Tag: asoiaf meta

One more time, re: Aerys and public works

Having twice had a rather long answer to an ask about whether Aerys’ grand schemes had any merit gotten eaten by Tumblr, I’m stubbornly trying again. 

So here’s the thing about Aerys’ grand schemes: they all fall victim to the same flaw of monumentalism. They’re all huge, incredibly expensive, and very difficult projects ultimately chosen more to satisfy Aerys’ grandiose self-image than they are on their individual merits, and they would eat up resources that would probably be better spent on more prosaic, but also more useful and more likely to succeed projects:

“His Grace was full of grand schemes as well. Not long after his coronation, he announced his intent to conquer the Stepstones and make them a part of his realm for all time. In 264 AC, a visit to King’s Landing by Lord Rickard Stark of Winterfell awakened his interest in the North, and he hatched a plan to build a new Wall a hundred leagues north of the existing one and claim all the lands between. In 265 AC, offended by “the stink of King’s Landing,” he spoke of building a “white city” entirely of marble on the south bank of the Blackwater Rush. In 267 AC, after a dispute with the Iron Bank of Braavos regarding certain monies borrowed by his father, he announced that he would build the largest war fleet in the history of the world “to bring the Titan to his knees.” In 270 AC, during a visit to Sunspear, he told the Princess of Dorne that he would “make the Dornish deserts bloom” by digging a great underground canal beneath the mountains to bring water down from the rainwood.” (WOIAF)

Starting with the worst ideas, trying to conquer the Stepstones or to fight a naval war with the Braavosi for the hell of it are both terrible ideas. As we saw with Daemon’s War for the Stepstones, such conflicts would be very long, very expensive in blood and treasure, would be unlikely to succeed in the long-term due to the difficulty of maintaining forces abroad, and would definitely see the Iron Throne drawn into a broader Essosi war as the various Free Cities reacted negatively to the aggression of their neighbor. 

Next tier down, building a new Wall in the North would be hugely expensive to construct, would definitely involve a brutal war against the wildlings, and at the end of the day would gain you 300 miles of territory that’s mostly non-arable let alone fertile. By constrast, resettling the Gift would effectively extend the kingdom north by some 150 miles, would allow for the expansion of production due to the superior arability of the land south of the Wall, and (by expanding tax revenue coming out of the Gift) would allow for an expansion of the Night’s Watch which at the moment can barely staff the Wall they have let alone a second one. 

Similarly, building a whole new capitol down the road, a la Springfield in the Simpsons episode “Trash of the Titans,” is horrendously expensive, because you’re basically taking a complete loss on all of the built-up real estate in the old capitol. By contrast, investing in public infrastructure in King’s Landing is somewhat prosaic, but better water and sewage systems, paved streets, a public sanitation department, etc. would be a much more efficient solution for the capitol’s miasmic probems. 

Finally, while expanded irrigation of Dorne is key to its economic development, trying to dig a tunnel through the Red Mountains and then lay an aquaduct through that tunnel is almost certainly beyond the means of the Iron Throne. It would be hard enough to divert the Torrentine, allowing for the irrigation of the western third of Dorne, but that project would be far easier than trying to tunnel through hundreds of miles of rock by hand. 

Maester Steven, may I please ask why you describe the Mountain Clans at the outskirts of the Vale as “oppressed” as well as dispossessed? (the latter is objectively true, but given that the Clans outright reject any connection with the Vale that doesn’t involve preying on the local peasants one would argue “Marginalised” or “Exiled” is a more accurate term).

Because it’s standard policy for the knights of the Vale to mount punitive expeditions against the Mountain Clans of the Vale:

“Before that, the chronicles tell of countless battles with the savage mountain clans.” (WOIAF)

“The mountain clans were lawless brigands, descending from the heights to rob and kill and melting away like snow whenever the knights rode out from the Vale in search of them.” (AGOT)

“The clans have grown bolder since Lord Jon died,“ Ser Donnel said. He was a stocky youth of twenty years, earnest and homely, with a wide nose and a shock of thick brown hair. “If it were up to me, I would take a hundred men into the mountains, root them out of their fastnesses, and teach them some sharp lessons, but your sister has forbidden it.” (AGOT)

If we do a bit of de-bowlderization, I think it’s fair to conclude that “root them out of their fastnesses” refers to cavalry raids against camps and villages of civilians, and “sharp lessons” refers to massacres. Hence why the mountain clans have to be described as “savage,” “wildlings,” and the like; de-humanization is required in order to rationalize the gap between the ideals of knightly conduct that the knights of the Vale espouse and how they behave at home. 

About 8 months ago, SLAL mentioned you had an idea of ‘link schools’ throughout Westeros, where the sciences are taught to a larger public. Can you elaborate on that? Like, where would you get the funds? Who’s your target for this increased education? Where would these schools be built?

Well, they weren’t purely for the sciences, but the idea I had as part of my economic development series was that, rather than having a system in which graduates of higher education were required to be polymaths (i.e, you need enough links on your chain to go around your neck and become a maester), you have schools set up where the objective is to train someone to competence in only one or two areas, and essentially create a new category of half-maester as credentialed specialists. 

So for example, if you need more doctors, it makes sense to have schools where students go only to train to get silver links; or if you want to expand the communication network of the ravens out further, have people who only study to get black iron links; or if you need more accountants, have people who only study to get yellow gold links, and so on. 

