Category: Uncategorized

Simon Rumble Asks: Nobility – – > Officer class

Can you explain more about how the nobility became the officer class? I know it has something to do with the rise of artillery. Thanks!

Well, in a sense the nobility had always been the officer class, in the sense that premodern armies were largely made up of (and led by) the nobility. 

But at the same time as the military revolution, when European armies got much bigger and thus needed professional officers to keep them organized and effective in the field, you also had economic transformations that hit the smaller nobility pretty badly. 

Without the capital to get into the commercial revolution or the industrial revolution, and unable to engage in trade lest they lose their social standing, one of the major career paths open to these lesser nobles was the military. They had just enough money and education to get the training and equipment, they had enough social privilege to keep out ambitious bourgeois social climbers (or at least keep them to the lower ranks), and military service was considered honorable. 

And of course, these petty noblemen were some of the most conservative forces in Europe, because their social privileges were really the only things keeping them above the peasantry, let alone the haut bourgeois (who tended to be far richer). 

Anon Asks: Is it the last we’ve seen of Varamyr?

Bloodraven mentions that a raven or any animal that has been previously warged can be warged by another. 

Last we saw, Varamyr’s pack was with Summer, including One-Eye who Varamyr warged into before he died.

Bran warging Hodor come back to bite him, since the same rule could apply. Should enough of Varamyr remain in One-Eye, could he theoretically warg from One-Eye into Hodor? He would likely want a large, strong body like Hodor’s. 

Pretty sure Varamyr’s stuck in the wolf body. 

Simon Rumble Asks: Daemon’s Riverlands strategy

So Daemon invaded the Riverlands with the force of two kingdoms behind him and most likely dangled the Lord Paramountcy of the Riverlands in front of rebellious and powerful lords like the Freys, Lothstons, Brakens, etc. How badly did the Riverlands get crushed?

How did his invasion differ from the Lannisters in OTL?

Well, we know almost nothing about Daemon’s strategy in this theater, so it’s hard to say how it differed. Although I’m guessing that, with those rebellious lords in his coalition, he didn’t go with Tywin’s reaving. 

But to me, the main difference is that the Riverlands were divided during the Blackfyre Rebellions. And, as we see with the various invasions of the Riverlands – the invasion by the Stormlanders where the Blackwoods invited in the Stormlanders to help them overthrow the Teagues, the invasion by the Ironborn where the Brackens sided with the Hoares to revenge themselves on the Brackens – when the Riverlands are divided, they lose badly. 

Dear maester Steven, I once asked why you thought the only Citadel was in Oldtown. Could it be because of the Hightowers? The Starry Sept was once the center of the Faith, and it losing that position likely cost them revenue. Since the Citadel also brings revenue to Oldtown (which would likely be decreased if additional Citadels were built) could the Hightowers have threatened to stop funding them if they branched out (I read they are mainly funded by the Hightowers via taxes from Oldtown)?

It would make sense if the Hightowers were opposed to expansion, but it doesn’t make sense that the Citadel itself wouldn’t favor expansion. After all, if the Hightowers aren’t willing to pay up, surely the Lannisters or some other great House would be for the prestige and soft power that comes with it.

Is asoiaf’s depiction of minor lord’s living in poverty realistic? For instance, Godric Borrel can’t afford to repair or heat his castle, has his meals cooked and served by his own family, and even his liege lord can’t afford to equip his own sons as knights.

Absolutely, that’s one of the more realistic things about ASOIAF. Here’s the crucial factor to consider about the economics of the nobility – in feudalism, rents are generally fixed at traditional rates. Which means that the nobility are more exposed than most to economic shifts, especially shifts in prices. 

One of the reasons why we see peasant revolts in the 14th century following the Black Death (which greatly decreased the labor supply and thus raised wages, at a time when noble incomes were declining because their rent-paying tenants were dying or running away) and then again after the Great Price Revolution (which raised the price of everything, and thus was a major real income cut for people on fixed incomes) is that these events hammered the economic position of the nobility, the nobility responded by trying to violently restore the balance of power (both by trying to freeze wages and worker mobility, which often meant attempts at enforcing or re-establishing serfdom), and the peasantry responded with violence in return. 

