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Are all the men on ironborn longships freeborn fighters, or do you think some are thralls who solely row? We see Vic using such to Meereen with captured slaves he “freed”. And do you think all the regions were involved in Greyjoy’s Rebellion? If not, which ones weren’t? Did Jon presumably staying in KL mean the Vale wasn’t rallied? Did Doran not seek to build (fake) trust with the Iron Throne by sending levies? Did Mace only “provide” the Redwyne fleet? Did Hoster leave it to the Mallisters?

  1. I think that usually there’s a pretty strict code that there’s thrall’s work and Ironborn’s work and the two should not be mixed. Hence why Euron’s crew is an aberration.
  2. The Reach, the North, the Westerlands, the Riverlands, the Stormlands, and the Crownlands were definitely involved. We don’t hear anything about the Vale or Dorne tho. 

“The Boltons are planning to betray the Lannisters when they get a chance” Wait, what?

See here and here. Tywin’s original plan always had tension between the interests of the Lannisters and the Boltons:

“Why, do you plan to mistreat her?” His father sounded more curious than concerned. “The girl’s happiness is not my purpose, nor should it be yours. Our alliances in the south may be as solid as Casterly Rock, but there remains the north to win, and the key to the north is Sansa Stark…Come spring, the northmen will have had a bellyful of krakens. When you bring Eddard Stark’s grandson home to claim his birthright, lords and little folk alike will rise as one to place him on the high seat of his ancestors.” (Tyrion III)

Lord Bolton will wed the girl to his bastard son. We shall allow the Dreadfort to fight the ironborn for a few years, and see if he can bring Stark’s other bannermen to heel. Come spring, all of them should be at the end of their strength and ready to bend the knee. The north will go to your son by Sansa Stark … if you ever find enough manhood in you to breed one. Lest you forget, it is not only Joffrey who must needs take a maidenhead.” (Tyrion VI)

“The price was cheap by any measure. The crown shall grant Riverrun to Ser Emmon Frey once the Blackfish yields. Lancel and Daven must marry Frey girls, Joy is to wed one of Lord Walder’s natural sons when she’s old enough, and Roose Bolton becomes Warden of the North and takes home Arya Stark.” (Tyrion VI)

So the Boltons would have the Wardenship and Arya, Tyrion would have Sansa and Winterfell, but that’s not a tenable situation over the long-term because only one of these houses can rule the North. So Tywin wants to wear down Roose Bolton’s power by having him fight the Ironborn and the Stark loyalists, and then turn on him to consolidate power in the person of Tyrion’s Lannister-Stark son. 

Roose Bolton realizes this, but he also realizes that once he’s up in the North with his carefully-hoarded Bolton-Frey army, there’s really nothing the Lannisters can do to him all the way down in King’s Landing:

“Lord Bolton aspires to more than mere lordship. Why not King of the North? Tywin Lannister is dead, the Kingslayer is maimed, the Imp is fled. The Lannisters are a spent force, and you were kind enough to rid him of the Starks. Old Walder Frey will not object to his fat little Walda becoming a queen. White Harbor might prove troublesome should Lord Wyman survive this coming battle … but I am quite sure that he will not. No more than Stannis. Roose will remove both of them, as he removed the Young Wolf. Who else is there?” (ADWD, Prince of Winterfell)

I don’t know if you’ve been asked this before, but can you buy or sell land in Westeros? Lady Ellyn Reyne and her husband Lord Tarbeck buy up land surrounding them. The Westerlings lost land over the years. Just how would that transaction work and would it be acknowledged by others as legal?

I’ve discussed this before, so I’ll just quote myself:

The Westerlings selling their land is a highly unusual event in Westeros – the only other times we hear about selling land is in the context of the Tarbecks forcing people to sell their land through threat of armed force, so voluntary (to the extent that the necessities of poverty qualify as voluntary) land sales are a sign that the feudal order is in crisis.

It suggests that the Westerlings were falling into genteel poverty, such that their rental income had fallen massively behind their ability to service their debt, and that they were having to surrender the collateral they had put up to secure the loan.

