Category: Uncategorized

Thinking on your “Wildlings as collaborators” theory. The ancient 2 blast signal holds true using this thinking, they would be an intermediary threat that fits before the NW’s primary foes at the time the signal system was established. Could the ancient wildlings be the original pre-Stark Kings of Winter? Could then the wildling-born Mance Raynor be the true King of the North after all, making his blood as potent as the Targs (and the Targ-Descendant Baratheons?)

To take your first point first, that might be a point of evidence in favor or it might be a coincidence. Keep in mind, the wildling mission came much later for the Night’s Watch than the White Walker mission. 

As to your second point, I don’t think there were pre-Stark Kings of Winter. 

Hi, may I ask you the political pros and cons of the Red Wedding for House Lannister? I mean, was it a Machiavellian masterstroke or did the long-term implications of it outweight the benefits? Again, I am referring only to House Lannister and not to the whole realms (as in Tywin biased perspective). Sorry for my english and thank you for your incredible essays!

Glad you’ve enjoyed them! 

Let me answer your question in two sections. 

First, the pros and cons – the pros are, most obviously, that the Lannisters were able to quickly defeat their most serious opponent in the War of the Five Kings at a time when their own manpower (as opposed to that of House Tyrell) was starting to get tapped out. And in the process, the Riverlands and the North fall into their column (to an extent), which gives the Lannisters a geographically united realm they can govern. The cons are that the Lannisters are now universally seen as bad actors – which, as we saw with the second siege of Riverrun, makes it much more difficult to engage in political relations. 

Second, the long-term picture. This is where I think the odds start to look worse for House Lannister, because they’ve become more hated than they are feared, which Machiavelli warned against. While the Young Wolf is dead and Edmure is in chains, and the North and the Riverlands are temporarily pacified, both provinces are on the verge of a new revolt that the Lannisters do not have the resources to deal with, and new leaders are going to take over from the previous set. 

Could dragonless kings exercise a great power as Aegon I and Jaehaerys I? Aegon V could have made it with alliances, Daeron I proved that you can conquer Dorne without any dragon, Viserys II excellent management made possible to finance it after DoD. And, in a world without magic… Stannis wins ala Crecy inspiring to stick with him against overwhelming odds, lose no time at Storm’s End, not enough wildfire to stop him, it does seem like GRRM hints that you can do it without dragons

Well, you have to think about the role of path dependency and institutional inertia. Aegon V, Daeron I, and Viserys II had a monarchy behind them that really couldn’t have been created without dragons – hence the failure to overcome the balance of power between the Seven Kingdoms in the 8,000 years before Aegon’s Conquest. 

The issue is, without the dragons, you’re very reliant on the character and ability of the monarch, and you don’t have much to fall back on if that’s not there. Hence, despite the charisma and military skill of Daeron I or Viserys II’s management, they weren’t able to make enough headway to overcome the erosion that would occur during the reigns of the weak kings who followed them. 

Don’t know if you’ve answered this, your wildlings as exiles reminded me of something that’s been bugging me for a long time: what is the timeline of the Others return, specifically in regards to Craster’s involvement in that? Could it be that there had been other people doing what he did? It’s not mentioned how long Craster has kept his wives and has had non sons to speak of, how much of the Others’ return is his “fault”? Thank you in advance.

Good question! Craster is in his late middle age/early old age, probably late 50s through mid 60s. So that gives a rough sense of how long he could have been doing it. The difficulty is that we don’t know how long the White Walkers have actually been “accepting” his sacrifices – could be they came along after he started doing them. 

In terms of it being his fault, the fact that Jon III mentions that things have been changing recently, with the Cold Gods coming more frequently and Craster having to sacrifice sheep suggests that there’s some exogenous change going on. 

I know that dismantling the Faith was a great move, but that would at least feel bad for some worshippers, if not for other thing that the fact that, if the Crown is negligent OR weak, they could comfort themselves into being the ultimate defense. So, my question is, in order to make every Faithful feel happy, shouldn’t they have integrated the military orders of the Faith into the Crown? That would merge them together in one institution of power AND clarifying that Loyalist = Pious

Too dangerous. You can’t be sure if those soldiers will be loyal to the Crown or to the Faith, and bringing them inside means they’re close to you, and the last time that happened they nearly wiped out the royal family. 

When mounted knights armed with lances (swords, maces, etc as secondary armament) attack heavy infantry (Shield Wall / Pikemen), do they use their lances at all or is it more a matter of breaking the enemy formation with impact of his armored horse, after which he fights with his secondary weapon? Is the lance more for killing other mounted knights or isolated heavy infantry thanks to its single use nature?

The lance works to concentrate the impact of the armored horse to a single point, and to deliver that point in advance of your own body and the horse’s body (and hopefully before their spear can reach you). And lances aren’t necessarily single-use – war lances aren’t made to break like tourney lances (although given the speed of impact, it’s possible it’ll break anyway), and the main trick is A. bringing your lance back on line quickly after the first contact, because you don’t have long to do it before you hit the second rank and if they get inside the point you need to switch to your secondary weapon right now), and B. keeping a good enough grip on the lance so that if the lance sticks in someone, you pull it out of them as you ride past rather than having it pulled out of your hand. 

What is your take on the mounted crossbowmen we see in The Sworn Sword? Are they normal crossbowmen who fight on their feet and only travel by horse or could they possibly be Real mounted crossbowmen armed with a type of cranequin crossbow suitable for fighting from horseback?

Mounted crossbowmen were real. According to Ralph Payne-Gallwey, they were more popular in Spain and France, whereas the English had quite a lot of mounted longbowmen. In terms of how they fought, I imagine it was probably more of the former – as with the dragoons of the blackpowder era, the mobility of having a horse can be hugely useful in terms of getting your ranged infantry to the best terrain first. But I imagine if for no other reason than self-defense, it would be useful to use bows that could be fired and cranked from the saddle.