Where’s the Faith in the Great Game? How do they function on a Trans-Westerosi during this time when kingdoms are going at it? Do they stand neutral/No one has tried to get the High Septon on their side?

This is an excellent question!

The pre-unification Faith of the Seven is a topic that I (and others) find to be a fascinating mystery, because you would expect the Faith to be frequently involved in inter-regional conflict, either as an instigator or a mediator.

Instead, we have a very brief period where the Faith is used to inspire the Andals during their conquest of the Vale, and a little bit of the same in the Riverlands, but little thereafter.

This is strange, for a couple reasons. First, the Faith headquartered themselves in Oldtown, and far from remaining aloof from politics, almost immediately we see the first High Septon serving as the regent of Oldtown for twenty years. As I’ve said, this is going to have regional implications.

Second, the Faith established a standing military arm (the Warrior’s Sons and the Poor Fellows) and you don’t do that just to protect itinerant septons, escort pilgrims, and protect septs. You do that because you’re going to be fighting in wars.

However, we do get one example of the Faith involving themselves in the Great Game, which we can extrapolate from to work out a model of their political behavior. As we learn in the Riverlands chapter, the Faith Militant fought for King Humfrey Teague when the Blackwoods rose up against him and then when Arlan III Durrandon invaded the Riverlands to back them up.

So what can we learn from this?

The Faith of the Seven was active in the Great Game. While not a competitor in its own right because it lacked the equivalent of the Papal States, the Faith acted to promote some kings and, presumably, against others.
This activity extended to military intervention. This is something of a risk, because you can imagine a lot of monarchs who would get very nervous about allowing the Faith Militant to operate in their kingdoms if the Faith Militant was going to get involved in internal politics.
The Faith used their influence to shape religious policy specifically. Humfrey Teague didn’t get the Faith’s support just because he was a charming guy, he got it by building “many septs and motherhouses across the riverlands“ and by seeking to “repress the worship of the old gods within his realm.”

So where would we expect to see the Faith getting involved in the Great Game?

Well, I would be very surprised if the Faith wasn’t involved in persuading Andals to conquer the Iron Islands (given their bloody reputation on the mainland and their religious differences), or in calling for the punitive raid against Hagon the Heartless (both for his crimes against the Mother and the Shrike’s religious purge).
Likewise, I would expect the Faith to have been involved in prolonging the War Across the Water between the North and the Vale once the initial invasions of the North failed, as the best hope for continuing the fight against the pagans.
I could also imagine the Faith to try to use the Great Game to crack down on regional religious divides: are the septons in Sunspear getting a bit too “Rhoynish” for the High Septon’s tastes, or is the Most Devout of the Stormlands getting a bit too big for his britches? Well, a war can turn into a crusade very easily.
And I would definitely imagine that the Great Game would infiltrate into the Faith. Since the Most Devout elect the High Septon, I would imagine that the elections would become very much like the elections to the papacy during the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Early modern period, where the various nations of Europe would vie to get their candidate on the papal throne as a way to extend their influence and thwart their rivals. Naturally, the Westerlands would have the most cash, the Reach would have the home field advantage, but there’s a lot of votes to be had from the Vale and the Stormlands and the Riverlands and Dorne, so I imagine the competition would get very complicated.

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: the Reach (Part III)

credit to ser-other-in-law Introduction: Last time, we saw how a succession of frighteningly single-minded and capable monarchs turned the Kingdom of the Reach from a petty kingdom ruled from a hillfort into a powerful and dynamic state that could reshape the map of southern Westeros and defeat its regional rivals singly and in combination. In this part, we shall see how this state confronted the…

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What were common benefits from marriage alliances, apart from alliance in case of war? Toll freedom?

As we might expect from a society which is more than 90% agricultural in its economy, the major benefit was:

Joking aside, marriages were a key method of acquiring, expanding, and rationalizing estates, from the lowliest peasant who had to get permission to marry to kings and queens. After all, you didn’t have a free market in land so marriage was one of the few times in which you could actually transfer property, and since nobles couldn’t work for a living, marrying well was one of the few things they could do to become economically self-sufficient.

Stop the Presses! (re: Euron)

So I haven’t checked in on the WOIAF app for a while, but I came across a r/asoiaf post that rounded up some stuff. This quote grabbed my eye especially:

“The warlocks under Pyat Pree attempt to pursue and avenge themselves on Daenerys, but their ship is taken by Euron Greyjoy, who seizes their alleged dragon-binding horn from Valyria and takes them as slaves.”

So the dragon horn belonged to Pyat Pree! Makes sense, I guess that they would try to use it to revenge themselves on Dany.

Does this mean that Euron-the-liar is potentially back on? @poorquentyn, your thoughts?

Can you define this Great Game and what each kingdom want to achieved?

Well, the Great Game is the term I use to describe “that long epoch between the assimilation of the Andals and the coming of the dragons” when the “Kings of the Reach
warred constantly with their neighbors in a perpetual struggle for land, power,
and glory. The Kings of the Rock, the Storm Kings, the many quarrelsome kings
of Dorne, and the Kings of the Rivers and Hills could all be counted amongst
their foes (and ofttimes amongst their allies as well.)”

