This is an area in which the two maps that I think are accurate differ, and where I think I side against the Lands map. As an extremely amateur student of geography, it seems very very odd to me that the source of the Tumblestone is in the middle of a valley without some kind of lake that feeds it. Likewise, if that valley that seems to lead straight down into the Riverlands exists, why build the Riverroad through the damn mountains? 

So I’m skeptical that river and valley exist. 

Part2. If you have cities settled with a majority of people as immigrants from other parts of Westeros how much pushback would you face w/r/t religious differences. I mean White Harbour is the only current city in the north and it is ruled by the only major northern house who follow the Seven?. Also you mention settling the gift (I assume as farmland) how would you reconcile the Umbers to ruling over people they have previously executed for coming over the wall?

Part3. With encouraging immigration – would you look to the free cities at all? Would it make any sense for the North to build its own sort of Citadel? Like a university of the North because it seems like the one in oldtown is heavily tied to the faith and like Knighthood is then closed to Northeners because they cannot take the vows? Like I understand that you can study without becoming a Maester but then you get a situation where the north’s only healers are people with fundamentally different

Part4. The north has healers with fundamentally different ideologies to the rulers/everyone else? You have mentioned you agree with/believe the theory that there is a dragon/dragon eggs in/underneath winterfell. If that is the case what are the chances of Winterfell still standing/the land not being a crater if the dragon/eggs awakens?

As I’ve discussed before, the precise authority level for charters is a bit unclear, since the major case of a town applying for one we have comes from the Crownlands where the liege lord would be the king anyway. So as with previous segments, if the Lord Paramount doesn’t have the authority, replace “I will issue charters” with “I will bribe/lobby the king until he issues charters.”

Religious differences are an issue – hence why you’d want to favor immigrants from those areas of the South that still worship the Old Gods, spread out immigrants so they aren’t in big enough numbers to form their own communities vs. assimilating, etc. And ironically, that’s one thing that might help integrate the wildlings – they’re First Men, they worship the Old Gods, so there’s less of an adjustement there.

The Citadel does not seem linked to the Faith – Northern Houses routinely use maesters, there are maesters who come from the Iron Islands and who likely follow the Drowned God, etc. So that’s not really an issue.

Regarding immigration – obviously, you want to encourage skilled craftsmen to immigrate. The issue is that the North probably isn’t as promising a destination as other places in Westeros, so you might not get much. 

Not a terrible idea; selling ice across long distances is something that happened pre-modern refrigeration, so might be profitable. 

Absolutely not. Aegon will do the short-term thing, marry Arianne for the Dorne’s army, seize the capitol, and then Dany shows up. 

poorquentyn:

Adventure stank.

The Refusal of the Call is a near-sacrosanct element of the Hero’s Journey. Luke Skywalker has to draw back fearfully from the adventure embedded in Leia’s message before finding his aunt and uncle dead. It heightens the stakes, establishes internal conflict, and prevents our protagonist from looking like a jerkass eager to abandon the stern-but-loving couple who raised him. Plus, of course, it neatly sets up the rest of the narrative: “There’s nothing for me here now.” But there was something there for Quentyn Martell.

I want to go back to Yronwood and kiss both of your sisters, marry Gwyneth Yronwood, watch her flower into beauty, have a child by her. I want to ride in tourneys, hawk and hunt, visit with my mother in Norvos, read some of those books my father sends me. I want Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry to be alive again.

Maybe it wasn’t the epic, exciting, revolutionary life his father had planned for him, but it was his, and he wanted it, and he died before he could get back to it, died knowing his best friend had given his own life for nothing, died pretending to be somebody (the Dragontamer, referring to Dany as well as her children) he never wanted to be.

So when I say Quent was the wrong man for his mission, I’m not talking about his plain face or his awkward attempts at gallantry. Quent shouldn’t have had to go on his quest because he did not want to, and that is a genuinely radical thing to suggest in fantasy and sci-fi. Some adventures are bloody and brutal and ultimately pointless; some adventures bring you not courage and self-actualization but grief and humiliation; some adventures grind down your soul before they kill you. Some adventures fail, and Quent’s never stood a chance: his ace in the hole was a marriage contract that, as Barristan notes, mentioned neither Quent’s name nor that of his ostensible betrothed. When Barristan can easily unravel your Secret Plan…

At some deep level of cognition, Quent knows all this, but does not allow himself to truly understand until the very end. My favorite character in the series, full stop.

Well damn. I was going to write about Quentyn when I got to ADWD but now it’s all been said.

thetannhausergates 

 Some excellent points in here, Steven.  Just a couple of things I’d like to add.  You mention ‘trade’ in passing, but I think – with some slight tweaks surrounding more trade – the North could be even more successful while further minimising the ‘Winter Risk’.

Firstly, horses.  You mention briefly a horse trading centre based around a new ‘Rillstown’ in the South West of the region.  But there is no real reason horse breeding could not become an economic staple through out The North.  The populations of Central Asia have for thousands of years bred horses combined with sheep and goats because the horses are able to use their hard hooves to break through tundra and permafrost to reach forage underneath.  Sheep and goats also do well following up this grazing method (they eat the portions of the forage left behind by the horses, so there is good symbiosis).

