Tag: asoiaf meta

Hullo, I’m not sure if this was asked before, but here goes: do you think there is a reason as to why no one in Essos was able to hatch dragons while the Targaryens’ were still alive? We know that across the Narrow Sea a) dragonblood still runs strong 2) magic is much more common and less reviled than in Westeros and 3) dragon eggs are still extant, if exceedingly costly. I find it especially odd that no one in Qohor or Gogossos managed it, given the expertise of the latter two in bloodmagic…

1. Dragonblood and the Blood of Old Valyria not the same thing. Dragonriders were an elite within Valyrian society, and almost all of them died during the Doom and the rest not on Dragonstone died thereafter:

“The dragonlords had been gathered in Valyria as was their wont…except for Aenar Targaryen, his children, and his dragons, who had fled to Dragonstone and so escaped the Doom. Some accounts claim that a few others survived, too … for a time. It is said that some Valyrian dragonlords in Tyrosh and Lys were spared, but that in the immediate political upheaval following the Doom, they and their dragons were killed by the citizens of those Free Cities. The histories of Qohor likewise claim that a visiting dragonlord, Aurion, raised
forces from the Qohorik colonists and proclaimed himself the first Emperor of Valyria. He flew away on the back of his great dragon, with thirty thousand men following behind afoot, to lay claim to what remained of Valyria and to reestablish the Freehold. But neither Emperor Aurion nor his host were ever seen again.
The time of the dragons in Essos was at an end.
Volantis, the mightiest of the Free Cities, quickly laid claim to Valyria’s mantle. Men and women of noble Valyrian blood, though not dragonlords, called for war upon the other cities”

2. While magic was more common in the east, it was still less common than it had been. Hence the reports from Qohor of the return of magic with the dragons. 

3. While it’s true that dragon eggs exist, the ones that Dany got were not fresh viable eggs: “the eons have turned them to stone,” as Magister Illyrio says. He got them for her as hugely expensive curios, but it took an act of spontaneous magic which GRRM has described as a miracle to make them hatch.

As for the blood magic angle, I think it takes more than just that – remember, Dany didn’t know blood magic when she hatched the eggs, and it took not just lives but also her presence as a Targaryen and the convergence of the very cosmos. 

Lysa, as a foreigner and a female leader, and an unstable one at that, seems to engender an unusual amount of loyalty from the lords of the Vale in refusing to enter the war of the five kings. Is this a result of Littlefinger bribing lords or something?

We get a pretty straight-forward answer to this: 

“Others believe that Lysa must marry again, and soon. Already the suitors gather like crows on a battlefield. The Eyrie is full of them.“

“I might have expected that,” Catelyn said. Small wonder there; Lysa was still young, and the kingdom of Mountain and Vale made a handsome wedding gift. “Will Lysa take another husband?”

“She says yes, provided she finds a man who suits her,” Brynden Tully said, “but she has already rejected Lord Nestor and a dozen other suitable men. She swears that this time she will choose her lord husband…it seems to me Lysa is only playing at courtship. She enjoys the sport, but I believe your sister intends to rule herself until her boy is old enough to be Lord of the Eyrie in truth as well as name.”

The Lords of the Vale follow Lysa Arryn up until she marries Littlefinger, because many of them were hoping to win the competition for Lysa’s hand, and through her to win the Regency of the Vale. 

In the minority of a king, are the titles of Regent and Protector of the Realm different? Can they be given to different people? Also, does the king, as a minor, have the right to dismiss his regent and appoint a new one?

The King as a minor cannot dismiss his regent, because formally speaking he hasn’t been invested in royal authority yet – he is legally speaking a ward of his Regent, who holds that authority in trust. 

So, Regent and Protector of the Realm: not quite the same thing, although they often go together, and they don’t have to happen during a minority. For example, Aemond was Regent when Aegon II was injured, and none of the Regents on the Regency Council of Aegon III were Protectors (not even Unwin Peake). Likewise, Daemon Targaryen was Rhaenyra’s Protector while she was Queen regnant, and Baelor Breakspear was named Protector  by Daeron II.

So how we we understand the meaning of all these royal titles?

