Tag: asoiaf meta

How historically accurate are the prizes/penalties from the tournaments in GoT and Ko7K? They always seemed like they had a horrible Risk/Reward ratio to me to attract so many competitors. It would be like the NFL having several thousand teams, but only paid the one team that won the Superbowl, and any teams that lost in the first round of the playoffs would have to hand over their personal houses to the team that beat them.

Well, I’ve talked about the prizes recently.

But when it comes to the penalty, yes that’s accurate. Most tourney knights made their money off of ransoms and not prizes, since there were many more of the former than the latter in each tourney.

However, you have to keep in mind the class and class mentality of the participants involved. Tourneys were a pastime of the nobility, not that much different from hunts or feasts or dances, so it was expected that the combatants in a tourney were A. rich enough to be able to ransom themselves/their arms/horses and B. not supposed to be concerned about money.

To use your sports analogy, imagine if you had to be in the top 5% of incomes and wealth to play in the NFL at all. 

Is Rickon bound for death in Winds of Winter? I can’t figure his involvement in the narrative other than to provide Davos with a certainly thrilling excursion to Skaagos. Rickon can’t be a true KITN contender if Robb’s will surfaces and that it is a pretty well smoking Chekov’s gun. Your thoughts on Rickon’s arc?

I think he’s there to set up internal conflict in the North. 

If Wyman Manderly believes Rickon Stark to be the last living legitimate son of Ned Stark, you’d better believe he’s a true contender for the Northern throne. I imagine there’s going to be not a few people who’ll argue that Robb wrote his will believing Rickon to be dead, so that invalidates the will. 

Likewise, I’m sure the forces of the Vale will argue that Sansa is the last legitimate child of Ned Stark, and that Rickon is an imposter pretending to be a dead prince. In rebuttal, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Manderlys argue that Sansa is an imposter put up by the treacherous Littlefinger and that sons come before daughters.

Similarly, in Jon Snow’s camp, there will no doubt be arguments from the Glovers, Mormonts, and Reeds that the will should trump all, that an adult male proven warrior is a better choice than a child or a woman. (On the other hand, when R+L=J comes out, that’s going to complicate the situation, because bastard-born or not, Jon Snow comes from the female and not male line of the Starks.)

not the previous poster

Aren’t R’hllorism and magic fundamentally connected? Every red priest we’ve seen openly practices magic. They also seem to use magic as a selling point for the religion. Melisandre is a true believer, while some of her magic is intentional misdirection, she thinks and does real magic and attributes it to R’hllor. If today high ranking Scientologists came out and started performing real magic and predicting the future and performing miracles, you’d think they’d get a lot of converts from other religions. Like whether the religion is true can’t be proven from the books, but she is in an honest to god magic cult, and that seems like it should be appealing.

Fundamentally? No. 

As I’ve discussed before, there are R’hllorite priests who know non-R’hlloric magic (like Melisandre or Benerro), there are R’hllorite priests who do not know non-R’hlloric magic who do R’hlloric magic (Thoros, Moqorro although he could be in the first camp), and there are people who are not R’hllorite priests and who don’t know non-R’hlloric magic who are able to spontaneously perform magic associated with R’hllor (Beric). 

At the same time, there are plenty of examples of people who use the same kinds of magic without any associations to R’hllor: Dany sees fire-mages and meets shadow-binders in Qohor, there’s Bloodraven, etc.

Moreover, R’hllorism is not the only faith that is associated with magic – the greenseers of the Old Gods, the water-wizards of the Mother Rhoyne, the miracles attributed to the Seven or the Drowned God, the secret association between Valyrian steel, blood magic, and sacrifices to the Black Goat of Qohor, and so forth. 

Do we know what the actual term for the shadow babies is, or is that the actual name of the magic in question (I’m operating under the assumption that there is more to shadowbinding than this practice alone)? I’ve always been under the impression that “shadow baby” was the term that the fandom collectively settled upon.

Sigh…first draft got eaten by tumblr, so I’ll try again.

