How does voting work in Braavos? Who can vote?

This is a tricky one, so bear with me: the answer is, we’re not entirely sure.

We know that the Sealords of Braavos are elected (for life) and we know a little about who elects them:

Neither prince nor king commands in Braavos, where the rule belongs to the Sealord, chosen by the city’s magisters and keyholders from amongst the citizenry by a process as convoluted as it is arcane. From his vast waterside palace, the Sealord commands a fleet of warships second to none and a mercantile fleet whose purple hulls and purple sails have become a common sight throughout the known world.

Part of what makes this complicated is that the electorate is composed both of magisters and keyholders, and it’s not clear whether all keyholders are magisters but not all magisters are keyholders or whether the two classes are completely separate. We do know that both magisters and keyholders form quasi-nobilities, with the Antaryons and Prestayns as two well-known houses of the former (the current sealord is an Antaryon, for example), and the Reyaans as one well-known family of the latter. Another complication is that the keyholders are officials of the Iron Bank of Braavos, which suggests something of the interconnection of state and corporation as was the case with the Dutch Republic and the Dutch East India Company.

There’s also a suggestion, and this is more speculative, that there’s also a legislative body in addition to the Sealord’s executive. The books refer to a Hall of Truth (and sometimes a Palace of Truth, although it’s possible they could be two separate buildings) which is distinct from the Sealord’s Palace, where keyholders are “summoned to the Hall of Truth to vote.” While this could just be where the elections for the Sealord are held, the phrasing suggests otherwise (given that the choosing of the Sealord is a much more drawn out process than a sudden summons would suggest). Also, given how much Braavos loves its liberty, it would be surprising if they were less democratic than Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh.

How is it that all the wars during the Targaryen era last between one to two years only? Given the size of Westeros and the travel distances therefore involved shouldn’t the Dance, the Blackfyre Rebellions, etc. have been longer?

opinions-about-tiaras:

“Seasonal fighting” may mean something much different in a world where the growing season can last six years as opposed to six months.

(Seriously, you want to talk about significant worldbuilding issues? The goddamn inconsistent seasons not really having much effect beyond “oh, during hard cruel winters people die in the north” are Exhibit A.)

alittleonward said:Wouldn’t the length of seasons be a major reason for the brevity of wars on planetos? Campaigns only need to end for winter and many don’t stop for that (Cf Battle of Ice)

Adding this one on to talk about the topic.

So here’s how I’ve rationalized the long seasons, because beyond the question of how wars would work, there is a bigger problem of how everyone isn’t dead. I’ll quote this in full b/c it’s a complicated argument:

racefortheironthrone:

Yeah, this is a pretty significant worldbuilding issue. Leaving aside Westerosi travel distances, most real-world wars in the Middle Ages and before were pretty long-lasting affairs. Sieges lasted a long time, fighting was seasonal, etc.

Anonymous asked: The intended amounts of food cached for winter seem far too small relative to the populations they must support and uncertainty of winter’s duration. Does this suggest that the primary strategy is to buy food, with the winter stores as more of a backstop?

You raise a good question, and all I can say is GRRM seems to think it’s enough.

Well, that’s not exactly true, there’s a bunch more I can say:

There’s an underlying world-building problem here, which is that the multi-year seasons don’t really make sense when you consider the ecology of the life cycle of flora and fauna. If winter was just unrelenting night and cold and nothing else, you’d expect 100% die-off as seeds wither in the frost and animals run out of plants to dig up from the snow. (Either that or there are some truly baroque evolutionary adaptions that you’d think we’d have heard about by now) Likewise, it doesn’t matter how much you store and how cool your cellars are, there are hard limits to how long you can store food in a pre-modern context.

So the way that I’ve rationalized it is that the seasons are really closer to climate cycles than what we think of as seasons – summers are extended warm periods, winters are mini-ice ages. While agricultural productivity is going to be much much higher in the “summer” than in the “winter,” it’s not the case that there’s no growth at all during the winter.

