Is Myranda Royce snobbish about the Sistermen in TWOW because they’re poor, or because they’re not integrated into the Vale political polity, or some other reason?

Good question!

I think there are a couple different factors going on:

The Sistermen are not part of the mainland but rather out on the extreme periphery of the Vale:

Because the Sisters became part of the Vale after the Battle of Seven Stars, they don’t have the cachet of having fought for the Andals and the True Religion (in the same way that a certain kind of WASP looks down on people who didn’t come over on the Mayflower or whose ancestors didn’t fight in the American Revolution) and are instead provincials.
Because they live far off, they’re not a regular part of court life, and although definitely the highborn families would be treated as highborn, they certainly wouldn’t have the cachet of the inhabitants of the Vale proper.
Because they don’t live on the mainland, they don’t share mainlander concerns about mountain clans raiding or growing seasons or mountain passes being closed off by snow, etc.

The Sistermen are moreover a historically rebellious and quasi-criminal part of the periphery.

Before the Andals came, the Sistermen were pirates and slavers, neither activity likely to make them popular with the people they steal from or the people they steal. And to the present day, a big part of their economy is smuggling, and wrecking – the mainlanders despise honest merchants, so these guys are going to be seen as the lowest of the low.
As the mainlanders see it, the Sistermen started the Worthless War by being greedy pirates who poked the wolf one too many times, and not a small part of the mainland suffered as a consequence.
Then after the Arryns rescued the Sistermen, they rebelled against them during Aegon’s Conquest, and then against them and the Targaryens during the Blackfyre Rebellions.

And finally, there’s the whole inbreeding/webbed fingers and toes thing, which probably means they’ve interbred with the Squishers…

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Catelyn III, ASOS

“Outside the thunder crashed and boomed, so loud it sounded as if the castle were coming down about their ears. Is this the sound of a kingdom falling?” Synopsis: Rickard Karstark commits suicide in an extremely elaborate fashion. SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector. (more…)

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Was it common for medieval kings to actively hold the noble classes in disdain? Something that I’ve seen somewhat regularly in medieval fantasy is a monarch that wants beneficial progress, but is blocked by the nobility, and hates them for it. Stannis is an example with his “if all the lords had but one neck” remark. Are these sorts of characters a bit of an overoptimistic take on absolutism, or did they turn up in real life?

Given the long history in many different countries of monarchs struggling with the aristocracy over centralization vs. decentralization of power, it’s not an inaccurate portrayal, but how common that attitude was did change over time.

I’m not sure I would always go as far as to say the class as a whole or as a concept was disdained – a lot of the centralizers would still defend at least the social prerogatives of the nobility against the peasantry or the urban burghers and none of them attempted to abolish or eliminate the nobility. Rather, the aim was usually to try to make the nobility a compliant and dependent part of the monarchical system.

How would Guest Right be reconciled with Westerosi customs around holding hostages, particularly killing them? A hostage would live beneath a person’s roof and eat their food, which should in theory protect them from being killed. Is this perhaps why, while taking hostages is common, killing them isn’t? Aside from other practical considerations?

I don’t think it’s an accident that there is a conflict between these two customs: guest right exists somewhat to create a systemic dis-incentive to kill hostages. And that’s not a bad thing, because the point of hostage-taking (and especially true with hostage-exchanges) is to create an alternative to wiping out your enemies root and branch, similar to how the custom of ransoms is there to encourage people to take defeated nobles prisoner instead of murdering them for the rings on their fingers.

However, there are cases where you need to execute a hostage. My guess is that the cultural circle is squared through giving hostages guest gifts:

“The Freys came here by sea. They have no horses with them, so I shall present each of them with a palfrey as a guest gift. Do hosts still give guest gifts in the south?“

“Some do, my lord. On the day their guest departs.”

“Perhaps you understand, then.“ (ADWD)

Thus, the hostage is no longer a guest and can be executed without violating the taboo.

Is it possible for a Riverlander King to win the Great Game, or at least dominate it for an extended eriod ?

I think anything’s possible, and certainly there have been periods of stronger and weaker Kingdoms of the Rivers and Hills.

I think a couple different things would be necessary for a Riverlander King to become dominant:

economic/political/military development so that the Riverlands can bring its full potential to bear on its various challenges. If the Riverlands could raise 40-45,000 men as their population indicates they ought to be able to raise, or if their borders were better guarded by stronger castles, then they’d stand a much better chance against the Westermen, the Ironborn, the Valemen, the Reachermen, and the Stormlanders.
a stroke of geostrategic luck. Given the multi-front nature of the great game, it’s much easier for the Riverlands to do well if the Vale is fighting the North and/or the Westermen are fighting the Ironbron and/or the Stormlands/Dorne/Reach are all fighting eachother.
good leadership who can combine diplomatic and military talent to achieve one doable objective at a time. For example, if the Riverlands could work out deals with other kingdoms that would allow it to redistribute resources from one or two fronts, that would allow them to concentrate their resources in another direction. LIkewise, while absorbing the Crownlands is a reasonable goal, making a frontal assault on the Bloody Gate or picking simultaneous fights with all of its neighbors at once.

