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I have been reading some alt Westeros theories that remind me of your economic plans- winter hardy cattle leads to a Tsarist North. One point puzzled me- a Moat Cailin canal makes Dorne mad since less trade but other than Braavos would it really make a difference?

That’s a bit odd. 

I don’t really see a mechanism by which a larger cattle-raising industry lead to Tsarism. 

And a Moat Cailin canal wouldn’t really piss off Dorne, because it’s more redistributing trade in the more northerly areas. So I would expect Gulltown to take a hit, King’s Landing to an extent, and maybe maybe Oldtown if more Lannisport trade goes north through the canal rather than south. 

I get the impression that proper weaponry and armor were expensive in the middle ages. If that is so, which one was more expensive? Were you more likely to have a sword or other real weapon or some ringmail?

Armor was way more expensive because it was a lot more time-intensive, especially chainmail. Especially more early in the Middle Ages, a lot of soldiers got by with helmet, shield, and weapon. 

As for what kind of weapon, the most “common”” weapons were based on things that farmers might actually own – the spear and a lot of polearms were basically Bladed Tool I Own on a Stick, axes that were normally used to cut down trees or chop firewood getting pressed into service in war. 

But swords were not uncommon either. They were something of a luxury item, since they were only used for war, but archaeologists keep turning up large numbers of them. 

You called the reaving in ACOK Theon III his moral event horizon. I can see the point, but what does that mean for Asha? After all, at the same time she did the exact same thing on a larger scale somewhere else. Asha is generally portrayed and viewed favorably. So do I have to picture Asha surveying the carnage, with women being casually raped left and right as she walks by? Does the fandom or even GRRM have a blind spot there?

It’s definitely a reason to be more skeptical of her speech at the ‘Moot. Yes, “Peace. Land. Victory.” sounds like a great reforming agenda, but remember that it’s built on a foundation of holding Sybelle Glover and her children hostage and somehow persuading the North to forget invasion, murder, and pillage all across their western coast. 

I think the key moment where we see that part of Asha’s dream fall apart is the attack on Deepwood Motte, where the Flints, Norreys, Wulls, Liddles, and Mormonts come storming out of the woodwork to take back the North, and where Sybelle Glover, one badass lady who needs more respect, who breaks her promise to Asha the first chance she gets and immediately raises her banners for King Stannis despite her children still being held at Harlaw. (Although I’ll bet dollars to donuts that part of her deal with Tycho Nestoris is to get her kids back)  And of course, Asha gets hit in the face with this when she talks to Alysane Mormont, who reminds her that “what we are is what you made us. On Bear Island every child learns to fear krakens rising from the sea.” (emphasis mine)

There’s a great bit in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall that’s apropos (emphasis mine):

“The English will never be forgiven for the talent for destruction they have always displayed when they got off their own island. English armies laid waste to the land they moved through. As if systematically, they performed every action proscribed by the codes of chivalry, and broke every one of the laws of war. The battles were nothing; it was what they did between the battles that left its mark. They robbed and raped for forty miles around the line of their march. They burned the crops in the fields, and the houses with the people inside them…they found out the families of the dead and demanded that the living ransom them; if the living could not pay, they torched the corpses before their eyes…

 “This being so, the kings may forgive each other; the people scarcely can.” 

SomethingLikeALawyer, any particular reason the great spring sickness has not led to pro-smallfolk reforms ala the black death?

warsofasoiaf:

racefortheironthrone:

warsofasoiaf:

Well, not every plague leads to pro-smallfolk reforms. Even Yersinia pestis is no guarantee to pro-peasantry reforms in our own world. Bubonic plague was devastating every time it struck, but the devastation of the outbreak of 541 didn’t lead to the same thing as the Black Death. There’s social factors, the evolution of philosophy, sheer population concerns, and so on.

I can’t tell for certain, but I’m thinking Bloodraven had a hand in it. Bloodraven passed edicts to stop people from leaving their land, but obviously, he lacked the ability to enforce it. He could more easily, however, stop nobles from raising wages to entice peasants to move to their land. Any smallfolk who tried to organize were likely executed as Blackfyre sympathizers (if Haegon ran on a pro-smallfolk platform, that would be an amazing wrinkle, but I’m going out on a limb and saying that won’t be happening).