Because even within the “winter,” you’re going to get variation in temperatures – your “false springs” and “spirit summers” – that allow for short bursts of agriculture productivity. Those little bursts are vitally necessary to stretch out your supplies, replenish fodder for whatever livestock and game is still around, repair some of the damage done by malnutrition, etc.

But I would imagine that those are very chancey – if the lull in the snows and the cold ends before you can harvest whatever crop you’ve been able to get into the ground, you’re going to lose it all.

BTW, I forgot to add GRRM’s So Spake Martin that supports my theory. One of the main occupations of the Citadel of Maesters is tracking the seasons, trying to predict how long they’re going to last and when they’re going to change, and providing advice about “when to plant and when to harvest and how much food to store” to take maximum advantage of the “false springs” and “spirit summers.”

So you still have the problem of needing your manpower on hand to sow and to reap every year, which is going to produce seasonal fighting. And we even have evidence of this happening: “we have lost men in battle, and others to the harvest.” (Catelyn II, ACOK)

Why was the first Baelish granted the title of Lord, when the actual amount of land granted to him would have made a well to do landed knight snort? Conversely, how come a House as powerful as the Templetons never managed to get themselves elevated to the status of Lords in past several millennia, despite being one of the original Andal houses to fight under Ser Artos Arryn ?

Baelish has the title of Lord because he inherited it: “Lord Petyr’s father had been the smallest of small lords, his grandfather a landless hedge knight; by birth, he held no more than a few stony acres on the windswept shore of the Fingers.” Here’s the thing about lordship – lordship is a social and legal status that affords you certain privileges, like the right of pit and gallows. It is not dependent on wealth, beyond an absolute minimum of land.

Hence the phenomenon of nobles living in genteel poverty, who were far poorer than many commoners – and these nobles tended to be the most insistent on maintaining the privileges of the nobility. For example, the noblesse d’epee in the ancien regime were the most conservative of the Second Estate, resistant to both the rising bourgeoise and the noblesse de robe (who they saw as upjumped commoners and not true nobles).

As for the Templetons, we don’t really know why, any more than we know why the Tallharts or the Glovers are Masterly Houses despite the fact that the Glovers were once a royal house.

Why is the Golden Tooth so important with Robb having to bypass it through a hidden pass, Edmure holding the pass and Daemon Blackfyre having to break through the castle? Tywin didn’t leave through the pass, according to this quote ” All the time they were battling in the pass, Lord Tywin was bringing a second Lannister army around from the south. It’s said to be even larger than Jaime’s host”. Yet he can’t have been too far south as he crossed the Red Fork and didn’t go into the Reach.

The Golden Tooth guards the main pass between the Riverlands and the Westerlands, through which passes the River Road that stretches from Lannisport and Casterly Rock to Riverrun and Lord Harroway’s Town. So it’s a big deal because it’s guarding the direct route.

My theory about what Tywin did is that he took the southern pass through Deep Den along the Gold Road, then hooked up sharply to attack the Mummer’s Ford.

After all, Robb says that “Lord Derik had no sooner crossed the Red Fork than the Lannisters fell upon him, the king’s banner be damned, and Gregor Clegane took them in the rear as they tried to pull back across the Mummer’s Ford.” In other words, Gregor Clegane was on the east side of the ford before the battle started, and Gregor is definitely with Tywin’s army at all points after this battle, so it stands to reason he was with it before.

In your head canon, where did the turncloak mercenary Tyroshi swordsmen go?

According to GRRM:

Second; what did Robb do with the Tyroshi sellsword who dipped his banners at Riverrun?

I don’t know what Robb did with him… but =I= forgot all about him, I blush to admit.

Now that you’ve reminded me… I imagine he kept most of them with him when he went west. Having just marched through the westerlands when they were on the other side, they would have had a certain value.

