I dunno, he could have been a bit better of a guy, but at the end of the day he still betrayed the blacks for the greens, then betrayed the greens for the blacks. 

Rhaenrya had her good qualities and her bad. I think chiefly among her bad qualities was an early-Stannis-like inability to let anything slide, thus the moment she actually gets into power she spends more time taking revenge than actually ruling. Hence, mass arrests and executions and torture, and people side-eyeing her because of putting Alicent in chains and poor Haelena committing suicide over the death of her children, hence completely counterproductive orders to execute her own dragonriders. 

I’m sure we can chalk some of it up to propaganda, but some things are historical fact – Rhaenrya so alienated the people of King’s Landing that they rose up against her and killed her dragons, breaking the power of her House. That on its own discredits her as a politician.

But ultimately, Viserys II’s mistake was that he couldn’t make up his mind. If Rhaenrya was going to be his heir, he shouldn’t have remarried and had more children. 
 

I think she’ll return to destroy her enemies, not to rule. 

asoiafuniversity:

I’m sad to say that stannisisthefury, one of our admins, as well as a popular ASOIAF essayist and writer for Esquire, deleted his tumblr today 😦 

Thomas needed a break from fandom, but he’s otherwise doing great, and he is still on twitter for anyone who follows him there.

Fortunately, if you still want to read his essays, we reblogged most of them to asoiafuniversity, and I just spent the past hour using google’s cached version of his tumblr to move various essays above their read-mores. You can read them here: 

asoiafuniversity.tumblr.com/tagged/stannisisthefury

Thank you, stannisisthefury, for all the hard work you did for asoiafuniversity, and we’ll miss you!

— joannalannister

Yikes! Thomas, your stuff is awesome. If you need to take a break, at least leave it up there for posterity, man!

Who’s to say Dany doesn’t arrive back in the nick of time?

You have a good idea for political chaos.

If Aerys dies right there, his Small Council is in a bit of a bind – Rhaegar is technically heir, but they hate him and vice versa. Viserys would be better for them politically, but Rhaegar is too well-established to be gotten rid of. It would mean civil war with Dorne backing him (they’re pissed at Rhaegar for cheating on Elia, but not to the extent of kicking Elia’s son out of the succession), and at least four of the Lords Paramount not feeling particularly kind to either side. 

If Lord Merryweather is feeling particularly stupid, he tries to hold Brandon hostage for the military support of Houses Stark and Tully. If he’s smart, he releases Brandon Stark into his father’s custody. Indeed, you might have an interesting scenario where Merryweather et al. defect into the Southron Alliance on the grounds that a child king would mandate exactly the kind of ruling council that the Southron Alliance seems to want. 

However, Merryweather might simply give it up at that point, accept Rhaegar as King. At which point, things are pretty shaky – the new King is an accused rapist and kidnapper who’s just alienated House Stark and House Baratheon (who have powerful allies) and the Martells aren’t too happy either, rebellions have been fought over just this sort of thing. 

So at a minimum, Rhaegar’s going to have to do some very fancy footwork. Returning Lyanna is tricky – she’s going to be seen as damaged goods. Announcing they’re married is also tricky – House Stark might be slightly mollified but not much, House Martell is going to be enraged if Elia is put aside, House Baratheon’s still pissed, and Rhaenys is way too young to be traded in compensation. On the other hand, it’s possible Tywin might back him if Rhaegar gives him Jaime back. 

I found some historical examples of child hostages here and here.

I’m not sure whether the Hightowers particularly care at the mean time, they’re a bit busy at the moment.

I’m not so sure about that. Dany’s trip to the Dothraki Sea happened two weeks before the Battle. She could easily have made the return trip in the meantime. 

I think they will react by being very afraid, because they just lost a lot of their military power. I would not be surprised if there’s a slave revolt in Volantis and New Ghis.

racefortheironthrone:

You’re quite right. And this is a very interesting question.

The historical Constantinople at its height was around 1 million, so Volantis is probably at least that big. We learn from Victarion that their war fleet is somewhere between 300-500 war galleys, which means at least 30,000 and as high as 150,000 men manning the oars (depending on whether these are 100 oarsmen or 300 oarsmen ships), not including the marines and the regular troops. Using our normal 1% rule, that gives us a population under Volantis’ control (since they have colonies, not just the metropolitan area itself) of anywhere from 3 million to 15 million. It’s definitely the largest, which makes sense as it’s the oldest and thus has had time to build its population over time.

On the other hand, only 500k to 2.5 million of their people are Volantene citizens. The rest are slaves. 

Braavos is a bit harder to estimate. Historical Venice and Amsterdam in their Golden Ages had around 200,000 residents. On the other hand, historical Venice only had 6 islands and the Mestre, whereas the metropolitan area of Braavos has 100 islands to build on. It’s highly crude, but if we simply multiply Venice’s population by 16.6, we get a population of 3.3 million. Taking another method, Braavos has the largest war fleet in the world, so it has to have substantially more than Volantis’ fleet. If it’s 600, that suggests a population of anywhere from 6 million to 18 million. 

18 million seems high, there’s no way Braavos is half the size of Westeros in terms of population even with its colonies

. Ditto Volantis, even with its colonies. So I’m more inclined to say that Volantis probably has around 300 ships, and a max population of 9 million people. Braavos probably has at least 400 ships, and a max population of 12 million people. 

The Three Daughters (Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh) have at least 90 warships, which means a combined population of between 900,000 and 2.7 million. 

Ok, did some consulting with Elio, and he shared some interesting info that Venice mobilized more like 25% of its male population (or 12.5% of the total population) to crew its navies.

Plugging that new figure into our formulas gives us a Volantene population of  240,000 to 1.2 million (which seems a bit low, given the size of its colony cities), a Braavosi population of 320,000 to 1.4 million, and a Three Daughters population of 72,000 (way too low) to 216,000 (also seems low). 

So, still not sure what the populations are. My guess atm is to take the average of each estimate and then average the estimates – so roughly 5 million for Volantis and 6.5 million for Braavos and around a million for the Three Daughters?

I hope so. I don’t think the Shavepate faked the assassination or the Sons of the Harpy or anything like that. I think that Yunkai et al. are going to lose big in the Battle of Fire, which probably means the new Ruling Council stays in power.