What would the ceremony for a king confirming the land and title of a vassal consist of? I assume their would be some kind of formal script like the vassal kneeling and pledging loyalty in front of the throne followed by a feast.

Well, here’s how it worked in Medieval Europe. From Wikipedia by way of Anne Duggan’s Nobles and Nobility in Medieval Europe:

“The would-be vassal appeared bareheaded and weaponless as a sign of his submission to the will of the lord and knelt before him. The vassal would clasp his hands before him in the ultimate sign of submission, the typical Christian prayer pose, and would stretch his clasped hands outward to his lord. The lord in turn grasped the vassal’s hands between his own, showing he was the superior in the relationship, a symbolic act known variously as the immixtio manuum (Latin), Handgang (German), or håndgang (Norwegian).[1] The vassal would announce he wished to become “the man”, and the lord would announce his acceptance.

Now there were variations on this model: often there was an exchange of tokens, such as rings, to signify mutual aid and fidelity; when a king was confirming a religious office, he handed the new bishop or whoever a crook staff (although this was a major source of disputes between church and state); sometimes, the ceremony of homage would be combined with the knighting ceremony so that there would be a dubbing; etc.

But the basics of a symbolic show of submission and trust on the one hand and protection and honor on the other were usually the same.

One question why is their a large lack of large scale big knight orders like the knights templar knights hospitaler and Teutonic Knights even warhammer has the down with the reiksguard knights of the white wolf and knights of Moore so for example I think their would be say a knights of the golden lion and you should make up orders for all the kingdoms

Ok, well you’ve pushed me into it…

The Vale: The Brotherhood of Winged Knights, natch. Seven knights to honor the Seven. Chosen by a tourney of no less than 77 applicants to guard the King of the Mountain and Vale for seven years. To honor the memory of Artys Arryn’s victory, the Brotherhood have a custom of insisting that any Arryn who takes the field of battle must don an eighth set of the armor and livery of the Brotherhood, to ensure that his enemies cannot spy him out. And hey, let’s go nuts and say that the Winged Knights are especially feared for their horse-frightening harnesses.

The Riverlands: The Order of the Trident. One of the more recent chivalric orders in Westeros, the Order of the Trident was founded by House Teague in order to bolster their hold on their newly-won kingdom. By their original charter, the knights of the Trident were charged with maintaining the peace on the “roads and rivers of our kingdom,” which led to the construction of many chapter houses at fords and other intersections where travelers could sleep protected – in more recent centuries following the fall of House Teague, many of these chapter houses were abandoned and later converted into inns. This charter also requires each member to maintain a shallow-drafted warship of no less than 10 oars a side, which may explain their ceremonial weapons. Notably, rather than implicitly stating it, only members of the Faith of the Seven are allowed to join, which is why no Blackwood has ever participated and why every single generation of Brackens have held membership (with no less than a dozen grand-masters among them). According to rumor, the Order may have been instrumental behind-the-scenes in many of the rebellions against those rulers who succeeded the Teagues to the crown of the Riverlands – which is probably false…

The Westerlands: The Grand and Most Puissant Order of the Golden Mane. Unlike most orders of chivalry in Westeros, the Order of the Golden Mane was primarily not a martial order – rather, the Order was established during the reign of King Norwin Lannister as a means of raising revenue, with membership dues being originally listed at 100 grains of pure gold annually. In exchange for their dues, members were granted knighthoods if they did not already have them, but also a number of privileges including the right to be tried only by the Order, the right to arbitration by the Order in all disputes between fellow members, and even the right to advise the king on “weighty matters.” During the rule of Tytos Lannister, these privileges were badly abused by dozens of social climbers, leading to the diminishment of the order’s prestige and an increase in public disorder, as many used the order’s immunity from normal criminal procedure as a shield against Casterly Rock itself. Shortly before the Reynes of Castamere, Tywin Lannister raised the membership fee to five times the member’s body-weight in gold, and then took advantage of a number of sudden vacancies to have the order declared extinct due to lack of quorum.