I also would expect that he suffered some desertions… these men were not bound to him by oath or ancient loyalty, and there was plenty of plunder to be had…

So chances are they left his army after he got back to the Riverlands, when they found out about the Blackwater and thought they might as well get out while the getting was good, before Tywin and his new Tyrell reinforcements could wreak his vengeance on those who betrayed him.

So the Citadel was founded by Peremore Hightower in the Age of Heroes thousands of years before writing existed in Westeros? Are we to take that as historical embellishment? I’m tempted to chalk it up to a mistake on Martin’s part but that seems like a really obvious and silly one if that’s the case. Could an order like the Maesters exist in any meaningful way before the invention of written records? It seems like the answer would be no.

The issue of the literacy of the First Men is one of the biggest inconsistencies in ASOIAF worldbuilding – although it’s possible to parse one’s way to coherence. On the one hand, Sam says in AFFC that:

“The oldest histories we have were written after the Andals came to Westeros. The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later.”

And in WOIAF, Maester Yandel omits the First Men from the list of “lettered races” who left behind written records from the Dawn Age. So that’s the evidence we have that writing post-dated the Andals.

However, there is counter-evidence. WOIAF also repeatedly mentions “runic records” that were “written in the Old Tongue” which Maesters from the Citadel can read and have translated into the Common Tongue. A lot of these records go back into the Age of Heroes, and some even go back into the Dawn Age…and if you think about it logically, in order for the records of the Night’s King to have been destroyed, there must have been written records of some kind back in the Age of Heroes.

(Further confusing the issue, the WOIAF has a rather ambiguous statement that the Starks’ “legends came before the First Men had letters” – which suggests that the First Men gained writing at some period, although whether pre- or post-Andal it doesn’t say.)

Here’s my theory: Sam doesn’t speak the Old Tongue and probably most Maesters don’t, unless they’re among that rare breed of Maesters interested in ancient history and archaelogy who took the time to learn how to speak the Old Tongue and thus read the runic records of the First Men. So Sam’s being a bit of an Andal cultural supremacist, in that he’s treating translations of surviving First Men records that were done after the Andal invasions as the only real records. But if you think about it, the Citadel is the one place in Westeros where, because it’s been kept safe by the Hightowers, First Men records and the ability to read them have survived.

How many men do the brave companions actually have? And how does such a seemingly large multinational company come together, and where did Tywin find these evil fuckers?

They’re not that big, around 300 men. They’re a pretty recently-founded company, although they predated Vargo Hoat.

As for where Tywin found them…although it’s not stated particularly clearly, Tywin clearly put the word out for mercenaries when he called the banners at Casterly Rock.

Tywin didn’t seem to get very good/many mercenaries, for various reasons. My theory is that Tywin has a bad reputation among mercenaries for using them as arrow fodder to keep the wages bill down.

Among those he did get, the Bloody Mummers are in Tywin’s army after the Green Fork but we don’t hear of them before that although logically that means they would have had to be at the Mummer’s Ford and Tywin’s rampage across the hills of the southern Riverlands.

Why is Bronze Yohn so committed to the cause of House Stark to the point of being in “near open revolt” over Lysa’s failure to support Robb ?

The Starks and the Royces are kin: Beron Stark married Lorra Royce, so all Starks since Beron have Royce blood in them.
Ned and Yohn were contemporaries and knew each other pretty well: Ned was fostered at the Eyrie where the Lord/heir to Runestone would have frequently attended court, Yohn was at the Teourney of Harrenhal, Yohn almost certainly fought with Ned during Robert’s Rebellion, Ned hosted Yohn at Winterfell when Waymar Royce joined the Night’s Watch, etc.
Yohn rightly views the Lannisters as his personal enemies: Yohn was there when Robert died, he was put on Cersei’s enemies list, and managed to get out of the Capitol ahead of the Goldcloaks.
Yohn is likely one of those Valesmen who blame the Lannisters for the death of Jon Arryn.
Yohn’s a traditionalist and views Lysa’s failure to fight in defense of her own kinfolk as failing in the honor code of the Vale.

