I think that’s a very good formulation. 

My guess is that he wanted to ford the river further upstream where he wouldn’t have to deal with the royal navy at all, and attack the city from the north. As for hauling them, yes, that is incredibly slow but on the other hand it means the enemy can’t burn or cut down the trees to deny you building materials, and Renly wasn’t in a hurry. Indeed, it may have been the case that he thought that a sufficient show of preparation might convince Tyrion to surrender peacefully. 

I know, I just read that. On the other hand, we’re talking about a period without any written records, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. 

Well, it depends greatly depending on the region and the time period (was serfdom active at the time, for example). 

But to generalize: kings had lands of their own and would recruit from their population, whether it’s by compelling labor or by paying wages. Moreover, since occupations tended to be hereditary, servants would train up their kids to be servants, so there was an element of self-reproduction.

However, who held the job also depends on the job. Cooks and scullions and porters are clearly peasant jobs, but other jobs like being a seneschal or a chamberlain or a secretary or a treasurer or an equerry would be plum jobs for younger sons of the nobility or the gentry because of the potential for royal patronage. 

Moreover, because of the way in which the person of the monarch was elevated to near-godly status, some of the jobs you wouldn’t expect were reserved for the nobility. So the position of the Groom of the Stool, the man responsible for assisting the king with evacuating his bowels and wiping himself, was one of the most hotly sought-after jobs at court by the nobility, because their literally intimate relationship meant that the Groom would have a lot of face-time with the king. 

I think Edric Dayne will come back to Starfall, but I don’t think that’s going to be his role. I think the young Dornish are going to learn the hard way when they back Aegon VI and come up against dragons. 

Thoughts on the possible contradictions in the history of old Westeros, in terms of how the “Iron” Islands and Ironborn fit with the claims of the First Men having a solely bronze technology and the Andals bringing in usage of iron? Or is this a deliberate obfuscation by the author? Was the iron the Andals introduced actually steel? If the Iromborn and Kings of Winter in the Age of Heroes used iron, why did the Royces and other southron First Men stick to bronze?

That’s a good point. Steel vs. iron is one way to reconcile it and the WOIAF is a bit inconsistent about that. Another possibility is that the Kings of Winter adapted their crowns to include iron after capturing the technology from the Andals during Theon’s wars? (Maybe they captured some blacksmiths on his raid on Andalos?) 

Now it’s possible that the pre-Andal Ironborn had the secret of iron because there was just so much of it around – hence the legends of Balon Blackskin – but the mainlanders didn’t until the Andals arrived. Or maybe they’re just reading their later history backwards, since a lot of Ironborn history is legends and oral tradition. 

Usually, incredibly effective – hence why kings and lords spent so much money on building them. And even in ASOIAF, we have examples of successful defenses – the Bloody Gate holding off Halleck Hoare, Tytos Blackwood holding Riverrun against Jaime until Robb can relieve it, Tyrion holding King’s Landing at the Battle of Blackwater, the Night’s Watch in the Siege of Castle Black. 

Successful siege defenses are just not a very dramatic form of war – hence the Battle of Helm’s Deep revolving around heroic cavalry charges rather than waiting until Saruman’s army ran out of supplies and was hit by the plague. 

Militarily, it’s hard to say because he spent so much of the war deliberately throwing fights to weaken his rivals and then to overthrow King Robb. We’ve never seen Roose in command of an army where he’s really trying to win and has to fight a straight-up battle. 

Politically, he’s pretty effective in the short-run, but he’s got this weird thing about long-term ramifications of his act. He’s climbed to the top of the slippery pole – he’s got Winterfell and the Wardenship and the Starks seem to be gone forever – but he’s not going to stay there. 

warsofasoiaf:

We’ve gone into that a little before. Rhaenyra and Daemon got married without any protest of the union as incest (though not without protest about having too short a mourning period and not asking Viserys I for permission). Serena and Sansa Stark’s marriages too, we would have probably heard more about if they were as abomination as you say. First cousin marriages are relatively common among the Great Houses, so no, I don’t think there’s a specific religious prohibition against uncle-niece unions, as we would have certainly heard something about it.

As for the rest of your question, well, that’s what She-Wolves of Winterfell should hopefully illuminate for us.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Isn’t the bigger problem here expecting Cregan Stark to follow Andal law?

It occurred to me that the new generation Dornish have an incredibly gung ho, casual attitude towards politics & war. Obara’s incredibly “brilliant” plan of blitzing the Marcher castles & Oldtown( obstacles that have defied much better commanders) to Arianne’s casual decision to wipe out the Yronwoods “root & branch” in case of rebellion, to the whole picnic attitude prevailing among Arianne’s friends on their Queenmaking expedition- just ridiculous. Young noblemen all over Westeros suffer from a delusion that war is glorious, but these buffoons seem to believe that it is a trivially easy game. For a people whose last military venture 15 years ago ended in bloody defeat they sure are confident ! Only Tyene’s plan of luring the Lannisters into the deserts- Dorne’s home field advantage was even remotely well planned. What is your opinion on this matter ? Have they completely forgotten about the destruction Dorne suffered in earlier wars?

The comparison to say, the Knights of Summer in the Reach, is an apt one. The Dornish have sat out the War of Five Kings, they seem to have sat out the Greyjoy Rebellion, and they only fought in one battle of Robert’s Rebellion. So you have a generation of Dornish nobility who don’t have any experience of war and a North-like set of grievances about the death of Oberyn and Elia before him.

Add to that the impact of Dornish nationalism. The identity of the Dornish, highborn and low, is rooted in a historic saga of stalwart resistance and inevitable victory, and I doubt the stories and songs linger on the horrendous casualties inflicted on entire populations from dragons and armies alike that may have reduced Dornish manpower from 50,000 to 25,000 spears. So I don’t think the Dornish are immune to the same thinking that says that “every northerner is worth ten of these southron swords,” or that “the men of the green lands were made of softer stuff” than the Ironborn, who have a destiny to rule.