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Here is how I understand it:

  • King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men is a recognition that the King is monarch of three nations (in the sense of peoples), both in the sense of glorifying the union of the whole of Westeros but also a promise to respect the customs and folkways of these different peoples. 
  • Lord of the Seven Kingdoms is a statement of feudal authority – the king as ultimate liege lord, whose right to rule in part flows from his acclamation and oath-taking by his vassals.
  • Protector of the Realm is a military title, recognizing the king as the supreme authority in warmaking – he’s the one who gets to declare war and make peace, he’s the one who calls the banners and who sits atop the chain of command in cases of dispute, and lesser military authorities like the Wardens Cardinal get their authority through him. But as I’ve said before, there’s also a recognition of reciprocal obligation to a social contract: because the King is the warmaking authority, he’s also the one responsible for the defense of the realm against foreign invasion and domestic rebellion.That’s why it’s the King’s Peace and the King’s Justice – he’s the one tasked with maintaining law and order in the face of everything from rebellious vassals to bandits and outlaws to common criminals. 

And this is why I think we see the two titles sometimes separated. Daemon’s Protectorate was a recognition that he was the commander-in-chief of Rhaenrya’s armies; Baelor’s Protectorate was a statement from Daeron II that Baelor was being eased into becoming King, but also a way to counteract the king’s lack of skill by endowing supreme military authority on someone whose martial abilities were unquestionable. Whereas a Regent represents more the civilian side of power – the Small Council and the royal bureaucracy, the judicial and lawmaking sides of Kingship. 

racefortheironthrone:

Race for the Iron Throne Volume 2 is Here!

Apologies for my recent silence – I took a plane to California and my laptop didn’t make it and I’ve spent the last six days trapped in a Kafkaesque situation where FedEx’s delivery times slipping and inflexible IT systems meant that I flew from San Francisco to Santa Barbara and couldn’t re-route the package so had to resend it from SF to SB – but now that I have my laptop back I can once again communicate!

And now it’s available on Amazon.com!

If you didn’t get a chance to pick it up with the Kickstarter, you can grab yourself a copy now. And either way, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a review. 

Stannis’ arcs

Stannis’ arc from ACOK to ASOS was to become from the king Westeros deserved for its stupidity in the nobles to the king Westeros desperately needs in the face of the Winter-creatures.
Now sadly Stannis’ arc from ADWD to TWOW will be to realize that being King of Westeros =/= Hero of the World, even though he is fit to be and will horrifyingly prove it, only for it to be worthless. However, I thought about something, and I know GRRM said he would not end it in “Westeros became a wasteland, but Essos got lucky, the end” to paraphrase it, but I thought on how much horrifyingly fitting would it be if Stannis has to sacrifice not only his only child, but ALL WESTEROS (supposed someone would give him the means) to decide “Kill Westeros to keep humanity alive”, it would be an interesting choice from a dramatic literary viewpoint where, to keep the role of hero, he has to commit the worst crime possible from the viewpoint of his original position, the position from which he accepted Melisandre’s service in the first place, to help him being the king, initially caring nothing for the hero thing, except as a little booster of self-esteem. Your thoughts?

I don’t think scale is necessary for the “worst crime imaginable.” Rather, I would argue that it’s intimacy that acts as an intensifier, while sadly scale often de-sensitizes. 

Hence my theory as to where Stannis is ending up. 

What do the various hangers-on and other minor members of the court who seem to have no actual function do with their days? Are they doing work in the background or simply lounging around the Red Keep whenever court is not in session?

Good question! 

So I’ve talked a bit about how you become a courtier, a bit about various offices, a bit about how you would get paid (or not)…But let’s say we’re talking about someone who isn’t one of these people, who is literally just a hanger-on: what do they do with their days? 

A big part of what they’re there for is access. Since royal politics is far more organized around proximity to the person of the monarch and, further out from there, proximity to people who are proximate to the person of the monarch, just being around the court means that you can present petitions, ask for favors or money (you’d be amazed at how good nobility were at mooching), and (more importantly) get money from less important people for doing it for them. (There’s not a huge difference between being a courtier without office and being a lobbyist.) But mostly, you’re hanging around waiting to be noticed and given your big break, just like show business.

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So while you wait, a big part of your life is entertainment. Remember, these hangers-on are nobility; by definition, they don’t work for a living and would be horribly offended if you suggested that they should. So they have money from the family’s estates, and they spend their lives in the pursuit of pleasure – and to do that, you need a big enough concentration of highborn folks that you can do social events. So there’s hunting, feasting and drinking (and other recreational substances), dancing, having affairs, GAMBLING (for reckless gamblers, you really can’t beat that combination of cultural disdain for money and aristocratic competitiveness), amateur and professional arts, and other organized activities, and some of them are socialized as male and some as female and some as mixed (because courts are also marriage markets, because one of the ways that people who don’t work make their way in life is by marrying well). And as smart people like @goodqueenaly and @nobodysuspectsthebutterfly have written about, these entertainments had symbolic political functions, which is why people paid for them to happen. 