The closest thing I can think of to an official term for them is that Melisandre refers to them, obliquely, as shadow sons:

“Is the brave Ser Onions so frightened of a passing shadow? Take heart, then. Shadows only live when given birth by light, and the king’s fires burn so low I dare not draw off any more to make another son. It might well kill him.“ (ASOS) 

At some times, Melisandre suggests that this is the work of R’hllor – “The Lord of Light in his wisdom made us male and female, two parts of a greater whole. In our joining there is power. Power to make life. Power to make light. Power to cast shadows.” – but I think this is a case of Melisandre propagandizing for her religion by attributing the magic known as shadowbinding to her god. 

To test this, I’ve looked for examples of shadowbinders who lack her religious affiliations doing things that Melisandre does. For example, Bloodraven is accused of using shadow assassins: “A shadow came at his command to strangle brave Prince Valarr’s sons in their mother’s womb.” (Mystery Knight) Now, this is most likely mere slander, but it does suggest that there is enough folk lore about shadow assasins out there that people think it’s a thing that magic can do.

Moreover, there is evidence that Bloodraven does have some knowledge of shadowbinding. In Mystery Knight, he pretty clearly uses shadowbinding to disguise himself as Ser Maynard Plumm:

“Distantly,” confessed Ser Maynard, a tall, thin, stoop-shouldered man with long straight flaxen hair, “though I doubt that His Lordship would admit to it. One might say that he is of the sweet Plumms, whilst I am of the sour.” Plumm’s cloak was as purple as name, though frayed about the edges and badly dyed. A moonstone brooch big as a hen’s egg fastened it at the shoulder

…Through the rain, all he could make out was a hooded shape and a single pale white eye. It was only when the man came forward that the shadowed face beneath the cowl took on the familiar features of Ser Maynard Plumm, the pale eye no more than the moonstone brooch that pinned his cloak at the shoulder.

This is almost identical in fashion to the glamour that Melisandre uses to disguise Mance Rayder and Rattleshirt in ADWD: 

Rattleshirt sat scratching at the manacle on his wrist with a cracked yellow fingernail…The big square-cut gem that adorned his iron cuff glimmered redly. “Do you like my ruby, Snow? A token o’ love from Lady Red.”

“The glamor, aye.” In the black iron fetter about his wrist, the ruby seemed to pulse. He tapped it with the edge of his blade. The steel made a faint click against the stone. “I feel it when I sleep. Warm against my skin, even through the iron. Soft as a woman’s kiss. Your kiss. But sometimes in my dreams it starts to burn, and your lips turn into teeth. Every day I think how easy it would be to pry it out, and every day I don’t. Must I wear the bloody bones as well?” (ADWD)

Melisandre associates these glamors with both R’hllor and shadows: “with whispered words and prayer (emphasis mine), a man’s shadow can be drawn forth from such and draped about another like a cloak.” By contrast, Bloodraven’s glamor is associated with shadows but not with R’hllor.

Another possible use of shadowbinding is that Quaithe the Shadowbinder appearing as an illusion to Dany: 

“They sleep,“ a woman said. "They all sleep.” The voice was very close. “Even dragons must sleep.”
She is standing over me. “Who’s there?” Dany peered into the darkness. She thought she could see a shadow, the faintest outline of a shape. “What do you want to me?”
“Remember. To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.” (ASOS)

A woman stood under the persimmon tree, clad in a hooded robe that brushed the grass. Beneath the hood, her face seemed hard and shiny. She is wearing a mask, Dany knew, a wooden mask finished in dark red lacquer. “Quaithe? Am I dreaming?” She pinched her ear and winced at the pain. “I dreamt of you on Balerion, when first we came to Astapor.”
“You did not dream. Then or now.” (ADWD)

Now, it’s possible that this is actually a glass candle in action (”the sorcerers of the Freehold could see across mountains, seas, and deserts with one of these glass candles. They could enter a man’s dreams and give him visions, and speak to one another half a world apart, seated before their candles.” (AFFC)), since Quaithe mentions the glass candles but is also associated with shadows.

Reading your Anguy question, how much money was 10,000 gold dragoons actually worth? Was it a realistic pot for winning a contest?

