Why would Varys consider Kevan a good man considering he was the loyal underling of a cruel tyrant like Tywin?

Let’s examine the scene:

“Ser Kevan. Forgive me if you can. I bear you no ill will. This was not done from malice. It was for the realm. For the children…This pains me, my lord. You do not deserve to die alone on such a cold dark night. There are many like you, good men in service to bad causes…but you were threatening to undo all the queen’s good work, to reconcile Highgarden and Casterly Rock, bind the Faith to your little king, unite the Seven Kingdoms under Tommen’s rule.”

As I’ve said before, Varys is an arch-utilitarian who doesn’t blink at the idea of building Utopia by spilling an ocean of blood and raising up a mountain of skulls. Hell, this is a man who mutilates children so that they can’t betray his secrets, who does it “for the children” – and he’s not insane or lying, he’s weighed the short-term costs in human lives versus the long-term gains of a complete remaking of the social order by enlightened despot. (Incidentally, this is why utilitarian revolutionaries are so dangerous, because their faith in the future justifies any atrocity.)

So how would someone like that look at Kevan?

I don’t think Varys would object to Tywin’s methods as much as his goals and his frame of reference – Tywin was fighting for the glory of House Lannister rather than for the greater good; his efforts to keep the Seven Kingdoms together with war and war crimes would have been undone by Joffrey’s unstable tyranny or Tommen’s well-intentioned weakness or Cersei’s paranoia and misgovernment; and none of these people have the very precise training and worldview that would allow them to be a “perfect prince” who could make systemic change. Hence the “bad cause.”

At the same time, when Kevan took control, he didn’t act for his own benefit but to strengthen the crown and restore order in the capitol – by rebuilding the alliance between House Lannister and House Tyrell that gave the regime its political constituency and military hegemony, by ending the clash between Faith and Throne that was dividing the body politic and threatening further uprisings. Varys sees that as the actions of a “good man,” one who looks out “for the realm.”

Someone may have already asked this, but who would come out ahead if every kingdom tried to implement your Economic Development Plans more or less at the same time? Is it just a case of the-rich-get-richer where the Reach and the Westerlands ride their advantages to economic supremacy, or do the poorer kingdoms (the North, Dorne, the Stormlands) have some hope of catching up?

Discussed somewhat here and here.

It’s not just the case that the rich-get-richer; economic development can rapidly shift who’s rich and who’s not both inter- and intra-regionally: look at how England shifted from a relatively poor nation into the economic and financial powerhouse of Europe due to the commercial and industrial revolutions, or how the economic balance of power within the U.S has shifted over time (the Industrial Belt becomes the Rust Belt, the South moves from the “Nation’s #1 economic problem” to the Sunbelt, the factory towns of New England that have become hollowed out when the factories moved away).

My thinking is that the winners and losers have a lot to do with two main factors: timing and advantage:

When it comes to commercial infrastructure, getting there first gives a given region a huge head-start over their rivals, as was seen historically with the Erie Canal putting New York ahead of Pennsylvania and Virginia when it came to capturing the new east-west trade with the Midwest.
It also matters, on an industry-by-industry basis, whether a given region has an absolute or comparative advantage in that industry. So for example, the North is going to be very difficult to beat in the wool and woolen garment trade once it captures the higher valued-added segments of the industry, because it has such a large amount of land that’s suited to pasturage. Yes, the Reach is large, but you’d be giving up a lot of agricultural productivity by shifting over from cereal crops, fruits and veg, and dairy farming to sheep, so that raises the opportunity cost of investing in that industry. (On the other hand, the Reach might have lower opportunity costs when it came to linens or cotton.) Likewise, the Westerlands are probably going to be hard to beat when it comes to finance or metallurgy.

Are you able to elaborate on the whole Euron is Bloodravens former protege theory. I know there is the dream where Euron mentions of a crow, and it’s clear that Euron has magical ability, but it’s also clear that Euron has been bat-shit insane from the get go. Even someone like Brynden Rivers who firmly believes in ‘achieving the goal at any cost’ would have seen Euron never had any interest in saving the world. So why is there such a popular opinion that Bran is Anakin to Euron’s Count Dooku?

Discussed here, here, and here.

Here’s my thinking, which is somewhat different from @poorquentyn‘s theory. I don’t think Euron was contacted by Bloodraven as an adult, any more than Bloodraven waited for Bran to become an adult before he contacted him.

I think Euron had some sort of health crisis/near-death experience at a young age – a drowning, an illness, etc. – that acted as a shamanic calling. Bloodraven contacted him in that moment, and showed him this:

And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks…

Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.

