Tag: asoiaf meta

WOIAF

Your thoughts on the WOIAF? On one hand it fleshes out certain characters and time periods and has some great art. On the other hand it sometimes seems contradictory and sloppy and certain areas (ie. 3rd Blackfyre Rebellion) have been completely skipped, leading me to the feeling that GRRM’s rough notes from the upcoming “Fire and Blood” were sold to us with a new title slapped on it.

Well, I won’t say that there isn’t editing that needed to be done. 

But the wealth of knowledge that is included is, as you can see from the podcasts I did with @unspoiledpodcast and my own analyses, incredibly rich, allowing us to understand far more about the historical development development of Westeros and Essos than we did before.

That being said, there are some omissions – we don’t know a lot about the North post-Andal invasions through to Torrhen Stark outside of their war with the Arryns, we know almost nothing about the Riverlands pre-Andal invasion, we know almost nothing about the Vale between the Dance and Robert’s Rebellion, there’s some significant gaps in the history of the Iron Islands from the Blackfyre Rebellion to the present, we don’t know what happened between the reigns of Garth the Painter and Mern IX in the Reach, other than Lyonel’s Rebellion we don’t know much about the Stormlands between the Dance and Robert’s Rebellion, and we don’t know much about Dornish history outside of its various foreign wars. 

My hope is that a lot of those blank spaces will get filled in through Dunk & Egg, Fire and Blood, and the like. 

What are your thoughts about Patchface’s various creepy/cryptic rhymes? I’ve always assumed the “fool’s blood, king’s blood” one was a reference to the Red Wedding, but most of the others — particularly his fascination with things occurring ‘under the sea,’ mermaids, and seahorses — stump me. Can you explain any of them?

poorquentyn:

Hiya! I’m of the school that says when Patches went down with the Windproud, he encountered the Drowned God beneath the waves, and became Its prophet. Of course, we know from WOIAF that said God is a Lovecraftian abomination, and so the sight of It drove Patches mad even as It kept him miraculously alive before returning him to the surface world: “no one ever explained those two days the fool had been lost in the sea.” (I expect It will drive Damphair mad as well when he summons It in TWOW by praying for Its help against Euron before the Seastone Chair built by Its children the Deep Ones, although I do hope Aeron retains enough sanity to ride It into battle against his by-then-dragonriding abuser. C’mon, tell me with a straight face you don’t want to see C’thulhu fight a dragon while Sam runs around underneath trying to save his books. “My atlas!” he cries as Sarella literally drags him away.)

As for the individual prophecies, you’re right on about the Red Wedding. The one about smoke under the water and flames burning green is pretty clearly referring to the Blackwater, and “in the dark the dead are dancing” is a chilling vision of the Others’ reign. But while I’m sure the rest have specific “answers,” I see them all collectively as evidence of how thoroughly direct contact with the divine screws with your brain. Being a prophet means, to paraphrase Jaeherys II, walking a line between greatness and madness, and I think what poor Patches went through “under the sea” pushed him far over that line. When he says “I know, I know, I know,” it’s not a brag. The revelation, the knowledge, of the Drowned God is a crippling curse, not an empowering blessing. 

Finally, I think Patches’ prophecies are meant in part to undercut Melisandre’s messianic certitude. As @racefortheironthrone put it regarding the aforementioned vision of the Blackwater, “even as Melisandre pushes forward her religious mission, metaphysical events are happening below her nose that she cannot see coming.” 

I would also add that Patchface contrasts strongly with Aeron Damphair. Aeron believes himself to be a true prophet of the Drowned God, but ultimately he’s the same weak man he’s always been who’s listening to the voices in his own head and confusing them with the divine, and lacks the true conviction of his faith. 

Reminds me a lot of Deacon Vorbis from Small Gods – on the outside, a fanatic, on the inside a solipsist.

SomethingLikeALawyer, any particular reason the great spring sickness has not led to pro-smallfolk reforms ala the black death?

warsofasoiaf:

racefortheironthrone:

warsofasoiaf:

Well, not every plague leads to pro-smallfolk reforms. Even Yersinia pestis is no guarantee to pro-peasantry reforms in our own world. Bubonic plague was devastating every time it struck, but the devastation of the outbreak of 541 didn’t lead to the same thing as the Black Death. There’s social factors, the evolution of philosophy, sheer population concerns, and so on.