See here for my estimates on the value of a gold dragon. 

As for whether it’s a realistic pot, it’s a bit tricky, because medieval tourneys don’t seem to have given out prizes in cash, but instead gave out prizes in jewelry, plate (hence why so many modern sports tournaments have “cups” as trophies), and the like. And without these objects to hand, it’s a bit hard to value how much a “gold vulture” or a “very rich ring” should be valued at, or (given how popular diamonds were in medieval tourneys) how to appraise precious stones in the abstract. 

However, I can say that 10,000 dragons work out to something on the order of 6,000-7,000 English pounds (in 1300 CE pounds, that is), which is far, far bigger than any tourney prize I can find an example of. 

So I think this another example of math being GRRM’s Achilles’ heel. 

Without dragons, the Targaryens were, on paper, one of the weaker of the Great Houses, relying more on their established seat at the head of the table, which gave them the ability to assemble coalitions against rivals & enemies, than beating them solely on their own muscle. Do you think this is the same dynamic on a lesser scale within the various realms, with Lords Paramount having less incomes & fewer levies than some vassals, using the advantages of Paramount status to maintain supremacy?

To a certain extent, that is ultimately the story of how feudalism dismantled the medieval state post-Charlesmagne, and why kings in many different kingdoms from the High Middle Ages onwards spent so much of their time trying to slowly expand their power vis-a-vis their overmighty vassals. However, it’s not necessarily true that the pattern repeats all the way down – the reason why certain vassals got overmighty is that a lot of lords were good at accumulating as much land as possible while distributing as little as they could get away with while keeping their followers in-hand. 

Indeed, whether king or duke or count or baron, there are two basic rules to medieval politics that follow from the above: first, gain land/power for yourself to remain primus inter pares (while avoiding the level of monopolizing greed that might provoke rebellion), second, divide and rule among your subordinates so that you don’t ever have to fight them all at once and can thus overawe any one rebel vassal. 

And we have some local examples of that: as the Reynes and Tarbecks found out, they did not have more income and more levies than the Lannisters…

Do you think Stannis was a willing participant in creating the shadow babies, or do you think Melisandre just did it without letting him know what was going on?

As I suggest in my ACOK chapter essays, I think Melisandre told him that it was a necessary ritual (to prove his faith or to purify him or something), but didn’t tell him why it was necessary or what it would do. After all, “Melisandre has gazed into the flames, and seen him dead.” If R’hllor is the one true god and Melisandre’s visions are true – both propositions that Melisandre has gone to great lengths to try to convince Stannis of – then there’s no need to take action, much less to use black magic (which would seriously undermine those propositions) to kill him. 

And after the fact, I think Stannis was in deep denial about what he had subconsciously experienced in the night – “I dream of it sometimes. Of Renly’s dying. A green tent, candles, a woman screaming. And blood….I was still abed when he died. Your Devan will tell you. He tried to wake me…Devan says I thrashed and cried out, but what does it matter? It was a dream. I was in my tent when Renly died, and when I woke my hands were clean.”

1/3 How on earth do the titles and styles of the Westeros nobility work? I am so confused, and part of that is probably because I know a lot about how titles and styles work in the British peerage (where Lady Catelyn and Lady Stark signify VERY different things). But I can’t make sense of it in AOIAF/GOT Sometimes people are called Lord first name, sometimes Lord last name, sometimes Lord first name last name. Children seem to be addressed by the same title as their parents (Lord and Lady).

2/3 And people of vastly different ranks seem to have the same title (Ned might be Hand of the King, Warden of the North, and so on, but he and Littlefinger and someone like Roose Bolton or Walder Frey, who are of different ranks and come from different places are all Lord of _blank_). The bastard of minor lord (albeit one with a high office) is addressed as Lady Alayne, but the bastard of the Warden of North is mockingly called Lord Snow.