In terms of financing and location, my original idea was that a Lord Paramount would essentially subsidize the construction and operation of these schools by way of a payment to the Citadel, with schools located in cities/towns/major castles, in return for having their people educated at a reasonable price. And the target is essentially to build up the human capital of a given region, so that I have more literate people, more specialists in needed areas (not just doctors, but also lawyers, accountants, metallurgists, communications experts, teachers, etc.), and thus a more productive economy, although I imagine these halfmaester positions would probably be more attractive to the merchant, artisan, and wealthy peasant classes as a way to get their children a respected trade than to the nobility per se. 

Would it be worth it for Sunspear to enhanced its harbor and use the Greenblood to pull trade away from Oldtown? What would a ruler have to do and how soon could such a project be pulled off?

I don’t think so. 

First, Sunspear isn’t on the Greenblood (it’s a good bit north of the mouth of the Greenblood), so it would really make more sense to build up Plankytown (which sits at the mouth of the Greenblood. 

Second, as far as I can tell, there is no harbor at Sunspear. Indeed, when “Princess Nymeria and her ten thousand ships made landfall” near Sunspear, she did so “on the coast of Dorne,” beaching her ships rather than anchoring them at a harbor.

Third, it’s not clear how easy it would be to pull trade off of Oldtown from such a location. Yes, you have the Greenblood, but those waters reach their terminus in the middle of the Dornish peninsula and it’s a long caravan route indeed to get into the Reach or the Stormlands. By contrast, Oldtown is located in a much more populous market and has access to the great heart of the continent, either taking the Roseroad up to Highgarden (which then gives you access to the Coast Road and Casterly Rock) and then to King’s Landing, or taking the Mander as far north as Silverhill and as far east as Tumbleton or Grassy Vale. 

Hi again, i’m the anon from the northern and southern style of politics, i was wondering how different is ned’s ruling style from other lords of winterfell, and if that difference is more from been raised by jon arryn or some other reason (his uniquely strong sense of honour, the fact that he was a second son, raised to served his older brother) ? thanks for the fast answer btw!

That’s a good question – we don’t really have a good sense of how Ned’s very personal approach to power and his benevolent paternalism compares to the Starks who came before him. We know Rickard Stark was interested in continental power politics, dynastic marriage alliances, and fostering agreements but we don’t know much about how he related to the lords of the North. 

What we can say is that Ned Stark was widely respected and beloved by his lords even past his death, so his style couldn’t have been been that far from the norms of Northern politics. 

Hi Maester Steven, its very common in the asoiaf fandom to contrast northern and southern politics, usually saying that the northern lords are way more honest and loyal than their southern counter parts, and on the main series there are very evident differences. But after reading woiaf i’m now under the impression that the political styles aren’t really that different, but that ned ruled in a different manner than before. What is your opinion on this?

I’ve been saying that Northern feudal politics are just as complicated and ruthless as Southern feudal politics since Bran VI of AGOT. Leaving aside the manifest disloyalty of the Boltons and the Karstarks as shown in ASOS and later, we can see from the Hornwood Crisis in ACOK that the lords of the North are constantly jockeying for position and power and that the Stark in Winterfell has to work very hard indeed to keep the Manderlys and the Umbers or the Glovers and the Tallharts working in harness. 

Rereading A Game of Thrones it kind of surprises me that there were no Northerners at all in the Hand’s Tourney except for Eddard’s guards. Not even Manderlys and White Harbor knights when they follow the Seven and practice knighthood. Do you suppose this is due to the Manderlys adopting the Northern disinterest in tourneys? In fact besides Ned’s household I don’t recall seeing any Northerners in King’s Landing or anywhere in the south before the war. The North seem detached from Westeros.

First, about jousting in general. According to WOIAF:

“As knighthood is rare in the North, the knightly tourney and its pageantry and chivalry are as rare as hen’s teeth beyond the Neck. Northmen fight ahorse with war lances but seldom tilt for sport, preferring mêlées that are only just this side of battles. There are accounts of contests that have lasted half a day and left fields trampled and villages half–torn down. Serious injuries are common in such a mêlée, and deaths are not unheard of. In the great mêlée at Last Hearth in 170 AC, it is said that no fewer than eighteen men died, and half again that number were sorely maimed before the day was done.”

In other words, Northmen don’t joust (much – Brandon Stark didn’t do too bad at Harrenhal, there’s Jorah Mormont at Lannisport) because they consider it too refined, too sanitized, too fancy, and boring to boot, whereas southerners consider Northern melees to be disorganized, disorderly, and insanely violent. It’s a nice continuation of the North/South cultural divide. 

Second, about the Hand’s Tourney. The makeup of tourneys depends very much on the location and publicity of the event, and in this case the Hand’s Tourney was A. located down in the South, which means folks oop North are going to hear about it much later and have a hard time getting there, and B. a spur-of-the-moment decision of Robert’s, so there wasn’t the time to get the word out as much as there was for the Tourney at Harrenhal, for example. (Notably, in that latter tournament, the Starks were there in force, they brought their bannermen and companions, so there were way more Northerners)

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: The Stormlands (Part I)

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: The Stormlands (Part I)

image
credit to Ser Other-in-Law Introduction The Stormlands is something of an odd duck among the Seven Kingdoms neither one of the powerhouses like the Reach or the Rock, nor a failed state like the Riverlands, it putters around somewhere in the middle. At the same time, it is a kingdom which has enormous hidden potential, if only because something must explain how it managed to temporarily seize…

View On WordPress

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Jon II, ASOS

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Jon II, ASOS

image
It was easy to lose your way beyond the Wall. Jon did not know that he could tell honor from shame anymore, or right from wrong. Father forgive me. Synopsis: As the wildlings reach the Fist of the First Men, Jon has a talk with Mance and gets his first mission as a turncloak. SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and…

View On WordPress