Although the Dothraki are renowned as being the peak of the horse flesh business, establishing new bloodlines for horses and different breed specialties would be a good long term prospect for The North.  More than simply providing for the population of the region, they provide a competitive trading opportunity and the building of a differentiated, specialist skill set.

You rightly point out that The North should move into industries that offer more of a return per capita than subsistence farming.  I’d take that one step further and assert the real thing the North needs to foster is artisanal skill sets that are less ‘climate dependent’.  Fostering the growth of knowledge is the first step to technological advancement and a more stable, less seasonal economy. 

To this end, the growth of the British canal system was a boon to the pottery makers of the English midlands.  Something similar would also be a viable option for the North.  The raw materials for pottery (clay, wood, charcoal) are always available and everyone likes the idea of having a kiln in their village / house when the temperature plummets.  Moreover, pottery also offers a portable, non-perishable store of value that can easily be traded away to other locations, even when the weather is bad.

This focus on trade is important.  Surplus food in storehouses and in more applicable livestock is crucial and must not be overlooked.  But an additional way to safeguard food supplies to the North is with key trade relationships in the south and in Essos that can ensure a steady supply of food from outside the region.  Multiple sources of a resource are always better than a single source.

Of course, with key trade routes comes a merchant class and with that merchant class come wealth, power and a potential shift in he politics of the North.  At a level barely above subsistence, where the population is sparse and diffused, the Starks are able to maintain a hold over the North with a combination of loyalty, family alliances and projection of force.  If the population in the north was to increase and more money to flow into the region (which would happen under your original plan or with the amendments I’m suggesting), the old ways of governing would also have to change.

In a more wealthy and economically diverse version of the North, we may see a house like the Karstarks or the Boltons gain more money and power and use these to usurp the power of the Starks.  While Ned Stark seems to enjoy the loyalty of the majority of the Northern Lords, you get the very real impression that this Northern détente is a fairly recent thing (and of course – as we have seen – the Boltons have always chaffed at the Stark yolk). 

Chartering more towns and increasing the status of more nobles will keep people quiet in the short term, but in the long term it creates the potential for a ‘War of the Roses’ kind of power struggle.  That kind of potential power imbalance can stymie economic growth and improvement faster than a dragonglass dagger in the back of a white walker!  During the 1500 and 1600s, the English economy was stagnant and lacklustre (and very Westerosi).  It took the whip hand of William III, an intellectual awakening, Newton’s stabilisation of the currency, settling the succession via the Act of Succession, the passing of the Act of Union and – finally – the transition to the Hanoverian line, to truly turn Britain from a back water to an industrial and political powerhouse.

My point is merely that economic change will destabilise the power structure of the North and simultaneously rely upon that power structure to succeed.  The excellent changes and improvements you have suggested will wither on the vine if the Starks and the ret of the noble houses of the North can’t navigate the choppy political waters brought about by increased standards of living.

Anyway, sorry for banging on for so long.  I really like your economic pieces and the way you think about these things.  I don’t think even GRRM has thought as deeply about this aspect of the story (by and large, his understanding of economics is rudimentary at best … unless he means to attack the notion of overly powerful merchant classes via a Littlefinger / Iron Bank arc that has yet to be exposed), so I applaud your efforts.

An excellent response! 

Yeah, you’re right, I kind of breezed past trade. In my defense, I was writing late at night and trying to get the post out the door in time for tomorrow am.

While I certainly agree that your scenario is quite possible, it’s not necessarily inevitable. There are cases where industrialization didn’t destabilize traditional power structures as much as you might expect from the British or French cases – the German industrialization system, for example, was quite compatible with the continuation of Junker dominance. 

Pretty bad. Daemon was into expansionist war and some pretty violent criminal behavior before, now give him an enormous amount of power and influence.

Also, Aegon tried, it didn’t work. 

Andrew Mumford submitted:North’s military potential under economic plan

Under your economic plan, had the agricultural aspect at least been implemented decades ago, how many men would Robb have been able to raise if the North’s agricultural potential were fully realized?

Well, in the historical example, England doubled its population in a hundred years. So let’s say the system was introduced a generation ago (roughly 30 years): instead of the North having a population of ~3.5-4 million, you’d expect the population to be around 4.5-5.2 million (around a third bigger). This would make for an army of 45,000 to 52,000 – a rather substantial difference.

Good question, tricky to answer. For geography, I tend to use Ser Mountain Goat’s map over the map book, because the scale in the former makes it easier to calculate distances and thus time b/w destinations, and I use either over the WOIAF maps which are execrable.  

So depending on which map you use, you have different depictions of the terrain, which shapes what kind of policy you’d prefer. For example, in the map book, a Stony Sept to Pinkmaiden canal or a Godseye to Trident Canal really looks quite easy. 

Hornvale to the Rush would be possible, although there may be issues about House Lannister building a canal on what is probably Tully land.