3/3 And then you have Ser, and presumably some people who are called Lord also are knights, so how does that work? Titles seem to follow people to the Wall, but no to the Citadel or the Seven. I know sometimes people look to the historical time periods Westeros is based on for this kind of thing, but even that gets me at a loss, like Westeros clearly has the title of Princess which is a much later term. I just can’t figure it out. What am I missing?

Oh man, titles are such a tricky subject. 

The thing to start with is that GRRM deliberately went with a simpler form of noble titles because he didn’t want to have to keep track of which outranked or had precedence over the other, although this creates some difficulties.

  1. The way GRRM seems to use it, Lady Catelyn vs. Lady Stark is about familiarity and formality. Lady Catelyn suggests you know the person and are being familiar with them, Lady Stark suggests you don’t know them well and are being formal, Lady Catelyn Stark suggests that plus you’re being very formal and/or precise. 
  2. Ranks tend to be indicated by additional titles: Lord Paramount of X, Warden of X, Lord of X Castle, etc. 
    1. As for children, this to me is similar to how smallfolk members of the Small Council are called Lords out of courtesy as opposed to by right. 
    2. Lord Snow is an insult by way of exaggerated courtesy.
  3. In pretty much all cases, you address someone by their highest rank, so a lord who is also a knight (and most sothron lords would have been knighted at some point) is called Lord. (There’s a bit of confusion over the Darrys, but this may be a case of Early Installment Weirdness) 
    1. As for the Night’s Watch, the title of “Ser” definitely carries over, because the oath requires you to abjure holding land. Don’t think there are cases of any Lord who isn’t a Lord Commander, tho.
    2. As for the Citadel, maesters swear “sacred vows, to hold no lands or lordships.” I don’t know of any case of a knight becoming a maester, but presumably the same principle that applies to the Night’s Watch applies to them. OTOH, Aemon stopped becoming a Prince after he became a Maester although it’s possible that A. at the point he did that he was a “Prince of” something, which would indicate lordship or B. that as Aemon saw it, he stopped being a Prince when he ceased to be a Targaryen, since maesters give up their family names, which the Night’s Watch doesn’t.
    3. We don’t know the rules for the Seven, although presumably it’s the same as the Citadel.
  4. Pre-Targaryen monarchies outside of Dorne do not seem to have used the style of prince or princess, as we see with Argilac’s daughter being referred to as “Lady Argella” and not “Princess Argella.” The Targaryens started using the style somewhat belatedly, because for some reason people started using the Dornish style. 

@goodqueenaly, any thoughts?

Anguy won 10 000 golden dragons on the Hand’s tourney with his archery skills. If he had more modern-day senses and long-term thinking about his life (no offense, Anguy), then what could a man of the smallfolk have done with this amount of money to improve his life in the long term? What are the options?

Great question! 

I would say that his best bet for upward social mobility is to find an heiress of a poor noble family and marry his way into a title (either that of a landed knight or a petty lord) – the fact that he has a lot of cash on hand means that he can skip a lot of the steps along the way that people in medieval societies attempted to climb the social ladder. It would probably also help if he were to serve with distinction in war and get himself knighted* to belt-and-braces his drive for noble status, and given his superlative skills as an archer that wouldn’t be hard. 

* hell, he managed this in OTL (in a fashion) despite having wasted his money. If Ser Anguy survives the BWB, there’s no reason he couldn’t have a decent career as a sworn sword or household knight (and even a tourney knight, if he can find enough tourneys offering archery prizes). 

Next best, he could marry into a merchant family. This would advance him up to the status of burgher, and I would imagine there would be a lot more merchant families who’d be quite happy with such a large injection of capital and who’d be much less snobbish about his background than the minor nobility would be. My hesitation here is that, while Anguy is a perfectly nice young man, he doesn’t seem to have much of a head for or experience in business. Might be happy as head of security, maybe.

Another possibility is creating a sellsword company; he certainly has the up-front liquid capital to hire several hundred skilled archers and sell their services. Again, I don’t know necessarily that Anguy has the necessary head for military command or small business management, and mercenary work has all of the risk of social mobility through military service with less of the possibility of advancing into the nobility. Also, it would probably mean spending a lot of time in Essos, and Anguy might not like living abroad.