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What would you say are the events that define Westeros’ political culture i.e. things like Jaehaerys choosing Baelon over Rheanys after Aemon’s death in establishing precedent for males over females when it came to the Targs?

  • The Conquest
  • The Reign of King Jaehaerys, from the Reconciliation to the building of roads to the law code, to his sheer longevity. Without him, I think the Targaryen dynasty crumbles. 
  • The calling of the first Great Council. Sets a huge precedent. 
  • The “False Dawn” of Aegon III. Limits how powerful that precedent was.
  • The Blackfyre Crisis. 
  • Robert’s Rebellion. 

Perhaps people are still arguing about the Red Weddings excessiveness because no one’s given much thought to “reasonable” alternatives. Lets say you are an alternative Walder Frey. You’re the same loathsome man who wants extremely satisfying disproportionate revenge upon everyone who has ever slighted you, but you have just enough good caution to decide against breaking a major taboo like guest right. How would you do in Robb Stark and the Tullys, raise up your family, and laugh about it?

Rather than kill anyone, take them prisoner. Sell them to the Lannisters and let them do the killing. 

Of course, the Red Wedding isn’t just revenge for breaking an engagement. It’s also a play by Roose Bolton for his family to replace the Starks in the North, and an attempt by Tywin Lannister to win the war at a stroke. IIRC, wasn’t the actual Red Wedding plan itself more Roose Bolton’s than Walder Frey’s?

Mix of both. And yes, the Roose Bolton part is often ignored in discussions of Robb marrying Jeyne Westerling – Roose doesn’t give a damn about the Frey marriage, he wants the North. And between the two of them, Roose is the far more dangerous one, because Walder Frey is a bully and a coward. Roose is neither. 

Why do you think Aegon I decided to conquer Westeros? He could have carved out a respectable empire in Essos, which as you have pointed out, is more culturally advanced than Westeros. Do you think it was his ego that demanded that he not stop until he had the whole thing (although he did stop without conquering Dorne), the practical concern that and empire in Essos, being too big to be conquered in its entirety, would always have an easy route for land invasion of his new kingdom, etc?

I’m going to guess prophetic vision. 

As Hand, Tyrion supplies Thorne with 100 men for the watch to show support and alleviate the city of hungry mouths if only a little. Do you think a policy of offering the refugees and citizens of kings landing a situation of relocation to the Wall would’ve been successful? Compared to famine and disorder, I think families would be pleased with the notion of relative peace, land, and food compared to KL, and it would make Tyrions job easier.

Well, the problem with exiling them to the Wall is that the Night’s Watch only takes men, so you can’t really have whole families. But if you mean the Gift, yeah, you could resettle the Gift pretty easily. 

Now, Ned already had plans for this, and Jon Snow has kind of put a whole bunch of wildlings there, although given the size of the Gift you can definitely fit more than 100,000 people there. 

The biggest problem with this plan is that, other than the rural refugees, most poor people in King’s Landing aren’t farmers. They’re urban workers. Probably most of them work as unskilled, underemployed laborers – dockworkers, carters and porters, assistants to skilled laborers, petty vendors, lots of seasonal work, etc. So…how exactly are they going to feed themselves in the Gift?

Big problem with the whole “if you teach a man to…” nostrum is that people can starve to death while they’re learning. 

About what would be the average life expectancy in the middle ages? The show says Tywin is 67, and he seems in good health (he’s leading an army, no gout or difficulties riding). Is that normal?

Well, I’ve done some estimates. 67 would be beyond the average, as would be Walder Frey’s 92 years, but you did get some people in the Middle Ages who defied the trends, and of course it helps to be of the nobility where you don’t run into the problems with malnutrition that increased child mortality so much, and you’re engaged in less heavy manual labor which ages your body a lot.   

As for Tywin, the show exaggerates his age somewhat. Tywin was only 58 at the time of his death. 

Isn’t it weird that Jorah sold slaves at Bear Island? Wouldn’t Essosi ships stick to Lannisport at most, with only Westerosi ones going as far as Bear Island? It seems like an even worse trip than, say, Cairo to the Orkneys.

It’s a bit out of the way, but trading happens in the Riverlands (Seagard), the Iron Islands (plenty of foreign ships in Pyke buying stolen goods), and the North as well (hence Barrowton). 

Also, my headcanon is that, since Jorah Mormont was buying luxury goods on consignment, he probably sold the slaves directly to the merchants who were bringing the luxury goods to Bear Island. 

I wouldn’t say that Aegon ignored the Band of Nine. IIRC, WOIAF says that Jaehaerys went to war using plans that Aegon had drawn up before his death in the event he had to deal with them. If that’s the case, it implies that he had some criteria that he was using to decide when it was worth a war outside of Westeros, but whatever threshold he was using wasn’t met till after his death. It might have been that Aegon viewed the Blackfyres as a spent force after the Fourth Rebellion and he didn’t

“It was thought at first that the Free Cities of Essos would surely bring their power against them and put an end to their pretensions, but nonetheless preparations were made…but there was no great urgency to them, and King Aegon remained intent on his reign.”

I dunno, that seems to me like fairly vague planning, with a large helping of wishful thinking to me.

When it comes to Tywin’s corpse, do you think there is a metaphor taking place? Or is his corpse just rotting? Given todays embalming practices, the rotting of the deceased during funerals is no longer an issue, but is the manner in which Tywin’s corpse rotted typical for Medieval preservation methods?

If there’s a metaphor, it comes from history – a lot of infamous kings supposedly rotted quickly (Henry VIII, for example) or had nasty stuff happen to their bodies (dogs licking their blood, etc), but it’s unclear how much of that actually happened vs. chroniclers who wanted it to happen.

Or maybe he was poisoned…