as I’m rereading The Hedge Knight. After the first day of the tourney Dunk notes that Ser Humfrey Hardyng had beaten 14 knights over the course of the challenges. In that style tourney, is he getting a ransom from everyone of those knights? If so what would that be equivalent to if you could do the math? Feel like he would have been set for life if he had been able to survive the whole affair!

Good question!

It’s a bit tricky, because prices do fluctuate a bit. Let’s say a ransom is equal to the price of a horse and a suit of armor:

  • Horse prices: in 209 AC, Dunk sells Sweetfoot for three gold plus some silver, whereas 299 AC one gold per horse is the going rate. So let’s go with 1.5 gold on average.
  • Armor prices: in 209 AC, Dunk buys a set of plain steel armor for 800 silver (~3.8 gold), although this is mail, gorget, greaves, and greathelm rather than a full suit of plate, which one would guess would go for substanially more. The semi-canon RPG books give a price of around 14 gold for a suit of plate. So let’s go with an average of 9 gold. 

So I would say that a tourney ransom is somewhere around 10-11 gold minimum, which means that Ser Humfrey made around 140-154 gold on the first day of the tourney. (Ransoms in times of war are a good deal higher – Brienne’s father offered 300 gold, which Jaime considers a good ransom for a knight – since there’s something of a disincentive to return an enemy combatant to the field.)

Now, how much is that worth? Well, given that a good income for a smallfolk works out to between 3.5-5 gold, that would certainly set an adult peasant up for the rest of their life. However, it’s not that extravagant by noble standards. 

In terms of how much it’s worth by today’s money, that’s about $140,000-154,000 U.S dollars, which is quite a sum but not exactly “set for life” money.

re: artifact repatriation

How do you adjudicate something like Hammurabi’s Stele (Code of Hammurabi), then?  It was created by a culture which existed within the borders of modern Iraq, but was found in Iran.  To whom does it “belong”?  Especially given that unlike the Greeks or Indians today, modern Iraq and Iran have basically no connection to the cultures of ancient Mesopotamia despite the overlapping borders.

That’s a tricky question. 

I’m not so convinced that you can just declare that a country has “basically no connection” to an ancient culture that occupied that space, since there’s very little that modern France has in common with, say, the Romanized Gauls of the 1st century AD, but arguing that because of the cultural shifts that have happened since then the Pont du Gard should be repatriated to Italy is insane. 

On the other hand, one of the biggest problems with nationalism is that a lot of nationalist arguments are particularly sweeping and essentializing – X defines our in-group, all of us are like that, we’ve always been here, etc. – and run into huge problems when you have competing nationalisms with equally sweeping and essentializing claims, as in the real world there are rarely clear boundaries between national groups.

At the same time, I think there’s a pretty strong argument that the connection between Hammurabi and modern-day France is significantly more attenuated than a connection between the Stele and either Iraq or Iran, and that Gustave Jéquier wouldn’t have been allowed to remove this antiquity under modern UN conventions.

So who should get to keep it? Well, the Stele was taken to Iran in the 12th century BC and Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire (which included both modern Iraq and Iran) put copies of it throughout the Empire, so it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t have Persian as well as Sumerian cultural significance. If it were up to me, I’d say that it should be shared between the two countries and rotate between them, but that’s probably naive of me. 

How did the greyjoys become lords of the iron islands ? Harlaws should be the richest and drumms or goodbrothers the strongest

Lordsport being the largest town in the Iron Islands suggests that the island of Pyke is one of the most populated, and probably has a higher level of GDP per capita, between the harbor’s trade and the skill of its smiths. So it’s not that far behind the Harlaws’ in wealth and population. 

As for why not the Goodbrothers, I imagine it’s because Great Wyk is so large that they’re not totally dominant on the island, since they have to contend with the Merlyns, the Sparrs, and the Farwynds. 

Also, the Greyjoys were elected to be Lords Paramount in 2AC.  