RE: Kingdom vs Empire

Does that mean westeros is full of empires more than kingdoms?

Nymeria’s conquest of dorne led to a polity composed of multiple ethnic groups and cultures, there is the first men, andal, and rhoynar or the division between, stony, salty, and sandy dornish. That seems to be an empire.

Likewise, the Gardners realm was said to be made of four seperate kingdoms (arbor, hightower, marches, and reach proper).

The North has the mountain clans, the ‘regular’ northmen, skaggos, the craggomen, and the southerns from the manderlys.

The vale, has the andals and andalized first men, the mountain clans (though they are rebels) and the sistermen.

The riverlands has two different religious groups.

And thats not even mentioning the stormlander and both ironborn empires.

Plus of course the Targaryen realm.

Also, I find that many people, including myself, have this perception or disposition to think or view empires as somehow ‘better’ in someway than kingdoms (though definetely not necessarily morally better). Would you care to comment on this belief and how it holds up to scrutiny?

To answer your last question first, I don’t see why empires would be considered “better” than kingdoms. They’re not more efficient or effective as political structures – the sheer coordination issues that crop up in empires alone – they don’t lead to more political stability or internal peace, etc. etc.

I would push back a bit on your descriptions above:

Nymeria could have been said to have conquered an empire, if she and her dynasty hadn’t made it a central policy to eradicate all differences between her subjects in the name of creating a common Dornish identity.
The Gardeners might have been considered Emperors if they had left the Kings in place instead of absorbing them into one Reach.
The North’s divisions don’t come close enough to constituting different nations – with the exception of the Manderlys, they’re all First Men, they all worship the Old Gods, etc.
The Vale either forcibly assimilated or excluded the First Men from the polity, so they don’t reconize multiple peoples.
Two religious groups in the Riverlands isn’t enough to distinguish two “nations” in the sense of peoples, not without a lot more religious division on the level of the Thirty Years War.

What you could say is that, by claiming to be the “King of the Andals, the First Men, and the Rhoynar,” Aegon implicitly claimed an empire in Westeros, although hasn’t used the title (or indeed an imperial crown).

Anon Asks:

Would it be possible for say a powerful merchant prince or pirate king to sweep away most of the pirates in the stepstones and establish a lsting kingdom there? The closest we see is Daemon Targaryen but he just got bored and gave it up, he had his dragon and the velaryon fleet but he also had to deal with the triarchy.
Also why are the free cities static, like no new city rises up and replaces an existing one, its just the nine and no new ones appear? Its mentioned that the flatlands are bare of villages because of the dothraki, but there are other non-free cities like the ghiscari or Elyria and such, why don’t we see any of them rising into greater prominence?

1. Probably not. If it took the Triarchy to sweep the Stepstones clean of pirates in the first place, you’re unlikely to see a single merchant prince or pirate king manage on their own. There is one caveat: Racallio Ryndoon did build a pirate kingdom in the Stepstones, but we don’t know whether he held the whole of them, and in any case the Oakenfist put paid to him rather quickly.

2. I mean, there are other significant cities in Essos:

“We speak of Nine Free Cities, though across the width of Essos one may find many other Valyrian towns, settlements, and outposts, some larger and more populous than Gulltown, White Harbor, or even Lannisport. The distinction that sets the Nine apart is not their size but their origins. At their height before the Doom, other cities, such as Mantarys, Volon Therys, Oros, Tyria, Draconys, Elyria, Mhysa Faer, Rhyos, and Aquos Dhaen were grand and glorious and rich, yet for all their pride and power, none ever ruled itself.”

And you can add on the Ghiscari cities and Qarth and so on and so forth. The Nine Free Cities are a historically and culturally derived term that specifically counts the self-governing cities that existed before the Doom.

To use a real world analogy: the Ivy League in the U.S consists of a particular subset of particularly old elite colleges and universities that have been sportsballing one another for a long time now. Stanford or MIT are still elite universities even though they’re not Ivies.