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And another big part? Gossip, rumor, and public opinion. In the absence of a news media, it’s handy to have a big group of well-connected people who have nothing to do but talk about what’s going on. You’d better bet that there are ambassadors who hang out with or pay courtiers-without-office for the latest scuttlebut about what the king and his family and his officials are up to, so there’s real value here. Likewise, if you’re the king, the royal family, and the government, without any way to assess public opinion, the court is the only sounding board you have – and it’s a sounding board that is connected to the broader political class, because all of these hangers-on will talk to their relatives and peers back home – so it matters if a proclamation or decree or policy is very unpopular at court. And since no one’s getting elected, the standing of any official is their popularity with the court, so rumor could “make or mar.” 

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So that’s what the idle rich did with their lives. 

Race for the Iron Throne Volume 2 is Here!

Apologies for my recent silence – I took a plane to California and my laptop didn’t make it and I’ve spent the last six days trapped in a Kafkaesque situation where FedEx’s delivery times slipping and inflexible IT systems meant that I flew from San Francisco to Santa Barbara and couldn’t re-route the package so had to resend it from SF to SB – but now that I have my laptop back I can once again communicate!

If you were writing a series of Cadfael-type Mysteries set early in the reign of Jaehaerys the First (think Dunk & Egg in Septon’s robes) then what area of the Seven Kingdoms & what aspects of the period do you think would make for the most interesting focus?

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Great question!  

  • I would definitely recommend the Bracken/Blackwood feud and the disputed lands between their two castles as a good place for a murder mystery that can tie in to Jaehaerys’ mediation of the feud.
  • the North or the Wall during Jaehaerys and Alysanne’s progress and the handing-over of the New Gift.
  • Oldtown during the negotiations between the High Septon and Septon Barth over the disarmament of the Faith Militant.
  • the Inn at the Crossroads during a royal inspection of the Kingsroad.
  • the Great Tourney of 98 AC would be a great backdrop.
  • Aemon’s death and the Second Quarrel.
  • the Great Council of 101 AC and the Lannister gold. 

You mention your concept of a Westerosi Great Game in the Westerlands Politics of the Seven Kingdoms, and I wanted to know how you conceive of that era. Are there major “nexus points” other than the Riverlands for the Stormlands-Iron Islands and the Reach-Westerlands border? How important is the arrival of the Rhoynar and the unification of Dorne to this period? What do you want to know about it that there isn’t enough information on?

Well, keep in mind that the Riverlands aren’t just a nexus point for the Stormlands and the Iron Islands – we know that that the Kings of the Rock “warred against the many kings of the Trident,” we know that “the lords of the Reach sent iron columns of knights across the Blackwater whenever it pleased them,” and we know two kings from the Riverlands invaded the Reach during the reign of Gyles III.

Dorne was another important nexus – hence the political importance of the marcher lords in both the Reach and the Stormlands and the fierce independence of the mountain lords of Dorne – both before and after the arrival of the Rhoynar. Dorne’s role was to force both the Reach and the Stormlands to keep an eye on their southern borders and to pounce on any sign of over-stretch or weakness: Garth VII had to be nimble as hell to fight the Fowler Kings and the Ironborn at the same time, but when Gyles III looked to conquer the Stormlands, three Dornish kings invaded him; likewise, when Arlan III conquered the Riverlands, the moment he died the Dornish launched invasions over the Boneway.

So I would argue there are several levels that the Great Game operated on: there’s the Riverlands nexus (which includes the Westerlands, the Stormlands, and occasionally the Reach and the Vale, and would later include the Iron Islands), the Westerlands/Reach nexus, the Reach/Stormlands nexus, and the Reach/Dorne/Stormlands nexus. And all of these nexii were going on at the same time, making for a very complicated conflict.

In terms of the importance of the Rhoynar, we don’t know enough – we get a sense that Nymeria’s uniting of Dorne allowed them to successfully hold off invasions by the Stormlands and the Reach, and we get a few accounts of invasions of the Reach and the Stormlands by the Dornish, but most of that is during the pre-Martell phase.