The Reach: since the Order of the Green Hand is taken, let’s talk about the Lady Companions of the Blessed Maris. Given the Reach’s love affair with tourneys, pageants, dances, and other social occasions, someone has to do the organizing of the social calendar, otherwise the whole thing goes haywire and vendettas set up. Guided by an inner circle of noblewomen who can trace their descent to Maris the Maid, Rowan Goldenhair, or Ellyn Ever-Sweet (all women of acceptable moral purity, although of course the Gardener Queen was always given a position out of respect for Highgarden), the Lady Companions make sure that each seat of note is appropriately honored with fetes, that there are always enough tourneys to keep the knights occupied while ensuring decent attendance at each, and that enough mixed-gender events are held to ensure that the right young ladies meet the right young men. While the Green Hand may have perished on the field of battle, the work of the Lady Companions continue to this day, although there was much grumbling when a certain Tyrell claimed the Gardener Seat for her house on the grounds that Aegon had deeded Highgarden to them.

The Stormlands: The Ancient and Most Honorable Guild of Castlewrights. While the origins of the Guild are lost to legend and myth (some tales claim that the founders of the guild were the assistants of the mysterious Brandon who built the final castle of Storm’s End), the Stormlands takes the construction of castles more seriously than any other realm. To that end, the Durrandon kings gave (in addition to the honor of knighthood) this order the “responsibility for inspecting and maintaining the castles of my kingdom,” along with some fairly wide-ranging powers to commandeer labor and materials to make repairs when necessary for the defense of the realm. Over the centuries, the Guild turned into an order of knights who were experts both in the construction of castles and siegecraft. Many a seemingly desperate siege was won or lost due to the presence of a single Guildman using their authority to take over direction of assault or defense of the castle, especially in the Marches. Famously, the Guildmen take an oath never to allow themselves to be captured alive, lest they be tortured into revealing their occult wisdom.

Dorne: The Knights of the Wells. If there is anything that unites the often fractious peoples of Dorne, it is their common love of horse-riding. Thus, to keep their people happy and distracted, the Martells have organized both hippodrome races and cross-country races for the better part of a thousand years. Recruited from among the ranks of the winners, the Knights of the Wells were trained in the arts of cartography by maesters from Sunspear, given the best sand steeds that the Martells can buy and, formally, charged with little more than accurately mapping the oft-foreboding terrain of Dorne. Informally, the Knights of the Wells were the Martells’ best spies and scouts, who use their superior knowledge of the land to guide the armies of Dorne and track the armies of her enemies, and many wars have been won (or lost) because of the bravery and cunning of these swordless knights. Membership in the Wells is a dangerous proposition, however – both in Aegon’s War and Daeron’s, the order saw casualties of more than nine in ten of their members, with the Targaryens frequently posting lavish bounties for their deaths. Indeed, it was a significant provision of Daeron II’s treaty that the Martells were forbidden from re-establishing the Knights of the Wells, although some claim the order continues in secret…

If Edmure manages a sucssesful defense against the Westermen in the first place, would he or the Riverlords accept Robb as their King? They were not at the brink of collapse in this scenario and are not as dependend to the North as in OTL.

Interesting question!

I mean, if Edmure had managed a successful defense against the Westermen, lots of things would change significantly.

For example, let’s say Edmure arranges a reverse-Red Fork and executes competently, as he did in the OTL battle, and even manages to refuse his flank vs. Tywin’s southern flank.

A couple things change immediately:

There’s a lot more Riverlander troops around. There’s 4,000 from Vance and Piper’s doomed army, plus however many were lost at the disaster under the walls of Riverrun. How many that is something of a puzzle: I’ve made a few estimates, but I think another 5,000 may have been lost. Which means that the Riverlander army is going to be as big as Robb’s army at 19-20,000.
Lannister strategy is going to have to respond to their failure to break through. My guess is that part of their army is going to have to keep Edmure pinned down defending the Red Fork/Riverrun, while the rest is going to keep pushing east along the Gold Road, either trying to find an open way in to Edmure’s underbelly, or once Robert dies, shifting to defend King’s Landing from Renly or Stannis.

This in turn changes Robb’s strategy immediately, to begin with, he doesn’t need to figure out a way to defeat two armies with one army, which required the splitting of his forces and the deal with the Freys. Yes, Edmure’s going to be demanding support rather loudly, as I would imagine Tywin would keep at least 15,000 battering away at the Red Fork, but it’s not as urgent a crisis as to require more than half of his army.

