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I agree with your analysis of the Meereen plot, but I just can’t believe that ultimately Skahaz survives to rule the city. Like, the Tywins and Rooses of the world might have temporary triumphs, but their deaths are inevitably coming. I just really can’t see a guy who murders one hundred children, then a fan-favourite character, getting completely off scot free.

faustandluce:

poorquentyn:

Well, Tywin and Roose specifically have the Harrenhal curse hanging over them, and unlike the Shavepate, they’re just pure assholes, lacking a progressive endgame encouraging GRRM to keep them around. (Not that this excuses the Shavepate’s violence; it makes him a different category of character from those two, however. More like Varys: an idealist in his ends, hideously pragmatic about his means.) 

But hey, Big Walder’s a stone-cold killer, and is transparently being set up to rule the Twins. Same with the Tattered Prince and Pentos. Besides, while murdering a hundred children is undeniably horrific, as with Ryman and Edmure, don’t take hostages if you’re not going to be able to bring yourself to kill them when their family refuses to surrender. Or take Baelor the Blessed–while I admire his decision to pardon the Dornish hostages on a personal level, on a political level, he left unresolved the staggering blow of Daeron I’s taboo-breaking murder, and indeed frequently made it worse (as did Daeron II, lbr). This was a huge contributing factor to the Blackfyre Rebellions, in which way more people died. 

In other words: of course it’s best not to kill, but you need to figure out another way to solve your problems, not just refuse to kill and then sit on your hands.

This discussion of hostages is really interesting to me. Their value as a deterrent is obvious, but once hostilities are renewed, I can’t imagine that killing them would be particularly effective. Won’t the death of an innocent child only further inflame any possible conflict? If you’ve got a bunch of hostages (like Dany or Jon) killing one after the first violent incident is obviously critical to maintaining a plausible deterrent. But it also vilifies you as a child-killer, and lends credence to the arguments of those who oppose you. When you’ve got a Theon situation, with only one hostage, it seems like it’d be even more of a challenge. Once you’ve killed him, you’re completely out of leverage.

How have these things worked in real life? I imagine the history is at least as bloody as anything in aSoIaF. @racefortheironthrone, would you be willing to enlighten us?

As with anything else, sometimes it works at sometimes it doesn’t. 

When Caterina Sforza was besieged within her fortress of Ravaldino, the Orsi family threatened to murder her children who she had left as hostages to get inside the fortress. Standing on the walls of the fortress, Caterina flashed the besieging army and dared them to kill her children, saying that  she had the “equipment to make other children.”

When John Marshal was besieged inside Newbury Castle by King Stephen during the Anarchy, Stephen threatened to hang his son William if he didn’t surrender. John Marshal replied, ”I still have the hammer and the anvil with which to forge still more and better sons!“ (Presumably while motioning to his crotch.)

But most people were not Caterina Sforza or John Marshal, and thankfully the two never had a chance to mate, lest the world be overrun by badasses. 

What if Shavepate really didn’t care whether he killed Hizdahr or Dany ? What if what he desired is sole power over Meereen ? If he kills Hizdahr, well at least one of his enemies is dead & he can get rid of Dany later on at his convenience. If he gets Dany, then he can raise a hue & cry about Hizdahr being Harpy & murdering Dany, and depose him with the help of his loyal Beasts+ freedmen who are loyal to Dany & opposed to Hizdahr+ the Unsullied if he can convince Ser Barristan like in the OTL.

If that’s what he wants, why not make more of an effort to make it happen? 

So you don’t consider the Shavepate as a possible suspect in the Locust Poisoning? The Meerenese Blot convinced me, and its been approved by GRRM as “getting” the Meerenese plot.

earloffife:

racefortheironthrone:

This may be a case where I just got it wrong, but to me it never made sense. 

If Dany dies and Hizdahr is king, the Shavepate is a dead man and his entire revolution is destroyed. If his objective was to do a false flag operation, why not do it in a way that implicates Hizdahr – say, by having some of his Brazen Beasts attack Dany in the name of the Sons of the Harpy and Hizdahr King? Why not do it BEFORE Hizdahr marries her and gets political legitimacy? Hell, if he wanted to get rid of Hizdahr, why not have Hizdahr assassinated and blame that on the Sons of the Harpy? That would solve his political problem much more directly.

Look at the chain of events that happened in OTL – you have a poison intended for Dany, that only gets revealed because she brings Belwas with her and Belwas goes hog-wild on them before she even touches them, then the dragon shows up and Dany leaves, then Hizdahr replaces Dany’s entire team including the Shavepate, then the Shavepate has to sell Ser Barristan on a coup. Ridiculously circuitous doesn’t begin to describe it. 

So it’ll take some explaining in TWOW if that’s what happened. 

Have you considered that the Shavepate was trying to poison Hizdahr? Dany has never shown a particular fondness for Meereenese cuisine, so it’s possible he was banking on her not liking honeyed locusts. Strong Belwas merely got to them before Hizdahr did.