Why do extra sons from wealthy houses have to enter into professions like the priesthood or military service? If they’re rich surely they can be supported from existing income?

opinions-about-tiaras:

cle-guy:

racefortheironthrone:

Because you don’t stay wealthy by supporting moochers in a lavish lifestyle. 

This being said is it unusual the Freys remained so wealthy given Walder’s numerous sons?

A whole bunch of Walder’s brood have probably “earned out.” Emmon Frey married the only daughter of Tytos Lannister, and you can’t tell me she wasn’t handsomly dowered, for example.

It is indeed, although partly Walder achieves that by being a cheap bastard.

Before Marvel re-acquired the rights to portray Mutants in the cinematic universe, they tried to make Inhumans a thing in their spinoffs along with a whole bunch of other not!Mutants. How do you think they could go about cutting out these extraneous bits that sort of complicate the issue of mutants being persecuted, because the not!Mutants have always been portrayed as having far less serious or irrational institutional and societal discrimination leveled at them.

Given the manifold failure of a lot of Inhuman books, I don’t know how much of an audience there is for Inhumans stuff in general. But what there is boils down to a select few things, which I would emphasize: Kamala Khan, Lockjaw, and coming up third, the Inhuman royal family. 

And to be honest, I only care about that last one because of Saladin Ahmed’s Black Bolt series. So my solution is: have him do the Inhuman royal family and he can figure out how to make people care. 

What exactly is the geopolitical significance of the Three Sisters?It can’t be fishing rights, the Manderlys are doing fine in that regard while the Sistermen are better known for their shipwrecking. I also don’t remember reading about any attempted invasions by the Vale using the Sisters as a springboard. So why the 1000 year war?

It’s much more about naval control over the Bite than fishing rihgts, and the Worthless War came about in the wake of a series of naval conflicts between the North and the inhabitants of the Three Sisters:

“Even before the coming of the Andals, the Wolf’s Den had been raised by King Jon Stark, built to defend the mouth of the White Knife against raiders and slavers from across the narrow sea…During the wars between Winterfell and the Andal Kings of Mountain and Vale, the Old Falcon, Osgood Arryn, laid siege to the Wolf’s Den. His son, King Oswin the Talon, captured it and put it to the torch. Later, it fell under attack from the pirate lords of the Three Sisters and slavers out of the Stepstones. It was not until some thousand years before the Conquest, when the fugitive Manderlys came to the North and swore their oaths at the Wolf’s Den, that the problem of the defense of the White Knife—the river that provides access into the very heart of the North—was resolved with the creation of White Harbor.

…The last isles to be wedded to the Vale were the Three Sisters. For thousands of years, these islands had boasted their own cruel kings, pirates and raiders whose longships sailed the Bite, the narrow sea, and even the Shivering Sea with impunity, plundering and reaving as they would and returning to the Sisters laden with gold and slaves. These depredations finally led the Kings of Winter to send their own war fleets to seek dominion over the Sisters—for whoever holds the Three Sisters holds the Bite.”

So it’s absolutely the case that the Three SIsters *used* to be pirates and slavers, and shifted to becoming wreckers when more powerful forces cracked down on them, although they clearly still do a bit of piracy, because Stannis hanged twelve Sistermen for piracy when he was Master of Ships. 

As for attempted invasions, well, where do you think Osgood and Oswin Arryn based and resupplied their ships from when they attacked the Wolf’s Den?

Is it justifiable that the Indians want the Koh-i-noor or the Greeks demand the return of the Elgin Marbles from Great Britain? How would you respond to this?

I think they’re entirely reasonable desires grounded in nationalist sentiment following a long legacy of colonialism: Queen Victoria took the Koh-i-Noor diamond as part of the Treaty of Lahore, just as a few clauses above the British had taken the Punjab from the Sikh Empire; similarly, the Elgin Marbles were taken by the Earl of Elgin by getting a decree from Istanbul, only a few years before the Greeks would rebel against Instanbul, eventually overthrowing them.