Whereas Bran’s vision has compelled him to seek out the three-eyed crow and try to cancel the apocalypse, Euron became a metaphysical nihilist – because in the face of the truth of the heart of winter, all gods are lies – and confirmed the non-existence of divine judgement from an early age.

What do charters for guilds consist of? If all the alchemist guild has is wildfire, how to they sustain themselves? What does the Royal charter for the faith or citadel consist of?

Well, much like city charters, guild charters gave guilds legal recognition, rights, privileges, responsibilities, and limits.

So what kinds of “rights, privileges, responsibilities, and limits” did these charters include?

First, guild charters gave guilds a legal monopoly over a given trade or industry. If you wanted to work in a given industry in a given location, you had to be a member in good standing who had been given permission to work in that town or city. On the other side, employers and merchants who wanted to hire a smith or buy their goods also had to do so with a guild member, lest they be legally liable.
Next, guild charters gave guilds control of training, licensing, and locating of workers in their field. In order to become a member of the guild, you had to go through a guild apprenticeship where you would live with a master craftsman and labor for them for anywhere between seven and fourteen years. Apprentices were not paid save for food and lodging, but their masters were required to train them in the skills and trade secrets of their industry. When you had completed your education, you would be licensed as a journeyman, be given a set of tools that were now your property, and could now work for wages in your field. Journeymen were usually sent away from their home city for a period of at least three years (although that’s not where the name came from), for reasons that I’ll explain later. When you had completed that process and could afford to pay the application fee, you could apply to become a master craftsman, by submitting a masterpiece (that’s where the name comes from) to the guild masters for their approval – if your work was up to snuff and the guild masters let you in, you’d now be a full member of your field with the right to open your own business, hire journeymen, and train apprentices (indeed, you were required to train apprentices).
Third, guild charters gave guilds wide powers of regulation and self-regulation. In addition to the right to charge membership dues, guilds also had the right to fine members or even expel them for violating the regulations of the guild, and guilds established extensive regulations on prices, wages, working conditions, product quality, even standards of personal behavior. (Guild members could be fined or even expelled for drunkenness, for example, because it threatened the guild’s reputation for quality labor). At the same time, guilds also used their control over their members to essentially bargain collectively with governments, suppliers, merchants and employers, wielding the authority to blackball them from doing any business with guild members to get their way.

So how did the guilds use these powers?

First, they used them to control labor supply, labor demand, prices and wages – guilds carefully manipulated the intake of apprentices, the licensing of journeymen, and the qualification of masters, and used their powers to permit working or operating a shop in a given town/city/region, to ensure that there would be enough work/consumer demand for their members at the wages/prices necessary to support the living standards of guild members. If there wasn’t enough work to go around in a given location, journeymen would be refused entry to a given town and sent on their way, and masters would be refused the right to open a shop.

Second, they used them to control the quality of goods and services – if you sold shoddy goods or did shoddy work, the guild would fine or expel you, and if you tried to work in their industry without going through their training process, you’d be prosecuted.

And third, they used them to create mini-welfare states – financed by the various dues and fees they charged their members, guilds operated pensions for the elderly, the disabled, widows and orphans, a system of unemployment benefits for journeymen who couldn’t find work, and funeral benefits.

As for Westeros, the guilds we know about are the Alchemist Guild in King’s Landing, the Guild of Smiths in King’s Landing, and a series of unnamed guilds in Oldtown. The Faith isn’t a chartered institution – it’s a religious institution – but the Citadel might have a charter from King Urrigon Hightower, but we don’t have direct confirmation.

What are the roads in Westeros like? Do they have regular matinence and upkeep? If so who does the upkeep? Are the Gold Road, Roseroad, Kingsroad, etc the Westeros equivalent of highways? Because somewhere it’s said Ellyn Reyne built roads. So I’m curious, what were medieval roads like and what would you expect Westeros roads to be like?

(First off: there’s a big caveat here that GRRM hasn’t put every road on the map, so there may well be roads we can’t see that change our perception. But based on what we know…)

They’re not great.