1. That’s a really circuitous way to kill him. Hizdahr never eats one of them, which is one of the things that leads Ser Barristan to suspect him, so he couldn’t have liked them that much. Why not poison Hizdahr’s personal drink, and thus avoid the risk that someone else gets poisoned first? 

2. Why use poison at all? Poison is an incredibly chancy way of killing someone – you run the risk that other people get poisoned inadvertently, you run the risk that the person in question never consumes the poison by happenstance, there are antidotes and purges that can counter-act the poison’s effects, etc. Why not have some of his Brazen Beasts stab Hizdahr in the name of the Sons of the Harpy? 

3. If the Shavepate wanted Hizdahr dead, why wait that long? Waiting until after he’s married to Dany gives his enemy political power and influence that the Shavepate doesn’t want him to have. 

Could a dragon be used at sea using a boat like an aircraft carrier? Unless they can fly straight across the narrow sea, that is the only way I can see the Stepstones falling to Daemon.

I suppose you could use a dragon to transport men, but why bother? It’s far more useful to use the dragon to burn your enemy’s fleet out of the water while Corlys Velaryon transports the men you’ll need to dislodge the island garrisons. 

So you don’t consider the Shavepate as a possible suspect in the Locust Poisoning? The Meerenese Blot convinced me, and its been approved by GRRM as “getting” the Meerenese plot.

This may be a case where I just got it wrong, but to me it never made sense. 

If Dany dies and Hizdahr is king, the Shavepate is a dead man and his entire revolution is destroyed. If his objective was to do a false flag operation, why not do it in a way that implicates Hizdahr – say, by having some of his Brazen Beasts attack Dany in the name of the Sons of the Harpy and Hizdahr King? Why not do it BEFORE Hizdahr marries her and gets political legitimacy? Hell, if he wanted to get rid of Hizdahr, why not have Hizdahr assassinated and blame that on the Sons of the Harpy? That would solve his political problem much more directly.

Look at the chain of events that happened in OTL – you have a poison intended for Dany, that only gets revealed because she brings Belwas with her and Belwas goes hog-wild on them before she even touches them, then the dragon shows up and Dany leaves, then Hizdahr replaces Dany’s entire team including the Shavepate, then the Shavepate has to sell Ser Barristan on a coup. Ridiculously circuitous doesn’t begin to describe it. 

So it’ll take some explaining in TWOW if that’s what happened. 

Long ask sorry! I know you’re kinda covering the special cases of naval warfare with Constantinople and Blackwater, but I was just wondering how these battles normally occurred. It’s obviously before pre-gunpowder so was it mostly based on ramming like with classical triremes? Was the intended effect more immobilization or sinking? Additionally, what was the composition of navies? I know the Chola and Song dynasties had large standing navies, but what about Europe? Was it more merchant marines?

You’re more or less on-point – at least in the Mediterranean, where galleys were dominant and combat was pretty similar to classical Greece and Rome, focused on either ramming or boarding or disabling your opponent’s sails and/or oars. 

However, in the North Sea, the Channel, the Baltic, and the Atlantic, sailing ships predominated over galleys because of the rougher waters – yes, the Viking longship had both oars and sails, but they didn’t really use galley tactics due to their smaller size and number of oarsmen. Hence, boarding was the whole game.

One thing that did distinguish medieval from classical naval warfare is that you essentially had the importation of the castle onto the sea. Hence, you get ships like these: 

image

The forecastle and aftcastle got their names for very straightforward reasons – they were basically big wooden castles on either end of the ship that let you shoot your enemy from above and made it more difficult for boarders to come to grips with you. That, plus the fact that in order to support these castles you had to build bigger and taller ships which could just ride down the very low-lying longships, made these ships dominant in combat (although less seaworthy). 

In terms of composition, it varied. To take the English as an example, there was both a royal navy, but also localities like the Cinque Ports and Portsmouth were also required to maintain ships, and mercenary fleets were hired, and merchant marines were impressed, at various times. Likewise, at  times the royal fleet consisted of only two ships (in the reign of Richard II) and at other times as many as 700 ships (in the reign of Edward III). The thing to keep in mind is that wooden ships don’t have a very long lifespan, so unless you’re consistently putting money into maintenance, repair, and replacement, you can build an entire navy only to have it vanish, requiring a new navy to be built – which is one of the reasons the numbers and composition varied so much. 

In real-life history, what stopped people being illegally enslaved in the same way that Tyrion is by Jorah Mormont; just shanghaied while vulnerable and without witnesses?

Not much, to be honest. 

EDIT: To be a bit clearer – slavery is rarely designed to prevent people from being enslaved, which makes the term “illegally enslaved” somewhat of an oxymoron. 

Generally speaking, the only protection was community – were there people around you keeping an eye out who would make trouble if someone tried to drag someone off – and social status (i.e, was there a chance that the slavers would get in trouble for trying to kidnap you?).