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What would a mug of ale or a roast chicken cost in a medieval tavern/inn? How accurate is fantasy when it represents taverns? Are there examples of things like menus or prices and how would they match up to westeros?

The main inaccuracy in fantasy is A. how many of them serve food or have rooms to let and B. how many of them there are compared to places that just serve liquor. 

Historically speaking, because there was much less travel in the (especially in the early) Middle Ages than in later periods, there were far fewer establishments that catered to travelers, unless you were on a major trade route or pilgrimage or the like. So what you had was a lot of taverns that just sold alcohol and nothing else, because people were expected to eat at home, and people were expected to sleep at home, and pilgrims were expected to find lodging in monasteries. 

As we get to the High and Late Middle Ages, more and more people were traveling for business and other secular purposes, and the number of pilgrims had outstripped the supply of beds in monasteries. There was more demand for more services, so you started to see inns (as opposed to taverns) popping up that provided rooms to let, and those places tended to serve food to travelers.  

So to focus your question on prices for booze…in the 14th century, ale ran about 1 to 2 pence a gallon. Converting that to dragons works out to about 1.3 silver stags to the gallon in Westeros. 

The Westerosi seem to be both religiously conservative while also surprisingly tolerant of prostitution (brothels operate openly, pay taxes and its not even a secret that a member of the small council operates one.) Is this realistic? how freely could sex workers work in medieval/renaissance europe?

Yep, it’s pretty realistic. There’s a pretty wide literature on the history of medieval prostitution, which is very interesting if you want to know more about the history of gender, sexuality, and culture, and I haven’t read more than just the basics. 

Here’s the short and simplified version: in Medieval Europe, prostitution was seen as a necessary evil, something that would prevent adultery, rape, masturbation, and sodomy (which were seen as more important sins). The Church wasn’t super happy about it, and preachers would try to persuade prostitutes to reform, but the Church wasn’t about to ban it (especially since a lot of clergymen made use of prostitutes since they weren’t allowed to get married). 

What did happen is that prostitution was regulated: in some places, it could only be done outside the city walls; in other places, it was restricted to certain streets or neighborhoods; in some places, there were civic brothels that were given a monopoly on the trade. 

You convinced re: Maidenpool! Your ED series is brilliant, and I appreciate the discussion of the nuts and bolts of feudalism – it all adds to the feeling of a medieval world + magic. Concerning taxation: was this a means of punishing rebel lords, e.g. post Trident or Blackfyre rebellion? And would each tax rate for each lord be determined individually? The bureaucracy required for this system would have been monumental, so I presume there is another way I have not thought of. Thanks!

Thanks! 

As for taxation, it could be used to punish taxation, but it was a bit more common to simply confiscate the property of rebels or to levy a one-time fine, rather than expect compliance with taxes in the long run. Henry VII had a lot of success using bonds instead – people who chose the wrong side in the Wars of the Roses ended up having huge liens put on their estates that the King could call in at any time, which gave him a lot of control over the nobility. 

In terms of the tax rate of lords, it would be generally fixed by tradition – whether it’s a knight’s fee or the specific terms of a feudal contract – although when the king wanted to raise new revenues, it was usually by levying a flat percentage tax because that was a lot easier to do bureaucratically. 

If the dragons truly were poisoned by the maesters, is it possibly that Aegon III may have supported them in this? He was said to have been terrified of the dragons, and after the civil war that left him an orphan, I can see him viewing the dragons as a cause for destruction.

I doubt it. Aegon III might have personally been afraid of dragons, but he understood that dracocracy had been the foundation of his House from the beginning. 

All the evidence we have points to Aegon going to some lengths to bring them back:

“Did we learn nothing…from the nine mages?”

“Nine mages crossed the sea to hatch Aegon the Third’s cache of eggs. Baelor the Blessed prayed over his for half a year. Aegon the Fourth built dragons of wood and iron. Aerion Brightflame drank wildfire to transform himself. The mages failed, King Baelor’s prayers went unanswered, the wooden dragons burned, and Prince Aerion died screaming.“

“Yet together, Aegon and Viserys ably dealt with the remaining turmoil in the realm…they even attempted to restore the Targaryen dragons, despite Aegon’s fears—for which none could blame him after witnessing his mother being eaten alive. He dreaded the sight of dragons—and had even less desire to ride upon one—but he was convinced that they would cow those who sought to oppose him. At Viserys’s suggestion, he sent away for nine mages from Essos, attempting to use their arts to kindle a clutch of eggs. This proved both a debacle and a failure.”