Instead, I would imagine that Robb would concentrate on moving south quickly – first, it gets his army closer to King’s Landing where his father and sisters are, second, it puts him closer to dealing with that southern Lannister army which threatens to outflank the Riverlander lines and put his allies on the run, and third that Lannister army might give him the Lannister hostages he needs to achieve his political aims.

So what you could see happening is a major battle between Robb’s full(er) army and the southern Lannister army, probably being fought not that far from where the Fishfeed was fought. And if Robb can catch the Lannisters with their back to the Godseye or its river, he could achieve a tremendous victory that might, due to to its proximity to King’s Landing, actually deter his father’s execution.

Hi! I asked this to @warsofasoiaf a while back, and I was hoping to get your thoughts as well. Since, unlike the North, the Riverlands have no natural defences, did Robb ever have any chance of maintaining and defending that part of his kingdom in perpetuity? Even in the best of circumstances, wouldn’t whoever ends up ruling the south eventually conquer the Riverlands as soon as a slightly weaker king ascends the Northern throne?

This is a bit of fanon that annoys me. The Riverlands has natural defenses: they’re called rivers. It doesn’t have defensible borders or boundaries, in the sense that the Riverlands has lands outside of its rivers to the west, south, north, and east, and that rivers are easier to cross than the Neck or the Mountains of the Moon, but that’s not the same thing.

However, as history has shown time and again, when Riverlanders pursue a strategy of defense-in-depth as opposed to perimeter defense, they can easily deal with invaders: this is true whether you examine Arrec Durrandon’s campaign that led to the Battle of Fairmarket, the downright miraculous campaigns during the Dance of the Dragons against the Westermen, the Reachermen, and the Stormlanders, or the Battle of the Fords during the War of Five Kings.

So if the North adopted an effective administration (with support from the political community of the Riverlands) that built up a riverrine navy, used the rivers to gain the superior mobility of interior lines and to force any invader into fighting at chokepoints where you have a huge defensive advantage, and was willing enough to retreat back to the inner lines of the Trident when necessary, I think the North could hang onto the Riverlands, even if pressed, for an extended period of time.

Is Barrowton a river port?

It is near a river, but it doesn’t seem to be a river port itself:

Barrowton, too, is somewhat of a curiosity—a gathering place built at the foot of the reputed barrow of the First King, who once ruled supreme over all the First Men, if the legends can be believed. Rising from the midst of a wide and empty plain, it has prospered thanks to the shrewd stewardship of the Dustins, loyal bannermen to the Starks, who have ruled the Barrowlands in their name since the fall of the last of the Barrow Kings.

…The moon was rising over the wooden walls of Barrowton when they stepped outside. Reek could hear the wind sweeping across the rolling plains beyond the town.

Certainly, there aren’t any mentions of quays, docks, ships, or even boats. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the maps, you wouldn’t know that it’s near the water at all.

Steven, I’m not sure you’ve written on this before… what does an extended period of peace do to the Westerosi social order? How does the nobility dispose of younger sons when they can’t inherit, there’s no standing army for them to join, no war to kill them off, can’t conquer new lands, and there’s prejudice against working at a trade? My understanding is that historically IRL, this state could cause serious problems. Do the Church and the Citadel just get a ton more people sent to them?

Good question!

I mean, in the Westerosi context, there’s still quite a bit of violence and other causes that deals with younger sons – I mean, technically there hasn’t been a fighting war in any of the Dunk & Egg stories, but for all their lighter tone, they have a pretty high body count – tourney deaths, plagues, “pissing contests” between local lords, bandits, stupid coup attempts, etc.

But in terms of how the social order would react, it’s a bit tricky because an extended period of peace probably also means an extended period of prosperity as well, if only because the opposite tends to intensify resource conflicts and thus lead to war. And prosperity is a great social lubricant.