Legally, this could be quite tricky. 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 in 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.

The TL,DR is this: normally you cannot buy and sell land freely in Westeros. The Westerlings selling land and the Tarbecks buying land suggests the feudal order breaking down somewhat in the Westerlands.

Does it seem odd to you that Sons of the Dragon makes no mention of the Faith Militant operating in the Vale? You’d think they’d be a major hotbed of anti-Maegor sentiment given their deep Andal/Faith of the Seven heritage. Instead, the Faith Militant seem almost wholly focused in the Reach (which also makes a lot of sense), the Westerlands and the Riverlands.

Well, there was a mention of a Warrior’s Son chapterhouse in Gulltown, but other than that there’s not much mention.

If I had to guess, it’s because the local nobility kept the Faith more in check than was in the case than in other regions where the nobility was divided. 

If the Lannister-Baratheon dynasty and its major supporters survived the War of the Five Kings, how do you think Tywin’s “divide and rule” doctrine would have worked long term? How manageable would the Riverlands have been with the Freys in control of the Twins and Riverrun and the lord paramount based out of Harrenhal, or the North with the Lannister of Winterfell as lord paramount and the Dreadfort holding the title of Warden of the North, compared to the previous centralized models in each?

I don’t think it would have worked well:

  • The Riverlands are going to be incredibly unstable, since the Freys are hated, over-extended (with half of their forces sent North, and the rest trying to hold the Twins, Riverrun, Darry, Seagard), and likely to face a rebellion. On top of that, the de jure Lord Paramount (who’s also Lord Protector of the Vale) is looking to overthrow the Lannister-Baratheon dynasty. 
  • At the heart of the regime, the Tyrells want to become the power behind the throne as the Lannisters were for the Baratheons, which includes assassinating inconvenient monarchs to replace them with a compliant child monarch; the Martells want to violently overthrow the current regime and restore the Targaryens; and none of Tywin’s children want to cooperate in his plans, which means that there’s.
  • The North is in a state of chaos, the Boltons are planning to betray the Lannisters when they get a chance while the Lannisters were planning to do the same to them, Stannis is in the field and slowly working towards an alliance with the Stark loyalists and the wildlings, etc. 
  • The Ironborn aren’t in-pocket at all, and are destabilizing the whole system by attacking the Reach at the time when Tywin needs the Reach as his muscle. 

Sorry I just realized I sent my comments about Cuomo without asking the question. I also dislike de Blasio. The two of them are perfect for each other. I don’t believe de Blasio has the chops to execute a truly progressive agenda. Why is the New York Democratic Party in such a poor state, and secondly why are New York politicians so corrupt?

I have major beef with Cuomo (and that free college program really is just exceptional in how poorly constructed it was) but I honestly doubt there’s anyone with a better shot at winning than him. I just hope his presidential ambitions are dead…

Third question, what are your thoughts on the New York State Constitutional Convention? I think there’s some potential to do some serious work there but I’m also worried as many are about the potential harm to unions.

To answer these questions in order:

  1. I don’t think Cuomo has a particularly good shot in a Democratic presidential primary. He’s not well-liked by party activists because of all the shenanigans he’s pulled as Gov, any regional advantages he might have would be significantly curtailed with Gillibrand in the race, and he’s got a lot of skeletons in the closet.
  2. I disagree quite strongly w/r/t to De Blasio. While I don’t think his policies go far enough in every area, the list of progressive legislation is long indeed. 
    1. As for the Democratic Party, I think the NY Democratic Party has the same problem that occurs in states where the Democratic Party is in overwhelming majority – you have a progressive wing that really wants to push the agenda, and then you have a “moderate” wing that joined the party only b/c it was in the majority, and which doesn’t want the agenda to actually come into being.
    2. As for where NY corruption comes from, I would argue that it primarily comes from the immense wealth of New York’s real estate and financial sectors, and how their fortunes depend on favorable treatment in law (mostly taxation, but also regulation), so there’s huge gains to be made through donations, lobbying, etc.  
  3. I haven’t made up my mind on that issue, tbh.