I can’t tell for certain, but I’m thinking Bloodraven had a hand in it. Bloodraven passed edicts to stop people from leaving their land, but obviously, he lacked the ability to enforce it. He could more easily, however, stop nobles from raising wages to entice peasants to move to their land. Any smallfolk who tried to organize were likely executed as Blackfyre sympathizers (if Haegon ran on a pro-smallfolk platform, that would be an amazing wrinkle, but I’m going out on a limb and saying that won’t be happening).

It’s not all him though, the drought made the land itself less productive, which meant that the smallfolk labor didn’t have the same premium in the years following the Great Spring Sickness as the European peasants did in the Great Spring Sickness, and Dagon Greyjoy’s rebellion distracted the peasantry from wielding any power what with the danger of being abducted and murdered.
Once all that was taken care of, populations stabilized enough that the opportunity had sailed, and pro-smallfolk reforms would have to come from some other source.

Again, however, this is all speculative, and the answer might be something else entirely that we just don’t know. You might want to ask @racefortheironthrone for a second opinion.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Well keep in mind, the Black Death didn’t lead to pro-peasant reforms. In fact, it lead to the opposite – the nobility and the monarchy tried to crack down on uppity peasants and restore the status quo ante plaga, and then the peasants rebelled, and were bloodily put down. 

But the thing about even failed rebellions is that they make people nervous and unwilling to press the issue. So while there weren’t any legislative breakthroughs, quietly the nobility and the monarchy let serfdom lapse and tried to woo agricultural labor with more rights and better terms on their tenancy agreements. Likewise, over the long term, the cash that burghers in the towns and cities were  making eventually translated into bribes to get more and more generous charters that gave city-dwellers legal and political personhood. 

So while nothing happened legislatively until Aegon V’s time, the fact that Bloodraven wasn’t able to enforce his edicts meant that a lot of peasants got off the land they were bound to and got to a city or town where they had more personal freedoms, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that when the drought ended and the nobility needed more labor, there was a lot of quiet and not-so-quiet renegotiation of tenancy agreements. 

Ah, thanks for the correction, I should have mentioned the peasantry revolts as the intermediate step. My mistake there.

Wouldn’t a great deal of peasants moving to cities and towns end up being a bad thing for them given that so many of the larger population centers are on the west coast, meaning there’s a large surplus of peasants for the Ironborn to abduct for thralldom and salt wifery? That, plus Haegon Blackfyre if it lasted that long, might have been a reason why tenancy agreements weren’t revised to such a degree as they were in the years following the Great Spring Sickness.

Or maybe the tenancy agreements were just even crappier in the eras before and we don’t have anything on them.

-SLAL

Well, the Ironborn didn’t hit the big cities – Oldtown, Lannisport, etc. – and they didn’t hit King’s Landing or Gulltown either. They hit Little Dosk and Fair Isle and places like that.

And I have a strong suspicion that there was a gradual process of revision after the Spring Sickness. We don’t have much good info about this – all we can say is that the smallfolk were a step above slaves and thralls, probably got a few steps up after the Spring Sickness, made it a bunch of steps up during Aegon V’s reign, and then lost that progress due to Jaehaerys II and Tywin. 

SomethingLikeALawyer, any particular reason the great spring sickness has not led to pro-smallfolk reforms ala the black death?

warsofasoiaf:

Well, not every plague leads to pro-smallfolk reforms. Even Yersinia pestis is no guarantee to pro-peasantry reforms in our own world. Bubonic plague was devastating every time it struck, but the devastation of the outbreak of 541 didn’t lead to the same thing as the Black Death. There’s social factors, the evolution of philosophy, sheer population concerns, and so on.

I can’t tell for certain, but I’m thinking Bloodraven had a hand in it. Bloodraven passed edicts to stop people from leaving their land, but obviously, he lacked the ability to enforce it. He could more easily, however, stop nobles from raising wages to entice peasants to move to their land. Any smallfolk who tried to organize were likely executed as Blackfyre sympathizers (if Haegon ran on a pro-smallfolk platform, that would be an amazing wrinkle, but I’m going out on a limb and saying that won’t be happening).

It’s not all him though, the drought made the land itself less productive, which meant that the smallfolk labor didn’t have the same premium in the years following the Great Spring Sickness as the European peasants did in the Great Spring Sickness, and Dagon Greyjoy’s rebellion distracted the peasantry from wielding any power what with the danger of being abducted and murdered.
Once all that was taken care of, populations stabilized enough that the opportunity had sailed, and pro-smallfolk reforms would have to come from some other source.

Again, however, this is all speculative, and the answer might be something else entirely that we just don’t know. You might want to ask @racefortheironthrone for a second opinion.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

Well keep in mind, the Black Death didn’t lead to pro-peasant reforms. In fact, it lead to the opposite – the nobility and the monarchy tried to crack down on uppity peasants and restore the status quo ante plaga, and then the peasants rebelled, and were bloodily put down. 