Network:

There’s some pretty obvious missing connections when it comes to the system of royal roads created by Jaehaerys:

The River Road should absolutely extend to Maidenpool, and there should probably be a Trident Road connecting Riverun Fairmarket and Seagard.
The Kingsroad should connect to White Harbor and Barrowton, with feeder roads linking White Harbor to Ramsgate, Barrowton to Torrhen’s Square to Winterfell, Kingsroad to Last Hearth to Karhold, and maybe Winterfell to Deepwood Motte to a ferry to Bear Island?
The High Road should continue past the Eyrie to Gulltown, with a spur connecting the Eyrie to Ironoaks, Old Anchor, and Longbow Hall.
We’re missing a north/south connection from Riverrun down to the Gold Road via Stoney Sept (which also connects you to the Blackwater Rush), and then down to the Roseroad via Bitterbridge.
The Ocean Road should extend west to Kayce and north up the coast to the Banefort.
The Reach needs an orbital road connecting Old Oak, Red Lake, Goldengrove, Bitterbridge, Ashford, and Horn Hill, connecting back to the Roseroad south of Highgardern.
The Stormlands should have a direct route from Bronzegate to the Roseroad that doesn’t require going more than a hundred miles north out of your way through a congested King’s Landing. It also needs the Kingsroad to extend further south than Storm’s End, linking up with the Weeping Town and Stonehelm where it can connect to the Boneway.
Dorne could use an eastern road continuing the Boneway from Wyl to Yronwood and Yronwood to Godgrace, and a western road linking Skyreach to Sandstone to Hellholt to Vaith.

Bridges:

There are not enough bridges in Westeros, and a lot of the bridges that do exist are wooden structures that don’t fare well under heavy flooding. So I would definitely add the following:

Bridge over the Trident at the Ruby Ford, so that the main north/south highway in the whole kingdom doesn’t have to rely on a ford and some ferry boats.
Bridge over the Rush at King’s Landing, so that southbound traffic from the capitol to the Reach and the Stormlands doesn’t have to rely on ferries.
Bridge over the Mander at Cider Hall or Longtable, over the Blueburn at Grassy Vale, and over the Cockleswent at Ashford, and over the unnamed Silverhall River at Goldengrove. In general, the Reach is bizarrely under-bridged and seriously impedes land traffic in favor of river-traffic.
Bridge over the Red Fork south of Riverrun, and a more secure bridge over the Blue Fork at Fairmarket.

And yes, I know in some of these cases bridges might not exist due to defensive reasons (although that’s a double-edged sword; bridges work really well to stop Ironborn sailing their longboats up your rivers), but that’s why swing/draw bridges were invented.

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: The Reach (Part IV)

credit to ser-other-in-law
In the previous section, I looked at how House Gardener responded to the Andal Invasion of the Reach through a masterful use of assimilation that resulted in a cultural and political regeneration that made the Reach one of the leading contenders in the Great Game of Westeros…
(more…)

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Some people consider Dany a white imperialist, wrongly imposing her will on the Ghiscari, and you’ve written defenses of Dany critiquing that view. I’m very much behind you here, but I do find one thing a little troubling: you often emphasize how the Ghiscari slaves are not ethnically Ghiscari (to support the point that there is no such thing as ‘Ghiscari culture’). My question is: would the Ghiscari slave-owning be somehow less objectionable if the masters only/mainly enslaved ethnic Ghiscari?

The reason why I emphasize that is largely to rebut the premise that Dany is interfering with Ghiscari culture in an imperialist fashion – after all imperialism is not inconsistent with banning certain practices that might be considered immoral (hence Napier’s statement on sati, for example) – by pointing out that there is the culture of the slave (and in the case of slavery as practiced in Slaver’s Bay, there’s actually many cultures of slaves) and the culture of the slavemaster, so the situation is rather more complicated than a crude Orientalist analysis might suggest. (There’s also the fact that Dany actually shares a good bit of ethnic and cultural background with the Ghiscari…)

But to answer your question…as someone who’s argued the proper historical parallel for Dany’s narrative is the American Civil War and Reconstruction, there was a case where the slavemaster had largely (but not entirely) imposed their culture on their slaves. But in sharp contrast to “Lost Cause” narratives then and now about loyal slaves fighting for the Confederacy, despite their shared culture, African-Americans in the South didn’t share the belief that they should be slaves (and in the case of Nat Turner, we can see that shared culture being used to justify and motivate slave rebellions), and attempted to free themselves the moment that it was practical.

So if the Ghiscari slaves didn’t want to be slaves – and in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen, there were likely more than a few slaves of Ghiscari ethnicity, and they demonstrated their feelings on slavery quite clearly (if sometimes equivocally, as seen in ADWD) – then I don’t see Dany’s actions as imperialist in nature.

“A personal loan would be different from a loan from an institution of dubious legality, no? ” I don’t mean this as a ‘gotcha’ or anything, I’m asking because you’re the expert. Fundamentally, what’s the difference between house Lannister giving personal loans vs house Lannister establishing a bank and the bank giving personal loans?

The difference is whether we consider the bank a legal entity in its own right, one that can enter into contracts, sue and be sued, etc. Even today, with quite liberalized systems of general incorporation laws as opposed to requiring charters to incorporate, you still need to file paperwork to establish an LLC or an NGO or the like.