Now, the greater nobles were better able to adapt to changing economic circumstances – they had more land and more liquid capital, so they could convert more easily to pasturage and thus get into the lucrative cloth trade, they could invest in new commercial and industrial ventures, etc. 

But the lower nobles didn’t. Hence the figure of the impoverished nobleman, who becomes ubiquitous from Don Quixote to Jane Austen to the freaking Bluths. 

how many ships / of what type would you expect the riverlands brown water navy to have? would it be organized with each lord having a small fleet, or would it be more like the vikings where every river town has a few ships for community use that the lord would then draft into a fleet as needed?

Well, we don’t see anyone but House Tully itself with a riverrine navy, so I’m guessing they’re the only one with one. 

And in terms of type, according to Jaime I they are “river galley[s]…nine oars on each side, which means eighteen men.” More, if they crowded on fighters as well as rowers. And larger sails than ours…” These are pretty small vessels, even by Ironborn standards, but against ground forces trying to ford a river, they’d be incredibly potent. 

But where does it (reliably) say that the Others are “omnicidal”. To the COTF, the First Men must have seemed omnicidal, the two tried to exterminate each other. The Human-COTF war started out as a side effect of migration and cultural differences, they didn’t start killing each other just because, but it snowballed into attempts at genocide and human sacrifice. TWOTFK saw numerous atrocities on all sides, and even now “good factions” aren’t big on morality (Frey Pies), but is that omnicide?

From the pitch letter: 

“The greatest danger of all, however, comes from the north, from the icy wastes beyond the Wall, where half-forgotten demons out of legend, the inhuman Others, raise cold legions of the undead and neverborn and prepare to ride down on the winds of winter to extinguish everything that we would call “life.” The only thing that stands between the Seven Kingdoms and an endless night is the Wall…”

That’s Word of Author right there. The Others want to kill everything. Full-stop. And as @poorquentyn says, remember the bear. 

You can say a lot of things about the various participants in the War of Five Kings, but wanting to kill everything with warm blood isn’t one of them. 

New Weekly Series: A People’s History of the Marvel Universe

Hey folks, because this is the sort of thing I do for fun, I’ve decided to do some shorter pieces on the intersection between politics and comic books.

In A People’s History of the Marvel Universe, I’ll be exploring how real-world politics (and weird bits of pop culture) was presented in some of my favorite bits of classic Marvel comics, starting with Claremont’s run on X-Men and Captain America from the Timely Comics through the 80s. And thanks to my friends Brett and Elana over at Graphic Policy, which covers comic books from a progressive viewpoint and which you should be reading regularly, I’ll be posting them both here and there.

Today, I’ll be talking about the politics of Captain America, something I’ve discussed before. Political nerds and Marvel fans are probably aware that the original Captain America comics from the 1940s were explicitly political, as Joe Simon and Jack Kirby took an explicitly anti-fascist and anti-Nazi position in March 1941, ten months before the U.S was attacked at Pearl Harbor.

What they might not know is that that Captain America was also explicitly political – and progressive – on domestic politics as well. As proof, I present this panel from the very first page of Captain America #2:

Meet the villains of the very first story to feature Captain America’s now-iconic round shield – two corrupt bankers trying to evade Federal corporate income taxes. Now, yes, Benson the corrupt banker on the right happens to use “Oriental giants” he discovered in Tibet who are impervious to everything but sonic weapons to “raise havoc with the city – the nation! I want money-money!” but at the end of the day, he’s still a corrupt banker who kills people to hide his income tax evasion.

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s point couldn’t be clearer – wealthy businessmen who avoid paying corporate income taxes (and these would be FDR’s “Soak the Rich” taxes, specifically) damage America’s ability to wage war on fascism and require the same two-fisted justice that Captain America deals out to “Ratzi” spies, storm troopers guarding a concentration camp in the Black Forest, Adolph Hitler himself, and the evil Wax Man (who kills people with wax masks of themselves for some reason).

Then again, it’s also the issue where Captain America cross-dresses…to fight fascism.