It’s not all him though, the drought made the land itself less productive, which meant that the smallfolk labor didn’t have the same premium in the years following the Great Spring Sickness as the European peasants did in the Great Spring Sickness, and Dagon Greyjoy’s rebellion distracted the peasantry from wielding any power what with the danger of being abducted and murdered.
Once all that was taken care of, populations stabilized enough that the opportunity had sailed, and pro-smallfolk reforms would have to come from some other source.

Again, however, this is all speculative, and the answer might be something else entirely that we just don’t know. You might want to ask @racefortheironthrone for a second opinion.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Well keep in mind, the Black Death didn’t lead to pro-peasant reforms. In fact, it lead to the opposite – the nobility and the monarchy tried to crack down on uppity peasants and restore the status quo ante plaga, and then the peasants rebelled, and were bloodily put down. 

But the thing about even failed rebellions is that they make people nervous and unwilling to press the issue. So while there weren’t any legislative breakthroughs, quietly the nobility and the monarchy let serfdom lapse and tried to woo agricultural labor with more rights and better terms on their tenancy agreements. Likewise, over the long term, the cash that burghers in the towns and cities were  making eventually translated into bribes to get more and more generous charters that gave city-dwellers legal and political personhood. 

So while nothing happened legislatively until Aegon V’s time, the fact that Bloodraven wasn’t able to enforce his edicts meant that a lot of peasants got off the land they were bound to and got to a city or town where they had more personal freedoms, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that when the drought ended and the nobility needed more labor, there was a lot of quiet and not-so-quiet renegotiation of tenancy agreements. 

Ah, thanks for the correction, I should have mentioned the peasantry revolts as the intermediate step. My mistake there.

Wouldn’t a great deal of peasants moving to cities and towns end up being a bad thing for them given that so many of the larger population centers are on the west coast, meaning there’s a large surplus of peasants for the Ironborn to abduct for thralldom and salt wifery? That, plus Haegon Blackfyre if it lasted that long, might have been a reason why tenancy agreements weren’t revised to such a degree as they were in the years following the Great Spring Sickness.

Or maybe the tenancy agreements were just even crappier in the eras before and we don’t have anything on them.

-SLAL

Well, the Ironborn didn’t hit the big cities – Oldtown, Lannisport, etc. – and they didn’t hit King’s Landing or Gulltown either. They hit Little Dosk and Fair Isle and places like that.

And I have a strong suspicion that there was a gradual process of revision after the Spring Sickness. We don’t have much good info about this – all we can say is that the smallfolk were a step above slaves and thralls, probably got a few steps up after the Spring Sickness, made it a bunch of steps up during Aegon V’s reign, and then lost that progress due to Jaehaerys II and Tywin. 

SomethingLikeALawyer, any particular reason the great spring sickness has not led to pro-smallfolk reforms ala the black death?

warsofasoiaf:

Well, not every plague leads to pro-smallfolk reforms. Even Yersinia pestis is no guarantee to pro-peasantry reforms in our own world. Bubonic plague was devastating every time it struck, but the devastation of the outbreak of 541 didn’t lead to the same thing as the Black Death. There’s social factors, the evolution of philosophy, sheer population concerns, and so on.

I can’t tell for certain, but I’m thinking Bloodraven had a hand in it. Bloodraven passed edicts to stop people from leaving their land, but obviously, he lacked the ability to enforce it. He could more easily, however, stop nobles from raising wages to entice peasants to move to their land. Any smallfolk who tried to organize were likely executed as Blackfyre sympathizers (if Haegon ran on a pro-smallfolk platform, that would be an amazing wrinkle, but I’m going out on a limb and saying that won’t be happening).

It’s not all him though, the drought made the land itself less productive, which meant that the smallfolk labor didn’t have the same premium in the years following the Great Spring Sickness as the European peasants did in the Great Spring Sickness, and Dagon Greyjoy’s rebellion distracted the peasantry from wielding any power what with the danger of being abducted and murdered.
Once all that was taken care of, populations stabilized enough that the opportunity had sailed, and pro-smallfolk reforms would have to come from some other source.

Again, however, this is all speculative, and the answer might be something else entirely that we just don’t know. You might want to ask @racefortheironthrone for a second opinion.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Well keep in mind, the Black Death didn’t lead to pro-peasant reforms. In fact, it lead to the opposite – the nobility and the monarchy tried to crack down on uppity peasants and restore the status quo ante plaga, and then the peasants rebelled, and were bloodily put down. 

