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Regarding the oaths discussion. Doesn’t the precedence of an oath comes close to an unlawful order concept? And shouldn’t that be true regardless of oaths? And, lastly, isn’t it all expecting too much of a modern thinking from pre-modern people?

The idea of an unlawful order is pretty new, really dating back only to WWII, although the roots could be said to go back to the Geneva and Hague Conventions of the 19th century. 

The idea of precedence is a simpler one, rooted in some of the oldest legal precepts out there. 

Isn’t oathbreaking a threat to social order in Westeros? A lot of people seem to think that keeping oaths is only about honor. I’m no expert on feudalism (thank the gods we have you for that!), but that does not sound right to me.

poorquentyn:

Which is, of course, not the same thing as agreeing with Jon Darry when he told Jaime that it was A-OK for them to listen as the queen was raped. As I believe you’ve argued before, young Jaime was right; the oaths they swore as knights should’ve come before those they swore as Kingsguard. 

The problem with smashing this system is you need to have something better or you’re just breaking shit. Looking at you, Renly. 

Yes, especially to the point of about the precedent of oaths. If more Kingsguard had received a bit of legal training from their maesters, Westeros would be a quite different place. 

I’ll get to this more when I get to Beric Dondarrion and the BWB, but the oath of knighthood is potentially quite revolutionary if you think about it in the right way – because the oath says:

racefortheironthrone:

As I’ve said before, a feudal society is a society built of oaths – oaths of fealty going up the chain from knight to lord to king, and oaths of protection going down the chain. And those oaths are not incidental or merely ceremonial – it’s how property and political power are distributed, it’s how armies and taxes are raised. 

Here’s how important oaths used to be: while most people think of medieval justice in the context of trials by ordeal, ordeals were an innovation that sought to improve upon the pre-existing practice of trial by compurgation, where someone accused of something would take an oath (usually on some holy relic) that they hadn’t done it, and if they could find enough people to take an oath saying they believed the accused, they were innocent.

What I would say is that the social order is under threat if oathbreaking isn’t immediately punished by the law of man or gods, if people generally begin to believe that there are no consequences for oathbreaking. Because Westeros doesn’t have any social institutions that could function in the absence of this system, so the Hobbesian war of all against all would be coming along very fast and it would stay for a while. 

“in the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave.” The sword moved from his right shoulder to his left. “In the name of the Father I charge you to be just.” Back to the right. “In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent.” The left. “In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women.”

There’s nothing in there about obedience to your social betters or the rightful place of kings, and a lot in there about upholding justice and protecting the defenseless. Hence Dunk and “a knight who remembered his vows.” 

how strong exactly is the reach at full power? i know that its considerably stronger than the other kingdoms, but nothing ive seen from the franchise seem to suggest that the reach alone is capable of raising 100k men all by itself which some fans seems to believe. its at least 60k as proven during the war of the five kings, but how strong would you say it is?

I think they’ve got 100,000 men. 

In ACOK, Renly’s army numbers and dispositions are a giant mess, but if you look at which houses are actually present and not which houses Renly claims, he doesn’t have the whole of the Reach behind him (nor does he have the whole of the Stormlands either). Which means the Reach has more manpower than we’ve seen so far. 

Do you think there could have been peace between House Targaryen and House Blackfyre? Maybe between the end of the first rebellion and the deaths of Haegon and Aenys?

Probably not. After the first rebellion, you still have the feeling among Blackfyre supporters that they almost won, and that they would have if not for Bloodraven’s cowardly kinslaying, and you have a lot of exiles abroad and punished rebels at home who want their lands back. 

Maybe, maybe, if the Golden Company and the Blackfyres had decided instead to restore the Valyrian empire, unite the Three Daughters, and fight to conquer Volantis, you might have seen them eventually stop caring about Westeros in favor of their new lands in the richer and more sophisticated east. But that’s a pretty big maybe. 

Isn’t oathbreaking a threat to social order in Westeros? A lot of people seem to think that keeping oaths is only about honor. I’m no expert on feudalism (thank the gods we have you for that!), but that does not sound right to me.

As I’ve said before, a feudal society is a society built of oaths – oaths of fealty going up the chain from knight to lord to king, and oaths of protection going down the chain. And those oaths are not incidental or merely ceremonial – it’s how property and political power are distributed, it’s how armies and taxes are raised. 

Here’s how important oaths used to be: while most people think of medieval justice in the context of trials by ordeal, ordeals were an innovation that sought to improve upon the pre-existing practice of trial by compurgation, where someone accused of something would take an oath (usually on some holy relic) that they hadn’t done it, and if they could find enough people to take an oath saying they believed the accused, they were innocent.

What I would say is that the social order is under threat if oathbreaking isn’t immediately punished by the law of man or gods, if people generally begin to believe that there are no consequences for oathbreaking. Because Westeros doesn’t have any social institutions that could function in the absence of this system, so the Hobbesian war of all against all would be coming along very fast and it would stay for a while. 

Why did Medieval Western Europe become the default setting/reference for high fantasy novels rather than other time periods or cultures?

I’d highly recommend Adam Whitehead’s History of Epic Fantasy for a detailed narrative of the development of the fantasy genre. 

The TLDR version is that the first writers of what we consider fantasy today were all working off of what they knew – and what they knew was European history and folklore, if for no other reason than they were Oxford dons who had spent their lives studying it. 

And for better or for worse, the genre has always been one that played follow-the-leader to an extreme degree, where the styles and themes and world-building choices of early creators became the rules everyone needed to follow.