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queenklu:

savagedefectives:

thin places

Scottish singer/songwriter and national treasure Dougie Maclean has a song called “Feel So Near” which talks about this–

The old man looks out to the island, he says this place is endless thin
There’s no real distance here to mention, we might all fall in, all fall in
No distance to the spirits of the living, no distance to the spirits of the dead
And as he turned his eyes were shining, and he proudly said, proudly said

I told you I wasn’t making it up (entirely)!

Pre-Marian Roman legion questions- 1) Did legionaries get any form of regular salary? 2) Who looked after their lands & families while they were serving in the legions? 3) Did they complete their entire tour of duty of x years at a stretch, or was it spread out ? 4) Rome usually had only 4 legions in the field every year, so does this mean that a large number of Roman citizens were never called up for active duty ?

  1. Nope. Which was a big problem, because it limited the percent of Romans who could afford to serve in the army.
  2. No one. This was not so much of a problem when the Romans were fighting close to home, but became a social crisis during/following the first and second Punic Wars, where Romans were fighting in Spain and North Africa and all over Italy for long periods of time. The result was that large numbers of Roman and Italian soldiers saw their livelihoods ruined by their absence and the rapaciousness of the moneylenders their families had been forced to turn to, and those homeless veterans and their families became the followers of the Gracchi Brothers. 
  3. Usually it was more spread out, in no small part because normally there was only fighting during the “campaigning season” (after planting and before harvest, when the weather was warm and the soil wasn’t muddy). But as with above, this became more of an issue as Rome engaged in drawn-out imperial wars abroad, where conflicts stretched out for years if not decades at a time.
  4. Again, see #1. There were large numbers of Roman citizens who were deemed too poor to serve in the Roman army, including the class of Romans whose only contribution to the state was the production of offspring. Hence their name, the proletarii.

I hope si not a stupid question, but why did the vale lords want to join the starks in the wo5k? What do they do when robb is crowned ? Thank you

Not a stupid question at all. 

There were substantial numbers of Vale lords who wanted to fight the Lannisters for several reasons:

“Lord Jon was much loved, and the insult was keenly felt when the king named Jaime Lannister to an office the Arryns had held for near three hundred years. Lysa has commanded us to call her son the True Warden of the East, but no one is fooled. Nor is your sister alone in wondering at the manner of the Hand’s death. None dare say Jon was murdered, not openly, but suspicion casts a long shadow.” (Catelyn VI, AGOT)

“Pycelle pushed himself to his feet. He was clad in a magnificent robe of thick red velvet, with an ermine collar and shiny gold fastenings. From a drooping sleeve, heavy with gilded scrollwork, he drew a parchment, unrolled it, and began to read a long list of names, commanding each in the name of king and council to present themselves and swear their fealty to Joffrey. Failing that, they would be adjudged traitors, their lands and titles forfeit to the throne.

The names he read made Sansa hold her breath. Lord Stannis Baratheon, his lady wife, his daughter. Lord Renly Baratheon. Both Lord Royces and their sons.” (Sansa V, AGOT)

“Lysa was as lonely as she was. Her new husband seemed to spend more time at the foot of the mountain than he did atop it. He was gone now, had been gone the past four days, meeting with the Corbrays. From bits and pieces of overheard conversations Sansa knew that Jon Arryn’s bannermen resented Lysa’s marriage and begrudged Petyr his authority as Lord Protector of the Vale. The senior branch of House Royce was close to open revolt over her aunt’s failure to aid Robb in his war, and the Waynwoods, Redforts, Belmores, and Templetons were giving them every support.” (Sansa VII, ASOS)

The Lords of the Vale don’t declare for Robb Stark because Lysa has summoned her knights to the Eyrie and refuses to let them leave – “If it were up to me, I would take a hundred men into the mountains, root them out of their fastnesses, and teach them some sharp lessons, but your sister has forbidden it. She would not even permit her knights to fight in the Hand’s tourney. She wants all our swords kept close to home, to defend the Vale” – although given her close cooperation with Petyr Baelish later in ASOS, we can surmise that the reason why the knights of the Vale were kept at home is that A. Littlefinger didn’t want Robb Stark to win the War of Five Kings, and B. he wanted to keep them fresh for his attempt to win the Iron Throne. 

In book one Ned states Jamie will succeed to Warden of the West after Tywin as a reason to not have Jamie become Warden of the East. But isn’t Jamie precluded from inheriting anything bc of his kingsguard vows or does the wardenship somehow not count? Or is it as simple as just naming him W.o.t.West as he plans to do with the W.o.t.East thereby technically avoiding the issue of kingsguard inheritance? If this is the case are the Wardenships simply given to the major houses as a tradition? Thanks

Early Installment Weirdness; GRRM hadn’t keyed in yet on the whole idea that Kingsguard don’t inherit. 

I mean, technically Wardenships aren’t lands but royal offices, and if Kingsguard can be Hands, then there’s no reason they can’t be Wardens too. However, it’s clear from context that GRRM was thinking of Jaime as Tywin’s heir in Eddard II. 

Did lords ever have land holdings that were split up and far apart? I always assumed this is something that would naturally happen over time, yet in Westeros we’ve never hear of it. How would this be managed?

In fact, it was way more common historically-speaking for nobles to have land holdings that were dotted all over the place rather than contiguous, but GRRM didn’t want this to happen because it would make things complicated so he just decided it wouldn’t happen. 

Absent some battlefield heroism, what is the usual point of a squire becoming a knight? Is it just the nebulous opinion of the knight he serves, or was there a certain checkpoint like a term of service or a particular age where he got knighted, so long as he had progressed to the satisfaction of his sponsor? Or was there an achievement, like serving in battle without disgrace (Prince Aerys) or winning a formal joust or tourney (Harry Hardyng)?

I mean, age, achievement, the knight’s opinion, all of these things played a role. However, there’s one factor that you didn’t mention which was quite significant in determining if and when a squire became a knight: money. 

See, a knight was expected to pay for their own arms, armor, horse, etc. and not every squire could afford to do that. So there were quite a few examples of fully-trained, fully-grown, battle-tested men-at-arms who might spend their entire military careers as squires.