Hi !! Great work with politics of Seven kingdoms. I have a question on the dornish question : What is the role of dorne in the Great game ? In the essays i have not found this section

Thanks!

The role of Dorne in the Great Game was twofold:

to act as a check on the Reach and the Stormlands – neither could “win” by permanently absorbing one of their neighbors because every time they focused their efforts in that direction, Dorne would hit them with raids that would either force them to pull back to keep what they had or weaken them to the point where they would be become too weak to hold on to what they’d grabbed.
to act as a scavenger in times of weakness – hence invading the Reach during the reign of Garth X or attacking the Stormlands repeatedly when the Stormlands are on their way down – although this isn’t unique to Dorne.

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: Dorne (Part III)

credit to ser Other-in-law Politics of Dorne Part III With the arrival of Aegon I Targaryen to the Westerosi mainland, we get the most detailed section of Dornish history, with extensive coverage both in the Dorne chapter and the various chapters of the roll of Targaryen monarchs and their foreign policy towards the only foreign kingdom on their content. All the same there are some frustrating…

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Would Garth “the Gross” Tyrell’s position as Lord Seneschal of Highgarden be as Mace’s treasurer given his consideration as Master of Coin, or more general administrator as a Hand equivalent, or something else?

Garth Tyrell is listed as the Lord Seneschal in the appendix. I was curious as to what exactly that means. And why is house Tyrell the only ones mentioned as having a Lord Seneschal?

Since I got a couple different asks on this subject, I thought I might as well tackle it in one place, as apparently I haven’t before.

The answer is that the text isn’t very clear about what the office entails. Nor does history eludicate matters, because the term can mean a number of different things:

Seneschal can mean “steward” (in the sense of official in charge of administration of the household) although that term doesn’t necessarily mean a high-ranking member of the servant class.
Second, “seneschal” was also an officer of a French (or more specifically Norman and Languedoc) administrative unit known as a seneschalty: seneschals governed the unit on behalf of the king but also acted as a chief justice or bailiff.

My guess, without much to base it off of, is that when the Tyrells replaced the Gardeners as Lords of Highgarden, they abolished the office of High Steward of Highgarden so as to prevent any comparisons being made between the incumbents and their predecessors. However, the work still needed to be done, so they created a new title for the old office so that they could use it as a cushy job for junior male relations.

As to why the Tyrells are the only ones, I think it’s because everyone else sticks with just stewards and doesn’t see a need to give servants ideas by giving them lofty titles.

Barbey Dustin says that she contributed as few of her men to the Stark host as possible. Would the Starks not be aware of how many men she can raise, and questioned this disloyalty?

Well, this gets us to the twisty nature of the feudal contract. As bilaterally-negotiated documents, feudal contracts could vary dramatically in terms of what kind of service was negotiated – how many knight’s fees your land was valued at, how many days’ service you were required to provide, how many men you had to bring, etc.

What this could often result is that there was a difference between the minimum a lord was required to kick in and the maximum they could actually bring to the table, and how many men actually showed up would depend on politics. If the king is popular and/or powerful, if the war is going well and there’s a good chance of winning loot/land, you bring extra men above your minimum requirement so as to gain royal favor. If the king is unpopular and/or weak, if the war is going badly and the risk/reward on participation is bad, you send as few as you can get away with.

We see this very early on in the War of Five Kings with Bran VI of AGOT: the lords who show up in full force to Winterfell are looking to gain something in return, whether it’s a military command, or Robb’s hand in marriage, or for him to give them some land or some use-rights, or to side with them in a dispute or what. Barbrey Dustin is making much the same political calculation, but in reverse: what’s the least amount of men she can get away with sending without incurring a felony?

In a side note from your analysis of Jaime I in ASOS, you include the Brackens in a list with the Freys and Peakes as “asshole families”. What did the Brackens do? I know they don’t get along with the Blackwoods, or but I’ve always thought of that as feud without a clear antagonist or protagonist. Am I wrong?

So I use that term to suggest what the author’s feelings are, not necessarily my own.

But you just have to look at how GRRM has described the two houses to see which side he comes down on: the Blackwoods worship the Old Gods and have a cool weirwood tree for their sigil, the Brackens converted to the New Gods and have…a horse; Missy Blackwood is loved by all, but Barba Bracken is a callous schemer who gets exiled from court and her poor sister meets an even worse fate; Otho Bracken is a “brute” and won’t help Dunk; Jonos Bracken is a womanizing tool who sides (or is it “sides”?) with the Lannisters while Tytos Blackwood is an honorable Stark loyalist (with a kickass ravenfeather cloak); hell, when GRRM wants to have the Three Stooges enter his series, they show up as Bracken sworn swords!

So while I think the thematic argument that GRRM is trying to make is that both sides are equally to blame for the feud, his aesthetics aren’t matching up. Poets being of the devil’s party and so forth.