But the thing about even failed rebellions is that they make people nervous and unwilling to press the issue. So while there weren’t any legislative breakthroughs, quietly the nobility and the monarchy let serfdom lapse and tried to woo agricultural labor with more rights and better terms on their tenancy agreements. Likewise, over the long term, the cash that burghers in the towns and cities were  making eventually translated into bribes to get more and more generous charters that gave city-dwellers legal and political personhood. 

So while nothing happened legislatively until Aegon V’s time, the fact that Bloodraven wasn’t able to enforce his edicts meant that a lot of peasants got off the land they were bound to and got to a city or town where they had more personal freedoms, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that when the drought ended and the nobility needed more labor, there was a lot of quiet and not-so-quiet renegotiation of tenancy agreements. 

I missed asking about this when the Dany V essay came out, but how extraordinary is it that Ser Barristan speaks High Valyrian fluently (or for that matter, that he is passable in Ghiscari)? How common was it in the Middle Ages for knights like Ser Barristan to speak a second language like Latin or a third language?

Well, historical parallels are tripping us up here because in the Middle Ages, you were only considered literate if you knew Latin. Being able to read and write in your native language didn’t count. 

The extent to which the lesser nobility learned Latin is a matter of historical debate. Certainly, we know that it was considered unusual and notable that Henry I could read Latin instead of relying on his clerks (hence why his nickname was Henry Beauclerc, or Henry the Good Scholar), but from King John’s reign (1199-1216) onward, royals were routinely educated in Latin. And as Harvey Graff argues, “the example set by the kings inevitably gave the baronage and gentry a motivation to learn some Latin, both to avoid looking foolish at court…and to have sufficient understanding of the written demands” of their king.

How far down that penetrated is hard to say, because evidence is difficult to find. For example, how do we know that documents in Latin from various knights were written by the knights and not by clerks they employed? Best guess is that your average knight knew enough Latin to do their jobs.

As for Ser Barristan, it certainly is a mark of distinction that he can speak so many languages. On the other hand, Ser Barristan was not your average knight – he was born the heir of House Selmy, a principal House of the Stormlands, he served in the Disputed Lands where most of his enemies would have been speaking some form of Valyrian, and he served in the Kingsguard which means spending time in the royal court. So he’s more likely to know a second language than most.

But a lesser landed knight who didn’t rate having a maester in their household? There’s a good chance they’re not functionally literate in the Common Tongue, let alone in Valyrian. 

Anon Asks: Manderly’s Davos decoy

“ The man had your coloring, a nose of the same shape, two ears that were not dissimilar, a long beard that could be trimmed and shaped like yours. You can be sure we tarred him well, and the onion shoved between his teeth served to twist the features. Ser Bartimus saw that the fingers of his left hand were shortened, the same as yours. The man was a criminal, if that gives you any solace. His dying may accomplish more good than anything he ever did whilst living.”

When Manderly mentions that, is that not supposed to bother the reader a little? From the sound of it Manderly executed what was possibly a thief not for the crime he committed, but to serve a purpose in his plan. 

Isn’t that kind of Manderly’s whole shtick, though? Killing people and baking them into pies, then eating them and tricking their relatives into eating them, “had he lived he would have grown up to be a Frey,” etc. 

The character of Wyman Manderly in ADWD is borrowing pretty heavily from Titus Andronicus – a tragic protagonist whose family has suffered, who no one takes seriously because he’s feigning disability, and who’s engaged in a grand guignol revenge against those who done him wrong. 

Steven Xue Asks: Why didn’t the Ironborn reave an independent Dorne?

I’ve been going through the World Book and I find it strange how during the first century and a half of living under Targaryen rule when Dorne was still an independent kingdom at that time, the Ironborn didn’t take the opportunity to go there for pillage and plunder. I can understand that after submitting to Targaryen rule the Ironborn stopped raiding lands that are under the protection of the Iron Throne as they would not stand a chance against the combined might of the Seven Kingdoms (as Balon Greyjoy would later learn).

However during the time Dorne was still a sovereign country it was outside of the Crown’s jurisdiction so it wasn’t off limits. Surely Dorne should have been the perfect hub for Ironborn raids during the years before it was finally integrated into the Seven Kingdoms. It is closer to home than the lands beyond Westeros and it’s very rich. Its coastal regions especially like Planky Town which brought in a lot of trade seem like ideal targets for eager Ironborn captains as there is plenty to plunder there and they could take their chances with the Martells as there would have been no interference from the Iron Throne.