So to give a modern analogy, let’s say I decide to open a bank – I rent some office space, hire some people to help me run the bank, put out a sign saying “Bank of Steve now open,” etc. If I don’t do the paperwork to establish the bank as a formal institution, I’m going to have some serious trouble if someone defaults on a mortgage, because the “Bank of Steve” can’t sue someone in court and the defaulter didn’t borrow any money from Steve Attewell personally.

Moreover, banks do more than just give out loans. They also borrow money and invest money, they own real estate and other forms of property, they act as depository institutions, they act as financial middlemen, and so on and so forth. You need some legal framework to legalize these functions and to formalize how disputes that arise from these functions could be resolved.

So in the Westerosi context, without a royal charter that sets out the structure, rights, privileges, and limitations of the Bank, there’s no way to resolve major questions like: can the Bank own land? Who owns the lordship of that land, since “nulle terre sans seigneur”? Can the Bank be summoned to fight for the liege lord of that land, and can it be convicted of a felony if it doesn’t show up? (Likewise, can the Bank summon people to fight for it, and can it convict people of felonies for not showing up?) If someone who’s defaulted on their debt dies, does the Bank inherit their land or the eldest son of the defaulter?

Thank you for the answer to my question on strengthening the crownlands but it’s not really what I was asking. To clarify I’m wondering why the King didn’t strengthen his military might by taking lords sworn to the different Lords Paramount and have them swear fealty directly to him. For example, Harrenhal has been granted to numerous people by numerous kings. Why did he not keep their vassalage instead of transferring it to the Riverlands?

Ah, I see.

I think what you’re running up against here is that feudal politics don’t work like nation-state politics.

Sure, the King could expand the Crownlands vis-a-vis the other kingdoms (he already did with Massey’s Hook and the southern Crownlands across the Blackwater), but…unless he’s going to rule them himself (and that’s not easy to do – you need bureaucrats to manage your manors, you need bureaucrats to keep records, you need bureaucrats to pay the taxes, you need soldiers to make sure people don’t rob your tax collectors, etc.), he still has to give that land to someone in exchange for their fealty. Sure, you could get rid of one layer of subinfeudation, but that’s a huge political effort for not really that big of a change.

Moreover, and this is the real kicker, a king is supposed to be open-handed, a ring-giver. Indeed, giving stuff away is the primary way you get armed men to fight for you in a context where you don’t have the state capacity for a standing army. So a king who gets a reputation as miserly or greedy is going to find themselves lacking in armed men to fight for them no matter how much land they control.

That’s the catch-22 of feudal politics: you have to give away the thing that people want from you to get them to do stuff for you, but the more you give away, the harder it is to get them to keep doing stuff. And historically, while kings did eventually grab more and more land for themselves (hence the coalescing of nation-states from nuclei like the

Île-de-France), the main route that kings used to increase their power was to convert feudal military service into taxes paid in cash (the so-called scutage) that would allow them to hire mercenaries and other professional soldiers, gradually building up the state capacity so that they no longer had to rely on the old way.

How fertile is the Vale?

You may have already covered this, but I wonder exactly how fertile is the Vale? According to the wiki: “The Vale proper is a tranquil land of wide rivers, and hundreds of lakes. Wheat, corn, barley, pumpkins, and fruit grow in its fertile soil.”

By all accounts the Vale seems to be more bountiful than the North and probably the Westerlands. Yet for some reason the Vale can only muster about 30,000 or more soldiers at its peak, which is on par with the North.

I find this a bit peculiar because though the Vale proper cannot compete with the Reach and Riverlands in producing as much food (according to your estimates the Riverlands could boast an army of 80,000 at its full potential), surely it should still be able to sustain a larger population than the North and therefore be able to raise more troops.

I’ve discussed this here. The issue you’re missing here is one of size; the Vale proper is quite fertile (“a tranquil land of rich black soil…even in Highgarden the pumpkins were no larger nor the fruit any sweeter than here”), but it’s not very large compared to other regions of Westeros (”Though the Vale itself is famously fertile, it is small compared to the domains of other kings (and even some great lords), and the Mountains of the Moon are bleak, stony, and inhospitable.”)

Take a look at the map:

That blue circle is the Vale proper; the rest of the Vale is all mountains. That little triangle is just about the size of the Trident, far smaller than the Riverlands or the Westerlands as a whole, let alone the huge expanses of the North or the Reach. So while the Vale is quite fertile on a per-acre basis, and far more so than the North, the North has so much more land than the Vale that it evens out.

(Incidentally, I said the Riverlands at full strength ought to be able to raise 40,000, not 80,000 men).