In terms of what the countries wanted, the prize of the Great Game was the conquest of all of southern Westeros, or at least as much of southern Westeros as possible in the hopes of becoming a continental hegemon that could overawe those parts of Westeros it couldn’t conquer outright.

No one quite succeeded in that ambition, although many tried, in no small part because one of the rules of the Great Game is that the moment anyone looked to be winning, everyone else would gang up against them. Hence when the Reach had conquered all of the Stormlands save for Storm’s End itself, “the King of the Rock swept down upon the Reach in his absence, forcing him to lift his siege and hurry home to deal with the westermen. The broader war that followed involved three Dornish kings and two from the riverlands.” Likewise, when Arlan III conquered the Riverlands, “the Dornish came swarming over the Boneway to press them in the south, and the Kings of the Reach sent their knights forth from Highgarden to reclaim all that had been lost in the west,” and eventually the Ironborn took it off them. And just before Aegon landed, it looked like Harren the Black might be the next up for the dogpile.

The somewhat annoying thing about the Great Game, as I was just discussing with @goodqueenaly, is that we don’t have enough information from the sources to chart the whole 5,000 year period: we have a good bit of info about the early Great Game (from the Andal Conquest to the time of Lancel IV, Gyles III, and Torrence Teague), and we have a good bit of info about the late Great Game (from the time of Arlan III to Aegon’s Conquest), but the middle is very vague.

Why didn’t Aegon & Co. try to take Dragonstone first? Wouldn’t that have carried some symbolic weight as the ancestral seat of House Targaryen?

Good question!

While Dragonstone carries symbolic weight, it doesn’t carry a lot of political/military weight – as Stannis bemoaned in the Prologue of ACOK, Dragonstone only has three thousand men sworn to it. And by the time that Aegon and Co. show up, those men are gone – either they died at Blackwater, bent the knee to King’s Landing, or they’re up in the North with Stannis. So you’re taking on the same risks as besieging Storm’s End, but without any payoff.

Moreover, it’s a high-risk strategy: you’re parking yourself on an island right next to King’s Landing, which means you’re going to have to go right at the Iron Throne right away because they’re going to do it to you. And if you lose the naval battle, you might not be able to retreat at all.

By contrast, Storm’s End holds quite a bit of political/weight. Not only do you make a big name for yourself if you can take the unconquerable castle, but I think there’s as many as 12.5k men in the Stormlands who never joined up with Renly, who could potentially be recruited into Aegon’s army – more than doubling it in size.

And the nice thing about the Stormlands is that it’s close enough to King’s Landing that it’s a quick march away, but it’s also far enough that if King’s Landing marches against you, you have opportunities to fight them defensively at some nice spot in the Kingswood or when they’re trying to cross a river. And if you lose, you can still retreat back to Storm’s End, one of the strongest castles in Westeros.

Plus, Jon Connington wants his castle back and his castle is in the Stormlands.

Steven, re: the recent talk about feudal military service and the politics thereof… do you think Lord Selwyn was/is trying to thread that needle? Tarth is a large fief that ought to support a levy of men larger than “one” but one is precisely the number of people who ride forth from Tarth. Brienne isn’t at the head of a column, she’s flying solo. That says to me Selwyn is hedging; if Renly wins his daughter was in his service, if the Lannisters win he can play the “I didn’t send levies” card.

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what he did.

We learn in the Prologue to ACOK that only half the Stormlords actually sent men to Renly, while the other half “sit behind their walls waiting to see how the wind rises and who is likely triumph.” And Selwyn Tarth is explicitly listed as belonging to that faction, as Davos reports:

“I broke bread with Gulian Swann and old Penrose, and the Tarths consented to a midnight meeting in a grove.”

So yeah, I think Selwyn held back his levies but let his idealistic daughter pursue her dreams.

Would you call Jaime irresponsible?

I would, I could, I have.

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Arya II, ASOS

Do you think the reason Martin made Brienne so devoted almost pathetically to Renly was due to him wanting her to not seem perfect?

No, I don’t think that’s it. In chivalry, devotion to your liege lord is a sign of virtue; in chivalric romance, devotion to your love is likewise. Brienne’s case is rather efficient in that the two are one.

I think GRRM made Brienne devoted to Renly was to set up the idea that Brienne’s purpose in life is to protect others to the point of laying down her life in the approved fashion (”all his other knights wanted things of him, castles or honors or riches, but all that Brienne wanted was to die for him”), but that Renly wasn’t actually worthy of her service. Hence why Brienne spends all of AFFC looking for a maiden in need of defending, while slowly forgetting Renly and developing a deeper connection to Jaime.

Now, I have a darker guess about what Brienne’s endgame is than some people would like, but I think it’s definitely grounded in the rules and forms of chivalric romance and thus in Brienne’s character…