Given how tenacious the Ironborn have proven themselves to be throughout history when it came to sating their desire to pillage and plunder and attacking pretty much anywhere that’s vulnerable (eg. The North), what was stopping them from conducting full scale raids in Dorne? 

They probably did raid Dornish trade in the Narrow Sea, but the thing about Dorne’s southern coastline is that it’s really not good for sailing: “Nor is the long southern coast of Dorne more hospitable, being for the most part a snarl of reefs and rocks, with few protected anchorages. Those ships that do put ashore there, whether by choice or chance, find little to sustain them; there are no forests along the coast to provide timber for repairs, a scarcity of game, few farms, and fewer villages where provisions might be obtained. Even freshwater is hard to come by, and the seas south of Dorne are rife with whirlpools and infested with sharks and kraken.”

So the basic problem is that the Ironborn couldn’t really raid anywhere in between Skyfall and Plankytown because there aren’t really any coastal villages to raid. Also, the trip to Plankytown is a pain in the ass – if a storm blows up, you’re going to be wrecked and unable to repair your longboat or find food and water, and that’s assuming you don’t get eaten by sharks and krakens.

So my guess is that what the Ironborn would do instead is to run the gauntlet to the Narrow Sea and then prey on Dornish shipping there. 

Were guerilla and Fabian tactics feasible in the medieval period? I know the Romans employed the concept (hence Fabian tactics), but it seems like most nobles would be a little averse to it given that it requires more decentralized leadership and a more empowered populace to maintain supplies, morale, equipment, etc.

Absolutely. 

If you look at the history of the various wars between Wales and Norman England, leading up to Edward I’s conquest, the Welsh enjoyed their biggest successes when they used guerrilla tactics against the better-equipped but slower English armies, using a combination of the longbow, hit-and-run tactics, and the Welsh mountains as secure refuges. 

Likewise, Bertrand du Guesclin, Marshal of France from 1370-1380, took over after the disasters of Crecy and Poiters, and used Fabian tactics to great effect in Brittany, Castille, and Poitiers, reversing most of the French losses from that phase of the Hundred Years War. 

This is kind of a follow up to the Aegon reforms question and I apologize if it is a bit long or boring. Do we have any information (or do you have any guesses) on how towns, cities and municipalities overall are originated and administered? Burghers were generally a separate class from manoral peasant IIRC and had unique privileges as well (though I may be wrong). Most municipalities seem to predate the Targs though so it seems a little unclear how is overseeing here. Additionally do you think

status hierarchy varies at all by region? I seem to recall from the Defiance of Duskendale section of WOIAF that Lord Darklyn was partially inspired by the fact that the Dornish lords retained their ability to autonomously administer cities (which is odd because they apparently don’t have any!). I completely understand if you want to correct me somewhere or if you think GRRM has not really developed this part of the worldbuilding.

One correction: Darklyn was primarily inspired by the Essosi paradigm (where you have full city-states), not the Dornish paradigm: “It was Lord Denys’s desire to win a charter for Duskendale that would give it more autonomy from the crown, much as had been done for Dorne many years before, that began the trouble. This did not seem to him such a vast demand; such charters were common across the narrow sea, as Lady Serala most certainly had told him.” (WOIAF, Aerys II)

The answer is we don’t know much. We know that city charters exist, we know they involve autonomy from the crown on some matters, notably “port fees and tariffs,” and that they require royal approval in the Crownlands and used to as well in the Riverlands when they were independent.

One thing we can say is that the most expansive form of rights, where cities were completely self-governing communes answerable to no one but the king, doesn’t exist in Westeros. White Harbor is ruled by the Manderlys, Oldtown by the Hightowers, Lannisport by the Lannisters, Gulltown by the Graftons.

From the little we know, city charters seem to be largely focused on taxation and other economic regulations – city charters allow cities to set their own port fees and tariff rates to some extent, allowing them to more effectively compete for trade. I say to some extent, because we know that Tywin and Aerys II fought over tariff rates and port fees at Oldtown, Lannisport, and King’s Landing, so it’s clearly not full autonomy. 

Based on historical parallels and the fact that city charters are expected to lead to expansion, my guess is that the main things that Westerosi charters involve are: 

  • the right to hold markets and fairs and regulate them.
  • the right to establish public warehouses where goods can be stored.
  • the staple right, which means foreign merchants have to unload their goods in your town and exhibit them for sale there for a given period before moving on. 
  • some sort of autonomy or revenue-sharing on port fees, tariffs, and other taxes on commerce.