opinions-about-tiaras:

racefortheironthrone:

It gives him an advantage in the sense that he’s able to make a lot of feudal ties: Royces, Swanns, Crakehalls, Blackwoods, Rosbys, Farrings, Lyddens, Waynwoods, Vances, Hunters, Carons, Hardyngs, Lannisters, Darrys, Beesburys, Wyldes, Haighs, Blanetrees, Goodbrooks, Hawicks, Vyprens, Whents, Boltons, Leffords, Paeges, Braxes, Tullys – it’s a long damn list. So pretty much everywhere you go in Westeros, there’s going to be some family with links to the Freys.

On the other hand, that’s a LOT of money spent on doweries and dowers. And the Freys are only rarely marrying heirs or heiresses, so while Frey women would usually go to live with their husband’s families, there’s a lot of weasel boys who have no prospects of inheriting land who are living at home with wives and children who need to be supported. 

Do they actually need to be supported, in the sense that there’s a downside to not supporting them?

Like… Merrett isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but if he’s to be believed, then for all his grotesque domestic abuse, Walder Frey feels he at least owes his kin and their spouses a roof over their heads and food on their plates. And apparently he brought up Stevron the same way.

But Ryman, Edwyn, and Black Walder are apparently Freys of a different color and would have no trouble at all booting a lot of their supernumerary kinfolk, second and third cousins at various removes who aren’t doing anything productive, right out the door.

This says to me that, socially speaking, there isn’t a huge downside to kicking your kin out once they’re sufficiently distant kin. A lord might face some censure for not supporting his children and maybe even his grand-children, but once you’re dealing with great-grandchildren or cousins and whatnot, giving them a horse and a sword and a bag of coin and saying “go and make your own way in the world” is absolutely something you can get away with.

I think there is a downside in that it brings the family name into dishonor – people start to associate the name Frey with poverty, with being in trade, with not being nobles any more. 

It gives him an advantage in the sense that he’s able to make a lot of feudal ties: Royces, Swanns, Crakehalls, Blackwoods, Rosbys, Farrings, Lyddens, Waynwoods, Vances, Hunters, Carons, Hardyngs, Lannisters, Darrys, Beesburys, Wyldes, Haighs, Blanetrees, Goodbrooks, Hawicks, Vyprens, Whents, Boltons, Leffords, Paeges, Braxes, Tullys – it’s a long damn list. So pretty much everywhere you go in Westeros, there’s going to be some family with links to the Freys.

On the other hand, that’s a LOT of money spent on doweries and dowers. And the Freys are only rarely marrying heirs or heiresses, so while Frey women would usually go to live with their husband’s families, there’s a lot of weasel boys who have no prospects of inheriting land who are living at home with wives and children who need to be supported. 

Well, Taena was his Mistress of Whispers, but in terms of social stuff Alys Harroway seems to have been in charge prior to her death. 

Not sure. @goodqueenaly, early teens, right?

turtle-paced:

That was fast.

Right, so.

The wedding feast began with a thin leek
soup…

Leek soup. Okay. There are ways this could be incredibly delicious. If I was making leek soup in the real world and present day, I’d be using either potato or cauliflower to help give the soup its creamy texture. Lacking potato or cauliflower, you’d want your leek soup to be in a stock like this:

She served it in a trencher hollowed out of a stale loaf. It was
thick with leeks, carrots, barley, and turnips white and yellow, along
with clams and chunks of cod and crabmeat, swimming in a stock of
heavy cream and butter.

– Davos I, ADWD

Yeah, exactly that much cream and butter. That soup ought to be thick. Not thin. The fact that it’s thin means the Freys skimped on the dairy products and basically had their cooks chuck a bunch of chopped leeks in a pot of water. Maybe they added a dash of cream afterwards, who knows. Effort!

…followed by a salad of green beans, onions, and beets, river pike poached in almond milk…

This probably tasted fine. It is, however, a very plain preparation of fish and salad, lacking in seasoning, richness, novel ingredients or flavour combinations, or any sort of display of cooking skill. It’s the medieval version of inviting your boss over for dinner and serving them meatloaf and three veg, not because you’ve got a killer meatloaf recipe, but because mince was on special at the supermarket. And the green beans needed using up anyway.

…mounds of mashed turnips that were cold before they reached the table…

Again we have the issue of plain veg. Okay, well, the meal probably needs bulking out, it’s not a bad thing to serve mashed turnips to accompany a more impressive dish.

But here these vegetables which should be served hot, are served cold. Timing errors happen in a busy kitchen. In context of the rest of the feast, this doesn’t look like a timing error, but speaks to the fact that the Freys just don’t care about serving a good meal here.

…jellied calves’ brains…

From the relative lack of mentions of offal in other impressive feasts, I’m assuming that Westerosi nobility isn’t super into it. In which case, having offal on the menu at all for this sort of occasion is a bit dubious, and making it one of the centrepieces of the meal isn’t a great idea unless your cooks can knock it out of the park.

Brains are well-regarded in some cuisines. The recipes and general advice I have for cooking brains all involve either poaching or frying, primarily to preserve a creamy texture. That’s what brains have going for them. Texture. Jellying the brains? Yeah, no, not so much, ‘cause then you’ve got jelly texture distracting from brain texture, and not enough contrast between the two to provide a striking effect. That’s a preparation geared more to preserving edibility and using every part of the cow, rather than enhancing the natural qualities of the ingredient. You can do it well (thank you, Inn at the Crossroads), if you’ve got a good recipe that allows other flavours to shine, but this does not sound like it was. Not at all.

…and a leche of stringy beef.

A leche in this context is a fair bit like a terrine, with milk and eggs (and spices, sugar, wine, etc etc; it’s a versatile sort of dish). So it’s yet another jellyish room temp bit of meat, thanks Freys. It’s also clear from the word “stringy” alone that their cooks used inferior beef in a way that only highlights how low quality the meat really is. 

Suffice to say, if I’ve got a gristly piece of beef and couldn’t be bothered processing it in any way, just about the last thing I’d put it in would be a terrine.

It was poor fare to set before a king…

…or before any guest at all, actually. But again, why waste good food on dead people?

An excellent example of how even GRRM’s food porn has meaning. 

I think it would gradually shift with time, as it gets closer to the heiress acceding to the throne. 

Queen takes precedence over a princess, usually. 

Banning brothels? Not that I can recall. If anything, it was usually the reverse – brothels were seen as a necessary evil to prevent adultery (the church was worried about horny men sleeping with married women, not married men sleeping with sex workers), sodomy, and masturbation, so in some places there were state-sponsored brothels, in other places particular streets or districts were designated for the purpose, etc. 

Taxation definitely did happen, usually tied to the licensing of sex workers; Isabella and Ferdinand for example taxed prostitutes at public brothels at a lower rate than those at private ones in order to encourage legalization. 

RFTIT Tumblr Weeklyish Roundup

Hey folks! I’ve started to find my enthusiasm for Tyrion III after being blocked for some time, and I’m currently up to 5,000 words. It should be done sometime this week, but in the meantime, I’ve got some really good Tumblr stuff for you: Tywin’s strategy in the long term. Can one buy and sell land in Westeros? Again, not usually. Tywin’s betrayal of Roose and Roose’s betrayal of Tywin. Thrall…

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