But the thing about even failed rebellions is that they make people nervous and unwilling to press the issue. So while there weren’t any legislative breakthroughs, quietly the nobility and the monarchy let serfdom lapse and tried to woo agricultural labor with more rights and better terms on their tenancy agreements. Likewise, over the long term, the cash that burghers in the towns and cities were  making eventually translated into bribes to get more and more generous charters that gave city-dwellers legal and political personhood. 

So while nothing happened legislatively until Aegon V’s time, the fact that Bloodraven wasn’t able to enforce his edicts meant that a lot of peasants got off the land they were bound to and got to a city or town where they had more personal freedoms, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that when the drought ended and the nobility needed more labor, there was a lot of quiet and not-so-quiet renegotiation of tenancy agreements. 

I missed asking about this when the Dany V essay came out, but how extraordinary is it that Ser Barristan speaks High Valyrian fluently (or for that matter, that he is passable in Ghiscari)? How common was it in the Middle Ages for knights like Ser Barristan to speak a second language like Latin or a third language?

Well, historical parallels are tripping us up here because in the Middle Ages, you were only considered literate if you knew Latin. Being able to read and write in your native language didn’t count. 

The extent to which the lesser nobility learned Latin is a matter of historical debate. Certainly, we know that it was considered unusual and notable that Henry I could read Latin instead of relying on his clerks (hence why his nickname was Henry Beauclerc, or Henry the Good Scholar), but from King John’s reign (1199-1216) onward, royals were routinely educated in Latin. And as Harvey Graff argues, “the example set by the kings inevitably gave the baronage and gentry a motivation to learn some Latin, both to avoid looking foolish at court…and to have sufficient understanding of the written demands” of their king.

How far down that penetrated is hard to say, because evidence is difficult to find. For example, how do we know that documents in Latin from various knights were written by the knights and not by clerks they employed? Best guess is that your average knight knew enough Latin to do their jobs.

As for Ser Barristan, it certainly is a mark of distinction that he can speak so many languages. On the other hand, Ser Barristan was not your average knight – he was born the heir of House Selmy, a principal House of the Stormlands, he served in the Disputed Lands where most of his enemies would have been speaking some form of Valyrian, and he served in the Kingsguard which means spending time in the royal court. So he’s more likely to know a second language than most.

But a lesser landed knight who didn’t rate having a maester in their household? There’s a good chance they’re not functionally literate in the Common Tongue, let alone in Valyrian. 

Anon Asks: Manderly’s Davos decoy

“ The man had your coloring, a nose of the same shape, two ears that were not dissimilar, a long beard that could be trimmed and shaped like yours. You can be sure we tarred him well, and the onion shoved between his teeth served to twist the features. Ser Bartimus saw that the fingers of his left hand were shortened, the same as yours. The man was a criminal, if that gives you any solace. His dying may accomplish more good than anything he ever did whilst living.”

When Manderly mentions that, is that not supposed to bother the reader a little? From the sound of it Manderly executed what was possibly a thief not for the crime he committed, but to serve a purpose in his plan. 

Isn’t that kind of Manderly’s whole shtick, though? Killing people and baking them into pies, then eating them and tricking their relatives into eating them, “had he lived he would have grown up to be a Frey,” etc. 

The character of Wyman Manderly in ADWD is borrowing pretty heavily from Titus Andronicus – a tragic protagonist whose family has suffered, who no one takes seriously because he’s feigning disability, and who’s engaged in a grand guignol revenge against those who done him wrong. 

Doesn’t it seem odd that Janos Slynt became Commander of the City Watch? He’s a lowborn son of a butcher, holding a position that’s usually given to noble younger brothers and knights and such (Daemon Targaryen, Addam Marbrand, Jacelyn Bywater, even Moryn Tyrell for the Oldtown watch) so how did he gain the position? Can bribes and threats really carry such a man so far?

It didn’t have much to do with bribes and threats. Janos Slynt was Commander of the Iron Gate, and was promoted when his highborn commander, Manly Stokeworth of House Stokeworth, died. It’s likely that this happened right after the Sack of King’s Landing, where a lot of the nobles who would normally hold posts in the Gold Cloaks were invalidated by their support from the Targaryens, so Jon Arryn promoted from within.