For me, it works much better for Aegon to be genuine in those efforts – it’s the politically smart thing to do, as without dragons the Targaryens were doomed to diminishment; narratively, it’s a great case of the human heart at war with itself. Aegon steeled himself to overcome his worst nightmare for the good of his family, and still failed. No wonder they called him the Broken.  

Why do you think the lords of the Vale arte so poor?!

I think there’s a couple reasons:

  1. there’s a sharp division between the lords of the Vale proper and the lords of the Fingers and the islands. The former have all the rich farmland and arable land of the valley, whereas the latter have less and poorer soil that’s much more mountainous. So there’s a lot of inequality within the nobility: consider the difference between Petyr Baelish’s father and the Royces of Runestone, for example.
  2. the lords of the Vale are traditionalists, even more than most. They don’t act in a profit-maximizing fashion, they concentrate on agriculture rather than trade (hence why Gulltown is so small), and they would never think of economic development (hence why the mineral resources of the mountains haven’t been tapped into as in the Westerlands).   
  3. when you get down to it, the Vale is not that big. It’s quite fertile, but it’s not as big as the Reach and it’s not going to grow any time soon. This means that the Vale can’t expand its economy easily just by bringing new land under the plow (because all the land that can be grown on already has been) or by increasing the number of hands in a field (because that threatens overpopulation). 

In the novels, what are the duties specifically of the lady of a castle – like what would Catelyn have done during peacetime at Winterfell? And where do these duties differ from those of the queen? Does a lady have more practical responsibilities, whereas the queen (it seems) merely entertains the court? Thanks in advance, love the blog!

The duties of a lady are to manage the household, to oversee and manage the estate (when her lord is absent), to oversee the education of the children, and so forth. 

The only difference between the lady of a manor and the queen is that the queen has the additional responsibilities of organizing the royal court and all of its social functions, but the queen also has more staff to aid her than the lady of a manor. 

Steven Xue Asks: Do lords normally sell food right before winter?

I did a reread of the Alynne spoiler chapter and I find the way the lords of the Vale are trying to sell off their gain reserves and doing it so eagerly as lord Grafton says “the lords are eager to sell” very baffling because winter is fast approaching. I find this really bizarre because I’ve always been under the impression that before the 19th century, people had a tendency to stock up on food supplies before winter to ensure they had enough food to last the winter months.

In Westeros where winter can last for many years, I would have thought that right now the conservation of food would be considered a huge prerogative for both the nobility and the smallfolk (who should know that winter is just right around the corner). I suppose these lords are just trying to make a quick buck while the going is good, but even from a monetary standpoint it doesn’t make a lot of sense as Littlefinger points out that when winter is in full swing, he will then be able to sell their grain back to them at a higher rate.

With all this in mind I’m just wondering if it makes any sense at all for the lords of the Vale to be selling off their grain reserves right before winter and did this actually happen in real life? 

I would disagree with “winter is fast approaching.” Autumn may be lingering in the fields of the Vale, but Jaime has seen snow falling in the Riverlands, which means winter is here.  

And the lords of the Vale want to sell their food now because that’s what they (and the Reach) have historically done: exported their surplus so that the rest of Westeros can eat. While they’ll make a substantial profit due to higher prices – which is a significant source of their wealth and power – they wouldn’t dream of holding back supply from the market to maximize profit.

That would violate the honor code of noblesse oblige, their reciprocal obligation to their smallfolk. It would be precisely the kind of selfish and materialist action that marks one out as a merchant rather than a nobleman, who acts in a disinterested fashion. 

What Littlefinger is doing is known as “Engrossing, forestalling and regrating.” He’s withholding goods from market and buying up other supplies to resell later, with the intended purpose of raising prices. And historically, this kind of monopolistic behavior was considered highly illegal, because creating artificial scarcities threatened social disorder (bread riots). 

I ask this question, thanks in large part to what I’ve learned by religiously reading your tumblr over the past year: Would it be fare to assume that the Lannisters, post Conquest, never rebuilt their fleets to those glorious standards of the past as a result of the Iron Throne having the sole right to mint coins? The only surviving navies (AC), comparable to BC standards (IB and Arbor), both protect/facilitate their regions economies, while the West do not (to the same degree at least). RSAFan

I don’t think that’s the reason – Casterly Rock clearly has the financial capacity to build enormous fleets, given the money it’s loaned the Crown over the last 40 years. 

If I had to pick a cause, I’d say that there was a political split within the elite between those favoring a naval strategy and attendant investments and those favoring a land-based strategy and attendant investments, similar to that which happened in Classical Athens and other places. And these splits tend to be regional and class in nature – naval strategies empower coastal regions, port cities, merchants, whereas the cavalry-intensive armies empower the nobility and rural areas.