When the harvests are good, trade is up, and people have cash on hand and good terms of credit, it’s easier for the social order to deal with surplus kids – get them dowers/dowries to smooth the way for a marriage that wouldn’t have made fiscal sense otherwise, give them jobs around the castle or pay a neighbor to take them off your hands or send them to court, or even set them up as a landed knight or cadet branch if you’re particularly rolling in it. And yes, I imagine you’d see quite an uptick on younger sons and daughters getting sent off to septries and motherhouses with generous donations, as well as an increase in acolytes and novices sent to the Citadel.

Steven, you’re put in charge of creating some holidays for the major religions of Planetos. What significant events from each religion’s history would you choose?

Well,

For the Faith of the Seven, I’m thinking significant events: the Anointing of Hugor of the Hill, the first landing on the shores of Westeros, the Battle of Seven Stars, the founding of the Starry Sept, the crowning of King Aegon I, the birth and/or death of Baelor the Blessed. Oh, and days to praise each of the Seven, which we already knew about.

For R’hllorism, I’m going to guess more solar-based events: the solstices, the equinoxes, the eclipses, etc.

The worship of the Old Gods seems too decentralized to have holidays, but I could see holidays around the changing of the seasons, the harvest cycle, etc.

The Drowned God thinks that holidays are for the weak.

Do you think any ghiscari masters ever try to treat their slaves well ? Or does social pressure make impossible it ?

Believe it or not, this was a topic covered very well by 12 Years A Slave. Yes, of course there were some masters who treated their slaves well – but the problem is that A. there are some rather strict limits to how “well” the slaves can be treated (freeing them is out of the question, as is treating them like a free person), and B. treating your slaves too “well” makes other masters view the non-conformist as a threat to the smooth functioning of the system.

As with other systems of human oppression, slavery didn’t require participants to be actively malicious to function; it worked just as well if they were financially dependent, morally ambivalent, and socially surveiled.

How is it some lines of noble families end up as poor as the Tolletts, or end up becoming merchants like the Gulltown Arryns?

Good question!

There are many ways a noble family can either fall into genteel poverty or experience downward social mobility into the merchant class or even below (just look at the Heddles), but most of them come down to the relationship between rent, income, and debt:

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.” (Dickens)

Almost by definition, the major source of income of a noble family is rent income from their lands, and rents were overwhelmingly set by custom and tradition. This meant that most nobles were living on something like a fixed income, which meant they were very vulnerable to changes in prices. Crop failures, rebellious peasants demanding wage increases, competition from foreign countries, all of these things could seriously negatively affect the bottom line.

This could be especially problematic, because nobles were supposed to A. live an ostentatious lifestyle (hunting, hawking, entertainment, and fancy clothes cost a lot), and B. not care about money like some grubby bourgeoisie. A combination of these two social expectations means that a lot of nobles went into debt to keep up with their social peers, and since land was the only collateral they had…you can see where this goes.

So you get a gradual process by which trying to keep up with one’s station and the Joneses lands you in debt, the debt eventually gets larger than your ability to pay, you end up losing bits of your land to satisfy your creditors, that reduces your income and exacerbates the problem, and so on…

As to why there’s no center of Faith in Vale that tried to compete with Starry Sept, maybe the Arryns & Graftons couldn’t ( or maybe wouldn’t) match the amount of money that the Hightowers & Gardners could sink into the Starry Sept ? Add to it the fact that Oldtown is far easily accessible & the routes doesn’t involve braving barbarian raids, masses must have increasingly turned to the Starry Sept as their Mecca ?

I understand why the Starry Sept would have become the center of the Faith eventually, but there was a period of 300 years when the Vale was all the Andals had, then came the conquest of the Riverlands, and the Andals didn’t come to the Reach until “generations had passed” since the conquest of the Riverlands.

In that intervening period, you’re going to get a major center of faith in the Vale. There’s no way the Arryns aren’t going to use some of that Vale to raise up a Sept to glorify Ser Artys Arryn and his gods-ordained victory over the First Men, and by extension to emphasize their authority over the lesser Andal kings of the Riverlands. And with hundreds of years of pilgrimages and donations from guilty-conscienced knights and lords looking to buy their way into Heaven, that Sept is going to be very, very fancy and the Septon who runs it is unlikely to tug their forelock to some lackey of the Hightowers without a fight.